Rick's Gaming Page
I run a Game Day on the 5th Saturday of every month (about every 3
months). My friends Mike & Sallie are kind enough to host at their house
in Herndon. You can check out the gameday page or the Yahoo! Group.
There are tons of game clubs popping up all over the place. I tend to
keep my fingers in a bunch of different game pies. I show up at game days
hosted by the Washington Gamers
Association, Games Club of
Maryland, and Arlington Boardgamers.
I don't get into tournament play, I'm just not that serious about it.
I'd much rather just have a friendly game with a little bit of "rewind".
Some conventions I do go to include GCOM Game Days, Congress of Gamers and EuroQuest.
The best place to find out about gaming is on The 'Geek. My username is
rbynaker so you can check out my entire collection.
My favorite brick n' mortar store is Game Parlor. Online I shop at Game Surplus, FunAgain, Boards & Bits and ThoughtHammer.
Diplomacy is a strategy board game that's been around for many years and is
popular all over the world. It's currently produced by
Avalon Hill which was recently bought out by Hasbro (like everyone else who makes games!) The setting is Europe 1901 with seven powers, England, France, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Turkey. The object is to unify Europe under a single power.
The map contains 34 supply centers which are the basis of power in the
game. For every supply center you control at the end of the year, you are
permitted to have one military unit (either an army or a fleet) on the
board. These may be constructed only in one of your home centers--the
three centers (or four if you're Russia) you begin the game with.
There are two turns per year, followed by a military unit adjustment phase.
All movement is simultaneous. This is accomplished by each player
submitting orders and when all orders are in, they are read and the moves
correlated to determine the outcome.
Each military unit has a strength of one and only one unit can occupy a
space. You may, however, offer support of one unit into an adjacent space.
For more info, here are some Diplomacy sites:
Machiavelli is very much like Diplomacy except it is set in 15th century
Italy. The eight powers are France, Austria, Milan, Venice, Florence, The
Papacy, Naples and Turkey. Machiavelli is much more complex than Diplomacy
because it adds a financial element to the game, expands the number of
turns per year and offers several different scenarios and a number of
optional rules. The most popular scenario is The Balance of Power,
1454 which uses all eight powers. The other scenarios, The Struggle
for Dominance (Part One): 1499-1521, The Struggle for Dominance (Part Two):
1513-1521, and The Spanish Perponderance: 1521-1529 use only six
of the eight powers.
It was originally released a couple decades ago but then discontinued in the
late 80s. In November/December 1995 Avalon Hill released a second edition.
Here are some specific differences between Machiavelli (second edition) and
Diplomacy:
- Machiavelli has a Summer Campaign in addition to the Fall and Spring
Campaigns.
- In addition to armies and fleets, Machiavelli uses garrison units.
Garrisons are only positioned in fortified cities. They may not move but
can support other units in the province surrounding the city the garrison
is in. Garrisons can be converted to armies or fleets and, instead of
being dislodged, must be removed by siege. A garrison may be autonomous
or committed. Autonomous is a neutral garrison (put in place at the
beginning of the game) while committed is player-controlled.
- Units in Machiavelli are bought with ducats rather than supported by
supply centers. It takes three ducats to buy or maintain a unit for a
year. Each province, city, or body of water counts as one ducat for the
player who controls it. Some cities (Milan, Venice, Genoa, Florence, Rome,
Naples, and Tunis) are more valuable and count for two or three ducats.
Each power also gets a variable income. This can range from 1 to 6 ducats
depending on the power and the die roll. Some powers receive double their
normal variable income and the power who controls certain major cities may
also receive variable income depending on the scenario.
- There are more interesting things to do with your ducats than build
units however. You can spend anywhere from nine to eighteen ducats
(depending on the type of expenditure) in causing rebellions in your
enemy's provinces, disbanding enemy units or even outright buying them!
You can also spend twelve ducats for a one in six chance of assassinating a
player (up to a maximum of three chances). A successful assassination
prevents the power's units from moving for a turn and some of his/her
provinces will take the opportunity to go into rebellion without their
leader around.
- OPTIONAL RULE: Plague. At the beginning of the Summer campaign,
there is a chance that some provinces will fall victim to plague, killing
any units unlucky enough to be there.
- OPTIONAL RULE: Famine. At the beginning of the Spring campaign,
there is a chance that some provinces will be stricken with famine.
Provinces and cities struck by famine produce no income and any unit
remaining in a famine province at the end of the Spring turn is eliminated.
- OPTIONAL RULE: Special units. Certain powers are allowed to build
units that are twice as loyal (i.e. bribes cost twice as much), twice as
strong, or both for six to nine ducats per year. There are a number of
restrictions on these units and each power may only have one special unit
in play at any time.
- OPTIONAL RULE: Strategic movement. This is new with second
edition. It allows players to move up to two units within their own
territory. This movement is not simultaneous like everything else, the
player with the most cities moves first.
- OPTIONAL RULE: Money lenders. Loans of up to 25 ducats are
available from the "bank" (a.k.a. the Italian Mafia). They can be one
or two year loans. One year loans are at 20% interest while two year loans
are at 50%. Failure to pay back a loan results in an automatic
assassination and withholding of services for the rest of the game.
- OPTIONAL RULE: Conquering. If you lose all of your original
cities, you are eliminated from the game. If you gain control of all of
the starting provinces and cities of another player, you may use those
cities as if they were part of your own home country (construct units there,
etc.)
In addition I have a transcript of a
correspondence with Avalon Hill regarding my questions about some of the
new rules.
Civilization and the Advanced Civilization expansion are also products of
Avalon Hill. They center around the Med and offer the following powers:
Africa, Iberia, Illyria, Thrace, Crete, Asia, Assyria, Babylon and Egypt.
Advanced Civ made tremendous improvements over Civ (IMO) and I can't
imagine playing by the original rules. Each power starts off with a single
token (representing a tribe) and expands his/her population until large
enough to begin building cities. Once you have cities you can begin
trading with other nations and building up wealth. You then invest in
technological advances ranging from cloth making, allowing you to build
stronger sails for your ships, to Philosophy and Theology. Along the way
you get into border disputes and sometimes outright wars with your
neighbors and are struck with disasters such as earthquakes, epidemics,
civil wars and invasions by barbarian hordes. Of course, with more advanced
technology you can mitigate some of the effects and even become immune to
certain calamities.
The problem with the game is that it takes about 16 hours to play with six
to eight players.
If you're interested, check out the
Civilization Home Page.
CoC is by far my favorite RPG. I never really got into the whole D&D thing. Mostly because my friends knew just about everything there was to know about the game and they would make characters out of weird supplements they bought which always made my basic characters look lame.
Anyway, I've been playing CoC since, I don't know, probably around 1988. One of the main reasons I like it is that it's grounded in reality but introduces concepts of fantasy. Most adventures are set in the 1920's and most of them in New England. I like the skill system (based on percentages) but the combat system sucks. Since our traditional Keeper (GM) moved to Taiwan a couple years ago, I've taken up running adventures myself. I also managed to acquire (thanks to e-Bay and some online used bookstores) all the books in the Arkham series. I'm still reading through them and I'm going to try to come up with a useful chronology for characters to run through. I don't know how successful I'll be and I haven't devoted as much time to it as I would like but hopefully I'll come up with something decent that people will like and have fun with.
Sometimes called Euros or Sociable Strategy Games. Most of these games are imported from Germany. Some of my favorites include Tichu, Alhambra, Small World, Ticket to Ride, Lord of the Rings, Le Havre and Carcassonne.
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Rick Bynaker, CPA
rick@bynaker.com
Last revised February 25, 2010, revision 3.1.00.