Alan Snider - Feb 22, 2005 9:36 pm (#9099 Total: 9111)   
On the Playtest Table: Adam Starkweather's "The Devil's 
Cauldron"; and announcing the "Northern Knights Wargaming 
Group" in Vancouver, Canada with a retail store of it's 
own at http://www.stalag17wargames.com/    
 
GAMENIGHT, Feb 20th: We managed to get enough guys to launch a full
campaign game of Charles Vasey's "Chariot Lords", with Nathan Hiebert,
Andrew Nick, Craig Nynych and myself in attendance. We went full out
random for the purpose of picking sides, using a chit pull. I, once
again ended up with the Caananites and Kassites to start, Andrew had
Egypt, Craig had the Hatti and Elam, and Nathan (the crafty one) started
with the Assyrians, Sumerians, and Mittani. 

Thinking I had screwed up major the last time I played the game (when I
headed straight at the Sumerians in their superior defence of the bog,
and smashed meself to death), so I headed North to try to prevent the
Mittani from gaining the points for holding their capital (Harran) on
turn 2...We crashed up against one another and dealt pretty much equal
damage on one another, but the Mittani held on to claim the points. This
caused much problems for the Kassites later, as they had to think much
more conservatively later on in maintaining control of Mari and ?(can't
remember). 

The Egyptians did a big rush up the Gaza strip, destroying much of the
Caananites in their path..although the Canaanites managed to spread out
some, to claim max. points for areas controlled. It did not help matter
that the Canaanites cannot stack more than 3 units at any one time
compared to 5 for other peoples'. The Hatti also vacated their home
area, and crashed into Canaan form the North...leaving the Canaanites a
rag tag bunch of gypsies... 

Nathan decided to take a run at a few stray Elamites who tried to spread
out and take points near Babylon, with the Sumerians. This also denied
the kills to the Kassites who had Elamite and Sumerian kills on their
menu of tasks. The Sumerians, then headed back to the bog for
protection. 

Things got pretty wild on turns 4 and 5, as the Achaeans, Luvvites,
Phrygians, Chaldeans (5), Libyans, Judah, Assyrians (tons), and Sea
Peoples' all entered over these 2 turns: 

A combination of attacks by the Hatti and Libyans, nearly eliminated the
Egyptians from play, with Egypt being pushed into vassalship of several
nations on successive turns... although, "somehow" they managed to hang
on and rebuilt into a decent force, with Libyan mercenaries in tow. 

Judah stayed "godly" until turn 5, where they are now ungodly, and no
longer have their +1 bonus on dierolls. The Sea Peoples managed a full 5
cities occupation on their turn of entry and are now poised to take
areas of Ugarit and have eyes on heading south to take a few swats at
Judah whilst they are ungodly. They are forced to take a turn staging
this effort, as their sea movement range will not allow an immediate
assault. 

Andrew's Achaeans enter in the North-West, fanning out to take as many
points as they can, and are successful due to the fact that no one
nearby is able to gain points by killing them straight away... With the
Hatti otherwise disposed, the Luvvites manage to sneakin to take the
Hatti home area for big points, this forces the Hatti to begin to make
plans to retake it, as they need to occupy it a few turns hence...
strangely enough, the Phrygians get a whack of points from occupying
Hatti, if they take it from the Hatti themselves. So, needless to say,
the master plan is to vacate Hatti, allow the Hatti to take over and
bullrush them with the Phyrigians for the big points. 

The Elamites are hit hard b7y both the Sumerians and Assysrians, as the
Assyrians zone in on the remainder of Kassites holed up in Babylon. A
great one-two punch was helped by back to back to back red chit pulls
for Nathan; and he eliminated all but 3 Kassite units. However on the
final attack by the mighty Assyrian forces, the Kassites held on to
Babylon with truely heroic dierolls, turning back th Assyrian hoards.
The Kassites held onto Babylon just long enough to pave the way for a
smooth transition of control of Babylon being handed over to the
Chaldeans (with Nebecanezzar). 

The Elamites held on, to make a bit of a comeback with additional
reinforcements arriving in turn 5...but too late for offering any easy
kills for the Kassites to get their full points. Both the Assyrians and
Chaldeans are headed for a big showdown for Babylon. In the
Mediterranian, the Sea Peoples' look to be a bit of a wild card, with
the ability to wipe Judah off the face of the earth, and sink the
recovery hopes of the Hatti; although the re-emergence of the Egyptians
may prove to prevent this from happening... 

We are currently at the end of turn 5(of 10) and plan on finishing up
the game on Saturday Feb 26th, with all player committed to attend. Once
again, having a lot of fun with "Chariot Lords", which is becoming a bit
of a favorite within our group for multiplayer action. The game is
fairly easy to learn, but the gameplay turns on the challenges posed by
the order of the chit draws, as they can screw up all the best attacking
and defending plans; a quality design in our eyes! 

Alan Snider  - Mar 1, 2005 2:14 pm (#9138 Total: 9147)  
On the Playtest Table: Adam Starkweather's "The Devil's 
Cauldron"; and announcing the "Northern Knights Wargaming 
Group" in Vancouver, Canada with a retail store of it's 
own at http://www.stalag17wargames.com/ 	 

GAMENIGHT, Feb 26th: The Northern Knights continue with our game of
"Chariot Lords" (4-players) at turn 6 (of 10). All players from the
previous week were again in attendance (Andrew Nick, Nathan Hiebert,
Craig Nynych, Alan Snider). 

Andrew directing the blue forces, pushed hard with his Egyptians,
fending off the Libyans and taking a few more mercenary (meshwash)
forces at the end of battle. They also attempted to push northward,
taking on the Judeans; and while they inflicted some huge damage, the
Judeans managed to hold Jerusalem. 

The Arameans barely managed to survive on the coastal Mediterranean, as
both the Phyrigians and Luvvians took pot shots at them...although they
vassalized the Luvvians who got the short end of the battle. 

Craig's Hatti were a most amazing lot; taking huge hits attempting to
retake their homeland, but held on very late into the game as they had
taken several territories on Med (Philistia and 2 others). This was key
to not falling below their vassalage level. 

The Judeans, as I have mentioned fell apart until the very last round of
battle when they fought fiercely and held on to Jerusalem. The most
interesting thing about the Judeans was they stayed godly, even through
the reign of Solomon; which was lucky for them. In fact, they were only
ungodly for 2 turns the entire game; which likely had much do with their
longevity gamewise. 

The Elamites were an interesting lot, as both the Sumerians, Chaldeans
and Mittani preyed on them as they attempted to claim territory points.
They ended up in vassalage by the Chaldeans late in the game and did not
even have possession of Susa; so, it did not look like they had much of
a chance to rebuild if freed from vassalage later. If they'd only had
Susa, when they eventually were freed by the Assyrians, they could have
rebuilt their nation. 

My forces(yellow) had some horrible luck in the chit draws through the
second half of the game. The Phyrigians were anbushed on their way back
to Phryigia, and were vassalized without any chance of receiving their
replacement if freed. The Cimmerian entry occured ONE chit pull prior to
the Phrygian chit, and this made it impossible for the Phrygians to hold
Phyrigia on turn 10 for their last burst of points..they also needed to
kill 2 more nations (not Hatti) but their fate was sealed. 

The Luvvians had a different problem, they only occupied one territory
(2 units) to start turn 6, and this made it difficult to build (1
replacement per turn) OR take an additional territory to accelerate the
replacement rate due to putting units at risk. They did get most of
their points prior to making a gambit for 10 points with 4 units, and
losing one of the battles and fell into vassalage to the Arameans.
Incidentally, this was a similar problem to that of the Sea Peoples' who
needed to build with 2 units on Cyprus. Once building one unit at a time
as replacements; they ventured out to kill one more Judean to get 10
pts...got the points but fell into vassalage to the Judeans (argh). They
were not able to recover from this. 

Nathan, as he often does, provided some of the most intelligent play in
maneuvering the red forces. The Assyrians staged a gathering of forces
just outside the perimeter of vassalized Chaldean forces (Elamites and
Mittani). Nathan was much aided by consecutive chit draws for his red
forces...which happened in bunches of 2-3 chit pulls on many occasions.
This allowed him to coordinate his attacks in a way that the rest of us
weren't. 

The first of these orchestrated attacks involved using the Sumerians to
eliminated a Elamite unit to remove the blocking screen which limited
access to Babylon. The Assyrians then railed up against Chaldean forces
with both a leader and a terror marker...nearly taking Babylon at that
point. On the following turn, the Assyrian chit came early, and they
forced the Chaldeans to withdraw from Babylon to avoid extinction. As
the Chaldeans also held Susa, they were able to replace units on the
following turn and take a huge amount of reinforcements coming to them
(and fight another day). 

This brings us to the final 2 turns of the game. Craig's Hatti
re-emerged in a big way, fanning out to take a lot of territory. The
Cimmerians rampaged all over the place with their cavalry, wiping
everyone out and taking territory points with their massive amounts of
forces. The feeling was that Craig did his best with the cards dealt
him, but the gods of chit draw were also not with him; so he fell behind
VP-wise to extent that he could not recover. 

Andrew managed to make a huge last minute comeback with his Egyptians,
Arameans, and the late emergence of the Medians. In a very well thought
out and methodical fashion, he took territories, acomplished goals and
really dealt the killing blow to the Assyrian dynasty. By the end of the
9th turn, blue had surged into the lead by 17 pts. 

Nathan's late moves with the remainder of the Assyrians, vaulted him
back into the lead part way through the final turn. He spread out his
Assyrian forces, so as to block easy access (made it costly) for anyone
attempting to go on a major points spree. while both the Chaldeans and
the Cimmerians did gain nearly 100 points each in the last 2 turns this
was far below that required to catch the leader. 

The game finished with Nathan's red forces in the lead, with Andrew a
scant 25pts behind, with Craig and myself in the 50-70 range behind;
bringing up the rear. This was our first time playing through the entire
campaign of "Chariot Lords" and it was well worth it. If any of you have
not yet tried this game, you should; as it's quite the blast!!