David R. Moody - Mar 23, 2006 1:45 pm (#13016 Total: 13048) Life is that unfortunate time between wargames."--Larry Leadhead Cory, Yes I have played Downtown, and enjoy it quite a bit. Last night I hooked up with Joe Oppenheimer at Endgame in Oakland, CA to play the latest from S&T, Lest Darkness Fall, a game spanning fifty years of the Third Century Crisis, 235-285 A.D. Except in our game it wasn't much of a crisis. I (as the Roman player) spent a lot of time giving the Parthians a damned good thrashing for insisting on raiding my client states in Armenia. I marched on Ctesiphon twice and took it twice, looting it and bringing goodies back to Rome. Each time the Parthians rebounded (Joe kept drawing the Parthian Dynastic Resurgence chit) and I had to go back, the second and third times with Palmyran allies. The fuzzy-wuzzies were active too, clearing Romans out of Germania Decumantes and Dacia (the latter after much fighting) and raiding as far as Byzantium. Seaborne raiders also looted parts of Asia Minor, and the Scots were constantly on the move, charging across Hadrian's Wall every single turn, looting Londinium and wiping out a strong force led by the co-emperor who chased them into Wales. At one point the Emperor himself had to go deal with them. But all the barbarian gains were temporary and, blessed with a full treasury, I found it more profitable to buy them off with shiny things once they got into Roman territory. There was one rebellion--a minor one in the eastern provinces after the conclusion of the first Parthian campaign, when the emperor and his army had marched to Germany and prepared to sail to Britain, which was quickly put down by loyal troops--and two epidemics, which were not badly damaging, but that was it. One emperor was assasinated in Salonika early on; his troops proclaimed a successor who appears to have founded a secure dynasty, as no one messed with him. The legions in Carthage never moved. I won after the first few actions of the last turn, with a fairly prosperous empire and secure borders, though I had had to persecute Christians and provide public games to keep the people happy (more chits). Joe and I figured it was a combination of bad chit pulls (the Barbarians sea raid chit came up only once, for example) and two of the three turns ending early (turns are of indeterminate length--you keep alternating actions until both players pass, or one side draws the "Gods are Bored" chit and rolls an even number) that prevented him from really laying waste to the Empire. Because I had so much money in my treasury, he couldn't bribe or assassinate anyone and try to foment rebellion (the Roman player can 'salt' treachery and assassination dierolls by using his Treasury Points as bribes, and I had enough money to buy off any would-be assassins or traitors--see, another advantage of being rich) and force me to scurry around suppressing them while the barbarians pushed across the frontiers. Interesting game, all in all. Since LDF ended earlier than we thought it would, we did Mission #2 of the Dunkirk campaign from Down in Flames. Joe took up two Stukas, escorted by two Bf-109Es, against a freighter at the mole in Dunkirk Harbor. I intercepted with two Spitfires. After mixing it up briefly with the 109s, my Spits dove down to engage the Stukas, half looping behind one and shooting it down. The other one made it through unscathed, but as it dove down to Very Low to drop its bombs, even the light flak of the freighter was able to spoil its aim (Spoiled Attack card). The 109s, meanwhile, had managed to flame the Spit wingman. The opposing fighters maneuvered with each other briefly as the Germans left the target area, but neither side was able to do any further damage. Joe ended up with 8 VP to my 6, winning the mission, though Performance for the campaign is still Historical. Next week, Twilight Struggle. Maybe I'll get to win this time. It's turning into the same sort of game as War of the Ring--I love it, but hardly ever win when I play it. We might also have time for another DiF mission. She Who Must Be Obeyed going away for the weekend, and I just got a bunch of unpainted Russians (and some French). I see sorting and painting little pewter dudes in my future, plus I might playtest that homebrewed "what if the Prussians turned and fought on the way to Eylau and the Russians helped them?" intro to Napoleon's Battles I've been thinking about for a while. Plus there's Himeras River on the flattened cardboard box, and Grossbeeren (from Four Lost Battles) waiting in the wings.