The Most Dangerous Game

We made a quick trip to see Amy's parents this weekend, and her sister's family was also in town for a visit. Matthew and Nathaniel are enjoying the opportunity to spend time with their cousin Daniel. We introduced Daniel to Betrayal at House on the Hill, and our first game was a brief adventure in which the characters started out attending an open house for an old mansion that was for sale. It turned out that Matthew's Shopkeeper Lady was a Russian spy and already owned the property, and was using the open house as a pretense for capturing subjects for her bizarre experiments. She quickly imprisoned the rest of us in a basement of horrors, where we had to battle Cold War-era zombies. Some lucky tile placement, however, allowed us to escape unscathed.

My brother-in-law Ben, Daniel's father, joined us for a much longer second game. This time, we had all received mysterious invitations to a gathering at the house, only to realize that my character, Sports Gal, had sent the invitations and was preparing to hunt the others for sport, a la "The Most Dangerous Game", all the while filming the carnage to create a TV show. As I had Sports Gal roam the halls with her trusty crossbow, the others fled to pursue their own secret objectives. As I later learned, they could win by rewriting the script of the show, but it required succeeding on a series of knowledge checks. Nathaniel's Brainy Kid and Ben's Doctor Guy set up shop in a semi-secure location to pen a new ending to the show, while Matthew's Shopkeeper Lady and Daniel's Dude Bro kept my character busy. Virtually all the heroes were grievously injured, but they managed to create a new ending and kill Sports Gal -- thereby securing a lucrative TV contract of their own!

Touchdowns Down

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I'm already looking forward to another Strat-O-Matic campaign. In the meantime, I'm in the early stages of Season 2 of my Blitz Bowl football league. After the Giants (dwarves) were a surprise winner in Season 1, the Avengers (elves), Reavers (humans), and expansion Grasshuggers (halflings) are all looking to dethrone the champs!

How's it going so far? The Reavers (3-0-1) have once again claimed their spot atop the standings, but the first-year Grasshuggers (3-1-0) are right on their spiked heels. The halflings are a fun team to play, full of nifty free actions that give them tons of tactical flexibility. The other key narrative this year is that scoring is down. Here at the one-third mark of the season -- alert! small sample size! alert! -- teams are scoring 9.88 points per game, compared to 11.04 points per game in Season 1. That's a drop of more than a full point per game, but it's nothing compared to the absolute plunge in touchdowns per game. (Reminder: Blitz Bowl touchdowns are worth three points.) Last year, teams found the end zone 1.46 times per game, whereas this season it's a paltry 0.56. Yowzers! 

It is indeed a small sample size, but I think this trend will hold. As I'm learning this game, I'm seeing the importance of those one- and two-point challenge cards; I'm planning ahead to set up easy points, but also, crucially, looking for ways to deny the other team from claiming cards on their next turn. Essentially, I'm slowing the game down and learning how to win through defense rather than high-octane offense. For example, one standout contest from Season 1 was a 20-19 triumph for the Avengers in which they and the Reavers combined for six touchdowns; at one point, the teams traded touchdowns on four consecutive turns. Contrast that shootout with a game from this season in which the Grasshuggers defeated the Giants 10-6; not only did neither team score a touchdown, but the halflings won the game despite never moving the ball past midfield. To the (fictional) spectators in the Mortal Realms, football probably seems a lot more boring now!

Mirror Monsters and Ghost Sharks

Betrayal at House on the Hill is one of my all-time favorite board games. As you explore the mysterious house, you have to work with your fellow adventurers to overcome obstacles and acquire useful items -- but all the while knowing that someone in the group will eventually betray you. It's great that Bob found that shotgun, but do we really want him to have all the weapons...?

When Hasbro announced a third edition for the game, I placed my preorder immediately. This morning the game showed up on our doorstep, and the timing was perfect. Matthew and Amy are in Fresno this weekend for Junior Olympics (side note: Matthew is crushing it!), so Nathaniel and I had a perfect opportunity to dive into the game, learn all the new rules, and play the hell out of it.

One of the simplest but most effective additions is the characters' motivation for being in the house in the first place. In earlier editions, the characters have no reason for being there until the "haunt" is triggered and the game switches from cooperative to one-against-all as the traitor seeks to defeat his or her former allies. In this edition, players select a backstory (e.g., they're a team of paranormal investigators, they're searching for a friend who disappeared in the house, etc.), and that backstory determines the possible haunts. My only criticism thus far is that the haunts seem to trigger sooner than in the previous edition, but some might consider that a feature and not a defect.

Nathaniel and I played the game twice today, each time controlling two characters apiece. In the first game, my Sports Gal quickly got sucked into an alternate universe through a haunted mirror while evil mirror monsters chased the other characters around the house, nearly driving my Doctor Guy insane on their very first onslaught. Sports Gal was able to provide cryptic clues from her mirrorverse prison, allowing Nathaniel's Brainy Kid to bring her home and banish the monsters. For our second try, we kept the same characters. Sports Gal again triggered the haunt, this time dying instantly when a ghostly shark devoured her as a magical water-spouting idol threatened to flood the entire house. As the water cascaded down from the second story, the other characters searched for explosives and then rallied in the basement, where Nathaniel's Dude Bro stuffed our makeshift bomb into the shark's mouth and obliterated it. Two missions, two wins! Next time, though, I may opt to leave Sports Gal at home...

D&D Trailer

I am very, very excited...

Hot Stove Action!

As a league, my nineteenth-century baseball teams scored an average of 3.69 runs per game during our most recent season. How is it, then, that the Canaries -- a team with Hugh Duffy, Ed Delahanty, Roger Connor, and Honus Wagner at the top of its batting order -- could manage only a measly 2.88? I'm sure luck played an outsized role, but as I looked back over the past several seasons, the Canaries have consistently scored well below the league average. 

Heading into Season 8, they needed to make a change. With pitching as their only real asset, the Canaries put starters Tim Keefe, Kid Nichols, and Addie Joss on the trading block to see what sort of match they could make with a team that had surplus offense but was in the market for pitching. Enter the Blue Legs, a perennially high-scoring team with serious run-prevention issues. The Legs could offer outfielder and leadoff man Billy Hamilton, owner the highest on-base percentage in the entire league. Fundamentally, this trade ended up being Keefe for Hamilton, but I needed to throw in a couple of other players to ensure each team had the right number of pitchers and position players; as such, Tommy McCarthy went to the Blue Legs for his second tour with that franchise, and, likewise, veteran pitcher Pud Galvin returned to the Canaries, with whom he was a Playoff MVP way back in Season 4. 

So, at the end of the day, we've got ourselves a blockbuster trade in an otherwise quiet Hot Stove season prior to Season 8. It's hard to imagine Tim Keefe pitching for anyone other than the Canaries -- he's been their Opening Day starter for seven straight seasons -- but the team has spent the last three years below the .500 mark, and perhaps this trade will help get them sorted out.

And when the Canaries take the field for their Season 8 debut against the Haymakers, it won't be Keefe throwing the first pitch, but rather third-year phenom Addie Joss taking over as the staff ace.

The Sigmar Cup

Tonight I completed the brief first season of my Blitz Bowl league. Although I've been playing all the games myself, Matthew and Nathaniel really got into it, asking about the game results as if these were actual sporting events! Matthew was rooting for the elves all week long and Nathaniel (not surprisingly) was a dwarf booster, so there was precious little love for the humies. 

As I mentioned in the previous post, the title match for our first-ever Sigmar Cup would feature the first-place human Reavers against the second-place dwarf Giants. The Reavers won the coin toss and took possession of the ball, scoring three early points on Challenge cards and keeping the ball away from their foes. After the dwarves botched several attempts to break through the human line, the Reaver thrower lofted a pass to his catcher, who sprinted into the end zone for the game's first touchdown. As Blitz Bowl touchdowns are worth three points, the score was now 6-0 for the Reavers before the Giants had even touched the ball.

Game over? Hardly! The stolid dwarves dug in and began to chip away at their opponents' lead. One exciting highlight came midway through the match when the dwarf troll slayer bulldozed his way into the end zone for his team's only touchdown. Both squads picked up a few more points on Challenge cards, and it was 10-8 in favor of the Reavers late in the game. The Giants scored two late points to draw even, and then, on the very first turn of overtime, earned a single Challenge point that the Reavers could not match on their own turn. And thus the game ended with a score of 11-10. The Giants have won the first Sigmar Cup!

Doctors and Daleks

Yeah, I'm gonna be all over this...

Blitz Bowl Season 1

I'm playing a quick three-team Blitz Bowl league this week during my time off. Each of the three teams -- the human Reavers, the duardin (dwarf) Giants, and the aelf (elf) Avengers -- play the others four times, for a total of eight games apiece. Then the top two teams meet in a single winner-take-all championship game.

Tonight I wrapped up the regular season, and although the Avengers started off with a bang, they finished at 2-4-2 and failed to qualify for the championship. The Giants (3-3-2) came in second, so they will meet the first-place Reavers (3-1-4) for the title. It should be a great game, with the defense-minded Giants (a league-best 9.75 points allowed per game) going up against the high-scoring Reavers (tops in the circuit with 11.88 points scored per game). I'll do a full write-up this weekend for the championship match. After that, I'll start preparing for a much longer Season 2, in which I'll introduce a fourth team -- the halfling Grasshuggers!

Super Cars

The National Automobile Museum in Reno is one of my very favorite museums. The last time we took the boys there, they probably weren't old enough to appreciate it. 

As we toured the exhibits today, I treated my family to an impromptu retrospective on my beloved Elmira's many connections to automotive history, from the Philion quadricycle to American LaFrance fire engines to the Brothers Bodine. Here's a shot of their American LaFrance engine, manufacturing in good old Elmira, New York!

They also had one of the old Adam West-era Batmobiles on display, which Matthew was excited to see after getting into a lot of Batman video games lately. 

The reason for this post, however, is a connection to our Tales of the Ternion campaign. I nearly walked right past this beautiful Lincoln-Zephyr...

It then dawned on me that it was the favored vehicle of Ian "I'm missing a finger!" Silverstone, the British used-car salesman who has factored in numerous Front Porch campaigns set during the middle part of the twentieth century. The boys learned about Silverstone recently in our Tales superhero campaign as they've been working to unravel a decades-long conspiracy that links together all of my modern-setting campaigns.

Victory in Ulfenkarn!

As I predicted, there was considerable deliberation about how to mount our assault. Ultimately, we agreed to take out the initial guardians first, then split up to destroy the four phylacteries that protected the undead soul of Radukar. The vampire-lord would spawn as soon as the first phylactery was destroyed, so we needed weaken him by eliminating these magical vessels as quickly as possible. 

The subordinate vampires and undead ogres were no match for our party's prowess, so we moved into position for a near-simultaneous phylactery smashing. Nathaniel's sturdy dwarf and my nimble swordfighter moved toward the two phylacteries in Radukar's throne room, while Matthew's musket-wielding monster hunter and his stalwart priestess each headed for a phylactery in one of the adjoining wings. (The game requires you to take four heroes on each adventure, so we rotate among a couple of supporting heroes, of whom the priestess is probably the most effective.)

The destruction of the phylacteries went off almost without a hitch, and we were lucky to have Radukar spawn in front of Nathaniel's dwarf, as he was the tank of the party. The unexpected appearance of another undead ogre put the poor dwarf between two powerful foes, but I managed to move my swordfighter into position for a flurry of attacks that took down the vampire-lord and ended the game!

Here's a shot of the final scene, with the two heroes who were in the throne room for that final turn.

Since Nathaniel had been the one to open the mysterious envelope when we completed Blackstone Fortress, this time Matthew got the honor.

What secrets were contained therein? I won't give away any spoilers, but the ending was not altogether positive for the city of Ulfenkarn and its champions. The fight against evil will continue, but for now, we'll put Cursed City aside to focus on other things. It was a great game, perhaps not the novel and wildly fun experience we had with Blackstone, but the character development and legacy mechanics in Cursed City were rather more sophisticated than in its earlier cousin. The boys and I would love to see a new edition of Blackstone that incorporates all the great stuff that Cursed introduced. In any case, they're both magnificent games and we absolutely got our money's worth out of them!

Into the Ebon Citadel!

Over the past few months, other games have gotten in the way of our finishing Cursed City, but now that I've got a nice little week of vacation, I was determined that we were going to complete this game just as we vanquished its spiritual predecessor, Blackstone Fortress. Over the weekend, we did one final mission to level up a couple of our secondary characters and prepare us for our final assault on the Ebon Citadel, home to Radukar the Wolf, vampire-lord of Ulfenkarn. 

Here's a couple pics of the Ebon Citadel map, including (at the top) the throne room of Radukar!

It's hard to see the individual minis, but Radukar himself is not present. He'll show up once we start to cause trouble. In the meantime, we'll have to deal with his undead ogre and vampire minions. 

If we prevail, we'll be able to open the mysterious sealed envelope that was included in the box. As with Blackstone, it no doubt wraps up this first storyline, provides some sort of final reward for the party, and hints at adventures to come.

The attack on Radular's lair begins today, but we'll probably spend a couple of hours arguing over how to approach the mission before we actually get started. That's half the fun! Wish us luck!

Season 7 Awards

Before undertaking the tedious task of updating career stats for all the players, I'll wrap up Season 7 with the individual awards!

Scoring Champion: Newsy Lalonde, RW, Victorias

With 19 goals and 18 assists, Lalonde's 37 regular-season points were three more than teammate Cyclone Taylor's total. In just his second season, Lalonde has established himself as the league's premiere offensive player. (Offensive in more ways than one, because his 32 penalty minutes were just four shy of the league lead!)

Forward MVP: Blair Russell, LW, Comets

A star player in earlier seasons, Russell had been pretty quiet over the last couple of years before breaking out with 17 goals (second in the league). That number, combined with his +12 rating (third in the league but first among forwards), tell the story of his superlative two-way game. 

Defenseman MVP: Mike Grant, Comets

Grant suffered an injury early in the first game of the season and missed the next couple of contests. When he came back, he came back with a vengeance. Grant racked up 30 points and posted a +13 rating (second only to teammate and fellow blueliner Lester Patrick at +22), cementing his place in the holy trinity of defensemen alongside fellow trophy winners Cyclone Taylor (five times) and Hod Stuart (once).

Goaltender MVP: Paddy Moran, Bulldogs

Moran paced the circuit with a 2.40 goals-against average and .921 save percentage, almost single-handedly dragging his underperforming team into the postseason. To earn this award, Moran had to outduel four-time winner Bowse Hutton, although Hutton and the Victorias got the last laugh in the playoffs. 

Rookie of the Year: Hap Holmes, G, Bearcats

Holmes edged Thistles winger Jack Darragh to become the first goaltender to win this award. On a first-year team that won only two of its twenty games, Holmes was one of the few bright spots. His .913 save percentage looks exceptional, but it was actually just a few ticks above league average (.910) because expansion diluted the talent pool, resulting in a banner year for netminders. Even so, Holmes was arguably the Cats' best player, and I see nothing but greatness ahead of him.

Playoff MVP: Newsy Lalonde, RW, Victorias

Cyclone Taylor had one more point and a substantially better plus/minus, and Bowse Hutton put up an eye-popping .941 save percentage, but this year's Playoff MVP goes to their teammate Lalonde, who scored a record 9 goals in this postseason, when no one else had more than 5. Though twice injured during the Vics' championship run, Lalonde was a warrior who instilled absolute terror in foes every time he touched the puck.

The City Is Growing!

I haven't posted much about our 3D printer since those earlier warehouse pics because we've been troubleshooting some bed adhesion issues. Now we're using a raft with each print and it's working out very well. Construction of our city continues apace!

Above is a free model that Corvus Games Terrain allows you to download from their site. Why not include a game shop in our town?!

I love this model because it's so versatile. It's a modular design, so you can print and stack as many stories as you like. I'm going to use the same files to create a three-story building next. As you can see, there's an empty rectangular space just above the door and street-level windows; this area is for gluing one of the many signs that were included among the files, so I'll glue different signs onto this building and its future three-story cousin. Plus, the building has internal floors, so you have lots of opportunities for interior play as well!  

And now my favorite: the pizza parlor! I might re-print the roof to try to get better resolution on the letters and numbers on the sign, but for now it's fine. We also have quite a backlog of stuff to print, as Matthew and I went on a bit of a shopping spree on Corvus this morning, purchasing files for more city shops, an industrial building, and a military base. 

Just please don't ask me about how these are going to get painted...

Creighton Cup Finals

Season 7 came to a close with the presentation of the Creighton Cup! And on Canada Day, no less!

Stumbling into Game 1 of the Finals, the discombobulated Comets were no match for the businesslike Victorias and their star winger, Newsy Lalonde. Shrugging off a chorus of boos and taunts from the Comets' hometown faithful, Lalonde recorded his first playoff hat trick and led the Victorias to a 4-1 triumph. The Comets managed to eke out a 3-2 road win in Game 2, setting the stage for one of the wildest and sloppiest playoff contests I've seen in this league. In Game 3, a Joe Hall penalty in the opening minute gave the Vics an early power play. Blair Russell, however, scored a shorthanded goal to stake the Comets to the lead, only for (who else?) Lalonde to tally on the power play mere seconds later. Both teams had scored on their very first shot on goal! Lots of penalties and lots of goals ensued, with the Victorias emerging as 5-2 winners. Remarkably, the road team had won all three games, a trend the Victorias hoped to break as they headed home for Game 4 with the chance to wrap up the franchise's latest title.

Game 4 was at once epic and anticlimactic. Lalonde beat Percy LeSueur just moments into the opening frame, and captain Hobey Baker doubled the Vics' lead around the midpoint. The score remained unchanged until the Comets' George Richardson notched a goal in the closing moments of the second, setting up a final period in which the Comets would need to throw everything they had at netminder Bowse Hutton to get the equalizer. The visitors got an early break when Newsy Lalonde went down with an injury and did not return, but they struggled to get quality chances throughout the third. A late score by Dubbie Bowie restored the Vics' two-goal advantage, and that was that. Riding a 45-save masterpiece from Hutton, the Vics cruised to a 3-1 win and claimed yet another Creighton Cup. 

They deserved it, too. The Victorias went 6-2 in this postseason run, leading all playoff teams with 3.50 goals per game, 1.88 goals against per game, and a +13 goal differential. Check out the special teams: 31.82% on the power play and a mind-boggling 95.24% penalty kill. 

That level of dominance has earned them their fourth title in seven years. They won back-to-back cups in Seasons 1 and 2, then went through a bit of a dry spell, and now have championships in Seasons 6 and 7. Is this the beginning of a new -- or, should I say, "Newsy" -- dynasty? Only time will tell!