Fire In The Sky long campaign game setup trial run#1. After reading and rereading the rules at least 5 times, I have decided to run a trial game to wrap my head around it.
The most difficult part is to understand the movement mechanics and the strategy behind the carrier and bombardment task forces.
Since the setups for the long and short campaign game were provided, I decide to try and recreate the moves to obtain the short game setup from the long game setup.
Fire in the Sky is an asymmetric game where the Japs start with almost all units on board while the US forces enter the war gradually and finally build up to an unstoppable force.
South East Asia. The Japs have to take Manila and Singapore.
Pearl Harbor. To attack or not to attack, that is the question. The game provides an overwhelming bonus to the Japs’ first strike that it makes sense to strike… or does it?
Australia, the lynchpin of the Jap offensive in their attempt to force the Allies to sue for peace.
Aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack. Plenty of Battleship damage and sunkage, which probably meant it’s a good 1st turn move… or does it? Can’t make up my mind on this.
Manila invasion goes according to plan. Epic failz on the Singapore blitz. According to rule book, this is probably an unrecoverable setback.
Plenty of US units sunk in Pearl Harbor, however Japs’ singapore invasion force is also nursing some heavy bruising’ at home. Contrary to history, Repulse and Prince of Wales prevailed!
Notes: after running through a simulated 1st turn game, it is still a VERY difficult game to wrap my head around. It is difficult to ascertain the naval and air assets to commit to a particular battle based on the combat modifier tables. It is also still difficult to determine the strategic value of different naval and air assets positioning… Perhaps a few more simulated turns in the future…
It was a full night of gaming, 4 tables apparently.
Ubongo was spotted twice…
wah so serious…
janvier: where’s my L!?!
FITS twice…
I taught this game…
fun game between sedaya students…
spatial dysfunctionality teasing between MMU students…
Wyatt Earp, Caylus, Endeavour…
these guys look like they’re playing poker
Endeavouring to learn the rules
some accusations of slavery happening…
table learning to joust in Caylus
soon they’ll be Caylus knights!
And also, two games of Battlestar Galactica!
Me explaining the expansion rules. first time we are playing the treachery rules properly
I’m not a cylon, are you a cylon? not we’re not cylons…
janvier (helo) : so sharon (patomas), we should frak soon because we are frakked by our cylon admiral and cylon president
oh no, what should we do?
frakking massive assault…
by cylon adama (ang) and cylon roslin (li li)!
janvier (tyrol): OK guys, this is a new game, we should be able to win. hey! you’re sharon again (patomas), let’s boogie down to the hanger…
heng: guys sorry to burst your bubble, we cylons are here
cylons dualla and roslin. the percentage occurrence for li li to be a cylon is a shocking 99%
kevin (adama): oh man, what happened? first day on the admiral job and i got mislead by these two cylons
kevin: guys, there are two destinations here, as your admiral, i chose the safe but short distance one…
everyone: NNNOOOO!!!! jump farther!
kevin: oops
everyone: Brig him!
death by centurions… so close yet so far, was the last jump but frakking toasters got onboard and airlocked the party.
And a game of Confucius in the wee hours of the morning to close off the session…
I’m sure there’s a good game in there somewhere…
… the gift mechanic is fairly mind boggling, especially where calculating obligations…
… but the rules weren’t transparent enough! Oh well, next time then.
Next we did Battlestar Galactica, unofficially my wife’s favourite game.
She was President Baltar, I was Admiral Cain… so much power in the hands of so few…
… but we were not Cylons, despite the seeds of discord sown by a certain random game organiser/photographer kekeke
no, the real cylons were Mr. Ang aka Sharon the sleeper agent
and Mr Lester aka Saul the drunkard
two cylons revealed!
Jimmy was caught in between the two traitors and had his loyalty card check by the President once as he was very suspicious…
… actually everyone was suspicious, sigh, I still suck at lie detecting…
But there’s no stopping the human mob once toaster Sharon revealed herself when destiny conspired to show her sabotaging pilot card.
However, the humans still lost as they ran out of fuel due to abundance of good but fuel burning jump cards…
…cylon victorious again! i think we need Admiral Wolfx to show humankind the way next time.
I had to leave then but lent my Caylus Premium Edition for another round of serious game pimping
Cool bits, no?
The night started with FITS between myself, my wife li li and allen.
There’s a table doing Fresco, which i’d played the week before…
…between aanemesis, lester, henry and kelvin
And here where rumour has it that ang schooled a bunch of guys in Ticket to Ride…
There were 3 tables playing games in OTK Cheras that night…
After playing FITS, we join kareem and eerr… a friend for Macao
Macao is a game by Stefan Feld, who also did In the Year of the Dragon. Both Macao and In the Year of the Dragon share some similarities: 12 rounds, long range planning, penalty points and plenty of PAIN…
The heart of the game is the dice and the windrose mechanic. There are 6 dice of different colour and they are resources to be gained and spent
The trick is that the higher numbered dice you pick, the more resources you will get, BUT, it also represents how many turns later only will you get the resource! Plenty of long range planning angst from a relatively simple mechanic.
The resource cubes can be spent activating cards…
…buying goods/areas…
…ship to distant lands…
… and getting ahead on the turn order track (wall)…
…which will ensure first pick and less PAIN from unactivated cards!
a fun game, thumbs up, but what’s with the 4 player limitations nowadays?!
I arrived late from my own birthday party to find Allen, Kareem and Aanemesis apparently finished playing Alien Frontiers…
… and was setting up Power Struggle with CK Au. I had read the rules to this game and Allen also had played it with Hiew but both of us still need time to refresh the rules…
In this game we play as a shadowy figure attempting to wrest power in a generic multinational company
We hire our ‘crony’ employees to take over various departments and abuse department privileges
Which can sometimes go awry as our own cronies get bribed
All this in order to gain power which are defined in game terms as influence, shares, indestructable main departments, corruption and external consultants
It’s fun to backstab, sidestab, frontstab each other…
Especially after receiving a bribe just to ‘retire’ the bribed employee out of reach of the bribe offerer!
Overall a nice game but the rules itself are not ‘transparent’ in the sense that there are minor details easily overlooked. After we played the game, we found at least three misplayed rules, not enough to break the game but it’s still there.
Next we did 7 Wonders and it’s a quick light filler… although it might not be quick since anyone who plays it wants to play it twice!
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