Golden Anvil

Tonight we played Last Night on Earth with 3 other people at work. It was me playing the zombies against the four of them with the heroes. It was an amazing game! The objective this time was for the heroes to find dynamite and gas cans and blow up three of the spawn points where zombies enter the map.

The game started off very lopsided. I had a really horrible start, and by the end of my first turn (the zombies move first) I had only 1 zombie on the board. Ouch! Normally I'd have had about an average of 7. So, the heroes had nice free reign. Plus the had the hero who's really good at searching. Oh, and they got really lucky and one of them started the game with a stick of dynamite! Yeah...

Well, tonight MrsKheldar and I played another game of Last Night on Earth. Mark couldn't make it over, so it was just the two of us. She was playing the heroes this time while I took over the zombies.

This time we were playing the advanced rules. This adds an additional 20 cards to both the zombie and hero card decks. It also means a number of additional scenarios. The scenario we randomly drew was Escape in the Truck. There's a truck parked in the center of the board. The heroes need to find the keys and find the gas and fuel up the truck. Then there needs to be two heroes at the truck at the end of their turn in order to win. The zombies win by killing off 3 of the 4 heroes (so that they don't have the required 2 to escape) or running out the clock (15 turns).

So, I do very much enjoy the Descent board game that MrsKheldar got me for Christmas, but it IS a long game, so our play times will be less frequent than desired. Plus, I'd allocated some of my Christmas money for another board game. So, this week I went out and picked up another game called: Last Night on Earth.

This is a game about zombies, presented in a fairly light style intended to bring about the feel of a horror B-movie. We didn't take any pictures this time, but you can see one here.

Did you know that TrackMania supports red/blue 3D glasses? I'd never got the chance to actually try it out, because I never could get my hands on a pair of glasses.

Well, I came home today and found a surprise waiting on my desk. One of MrsKheldar's friends had a pair of SharkBoy/LavaGirl 3D glasses from McDonalds, and seeing that she was planning on throwing them away...

So, I tried it out.

The main menu looked pretty sweet, with the UI hovering in front of a slowly spinning globe. The actual racing though was not overly impressive. There wasn't a great sense of depth (I suspect that too much of what you're looking at is too far away from the camera to get a good sense of depth), and of course the colors were pretty terrible (as expected).

Still, it was fun to try out, and I'll have to show anyone that happens to come over.

Today MrsKheldar and I spent most of the day playing Descent: Journeys in the Dark. This is a big board game with lots of counters and markers and such, kind of like Arkham Horror (for those of you who've played that). This was MrsKheldar's Christmas gift to me, and it definitely looks like a winner. We had a lot of fun playing, although the game too waaaay longer than expected, in part due to time to punch out all the markers and having to do a lot of searches through the rules as we were playing. I suspect our next game will be a good deal shorter.

On July 1, 1453, King Giorgi VII officially declared war on the Golden Horde. He'd only just arrived in Alania with the army and was still in the process of integrating the new mercenaries with the regular troops when scouts reached him with news that the Golden Horde was raising troops in Astrakhan. With some luck, the king hoped to be able to march in and disrupt the enemy troops before they were fully prepared for battle.

Out of courtesy the king had sent word to Ak Koyunlu and Shirvan who had pledged to join us in any war that might arise. Little help had been expected from them however, and sure enough, they quickly sent replies to the effect that they could not commit to any action at this time.

"Your Majesty, I beg you to reconsider!"

"No time for that now." King Giorgi VII didn't even look back as he strode from the palace.

"But, Your Majesty, the risk! Our lands will be overrun by heathens, our people will be slaughtered! You can not do this!"

Giorgi turned back around on his heel. "You will not tell me what I can and can not do." Giorgi gestured off towards the parade ground where the entire army stood at attention to the sound of a single drummer. "That sound you hear is the sound of destiny, the sound of glory. The sons of the Khan stand alone. None will come to their aid. The time to attack is now. We can not fail."

He stood for one long moment to see if any response would be attempted. Then he turned and strode off towards his waiting men.

~~~~~~~~~~

Having already taken a good look at the external issues facing our country, it's time to peer into the internal status.

Georgia is a Feudal Monarchy ruled by King Giorgi VII. Despite fancying himself a great general, the King has only a little experience in such matters. His talents in administration and diplomacy are not even worth mentioning, except to say that his presence on the throne greatly cheers our enemies. He has ruled since the beginning of 1446, and has accomplished little. His court of advisors contains no one of any note, leaving the King unassisted in matters of state.

First, some technical details about the game. I am playing Europa Universalis 3 Complete, patched up to version 3.2 beta. I'm using Magna Mundi Platinum 1.5. I did play a couple of very short test games to try a couple ideas out and see how plausible it would be for me to play Georgia. In real life, Georgia remained an independant country until 1555 when the Ottomans and the Safavids divided the country between them. My goal for this game will be to at least survive past that year. There are new patches for both the core game and Magna Mundi coming out in the next couple months, so I do not plan for the game to run for too long. Even if I survive past 1555, I will likely not play until the game's end date.

For those of you who aren't familiar with some of the terms in the title, let me give a brief explanation.

AAR - After Action Report - In gaming terms, this is when someone writes up a detailed report covering the events of a particular game. You can actually find quite a lot of these around the internet. Some are extremely well written. Some are presented in a highly fictionalized fashion. Some are pretty focused on the specifics of the gameplay. Some are intended as tutorials. Most are fairly long, as they are usually written about games that take longer to play, and most cover the game in detail. In many cases, an AAR can be interesting to read even if you've never played the game before. AARs are frequently decorated with screenshots taken while playing the game.