Stress Test

After dealing with Alexander, the remaining companions tried to flee, but were caught between two groups of aliens. They dug in for a frantic firefight, and things got ugly in a hurry.

With acid blood burning holes in their body armor and lashing claws and teeth all around them, the five men struggled for their lives. One unfortunate private had his skull smashed in by an alien's mouth-within-a-mouth, and another was nearly disemboweled (and yet survived thanks to Malone's lucky roll on a first-aid check). Matthew's character unleashed a torrent of gunfire until -- after racking up an astounding twelve stress dice -- he ended up falling into a catatonic heap on the floor. And as Nathaniel's character was overcome with terror, as well, things were looking grim for the heroes. Their only hope had been to hang on long enough for one very important friend to arrive...

All throughout the campaign, a certain predator had been following their movements, watching from afar as they investigated Project Caliban. A few prior interactions had suggested that the predator was on their side, in a manner of speaking, so his arrival in Sycorax was a welcome development. As the battle raged, the predator fought his way to join the companions and arrived just as the last xenomorph stood poised to slaughter Malone, the last hero still capable of offering any resistance. The alien perished in a suicidal charge.

As the dust settled, the humans limped out of Sycorax and the predator rigged the base to self-destruct. Matthew's character accepted an invitation to join the predator on his ship, while Nathaniel's character, the other surviving marine, and Malone fled the planet aboard their own ship. And what became of the Queen Mother? When the base exploded, she was destroyed...or was she?

Queen Mother

The four surviving squad members slogged through the Sycorax complex, fighting room to room as they made their way toward secured wing where they could access the Project Caliban data stored within the supercomputer Mother. To get to Mother, however, they had to defeat the brute shown below.

I was expecting it to be a challenging encounter, but the marines managed to sneak through the corridors using the aliens' own infestation to conceal their movements. They launched a surprise attack that cut down the beefy alien before it could make even a single attack!

Nathaniel's marine ran a bypass to open the door, allowing the squad to enter. They called up their two civilian allies -- a former criminal named Malone and a synthetic or "artificial person" named Alexander -- from elsewhere in the base. The boys' characters entered Mother's chamber along with Alexander.

Expecting to find an alien queen, they were shocked to learn that it was Mother who had released the xenomorphs from captivity, allowing them to run amok within the base and slaughter the human soldiers and scientists of Project Caliban. Calling herself the Queen Mother, she had decided that humans were unfit to control the xenomorphs. Then, in a heartbreaking scene, Mother reprogrammed Alexander and turned him against the heroes. Just as the boys were forced to destroy their friend (I had, in fact, built up Alexander as the primary NPC of the campaign and went out of my way to depict him as kind and helpful), a xenomorph hunting party returned to the base...

Knock, knock!

Our surviving Colonial Marines are now in the midst of their assault on Sycorax, the headquarters of Project Caliban. They've found that the base has been overrun by the xenomorphs, including this nasty bugger who was lurking around the main entrance.

After fighting their way through a labyrinth of rooms and corridors, the troops have found no indication that the xenomorphs escaped from captivity. It appears that they were deliberately released...

What was the deal with Season 2?

Today I'm going to take a look at the scoring data from the first three seasons of my Strat-O-Matic historical hockey league.

• Season 1: 136 total goals scored (2.83 goals per team per game)
• Season 2: 157 total goals scored (3.27 goals per team per game)
• Season 3: 139 total goals scored (2.89 goals per team per game)

As the old Sesame Street song goes, one of these things is not like the others. Why did we see such an offensive spike in Season 2? Did something happen that led to an explosion in scoring?

The short answer is: No. It's just dumb luck. We are, after all, dealing with extremely small sample sizes (twelve-game seasons).

In Strat-O-Matic, as in real life, goaltenders are the players who have the largest overall impact on the outcome of a game. Likewise, both in the game and in real life, their results are highly volatile (i.e., luck plays a major role). For example, it takes about 3,000(!) shots for a professional goaltender's save percentage to stabilize to the point where we can start to see his true talent emerge from the noise of random chance.

So the story of Season 2, then, is that goalies were unlucky? That's part of it. But it takes two to tango, and skating players were the ones scoring all those goals. However, the jump in scoring came not from all players, but really only from two players: Frank McGee had 18 goals and Cyclone Taylor had 16. If we give them the average of their Season 1 and 3 totals instead of what they actually scored in Season 2, then the league total for Season 2 drops to within a couple of goals of 1 and 3. I think the best explanation for Season 2, then, is that two guys got lucky and ran the table!

Alien Assault

Tonight, at last, I got around to building the map for the climactic final chapter of our first Alien RPG storyline. Using tiles from the super-awesome AVP miniatures game, I set up the floor plan for Sycorax -- a base deep in the heart of the jungle where scientists of the United Americas concocted the nefarious Project Caliban. I think the boys are really going to dig it!

Unfortunately, with the lighting in the ceiling of our game room, just about every photo I took had a terrible glare coming off of the tiles. I salvaged two pictures, but neither of them shows the map from a good angle...

I'll direct your attention to the green tile in the center of the map in the image below. I had an extra jungle tile that didn't seem to fit anywhere, so I decided to give Sycorax a botanical research lab inside the base!

Once we get the mission underway and we have minis populating the tiles, I'll get some close-up shots that, hopefully, will be glare-free. 

Season 3 Awards

The Thistles may not have won the championship, but they racked up four of the six end-of-season trophies. The Comets took home the other two awards, leaving nothing for the Victorias or the Bulldogs.

Scoring Title: Dan Bain (Thistles)
Bain was promoted to top-line center after the Thistles traded Tommy Dunderdale to the Bulldogs, and he didn't disappoint. With increased playing time and better linemates (Alf Smith and Tommy Phillips), Bain racked up 20 points (7 goals, 13 assists), one better than Frank McGee's 19. It's cool to see Bain taking a step toward stardom, but I should point out that his 20 points would only have been good enough for fourth in the league in Season 2 and third in Season 1.

Forward MVP: Frank McGee (Comets)
McGee scored a league-leading 12 goals, and his plus/minus was a solid (for him) +3. This is the second straight Forward MVP award for the Comets' big gun. As a side note, McGee now finds himself tied with Cyclone Taylor for the most regular-season goals in league history (37).

Defenseman MVP: Hod Stuart (Thistles)
It was a down year for Taylor, and Stuart capitalized. He finished sixth in the league in scoring (6 G, 10 A) and was +4 on the season. His goal in the third period of the season's final game propelled the Thistles into the championship series, but Stuart was making great plays all year long as he finally emerged from Taylor's shadow.

Goaltender MVP: Riley Hern (Thistles)
His performance in the playoffs notwithstanding, Hern was the league's top netminder in Season 3. He tied for the league lead in wins (4) and goals-against average (2.67), and was first in save percentage (.915).

Rookie of the Year: Tommy Smith (Thistles)
Alf's kid brother did it all: He was a regular on the power play, he killed penalties, he took critical draws, and he put up respectable numbers (6 G, 3 A, +2) centering the Thistles' second line. And on a team known for taking lots of penalties, Tommy Tools was called for only a single two-minute minor during the whole season; his brother could learn a thing or two from him about gentlemanly play.

Playoff MVP: Mike Grant (Comets)
Hod Stuart beat him out for Defenseman MVP, but it's great that Grant won't walk away empty-handed. The Comets' top blueliner had a dominant postseason (3 G, 2 A, +3) and led his team to a championship.

Without Cyclone Taylor winning two or three awards, as in seasons past, I'm glad to be able to recognize six different players recognized for their superb efforts!

Strat Cup, Game 2

We have a new champion! After the Vics won back-to-back titles in Seasons 1 and 2, the Comets are now Strat Cup winners in Season 3. The deciding game was far less memorable than the prior contest, but, in any case, here's how it went down...

A few minutes into Game 2, Comets winger Blair Russell beat Riley Hern to give the visiting team a quick 1-0 lead. Mike Grant doubled the advantage later in the period on a feed from George Richardson. Percy LeSueur was sharp, although he was not called upon to make a flashy save until midway through the second period when he robbed Tommy Smith on a shorthanded chance. Late in the second, Grant repaid Richardson's earlier pass with a beauty of his own that allowed Richardson to tally his first career playoff goal.

The Comets had a 3-0 lead heading into the third period, but we saw in Game 1 that such a margin is not insurmountable. In the second minute of play, Dan Bain and Hod Stuart made a couple of sharp passes to set up Alf Smith for a goal that got the home fans leaping out of their seats. (Well, it got me out of my seat!) Now down by just two with 18 minutes to play, the Thistles could sense a comeback brewing.

It was not to be. Shortly after a power play expired, Russell found Grant open for a slapshot, and that was that. With his second goal of the game, and third of the series, Mike Grant had given the Comets a 4-1 advantage. Their season in dire straits, the Thistles shook up their lines, putting Tommy Smith in between Tommy Phillips and Dan Bain, and pairing up Dickie Boon and Hod Stuart on the blueline. It seemed like the last five minutes of the game were spent entirely in the Comets' defensive zone, where LeSueur held his ground amidst a barrage of shots. When time at last expired, the Comets celebrated their first championship. Mike Grant (3 G, 2 A, +3) earned the Playoff MVP award.

I have a bit of record-keeping to do, and of course I still need to figure out all the remaining awards, but for now this game brings Season 3 to a close!

Strat Cup, Game 1

By the beard of Brent Burns! That game was epic! We just saw the biggest comeback in the brief history of this league, leaving one team reeling from a mind-boggling collapse that may haunt them for years to come if they fail to win the title over the next two games.

In a year dominated by goaltending and defense -- when the average number of goals scored per team per game was 2.895 versus 3.27 last season -- it was a bit of a shocker to see nine goals tonight. Shots came early and often against Riley Hern, but he turned aside everything the Comets threw at him in the first period. It appeared as if we would have a scoreless first until Moose Goheen of the Thistles took a pass from Harry Westwick and beat Percy LeSueur in the final minute of the frame.

The stunned Comets were caught flat-footed again in the opening minute of the second period when Hod Stuart set up Tommy Phillips to give the Thistles a 2-0 lead. With the game in danger of slipping away from them, the Comets got a lift from Billy Gilmour in his first game back from injury. Scarcely a minute after Phillips's goal, the feisty Gilly converted a Mike Grant pass into an easy score. The relief of the home-team fans was short-lived, as Phillips struck again midway through the period to restore the two-goal lead for his squad. The Comets, meanwhile, struggled to get high-quality chances and played a lot of futile dump-and-chase. Rookie star Tommy Smith scored after a turnover to put the Comets into an even deeper hole.

Down 4-1 to start the third, the Comets got to work. Gifted an early power play by the penalty-prone Thistles, Mike Grant scored to pull the Comets to within two. Moments later, the Thistles took yet another penalty. Frank McGee had a beautiful chance, but Hern stonewalled him. The score remained 4-2 at the midpoint of the period, whereupon defenseman Graham Drinkwater found a wide-open Harry Trihey to cut the deficit to one. After their captain's goal, the Comets put relentless pressure on the Thistles. The minutes continued to tick away, however, and it looked as though the rally would come up short. In the final forty seconds (in Strat-O-Matic terms, the last Action Card for the period), Blair Russell found his favorite target, Frank McGee, who buried the puck past a shellshocked Riley Hern.

The Comets had done it. They'd tied the game with three goals in the third period to force overtime for only the second time in league history. The Comets' house was rocking and, if momentum is a thing (which I don't think it is), the home team had all of it. At the very first faceoff of OT, McGee and Dan Bain got tied up in the circle. Russell scooped up the puck and shunted it to steady defenseman Jack Marshall, whose laser-beam shot eluded Hern to end the game.

So it was a 5-4 win for the Comets, giving them the lead in this best-of-three series. If we're looking for frontrunners for the Playoff MVP award, Blair Russell (Comets) had three assists, Tommy Phillips (Thistles) had two goals, and Mike Grant (Comets) had one goal and one assist. I think we can safely exclude the goaltenders from the MVP discussion.

Next up, in Game 2, the Thistles need a win at home or the Comets will be league champions!

Turnaround

Not sure if the Thistles will win or lose this championship series, but holy cow they've gotten better since last year! Their move from 8 to 13 points (rising from fourth place to second) was driven by tremendous improvement in scoring prevention. Upgrading goaltenders from Paddy Moran to Riley Hern played a big part, as did improvement in their penalty killing (71.43% in Season 2 to 87.18% in Season 3). While their offensive output was largely the same (34 goals scored in Season 2 vs. 33 in Season 3), they went from allowing 48 goals (a league record) in Season 2 to only 32 in Season 3! That's 4.00 goals per game vs. 2.67! Wow! 

Playoff Time!

Ladies and gentlemen, we've got our dance card. The Season 3 battle for the Strat Cup will pit the surprising second-place Thistles -- who reached the playoffs only by knocking out the Vics in the last game of the season with a late-third-period goal by Hod Stuart -- against the first-place Comets. It's a great match-up! The high-scoring Comets reached the finals last year, but came up short against the Vics. The Thistles, meanwhile, finished dead last in both Season 1 and Season 2, but reshaped their team prior to Season 3 through shrewd trades and drafting. Let's compare our two contenders in more detail.

Forwards

• Comets: Frank McGee once again led the league in goals (12). Although he didn't come close to his record-setting Season 2 total (18), he's still the league's premier goal scorer. This year, he had significant support from two-way forward Blair Russell (3 goals, 15 assists), resurgent sniper George Richardson (8 G, 6 A), the now-healthy Billy Gilmour (4 G, 8 A), and several other capable attackers. This crew helped the Comets lead the league in goals (41) by a solid margin over the second-highest team (the Vics at 34).
• Thistles: If you'd bet on Dan Bain winning the scoring title, you'd be rich right now. With a paltry 4 points in Season 1 and 8 points in Season 2, this puck-possession machine wasn't a star until Season 3, when the Tommy Dunderdale trade thrust him into the spotlight as the Thistles' top pivot. He responded with 20 points (7 G, 13 A) as he dished out beautiful passes to linemates Tommy Phillips (8 G, 7 A) and Alf Smith (3 G, 8 A). Rookie sensation Tommy Smith (6 G, 3 A) provided important secondary scoring. 
• Advantage: Comets

Defensemen

• Comets: They've got superstar Mike Grant (3 G, 10 A, +5), plus Jack Marshall, Graham Drinkwater, and Lester Patrick rounding out their top four. No team in this league boasts more skill on the blueline. These guys are all responsible in their own end and move the puck very well. 
• Thistles: Hod Stuart (6 A, 10 A, +4) is likely going to win the Defenseman MVP, and it was his slapshot late in the third period of the season's final contest that got his team into the championship series. He's backed up by rugged Moose Johnson, crafty Dickie Boon, and journeyman Harvey Pulford. It's a mixed bag. 
• Advantage: Comets

Goaltending

• Comets: For much of the season, it looked like Percy LeSueur was going to win Goaltender MVP, but his play started to decline as we approached the finish line. He finished with great numbers (2.67 goals-against average, .911 save percentage), but the phenomenal defense in front of him prevented so many chances that he ended up facing by far the fewest shots in the league. 
• Thistles: Riley Hern scuffled for two years with the Bulldogs, but the trade that brought him to the Thistles unleashed his true talent. This season, Hern tied for the league's best goals-against average (2.67) and had the top save percentage (.915). Hands down, he's the Thistles' most valuable player.
• Advantage: Thistles

Special Teams

• Comets: This team is all about offense, and their power play doesn't disappoint. At 25.81%, they were tops in the league -- and no one was even close. For penalty killing, they finished a solid second at 85.71%. I'm a little surprised, actually, because Blair Russell is their only true defensive forward, and he spends a fair bit of time in the penalty box. Credit Grant, Marshall, and the other defensemen for the team's shorthanded success.
• Thistles: A couple of power-play goals in the last game brought the Thistles up to 18.52% on the season, which was good enough for second out of the four teams. Their robust penalty-killing unit -- Tommy Smith, Harry Westwick, Hod Stuart, and Harvey Pulford -- was first in the league at 87.18%.
• Advantage: Even

I can't wait to start this series! It's awesome to see the Thistles shed their image as perpetual cellar-dwellers, but I'm thinking the Comets are going to run away with an easy victory here. They were a league-best +9 in goal differential, while the Thistles were barely on the positive side at +1. On the other hand, it's a brief, three-game series, so anything can happen!

New Crew

When we finish our current storyline in the Alien RPG, we'll move on to a more open-ended campaign where the heroes are attempting to establish a colony on a (shall we say) unfriendly world. Although I still have a lot of design work to do before we can start playing, we did receive our custom miniatures in the mail today! (Thank you, Hero Forge!)

First up is Matthew's dapper Weyland-Yutani company agent...

And now Nathaniel's spunky (shotgun-toting!) kid...

Even Amy is going to play with us this time! Here's her intrepid explorer...

And, finally, their mysterious NPC leader (and her cat)...

I can't wait to paint 'em up!

Playoff Scenarios

One game left for each team! What has been resolved? We only know one thing for sure: The Bulldogs are out. They'll finish this evenly matched season in last place with 10 points. The Comets (12 points), Thistles (11), and Victorias (11) are all still in the hunt. Two teams will reach the championship series, and one will join the Dogs on the sidelines.

Next up, we have the Comets against the Bulldogs. The Dogs have nothing to play for except pride and would love to spoil the Comets' party, especially with their final game coming at home. For the Comets, the math is simple: A win clinches first place. If they lose or draw, the final pecking order won't be established until the resolution of the Thistles/Victorias contest. The Vics can take first place with a win accompanied by a Comets loss or tie. If the Vics tie, they can do no worse than second place (and thus secure a spot in the championship series). The Thistles, meanwhile, need a win over the Vics to reach the postseason, and a Comets loss alongside that win would push them all the way into first.

It's a weird ending to a weird season. I guess it's good that the Vics didn't completely obliterate the field like they did during Seasons 1 and 2, but the parity here in Season 3 has been striking. The Comets and Bulldogs have six ties apiece! That's half their games! (Sidebar: Even so, there will be no regular-season overtime and -- for the love of all the hockey gods -- there will be no shootouts in any league of mine!)

"Is this a stand-up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?"

The boys and I have finished up about three-quarters of the brief initial campaign I created to help us learn the Alien RPG system. In our most recent episode, their hard-nosed but kindly sergeant sacrificed himself to save the rest of the Colonial Marine squad from a throng of nasty xenomorphs that had nearly breached the jungle outpost where the team was holed up. When we resume the campaign in a week or so, the boys -- whose characters are now corporals -- will be thrust into command of the squad, and will be charged with planning the attack on a secret government installation that's been overrun by the very aliens they were studying. I can't wait to show you the map. It's going to be insane. 

Too Close to Call

All four teams have played 10 of their 12 regular-season games. Everything is crazy close right now -- the first-place Comets and the fourth-place Bulldogs are separated by a scant two points. The playoff race is going right down to the wire. So too are the races for individual awards. Aside from Rookie of the Year (which Tommy "Tools" Smith is going to win in a cakewalk) and Forward MVP (which is still pretty wide open), we have razor-thin margins separating the two top contenders for the Scoring Title (Frank McGee at 17 points, Cyclone Taylor at 16), Defenseman MVP (Hod Stuart and Mike Grant are tied in points with 13 apiece, and nearly tied in plus/minus), and Goaltender MVP (Riley Hern has a sliver of an edge over Percy LeSueur in save percentage while the two men have identical goals-against averages). A great deal will be decided in the teams' final two games!

Gilly Goes Down

No. Just...no.

Tonight, in a season that had been remarkably free of injuries, one team suffered a crippling blow. The Comets, in their bid to dethrone the mighty Victorias, must now dig deep to prove they have the mettle of champions.

In the first period of a critical road game against the surging Thistles, Comets winger Billy Gilmour buried a pass from Frank McGee to give his squad a 1-0 lead. With 12 points in 9 games, Gilmour was having the best season of his career. Moments later, just as Tommy Phillips scored the equalizer for the Thistles, Gilmour went down. The prognosis (delivered in pitiless black-and-white on the Strat-O-Matic Split Card) was grim: Gilmour would miss the remainder of the game as well as the next two contests. In other words, he would be out for the rest of the regular season.

What now for the Comets? The league's highest-scoring team (at 3.33 goals per game) will turn to Fred "Steamer" Maxwell to help make up for Gilmour's lost production. Maxwell -- acquired from the Vics during the off-season -- has suited up for only three games thus far in Season 3, but he's a two-time champ with great speed and the ability to play all three forward positions. I think he'll slot in nicely at right wing on a line with Harry Trihey and Jimmy Gardner, while breakout star George Richardson jumps to the top line alongside McGee and Blair Russell. Can the Comets' reconfigured lines bring home a playoff spot? We'll soon find out!

At the Final Turn

All teams have played eight games each, so we're at the three-quarter mark of Season 3. If the playoffs were to begin today, the Vics and Comets would return to the championship series, as they're tied for first place with 9 points apiece. The Bulldogs and Thistles are right behind them with 7. Directionally, though, the Bulldogs are kind of a mess, with a -8 goal differential, lousy special teams, inconsistent goaltending, and star players who have been mired in terrible slumps. The line of Roberts, Stuart, and Dunderdale should be the best in the league, but these guys are getting stymied out there. The Thistles, meanwhile, are trending in a much better direction. It wouldn't surprise me if they leapfrogged over the slumping Victorias and stole a slot in the finals. Their efforts to improve defensively have really paid off, as they're averaging only 2.63 goals against so far this year (4.00 last year). If they can squeeze a bit more production out of snipers like Alf Smith and Tommy Phillips, they'll be a dangerous team as we enter the last quarter of the season. I'd love to see a Comets/Thistles playoff, but the two-time defending champs, the Victorias, can't be counted out just yet. Cyclone Taylor is on track to win his third straight scoring title, and the Vics have quite a few underperforming players; a bit of positive regression to the mean would give them enough juice to stumble their way back into the finals. And the Comets? They're tied for first in goals per game (3.13), first in goals allowed per game (2.38), first in power play percentage (23.81), and first in penalty killing percentage (86.67). Their +6 goal differential is also tops in the league. They're looking like a lock for the championship series.