The Girl with All the Gifts

I read a review of this book and thought it sounded interesting.  Suddenly just after that I was in a text conversation with my mom and dropped the name of the book.  It was actually my daughter who was on my moms phone just to tell me that they had hit town and were out shopping.  Anyway long story short, they bought the book and my daughter thought it was for her.  She mentioned it to my mom who the thought I wanted her to buy it for my daughter.  So it goes.

It's a good read.  My daughter read it an loved it.  I read it an thought it was very well done.  Some where along the line I redlized it was written in third person present tense which was pretty novel for me.  I'm not sure if this is a thing now but it made the prose more immediate in a way I thought worked well with the material.  I haven't been suddenly aware of tense like that since Steinbeck switched to first person in The Winter of Our Discontent so that was nice.  It could just mean I am a bit oblivious but I will take it as a win anyway.
After I read it my wife read it and couldn't put it down so I have to say this book is a real hit in our family.  If we all can agree it is a fine thing then I really have to recommend it.

The Girl With all the Gifts by M.R. Carey.

Full disclosure its last day of camping and the fire is guttering out, everyone's asleep and I'm pretty drunk at the moment.

Good book though.

on Ashen Stars pt3

Ah it's been busy lately, but I have been playing stuff, just not so much writing about it.  I finished my run of Ashen Stars and now we are two session into a Trail of Cthulhu run.  My guy got killed already- RIP Dr. Krombach but I have stated up a new guy to get killed with - so that's all right.

I thought that I should give my final impressions of running a short Ashen Stars campaign before I forgot too much.  I imagine that since it's an investigative genre a lot of Gumshoe games are one off-adventures or con games and so many people might not get into the campaign rules and I wanted to make sure that I did focus on those rules and see how they worked for Ashen Stars.  I ran a very money oriented game because I wanted to have emergent story arise from that mechanical pressure.  I think it worked for the most part.  I did find that when the economic pressure was high the reputation and upkeep mechanics worked better.  There was a lot of arguing about PR and reputation that was undercut with money talk.  I don't think that reputation would have worked nearly so well without the money woes.  I did find that the downtime rolls were a bit too easy to game but this could have been because the players did not generally use their business skill and saved it just for the downtime roll and once they had some reputation built up, this meant very little downtime.  I made sure to provide opportunities for side deals to soak up some of those business points in all adventures, but the players didn't generally follow up on them.  I think that this was because aside from the Cybe player and the player running the ship books, there were no real incentives for the individual players to acquire credits.  Any money coming in went to ship and cybe upkeep and after that there were no worries - no 401ks among the Lazers -  it was assumed that the future was taking care of itself.  Some players might have had a couple big creds* upkeep to worry about but aside from the Cybe player they were banking more than they were spending.  I did try to rectify that later in the campaign by giving one player an economic incentive (blackmail) and another an economic goal (securing breeding rights), but the players didn't act on these - probably because it came too late and events were already rolling along.  I would do this kind of life event economics again, and much more of it, in a future game.  Giving all players divergent economic goals is the way to go here if you want to play an business orientated game.  I think that without either story pressure or money pressure it is too easy for the upkeep and reputation mechanics to become "managed" and they become either a gm fiat 'story of the week' thing or a toothless mechanic.  I don't think it would be good to mistake economic inducement for materialism however.  I do really like the game's focus on large scale economics and not everyday inventory management.  I would rather generate up a big ol' table of Life Events and Social Obligations for Ashen Stars instead of a big ol' table of +1 Swords and Power Armours.

I really liked the Space combat - we used playing cards for the point spending aspect and I think it worked really well overall.  I saw how the point spend added some character to the ship fights - a cautious pilot or a reckless gunner on either side could really change the outcome.  I do kind of wish that the personal combat had a similar feel to it.  Rolling against a hit threshold got a little boring especially since there were not so many options as there would be in a d20 type system.  I would certainly consider an alternate combat system using opposed rolls and hidden point spend like in the ship combat - perhaps not four full axis of attack but perhaps one force/armour based and one agility/dodge based axis for both ranged for non-ranged combat.  It would slow down combat a bit, however it would be more engaging than the simple roll to hit option.  We are looking at using some of the Nights Black Agents advanced combat rules for our pulpy Trail of Cthulhu game and they look pretty good, I'd consider adopting them for Ashen Stars too.  I do think something with more opposed rolls could be interesting as well.

The setting was very good and it flowed very well.  I was a little nervous my first real run of a sci-fi setting since it is hard to establish a common understanding when dealing with so many unknown social and technology cues - but with the Ashen Stars Lazer framework and a few establishing proclamations, the players quickly fell into the swing of things and were able to make logical projections.  I did have to establish that there was no communication while in trans-light and that there were no ubiquitous galactic networks, just a collection of planetary and corporate systems.  This was important because investigative games need to be active not passive and having universal access to cameras and personal files and history records has to be curtailed or the game will suffer.   The first couple of games there was a natural tendency for players to want to lean on the technology and call in Ossa One troops for every traffic offense, but I made it clear that they would have to prove their suspicions and that there were privacy and legal protocols that had to be followed.

The Lazers for hire nature of the game was very interesting and was a great setting conceit. I wanted to be in the background as much as possible and feed different players different information so that they would generate their own motivations.  I did send players informational emails between games, including the aforementioned economic incentives, but also little nuggets of personal mail or advertisements they could really take up and own as characters.  At one point this lead to a whole off-screen story about a character's cat going missing and the players all had different perspectives on what had happened.  I made sure that I only presented the "Bagger" character with the options for jobs and had them decide how to choose which to take - even  if that meant informing the other players or not of all their options.  I really tried to have the players run the game as a business.  It thought it was important for buy-in to have them make choices about which jobs they were taking.  Sometimes I was hard pressed to know ahead of time which adventure I was going to have to prepare, and in a couple cases I had two different adventures prepped and waiting.  It worked very well from my perspective, however it was a shorter campaign and I'm not sure there was enough time for much of that to get acted upon.

I also had a bit of a disconnect when I was trying to populate the setting with interesting worlds.  At first I found it hard to see how I would balance having a star map of places and work that in with the downtime travel mechanics, especially when I wanted players to decide which cases they were going to take next - something that involved travel.  This played less of a role than I thought it would since they looked more at the case than the location and they didn't chew through the adventures as quickly as I thought they would.  As for having a comprehensive star map - well I didn't need it.  It really did resolve down to 'world as a problem' as outlined in the Ashen Stars book. The simple map of the Bleed and the travel time rules were a great building block and I managed to build a map of event/locations as the campaign progressed.  Over time the character of the different worlds was built up so having the spartan map and slotting in planets as the story progressed worked much better than trying to fit the story to a fuller and established starmap.  I had to let go and wing it more than I was comfortable with at first but it really did work out better.  I did carefully note where things were afterwards so the setting gained coherence.  Knowing that the ice planet of Ijiraq is in the Medusa Outzone is now important and I want to make sure that the stories can emerge from those relationships.

This was probably one of the most fun campaigns I have run.  I think Ashen Stars has a lot to offer in a campaign type setting as opposed to one-shots and I'm looking forward the supplemental book that's coming out with more material.  I'd run this again certainly.  I'd even pick up the same campaign.  I would have to add in some more work on economic inducements and probably try to get a better handle on some of the business skills that effect downtime, but all in all it was a very satisfying game experience.




*bC

on Ashen Stars (pt2)

One of the things that really excites me about Ashen Stars is the economic system.  Isn't that a hoot.  But it is true and not at all sad.  We ran a game of Diaspora which is a Fate based Sci-fi setting and it was alright, but I didn't enjoy the abstraction of wealth in Fate.  I like my money crunchy and countable, not a roll on a status track. In Beacon I made sure that it cost a lot to buy things because money was so worthless in D&D proper, and one of the best things about Dungeon Crawl Classics for me was the fact that a bow and some arrows cost more than your life was worth at level 1.  I was really chuffed when we took the bows from the bandits that attacked us.  Good times.

I like tracking resources in games because it is a huge lever you can use in telling stories and providing motivations that feel real.  Everyone likes to get ahead and I think it's good to leverage that.  Also most people know what it's like to be in debt or to need more of something and that is also good material to draw upon. I do however understand when the economic mechanics of the game become too burdensome.  Lots of players don't want to track arrows or their meals and as a GM it's not practical to force them to do it or do it for them.  People play games to have fun so keeping a spreadsheet is not always going to be the fun option.

But I really like how Ashen Stars handles this.  Having Big Creds allows me to have all those economic story levers that come with the detective and the space opera genres.  There are lots of stories of space captains with bounties on their heads or detectives tempted to do the wrong thing for an easy payoff.  Having to pay the bills makes players consider interesting choices they might not otherwise entertain and having them sweat over their reputation in order to keep their bank balance in the black is one of the best ways to naturally curb those darker murder hobo or anti social character tendencies.  I love how this macro economics works and that players don't need to keep track of their bar tabs and hotel bills but can still panic to scrounge up a cargo run to some mudball planet to pay their upkeep.  It's great.

When I decided to run a campaign in Ashen Stars I knew I would have to lean on the economics so that the player choices would have meaning.  I didn't want to simply have the characters worrying about their upkeep, I wanted them to be invested in building their Lazer business.  I also wanted to make the economics drive some inter-player interaction. The one thing about economics in Ashen Stars is that is is a little but of a group hug.  Since Robin Laws is Canadian and therefore a communist it's not so surprising that the book references the mechanics of upkeep and payouts from a crew perspective.  I thought there should be all those economic business pressures from the book, but the players should also have individual relationships with money, some would want or need it and others would not care so much.  I wanted both friction and a cohesion to come from this.  

In order to facilitate this I did was do away with the economic budget in crew creation. I did let players have a little money to start out, but I decided that I wanted to see the game be orientated around personal finances instead of a group equipment template.  I wanted there to be some tension between paying out salary to the crew while also doing ship upkeep.  To add to this I also wanted to have them paying off the mortgage on their business and their ship - a very Traveller kind of thing I realize.  The first stumbling block to this was there were no prices for ships in the book.  I asked around a few places online to see if anyone else had done this but didn't get back any useful replies.  I even had some people on G+ tell me that if I wanted to do this I should go play Traveller!  Silly person.  I knew Ashen Stars could do this so much easier.  

After a very short deliberation I decided that a secondhand ship/laser business should cost around 1000 bC*.  I imagined this would, emotionally at least, be roughly between 1-4 million bucks just for some perspective.  I created a CFO role and told the players that they would have to decide which character was managing the finances and also that they as business partners would have to determine how to pay out salaries and service their business.   I added in a 2.5bC minimum payment to the monthly upkeep to service their debt just to twist the screws a bit tighter.  I told them that the characters would have to pay personal upkeep out of their own money and work with the CFO to manage common inventory and such. The players would provide the drive to pay down the debt faster or not according to their character.  What this was intended to do was give them all a stake but also some different perspectives on it.  The upkeep heavy players would naturally want higher salaries while other players with fewer obligations might want to invest in or service the business.

And so far it seems to be working out well.  With very little work the macro economics in the game serve to drive story but not bog it down in detail.  There is enough there to make payment for rare and interesting things work while the preparedness system manages to handle the smaller issues quite nicely.  The only additional thought I have had is to maybe make a upkeep price for standard of living since there is a big space in the game where characters with little interest in cyber or viro ware or high end gear have little economic outlets.  Maybe a little table like this:

Standard of Living      Upkeep Modifier

                 Normal                   N/A
                 Well to do              +1
                 Extravagant            +3
                 High Society           +5
                 Rock Star               +10

This would let some players burn off bC in amusing RP ways.

So all in all the game provides some good tools to manage money in a campaign and I really like how the upkeep and reputation mechanics work through this macroeconomic system to help create some natural narrative.

* I use bC as the currency symbol for Big Creds in the game and in the spreadsheet I use make the CFO track the finances.

on Ashen Stars (pt1)

If you wandered in here off the Internet and are wondering about the last two posts, well it's all about the Ashen Stars RPG I'm running right now.  The Pioneer poster is a hack on some content from the Pulp-O-Mizer all slicked up to provide some theme for the adventure I'm running.  The News Net Nine feed is some feedback and more theme for the same.  Just like all the other little story snippets you see on here from my characters or the session notes I post.   I think it's a good way to provide some extra oomph for the games and I'm going to continue to do it.

I did however want to break a bit from the vanity press shtick and write a bit about the Ashen Stars system and the things I'm liking about it.  First thing, I really like the game and I like it more now than when I started liking it.  I played a one shot and then I ran a one shot and then I agonized over using Ashen Stars out of the box.  I thought about trying to tack the things I liked about it onto a Mongoose Traveller game or something.  I even looked a bit into the Traveller 2300 AD material they put out so I could avoid dealing with some of the deeper depths of Traveller.  I admit I was hesitant to run a longer game in Ashen Stars even though I liked the basic concept.   Mostly I was worried that the Gumshoe system was too simple to handle a decent fight and too 'meta' to let the players loose themselves in the story.  In the end I decided to stick with Ashen Stars as presented and I am glad that I did because both those apprehensions were mis-apprehensions.

Combat, it turns out, seems to work just fine.   It is dangerous and so the characters are motivated to interrupt it after the first punch gets thrown or avoid to fights altogether and thus the combats seem much more fluid and natural than the big production numbers you find in some systems.  The point spend mechanic isn't getting in the way and I don't notice players hording their points.  The NPCs certainly don't have a problem, and I've found that having the points lets me control the NPC reactions to a much finer tune - having an NPC be calculating or cautious or desperate is a simple matter of spending accordingly.  I don't feel I have to pull punches or make tactical errors like I might in a d20 system -I can just do acting.   I can have a NPC throw out a couple points and a roll as a cautious feint, or load up the points if they are out of control or perceive themselves to be in dire situation.

Also, the setting material is much better than it seems.  The Ashen Stars setting material is a deliberate homage to a lot of mainstream sci-fi tropes and that might seem a bit goofy when you are reading the material.  But it isn't goofy at all in actual play.  Players pick up the tropes and benefit from all that associated material without bumping into objects in the mirror or stumbling over canons.  I can load up a alley with a press gang of Tavik, and it is easy for the players to feel like they are in a dangerous place without making jokes about Klingons or any of the other baggage that label entails.  Same for the technology, everyone gets tethers and NLD mode and osmotic punches right away.  It works because we are all thinking about klingons or tricorders and hyposprays, however the name has been filed off and everyone is free to have them act as the campaign requires.  It's the sci-fi analogue of the Elf/Dwarf/Halfling thing is so represented in fantasy.  The setting therefore feels fresh and new, but still very familiar and there is less time needed to set up things for the payoffs.

I wanted to get into the economic system but I think this post is too long already now.
So this is now a two part review of Ashen Stars.

The Many-Colored Land

One series of books that I think would make a really fun RPG, or a setting source book for an existing game, is the Saga of Pliocene Exile, aka The Many-Colored Land series by Julian May.  The blurb goes something like this:

There is a one way gate discovered that leads back in time from the early 22 century to the Pliocene epoch some 3 million years in the ago.  Naturally people go through it, it in fact becomes a social safety valve for the discontented and the criminal to escape the overly ordered society that earth has become.  And way back in the past there are strange, wondrous and terrible things afoot.  One group of misfits goes through the gate and finds themselves in the middle of it all.

These are an excellent read and manage to tie folklore into sci-fi in a way that is satisfying and consistent.  It's is almost the inverse of something like Shadow Run, instead of having magic mixing in with the near future world, it is near future science mixing in with historical fable.  I'd hate to spoil anything for you by revealing too much.  It's got fine characters, intrigue, humour and some pretty sweet battles.  It also has a pretty decent world that would be pretty easy to stage a campaign in.  I'm actually very surprised that there isn't a Gurps or Savage Worlds supplement for this setting simply because it is so robust and well designed and sometimes reads like someones very excellent extended RP campaign.  If I was going to run it I would have to figure out how the 'magic' and tech could work together which is why one of the generic systems might be easiest to use.  It would be a good setting for a more narrative game as well, Fate or Dungeon World maybe, perhaps even re-skin the Marvel Heroic Cortex system.

The whole series runs for 4 books, The Many-Colored Land, The Golden Torc, The Nonborn King and The Adversary.  It's a good read with an expansive cast of interesting characters and a satisfying conclusion.  The story also leads into a second trilogy about the future world called The Galactic Milieu series.  This series is pretty good as well and contains a lot of related material although it isn't required reading. The Galactic Milieu is not quite as strong as the Pliocene books in my opinion, but it is still a decent read and if you like the first books you can't go wrong reading both series really.

The Belgariad (and other books)

Well worn these books

I am think I was 13-14 when I first read Pawn of Prophecy, the first book in David Edding's Belgariad series.   I don't remember exactly when it was, but I do remember that I had to wait six long months towards the end for the last book to come out in paperback which places it in that time range.  I remember plowing through these books in long gulping weekends of reading and I remember they were just great fun.   I've read them a number of times since then and I've also read the follow ups and spin offs to the series which were way more formulaic and less interesting. The original run though, it was something.
I never knew that David Eddings was like 60 when he wrote this, I never would have guessed it.  For me it was exactly what 14 was meant to be and  re-reading it now makes me feel that way again.  I suppose if I was 60 I would take offense to this, 60 is probably closer to 14 than I suspect.

The Belgariad itself is a pretty straight forward journey quest, but it's well executed and the characters are fun to be around for the while you spend with them.  The writing is approachable and the world seems to hang together quite nicely.  Even the second trilogy, the Mallorean, is not a terrible read - and if you miss the characters and don't mind seeing them pace through the same character arcs again, it's not a total waste of time to read them.  It's not until the prequels that things fall into that dreaded protagonist hellbore that causes good worlds to revolve tighter and tighter around the actions of a specific group of heroes or an author driven purpose - like Heinlein's multiverse madly striving to mate with itself.  I'd stay away from the prequels.

I've been trying to get my oldest daughter to read the Belgariad series because she has been reading lots of these new tween adventure fantasy series.  She's having a grand time reading all that crap and I thought she might get a kick out of these as well.  She had her Harry Potter moment already -that  common milestone these days for kids that manage to read books.  Now that she's hooked on reading, I figured that she might like to see some of the books that blew my mind when I was young.

It's a long planned out trap actually - there are so many good books that hit me full on in the gut between 13 and 20 that I want to get her to read, and all of them had what people might consider 'Harry Potter' or 'Game of Thrones' levels of impact on me growing up.  I can't imagine being in a head space where I'd say that a single series of books was as influential as the popular opinion attributes the Hunger Games or Harry Potter - because in my experience there was a never ending stream of them.  Joel Rosenberg's Sleeping Dragon (the Guardians of the Flame series), Steven Kings's The Stand, Frank Herbert's Dune series, Asimov's Foundation series or oh my lord -  The Gods Themselves,  Robert Heinlein's Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land, Ursula La Guin's Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, Pohl's Heechee Saga, Anne McCaffrey's Pern books, the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - oh just way way too many books and series to even list.  I have boxes of these books that I couldn't part with because they are associated with parts of my personality growing up.  These books defined me.  I have too many of these books. I had to take some and box them up for lack of shelf space.  So many of them come from those early years, and I have pull them out on occasion and re-read them - so I can remember who I am and who I wanted to be.

And people keep coming out with new ones.

In which a long awaited package arrives at my door

When I got back from our family camping trip there was a small parcel from Finland at the door.   My copy of the Lamentations of the Flame Princess hard cover book had arrived.  I can't recall when I signed up for this on the Indiegogo campaign, but it was a while ago.  I hadn't worried about it however because I had faith that the book would be done well and I would get a quality product.  And it is a quality product.  It is very nice to look, has nice pages, good binding and even sports a lovely ribbon bookmark.  And the art is very nice - and weird - but it all works very well.  It even sports handsome and useful tables on the inside covers.  At first I was a bit bemused because it was a small book (8.5'' x 6'') and I guess I still think in terms of the large format hardcovers.  However after only a short perusal I find that I kind of like this smaller format for a hardcover.  It is light but solid and it fits nicely in your hand.  Here is a photo comparison with the DCC rule book - which is a monster.  I would not want to take the DCC book out for a stroll or anywhere I didn't have a table to support it, but the LotFP book I would slip into a pocket and pull it out at the drop of a hat.

LotFP hardcover and adventure supplement.

Fits well in the hands, has a solid binding and includes a nice bookmark.  Quality product.

Report - Zombie Risk

So Zombie Risk works pretty darn good as outlined.  We played a 4 player game using those rules and it was noticeably more fun fighting the zombies and attacking each other via proxy than simply fighting each other directly.  There were suitable amounts of hatred for other players, but it was a little less personal. There were many more moments of cooperation and rooting for other players than you would get in a typical game. It was fun to use familiar game mechanics in a new way to quell the growing zombie hordes.

The infection on a 1 mechanic was really good and a lot of fights took a sudden turn for the worse when a player's units converted to zombie units mid fight.  It was also good that the infection cards only dropped two units into countries as this limited the attack dice at first and made these skirmishes more tolerable, but made it all the more dramatic when it happened that fallen armies were infected.  The game started out a bit slow and at first the zombies seemed to be a bit weak and it was a concern that players wouldn't be able to get their cards each turn for lack of targets.  However as the zombies gained new units after each player turn, and also the 'infection' cards caused outbreaks and conversions of player countries, it soon became apparent that these zombies were getting to be a real problem.  Slowly the zombie faction spread and soon there were heroic fights just to knock the zombies down a country or two to prevent them from getting that one extra reinforcement next turn.  By the time that players are turning in card sets for higher numbers of units, the zombies had very large hordes in place to counter.  There was a real sense of survival horror and fighting against growing hordes that came with these mechanics.

There was a lot of option for strategic manoeuvring and for player diplomacy, and since everyone had vested interest in the zombie faction it was a much more interactive game than I remember regular risk being.  I am sure that a strategic co-operation in the early game would make it pretty easy to wipe out the zombie faction, but the player self interest in controlling territory seems to be a decent counter to that.  It is good that the zombies only receive one attack per turn and then the two infection cards as it prevents them from being used too aggressively against a single opponent or for a signal purpose.

The players suggested that it would only be fair to have some sort of 'cure' mechanic where zombie forces that rolled 1 on a loss would turn into humans again.  I am not sure this is a good idea but it was a popular request all through the game.  I suggested that perhaps if the zombies lost on a 1 against a roll of 6 the zombie could be cured - making it a more rare occurrence.  I would consider this as a house rule of the house rules I guess.

Some clarifications/qualifications to the rules:

1. Setup should be done by dealing out all the country cards (minus the wild cards) and putting units on the countries you receive - at least for the zombie faction if not for all players.  I assumed this since it's always how we played, but it's not in the official rules I had.  Once all territories have a unit, then the remaining units are placed as reinforcements in player order.  Players should take turns to place a number of reinforcements equal to the number of players and then place a zombie unit until they are all deployed.

2. Zombies get reinforcements for the number of countries they control but do not get cards or continent bonuses.

Space Empires III

Space Empires III is one of the best games ever.  It's too good for the technology that it was written for (Windows 95 people!) and I don't think I have even managed to find another game yet that did what that game does so well.  Asynchronous turn based multiplayer space 4x.

Your window into awesomeness.

Space Empires 3 looks simple, and sure it has simple graphics and sound. The menus are not fancy or animated or all tool tippy. The AI isn't brilliant.  But what SE3 does have is it is the best damn computer assisted space board-game you can play with your friends over email.  Oh I'm sure someone out there has made more complex games or more realistic games, and even the folks that made SE3 went on to make bigger prettier versions of the same game (SE4 and SE5)- but here's the thing SE3 got it right.  It has enough depth to keep things interesting but not so much that you need to study a couple books or log a million hours to play.  There is also a surprising amount of power in the way it organizes the game information for you.  All your ships, all your planets, all the orders you have issued are all there to be examined.  I tried other games and this is the break point for me - they get too hard to manage, their menu systems are too obtuse to navigate.  Space Empires IV might have been a better game but I could never get past the UI to find out.  Space Empires III is sleek and efficient.

The other thing that makes this game so good is the strategic combat and the combat simulator.  Don't even bother to play this game using the tactical combat system in single player mode because that's not where it shines.  Where SE3 works is building and testing your fleets and then sending them off with operating instructions to fend for themselves.  It's an wonderful feeling to get a notice that your fleet has trounced another fleet in some far sector of space.  It's a dreadful feeling to get news that your fleet has been expunged from existence.  There is more than just the combat. There is a decent research tree to juggle. You get mad benefits from managing your population properly. You can pump resources into espionage, and you can do well by being a good diplomat and skimming points from trade agreements.  You can win on points or by taking out all the other players.  And the best part is that you feel like a real emperor doing it all at arms length and waiting for your next turn to see what has transpired.

I've thought about how I'd make a 4x game quite a lot and I believe that it would fall pretty much in line with what SE3 accomplishes.  I might add some spokes to the tech tree for that rock paper scissors effect. I'd probably want to increase trade and tribute so that you could move units.  I might even add in some mining or resource collection.  But I have to say all this was attempted in SE4 and it didn't make the game work for me.  My one big wish I guess would be to add in simultaneous turn resolution and some method of having ships/fleets resolve combat at slight distances to compensate for this.  I can see it now, programming your ships to engage if anyone flies within strike range, or having them programmed to flee and conserving some of your movement for these eventualities.  However until the day that I see that, I'll be pretty happy with this electronic board game I think.

I meant to write a post about SE3 for a while now, in fact I started writing this one and ended up kicking off a new play by mail game of SE3 instead.

Broken Heart Kraken

So sad.

So you might notice something from the picture here, mainly that my Kraken has no heart counter. He was born this way apparently and that's how the game came from the store.  No I don't have a receipt to take it back to the store because I bought the game way back in the fall and didn't even open it until after Game Summit.  I did send an email to Iello about getting a replacement heart dial or something but they haven't replied.  Not even an automated reply which in this day and age is dumb for any company.  Love the game, not impressed with the customer service.  I wasn't even asking for a free replacement (although - hey why the hell should I have to pay to get all the pieces in a game I bought), but I didn't even get a form letter directing me to download an order form for replacements.  Boo.

Right now I'm using a d20 for the Kraken heart but I sure would like to get this resolved.  I suppose I'll send them another email.  If that doesn't work I'm going to have to start sending packages of calamari to Richard Garfield or something.

Also isn't that illustration a little odd - I mean look at the guys lower torso - those are some pretty spindly tentacles there.  No wonder this guy is spends all that time on his upper-body work...

Oz the Great and Powerful

Went to see Oz the Great and Powerful in IMAX 3D at the Kanata Empire Theatres.  A very nice theater,  they've apparently redone the whole place and it is pretty nice.  Actually this week I went on Wednesday to see Django Unchained with my Brother in Law, and then again tonight (Sunday) to see the Oz movie with the kids.  Both times I was impressed by how polished and clean the theater was and how well comported the staff was.  Also by how few people were in there which is a shame.  I hope don't go out of business because it's worlds nicer experience than going to the mall cineplexes, especially the South Keys one which is dreadful.

Anyway Rami/Disney's Oz is a amazing looking film and the 3D was really good.  Less popping out and lots of depth, which in my experience seems to be what works the best.  The first part of the movie looks really nice in old style aspect ratio and in black and white 3D with little flourishes here and there.  It looks very nice.  When the movie expands out into colour and full screen however everything looks amazing and there are some really nice design touches in all the environments.  There's even a nod to the IMAX experience via a cinematic trip over a waterfall that makes your stomach rise up into your throat.  Very pretty.

The acting is ok, not amazing but it is fine.  The kids didn't mind at all, and James Franco has enough charm to pull off the lead role.  My only complaint is that it was a bit draggy, this movie could have afforded to drop some 10-15 minutes and quickened the pacing on some of the characterization and plot points.  The china doll and the flying monkey butler were decent companions, Glinda was good (hehe) and the other characters were passable but they could have dropped one or two secondary characters and focused more on the ones they had. Plot wise, well movies today do tend to telegraph waaay too much, and they could have done a bit less of it, but it was a kids movie so I can forgive.  There is a nice little reversal that plays well, but after that some of the character elements and exposition could have been tightened up considerably.  Also there was too much time spent pointing out munchkins and emerald cities and comparing sets with the original OZ movie, which was also probably inevitable I guess.  I did enjoy pointing out Bruce Campbell to my kids though and was glad to see his cameo.   He got hit in the face a bit which was fun although they are too young to have seen the Evil Dead movies for that to make much sense to them.

I recommend going to see this in the IMAX 3D just for the eyeball candy, otherwise I'd just wait for the video to come out and watch it at home where you can pause for a pee break.  My two enjoyed the movie and now want to load up the original Wizard of OZ so they can see the 'next part', which is a lot more than I expected from the movie going into it.

Oh and Django was good in case you were wondering.  I liked it fine, and it was a very good movie, but I found it wasn't as quite as interesting as Inglorious Basterds.  Like most Tarantino films, I'm probably not fit to analyse all that is going on in there but this was as well crafted as you might expect.  I found the whole thing very enjoyable and the acting was exceptional.   I thought that the tone wasn't as consistent as Inglorious Basterds and I didn't find it as nuanced or on as grand a scale.  It seemed like a smaller movie, but it was a western, so that might have been the intent.  It was certainly worth a watch.

Games, whiskey and internet shows

I had a chance to play Eclipse and Agricola last night.  Both pretty good games.  Of the two, I think Agricola is the better game and I would be much interested in playing both of them again so that's a success I guess.  Agricola I bought like a year and a half ago at Hammercon with money I made selling a couple games I probably wouldn't be playing again.  I'd like to do more of that since I'm not as hung up on collecting as I am about having the right game available these days and I'm already making my list of 'trades' for the next con I go to.  It's been a thorn in my side to look over and see Agricola but not play it, and although I did do the usual learn the game run through, it hadn't clicked for me.  Now that I've had a chance to play it I know I will be bringing it out more.  I can see it as a light version of Le Havre in many ways - the shorter play time is a definite plus and the farming theme makes it more family friendly than the commodity theme (got to pick up some sheeples for this game, that would up the chances of playing it considerably) although I'd still probably want to play Le Havre if I had the time and the right group of players.

I don't think I'd buy Eclipse, at least not at it's current price.  It was a good game and I enjoyed it but I really thought the components were crap and although the mechanics were interesting I don't know if it's something I'd play over say Galactic Emperor.  Certainly not Twilight Imperium.  Ok, now that I've said that I can see how Eclipse has a more interesting research/upgrade mechanic than you see in most of these types of games.  If it had better components I'd probably buy it.  I played a three player game and it worked pretty well with three, the victory point mechanics offsetting the traditional last to fight wins the game problems so many three player war games have, so there is that.

I've also been sampling a number of single malt scotches in the last six months.  I made the mistake of cultivating the habit, and now I'm spending too much on it.  I started by trying a budget McClellands speyside single malt and it was alright but nothing special and I figured I just didn't like whiskey.  I much preferred a cheap bottle of St. Remy VSOP  or a dark rum.  However after buying a 12 year old Bowmore single malt on recommendation from a fellow at work, I realized that I really (really) like the single malts as long as they are good ones.  I like the peaty ones and Bowmore is my favorite as yet but I have been enjoying all of them quite a lot.  I've had a chance to sample about 8 or 9 different bottles now having worked my way through some Aberlour, Jura, Glenfiddich, Glenlivet, Glengoyne, Auchentoshan, and I just got a bottle of Glenrothes which I'm eager to try.  All these are in the low price range and between 8 and 12 years but are still  more than twice as much as I used to spend on a bottle of booze. I do like a good glass of whiskey now, which is something I don't think I would have said last year. I'm both interested and horrified to realize that I am now becoming very tempted to spend even more than that to try something like a 15 year old Laphroaig or a 18 year old Bunnahabhain.

I've been drinking that whiskey and watching a lot of CrashCourse on YouTube.  This is a series of short educational videos that are both interesting and entertaining.  I have waded though the world history and the literature and am onto the biology and chemistry.  I think that these are a wonderful example of the best of the internet, engaging content designed to be accessible and done with a genuine joy.  I have to salute these guys (the Green brothers and all the folks they have contributing to this) for doing something so valuable and then giving it away to the world instead of hiding it behind a pay wall or using it as fodder for a premium cable channel.  The old promise that television would be a revolutionary medium for educating the masses has not seemed to pan out so it's nice to see another medium take a shot and that quality educational content is being developed alongside the dancing cats and extreme cooking videos.  I think there is a conscious philanthropic component to this as well, likely it has something to do with their DFTBA (Don't Forget To Be Awesome) tagline.  Maybe I'm wrong about that and they are truly evil men in pursuit of unspeakable ends (the more terror connotation of the aforementioned "awsome"), but I am going to give them a big bravo regardless, since they are still very probably inspiring people, especially young people.  We can thank John Green for informing us that authorial intent means squat anyway.

Watchmen: the director's cut

I read the Watchmen long before the movie came out and I did think it was an amazing book and I did wonder what the hell did they think they could make a movie of this and I did remember thinking I had thought the same thing about Steve Jackson doing Lord of the Rings and look how that turned out. Whew, that's a mouthful. It's also pretty accurate because I was hesitant but not entirely dismissive about this movie when it came out. I wanted to like it. I didn't, but it wasn't terrible either, and so I thought that perhaps it was worth a second viewing when I saw the director's cut Blu-ray version in the bargain bin. Maybe the movie didn't get a fair shake, perhaps the director was forced to cut out some bits that would have made it work. Well I watched it and now I can say no, that wasn't the problem at all.

I saw the Watchmen at the theater and I didn't like it.  My wife liked the intro and the music and hated everything else.  Almost all the people I talked to about the movie said they liked the music but not much else.  I actually didn't mind the movie, although it seemed a bit off but I hated the music. Oh not the songs themselves, but the way they were implemented in the movie.  I thought that the music choices were obvious instead of interesting and the transitions were really really blunt and jarring.  I hate jerky music in movies, you have to seduce me with your mood altering sounds, not flash your baboon ass.

I also didn't like how the movie looked.  Ontario Canada has had the slogan Ontario, yours to discover for a long ass time.  It's a great slogan and it is all over the commercials and bumper stickers and says something about tourism and nature and stuff.  Ottawa, which is a city in Ontario, wanted something like this too so they paid a lot of money to have a PR company come up with a good slogan for the city.  Ottawa paid money to have the slogan "Technically Beautiful"  put on their signs and stationary.  Really.  It boggles the mind.  Ottawa needs to sell their slogan to the Watchman movie.

The movie looked very polished, all the right lighting and props and makeup was there (well with the exception of Nixon's makeup - that was bad), but there was a distinct wooden feeling to the scenes that ruined it.  The scenes were pretty but screamed look how accurate this shot is to the comic in a way that totally ruined the immersion and pacing.  Really it was amazing how much craft went into it and how that just didn't matter in the end.  This movie is a great example of the difference between comics and movies even though they are both highly visual narratives that do share so much.  The moved from comic panel to comic panel but we didn't have the chance to linger over the details like we would if we were reading it, and flipping back and forth to compare.  And when we were forced to move on to the next image, the movie didn't breath in any life between those panels.  So the move seem to be breathlessly rushing to tell the story but also very slow and plodding.

I also really didn't like the violent ubermensch take on the heroes as opposed to the comic's very human take on the masks. I have no problem with violence but here it was just done wrong.  A huge portion of the story to me is how Dr. Manhattan is the only actual superhero and the rest of them are very human.  This was especially true of the fight scenes with Owlman and Silk Spectre.  Having them wading through bad guys in super slow motion was totally wrong for this movie in exactly the same way it was so right for 300.  300 was an epic mythos, the watchmen was written as a response to that kind of story.  Those scenes should have been as paunchy and awkward as Owlman was in the comic.  Not to say that there was no place for that style in the movie.  Rorschach's combat scenes were better as he was a ruthless improviser and that super efficient slow time combat was appropriate for Veidt's fight scenes - he was kung fu enough to able to catch a bullet after all.  However it was over applied to the detriment of the theme in my opinion.

I had no problem with the way they adapted the story or the changes they made to the ending however, I actually thought that the ending was pretty good and made sense. I wish that they had done more adaptation. The story itself is pretty good and although it would be hard to boil it down into something more suitable for a movie instead of an elegant comic book, I think it could be done. It needed to be told for motion pictures however and not as a series of iconic images in homage to the comic.

After watching the extended Directors cut edition (over 24 minutes added!) I can say that there was no magic restored here with the additional content or that the cuts were not responsible for the movie's poor showing.  Sure the extra material filled in some parts of the narrative, but in the end it wasn't the narrative that was the problem, it was the presentation.

Gamesummit 2013

Gamesummit in Ottawa was in Gatineau this spring and it was easily twice as big as it was last year.  It was in a larger venue this year and it was also pretty full.  Everywhere the tables were packed so that bodes well for the event, and already next years date is booked at that location.  It ran for two days and I went both the Saturday and Sunday, Saturday for some serious game activities and Sunday to bring the kids.  It was a pretty well run convention and even though they had some issues with registration I think they did a really good job running the show.  I only had two real beefs about it in fact.  My first complaint is that they didn't provide a white board for the game library so you could easily announce games looking for players.  That's a minor thing but since they did have this in the past I was kind of relying on it and was ticked to see it wasn't available.  One of my friends did manage to get the MC to announce a game we wanted players for, and that was great, we got all sorts of folks dropping by so that then we had to turn folks away.  It was an awesome band-aid on an otherwise easily solvable problem.  Next year set up a whiteboard for games looking for players.  My second complaint was that they only had the picture booth running on the Saturday and so when I came on Sunday with the kids we couldn't spend our tokens and get novelty photos made up.  That was disappointing since there was little to spend the tokens on for them and I had saved them up just for that purpose.  Neither of these were big deal breaker issues by any means.

I got to try the Le Havre: Inland Port and I have to say it was interesting but I wouldn't buy it.  The game had a very neat goods abstraction system that entirely solves the issue of having gobs cardboard tokens that the original game has.  Unfortunately it solves it in a way as to be highly abstract and that takes away from the visceral fun of processing goods in the first place.   More interesting was our trial of Clash of Cultures (that's it in the picture) which is a true civilization style strategy game that was a lot of fun.  We messed up the rules and had a few false starts but the components and the game mechanics were really good.  I'd like to try this one again for sure.  I also got to try out a game of Chaos in the Old World which was an interesting and good looking area control style game based on the Warhammer franchise.  Evil gods trying to dominate the world.  It actually reminded me a lot of the Diskworld: Ankh Morpork game but with a more over the top heavy metal theme.

On Sunday the kids and I got to learn to play Munchkin which was pretty fun.  My oldest liked it and asked to play again sometime (of course I had a copy of Munchkin at home we haven't played yet - Axe Cop flavour), the younger one balked at the amount of info on the cards and didn't like it as much. She won the game but was more along for the ride than anything.  We also got a chance to learn and play King of Tokyo at the game demo tables which is a fantastic game, fast fun and very accessible to all types of gamers (of course I had a copy of King of Tokyo at home we hadn't played yet).  We also go interviewed for the local newspaper, likely because the two girl children at a game convention bites dog angle the reporter was looking for.

The market place was huge, at least twice the area of the whole convention space the previous year.  There were lots of vendors and the kids picked up some little nic-nacs but I really was keeping my self in check this year.  I was very tempted to buy Cyclades which I had heard good things about and which I saw being played.  That game is really pretty.  I was also tempted to get Clash of Cultures but I didn't because it is a 4 player game and I have a surplus of 4 player games.
I did get a chance to pick up a copy of Durance, which was a kickstarter RPG book by Jason Morningstar, the creator of Fiasco, that recently shipped.  That was a score because I missed out on funding that and was actually worried about finding it in a store before the zombie apocalypse.  Durance is a space penal colony themed story game that I am pretty eager to try out sometime.  I also grabbed a copy of Dino-Pirates of Ninja island even though I probably won't get a chance to run someghting like that for a hella long time (still gotta bplaytest Beacon whenever possible)because the dude was there with his book and we must support those dudes.

So good times.  Next March I'll be looking to go again.

Le Havre

I got to play this at Hammercon and I enjoyed it so I ordered a copy of it (from this great on-line game store in Canada German Boardgame Company which is another post itself really) and I got a chance to play it a couple times over the holidays.  I'm not going to go into the mechanics or the theme since you can read about it, but it's a resource manipulation game where you build up wealth by converting raw materials into goods and money and investing in infrastructure.

First thing - Cards and Cardboard.  This game comes with a lot of cards and a lot of cardboard.  There are lots and lots of tokens for the resources.  Cardboard chits represent cows and clay and fish and iron and wood - it's all about the goods.  I played twice with containers for those chits and one time using the spaces on the board and I believe that you need to have some strategy for managing the cardboard or it gets out of hand.  Little square bowls seem to work best - especially if you can put them on the board in the spaces provided.  There are cards for buildings and ships that need to be laid out and also the turn sequence is done using cards.  Have enough space at the table for players to organize all their building cards and resources too.

Next thing - Time.  It's a good three hours if you play the short game (the one where you start with more goods and play fewer rounds).  If you play the full game you start with less goods and really feel you are building up from scratch, but it's not a lot different in the end, just longer.  It's just like Titan in that respect.  You can start with more tokens and some of the early combos done for you already and it won't really change the game, but it will seem like you've cheated.  I say don't be afraid of the short game, especially if you're playing with less hardcore gamers or those with less patience.

How does it play?  I really like it, it has a lot of fiddly bits which I enjoy and there is a whole strategy in blocking other people from using buildings that can be interesting.  It isn't directly confrontational but there is a feeling of resource pressure from the other players which I don't get out of Puerto Rico.  I enjoy the hard decisions and the game moves quickly for a turn based.  Set up is an ordeal however with many cards to arrange and tokens to pass out, so a good storage strategy is essential if you don't want to add that time to the start of the game.

I like it and it fits into the same niche as the Mayfair crayon train games or Puerto Rico.  Its a good grown-up family game.  I haven't played with less than 4 players (played 4 and 5) but apparently it plays well with 1-5.  I don't see myself playing it single player since I'd just play a video game instead of wrangling all those chits around - but if the power was out and the zombie barricades were all in place it might be fun.  I'd try it with 2-3 however and it probably works much better than the train games or Puerto Rico with smaller numbers of players.  There is also a stand alone 2 player game called Le Havre: The Inland Port which looks interesting because it does away with all the goods tokens in favour of a resource dial or something.

Le Havre is a good game.

Mecha - summing up

I like it.  I think that Mecha is a interesting game and although I have some problems with it, I can see that there are solutions to be had as well.  I'm pretty interested seeing what's in the Mecha: Mercenaries book if it ever comes out, because I think the game can benefit from an infusion of some Battletech type mojo.  I wonder what the mercenaries book will have in it?  I hope that there are some simple but interesting rules for things like campaigning and resource management (like managing your crew's fuel and ammo).  In any case there's lots of opportunity for customizing this game in interesting ways.

The things I liked about the game were also the source of the biggest problems.  The combat system is a lot of fun and the Tactical Waypoint is a great mechanic - but pretty easy for the players to wreck a combat if they have a lot of tactical points.  I'd like to see more detailed rules on limiting how players use tactical points during setup or investigate some reasonable ways the GM could move the tactical waypoint mid combat to complicate the battle.  That might partly be my unfamiliarity with the combat rules however.  The other thing was the player scenes.  Most RPGs I've played have had the conflict resolution occur at the action level - meaning that players would take an action and then resolve the action with a mechanic.  In Mecha the player conflict resolution occurs at a higher level - the scene level.  This is pretty cool but means that players are doing a lot with those scenes and if the mechanical focus of the conflict resolution is for them to get points -they will focus on doing that over story development.

Id really like to figure out how to use player scenes to encourage the players to contribute to the story instead of optimizing their characters.  I understand that this can be managed by ensuring that the players understand how their scenes can drive the events, but I think that there needs to be a mechanic in place to offset the players having that total narrative control tied to a reward mechanic. I tired to tweak the system by making players use their traits to complicate their scenes in order to get advancement points, but I think that maybe instead some of the decision points in a scene need to be spread out among the whole group so that the vested interest of the group is in making the story work.  In Fiasco the players have a set of objects/locations/needs to interact with and they can choose to either narrate their scene or resolve it.  I think that aspects of those scene sharing mechanics could work here.  Perhaps a player could state their scene type and then each other player would get to add one story element into the scene that the player would have to incorporate.   So the acting player might say they are doing a Recovery scene to heal some damage and then the other players would add in turn: 

1. A workout session in the gym

2. Lon Granger (the cocky wing lead of Beta Squad)

3. It's Oktoberfest!

4. Player's trait of Proud 

The player would then incorporate these items into their scene like so: They are working through a physical therapy session in the ship's gym after getting hurt in the last fight with CTA forces.  Lon Granger comes in to limber up for his big mission in a few days.  Then Lon starts boasting how great his squadron is and how his guys would never have let that CTA pilot get a bead on him like that and the player can't ignore his goading any more. Oh yeah?  Yeah!  Some chest beating occurs and the PT trainer says to take it outside (which on the ship means stop right now since outside is deep space).  They head out into the corridor, still arguing and then they notice the loud singing coming from the mess hall.  It's the Oktoberfest party!  The player calls Lon a lightweight in from of the whole room and challenges Lon to a drinking contest in the mess and so the GM adds to the difficulty of the recovery roll (since he's now cutting PT and drinking a pile of beer).  He better make it or he's going to loose some face here!

I don't know exactly how this would work but I see some potential here.  I do like that Scene much more than having the player say I do a Recovery scene and my objective is to heal up me and Jimbo.  We read books for a bit - and I rolled two successes.  I think that by having each player add story elements to the scene it's more likely that these common elements will get reused or at least come from a shared design pool instead of players constantly incorporating new story elements from their internal designs to push their personal story along and having the common story get unfocused.  I have no proof that this is the case however.   It also changes the tone of player scenes by introducing an element of ad-libbing which some people might enjoy but others might not.

Anyway Mecha is cool and you should check it out.

Fiasco is great

With only four of us available for game night this week, I thought it would be a neat thing to try Fiasco.  I figured four was a bit light for a GM driven game but should be great for cooperative play.  I picked up the book at the local shoppe earlier on this spring and it had been sitting on the shelf all this time, so I read it over the week and tried to get a feel for it prior to game night.  I got the idea, but was still hazy on some of the execution and figured I'd do a dry run through following the play example at the end of the book.  Well unfortunately my wife got her foot stepped on by a horse and we spent the evening at the hospital getting it x-rayed the night before the game. I didn't get the chance to do the walkthrough and I wasn't feeling sure I should be introducing the game.  I felt it was likely going to be a ...debacle.

Well everyone seemed open to try it anyway and it was a Fiasco.

Fiasco is a cooperative story generator.  You set up some randomized Relationships, Needs, Locations, and Objects from a thematic playset and then you use these to create characters and perform scenes in a two act play.  As you do scenes you decide to either create the scene or resolve it which is an interesting mechanic.

Great game.  We tried out a superhero playset and got off to a bit of a rocky start.  From my reading of the setup I thought that each player needed two Relationships and we ran out of dice before finishing.  I found the written rules about how you would end up with two index cards a bit confusing and it was a bit of conjecture that there should be only one Relationship each and finally seeing the picture a few pages later solved that.  Its also true that the first scene is hard.  We had a bit of trouble figuring out narrative control and scene resolution.  I also think we probably fleshed things out too much but it started working better the more we played and we had a good time.  The game was fun to play and the story that came out of it was surprisingly fun and complete.  I'll totally play Fiasco again.

Nexus Ops

I finally got to play Nexus Ops.  This game has a story for me because of how I got it.

Quite a few years ago (like 2006 or something) I was visiting my Mother in North Bay and I popped into the local game store to check out what boardgames they had.  Catan was really hitting it's stride, Fantasy Flight was ramping things up, Hasbro was mining the Avalon Hill catalogue and trying to push a small number of gamer games and Mayfair was rolling out train games and some other stuff, but this was before you saw too too much on the shelves except old stock, Warhammer, and Magic cards.  It was also before I had much in the way of disposable income so I was pretty picky about what I would buy.  I did however go in with the intention of buying something.  I didn't buy Nexus Ops, I picked up Kids of Catan because my kids were tiny and this looked like something we could play.  Wow that was a mistake - Kids of Catan sucked donkey balls.  As for Nexus Ops, I picked up the box and looked it over and thought about buying it, but I didn't.  I found out later that it was actually quite well reviewed and I kicked myself for not grabbing it.  I really wanted a quick light fighting game to pull out and it seemed like a perfect fit.  Problem was that it was out of print now and I couldn't find it anywhere.

Cut away to last year - and I found myself back in that store and looking at that same copy of Nexus Ops.  I think the guy game me 10% off because it was so dusty.  I snatched that puppy up and skipped out of the store.  I read the rules and it sounded cool and I put it on one of the lower shelves and waited for a chance to pull it out.  It's funny because a couple times I have found a copy of a game that was out of print only to find that it was being reprinted - I spent many years looking for SPI DragonQuest, and the minute I found a copy TSR bought it and reprinted it.  Conversely I was ecstatic when Avalon Hill reprinted Machiavelli and the week after I got the reprint, I found a copy of the original at Value Village (it was in excellent shape and $3!).

Well last weekend I finally got to play Nexus Ops and I I have to say I enjoyed it.

You start with 4 corporations (represented as player boards and pieces in different colours) and a modular hex based game board which you build randomly each game.  You also place hidden resource marker on each tile. Each player gets a starting area with some mines on it and some cash (rubium) to buy units.  The mines you control give you more rubium at the end of your turn, but only if you have units working them.  The grunts are cheap (2-3 rubuim) and come in three types, humans, fungoids and crystaloids (or something).  They aren't great at fighting, however they get bonuses in their home terrains, and are the only units that can work mines.  There are also bigger more expensive units like rock striders that can move further over rocks, lava leapers who can jump out of lava pools, and 12 point rubium dragons that have a ranged breath attack and hit on a 2+.  You move out and explore and get more mines.  Combat is interesting because you each type of creature on both sides attack in order (strongest to weakest) and they only attacks once - so your dragons attack and you remove casualties, then the lizards and so on, until you get to the humans.  Humans only hit on a 6 (six sided dice) and it's tempting to take them off as casualties in the early rounds and save your big guys, but then you'd get less rolls later on in the combat round.  There are also energize(?) cards you can play to give combat bonuses or extra combat rounds or otherwise mess with things.  Certainly it's based on random dice rolls but there is some strategy to be had here in addition to the luck.  Also because you only run through the combat sequence once, combats are more persistent and if you didn't wipe out the enemy forces this turn,  players can retreat or reinforce their positions on their turns.

You play to get 12 victory points and you get a point for every combat victory.  You also get victory points for completing secret missions, and so you might enter combat just to kill a couple humans or to win a combat in a lava pit.  This works great and the game doesn't drag on and there are secret motivations in play  aside from simple 'resource holding' to make things interesting.  You might have all the mines to power a vast war machine but if someone tricks you into loosing a rubium dragon so that they can get a 3 victory point secret objective - they can take the game.  Turtling up around your mines is not a wining strategy.

There's also a bug monolith in the centre of the board and whoever holds it gets two energize cards on their turn - which is a nice perk so it's one big king of the hill going on there.

So Nexus Ops is a great game, light but fun, and it has a good story for me too.  I'm glad to see it's being reprinted by Fantasy Flight (although I don't know if they are keeping the dayglo black light-ready colour scheme) and also curious to see if they produce a two player expansion for it.  I think it might remain a good game with more a couple players (although it might drag a bit it seems to be light enough to overcome that problem).