The Blog: Laments From La Mancha

Zulu.

When I got the email, I thought at first that Mark was just being clever. Turns out, Zulu is a real place in Indiana. Who knew?

Game Night (R) Report – Zulu Edition: The other side of the room
The First half of Game Night (R) Report – Zulu Edition can be found here.

While the Battles of the Rebellion raged on the other side of the room (with Adam, Mark, Paul, Jon and Jonas), Michelle, Tom, Ty and myself sat down to enjoy some San Marco and Royal Turf.

San Marco is at the top of my list of Alan Moon games (Union Pacific being another one). Aside for its amazingly beautiful game board, it’s filled with wonderfully evil decisions to be made at every turn.

The goal of San Marco is to score prestige points by building up influence in the six districts of Venice, Italy through strategic placement of aristocrats. It should be noted that due to technical and artistic reasons, the board does not accurately represent the actual street map of Venice (I include that disclaimer because it’s actually in the game rules).

San Marco is broken up into 6 distinct districts (Cannaregio – 6/4, Santa Croce 7/4, San Polo 6/5, Dorsoduro 6/4, San Marco 8/6 and Castello 7/4), each separated by flooded streets. At the beginning of the game, players roll 4 times in a row to see where they place their first 8 aristocrats; one at a time they place one of a limited number of bridges between any two districts. Now the real fun begins.

The game is played over 3 rounds, with several turns being taken per round. On a turn players are paired up into two groups with one person from each group fulfilling the role of distributor and the other as decider. A distributor has 8 different cards (5 playing cards and 3 limit cards) that he or she has to divide up into two different offers. Now the distributor can be as fair or as unfair as they choose to be, but they must always keep in mind, that the decider will pick which offer they want leaving the other for the distributor to play. The 1st decider always plays first (turn order is important) followed by the first distributor, then the 2nd decider and lastle the second distributor.

The playing cards allow you to do different things:

1) Switch – Allows you to swap one players aristocrat for your own in any district
2) Banishment – which allows a player to pick any district and roll the dice. Whatever the total is, that many aristocrats must leave, the player gets to decide, but player beware, you might have to remove your own if you roll too high.
3) District cards – Place one of your aristocrats in the listed district. However, if you have a bridge connected to that district you are allowed to place in the connecting district instead.
4) Bridge cards – allow you to place a bridge to connect two districts. If all bridges are in place, then you are allowed to remove a bridge of your choice (any players) and re-place it as your own.
5) The Doge card – this allows you to score any district in which the Doge resides. You are allowed to move the Doge using the following rules: He can be moved over bridges you own to any district for free. You can use other player’s bridges, but you most pay them 1 prestige point per bridge to do so. Once the Doge reaches his final resting place, whoever has the most influence in the district scores prestige points equal to the higher number listed by the district name (in the case of San Marco the player would score 8 for example). Whoever has the second most influence scores the lower number (again 6 in the example of San Marco). If there is a tie for first, all players get the lower score. If there is a tie for second, players receive nothing.

Along with the playing cards there are also limit cards that range from 1 to 3 points. Once one player reaches 10 or more limit points, round end is triggered. If only one player exceeds the 10 point limit, all other players play one more turn. This time however, instead of 8 cards, the distributor has 6 playing cards and 4 limit cards to distribute in 3 offers. If two or more players exceed the 10 point limit, the round ends after that turn.

For the players who did not exceed the 10 point limit after the end of the final turn, they get some bonus prestige points. They take the highest total of limit points and subtract their total and receive the result in bonus points. As an added extra bonus, the person with the lowest limit points gets to perform and extra banishment before the scoring round (which be very helpful). After the banishment each district is scored. Whoever has the most prestige points after the three rounds wins.

With all those rules having been vaguely explained to my three companions, we dove in head first. Michelle and Tom ended up smack dab in the middle of the board in San Polo, while Ty and I ended up sprinkled along the edges.

It became apparent pretty quickly that this was going to be a tough game of decisions, playing a delicate balancing act, making an offer attractive enough that the decider will take it, leaving you with the cards that you really want. There were some truly tense moments (which we will get to in a bit).

Tom took total domination of bridges early on thinking he would need them to move his aristocrats around. Michelle ended up with lots Doge cards and racked up a huge lead scoring San Marco on more than one occasion during the first turn. I happened to be lucky enough to be along for the ride.

Ty did pretty well and started to close the gap between he and myself. Tom on the other hand couldn’t get a Doge card for the life of him and had to settle for collecting tolls as people crossed his bridges. I hit the 10 point limit first and the others continued on with out me. Ty had the lowest and received the extra banishments.

With one round under our belts, Michelle was way out in front, followed by Ty and myself and Tom brought up the rear.

Round two went much the same way as the first, though Tom figured out that he didn’t have to have an aristocrat in a district to use the swap card as well as his fiendish plan to make sure that everyone was tied for second so that no one scored when the Doge showed up. Thanks to these clever tactics and some long awaited Doge cards Tom quickly closed the gap on third and passed Ty. I too capitalized on Tom’s hard work and was able to pull ahead of Michelle to take the lead by 2.

The third and final round only lasted two turns thanks to Ty and Michelle. Michelle had taken 6 points in the first turn and I set her up in a tough dilemma on the second turn. She could either take an offer that had 6 limit points (pushing her over the 10 point limit) but had two Doge cards, or she could take one that had only 1 limit point but only one Doge card.

The one district she would have scored twice in (San Marco), I had the 2nd most influence and would have scored as well, so while she would have gained a 4 point advantage, she locked herself out of a possible additional turn. If she took the offer with only one limit point, I would have scored twice in another district and increased my lead over her by a considerable amount. I took a gamble that she would take the easy points, and hoped that I would get an additional turn. However, Ty wasn’t about to see that happen.

He setup his offers so that no matter which one Tom took, one of them would go over 10 and thus trigger game end (though I had no way of know that).

But all was not lost, I got an extra 10 bonus points for only having 2 limit cards, and I got the free banishment, however even with that last push, it wasn’t enough and Michelle won by 3 points, followed by myself, Ty and Tom (who were separated by 1 point).

It was a wonderful game, and one that I can tell at least Tom is itching for a second chance at.

The hour was growing late, and our brains were pretty fried from all the stress of San Marco, so we hit something light as our second game, Royal Turf.

Michelle and I are old hat at Royal Turf, so we explained the rules, and the betting began. We had a great time, but the game sort of unraveled in the last round as we were re-rolling dice that ended up partially on the board and partially on the table (which would have effected the end totals I believe) and Ty got a little over excited in his bet placing and accidentally revealed some hidden bets.

Tom in a bold move put all his eggs in one basket and bet it all on Earl Grey (Earl Grey for 1).

Ty and I finished almost tied with me having the slight edge in cash. Tom came in third and Michelle who had dominated San Marco didn’t even break $1000 in total winnings.

All in all it was a great time. The sausage roll and pies provide by Mrs. Mark (aka Jan) were enjoyed just as much or more so as the gaming. However, the one moment that made the entire evening happened before Game Night (R) even began. I was sitting on the couch petting the Robbin’s Jack Russell Terrier (which was tied to a leash which was tied around the waist of Ellen, the Robbin’s seven year old daughter. When the next car pulled into the driveway, Ellen took off to the door to see who it was. YOINK! The dog went flying off the couch and bounced along behind Ellen. I cried.

Friday, September 17 was another Night of Two Gaming Tables, as the American Civil War in miniature flared up once again in the kitchen, while Bob led four players in German games (San Marco at least) in front of the fireplace.

Bob’s group included Michelle, Tom and Ty, while I hosted Paul, Jon, Adam and Jonas. I’ll defer to Bob for a full report on San Marco.

Battles of the Rebellion is a home-grown miniatures game with essentially Corps-level action. The intent of the game, unlike most miniatures games, is to simulate command problems rather than the detailed tactical combat. One of the first command problems simulated was my lack of command of the game, having let it sit on the shelf for two or more years. It is still very much a design in progress; still, I have fun with it every time, and I hope the players did as well.

Adam and Jon were the rebel leaders, with orders to occupy the ground around the town of Bojrabville. They were to dispatch any smaller Union forces, but not get pulled into an engagement with a larger force. Since their forces were spilt some miles apart and separated by a river, this was no easy task. Add to that the uncertainty of the situation – they did not know the size or location of the Union forces – and they had their work cut out for them. They did have mobility, as each general could write two orders or messages per turn.

Paul and Jonas led the Union army, which had advantages in size and information. Jonas was aware that the rebel army was split, and was ordered to pin it down and hit it hard. Paul, on the other hand, was out of communication, with no orders. The first order of business for the Union was coordination, which was made more difficult by their relative inflexibility in issuing orders compared to the rebels.

Jon and Jonas appeared on the board first, with Jonas’ forces marching hard for the town to the north, and Jon’s men coming in from the west. It appeared that Jon might catch Jonas in flank, but a good iniative roll gave Jonas time to form a hasty line. By that time, Adam’s force entered the battlefield from the north east, and threatened Jonas from behind. Again Jonas was fortunate, as Adam’s men responded rather slowly and Jonas was able to get his last brigade into place on the right flank.

Meanwhile, Jon attacked Jonas’ line from the west and was repulsed, losing a regiment. Shortly thereafter, Paul’s army appeared from the southwest, and Jon and Adam watched with pained expressions as four brigades formed up south of Jon’s line. Jon assaulted here, too, and was repulsed; Paul assaulted as well, with some success…another of Jon’s regiments was destroyed, and Jon’s forces were thrown into retreat.

Simultaneous with the retreat was an order issued by Adam for one of his brigades to assualt the center of Jonas’ line. I thought it was a mistake at first read, as it would engage much of Adam’s forces with a superior foe. But Adam thought it would take some of the pressure off Jon’s men, had they not retreated. And it worked. Adam destroyed one of Jonas’s regiments and threw part of the line into retreat, and Jon’s regiments disengaged without incident. This left, after turn twelve, Adam close to contact with Jon’s men to the west, and only one confederate brigade engaged with Union forces. But Paul’s men were hot on Jon’s heels, and one of Jonas’ brigades was moving north as well.

From my perspective, everyone played the game well. This is an especially difficult game for new players, and both Jon and Jonas learned lessons the hard way. Impatient for orders to come through, Jon kept writing and had several turns where his men received conflicting orders. Given that, they retreated, which was probably for the best anyway. Jonas wrote a lot of orders, and also had his men take initiative several times, only to have an earlier conflicting order arrive later. Both Jonas and Adam had a couple of orders misunderstood by their brigadiers, but it was not serious in any case, though it slowed Jonas down.

So who won? I really don’t know, especially as the game ended after only twelve turns. The Union forces commanded the fighting and the battlefield, but they had the advantage to begin with. In one sense, they failed their orders because they did not pin the enemy forces. Adam’s men would execute an order to disengage on turn thirteen, and a rebel retreat might have taken them out of the engagement – fully consistent with their original orders. On the other hand, Jon and Adam did not really get their forces in line, and the pell-mell retreat in the west might have made it impossible to do so. If Paul and Jonas succeeded in keeping the two rebel wings apart, they surely could have wrecked at least one of them and had fair claim to victory.

Well, I have more to do in the game design. The combat needs simplified, and the order of events in the turn clarified. The attacking regiment had a bit of an advantage last night, and cannon were (due to an oversight) allowed to march into line. Much of the problem is the haphazard nature of the design, which hasn’t received attention for several years, and some details were forgotten. But Battles of the Rebellion does provide, I think, the appropriate atmosphere of uncertainty, impatience and frustration for commanders in a Civil War battle. Strategy is important, tactics are important, but in the end execution is what matters…and in that there is always a bit of luck, good or bad.

Thanks to all for a great Game Night, and I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did.

- Mark R