NBW Report -- Thursday (2/5/09)

Rolled out of bed around 7:30, showered, and headed to Tim Horton's afterward with Marty, to get my morning caffeine fix. When we got back to the ballroom, it seemed warmer, but that was only because the doors to the hall were open, so the frigid air was mixing with the warmer hall air. We were beginning to go into crisis mode, as the herd would be showing up soon and we were told the heater was broken. A "man" had been called, and should be there any time to fix it. Yet the morning wore on, and it didn't get fixed. Art, being the consummate businessman, got the hotel to go out and buy some space heaters, as a temporary fix. These worked well enough (though they kept on blowing fuses!), and by Noon we were gaming away, in relative comfort.

(Addenda: The heater did get fixed and, if anything, the room eventually became TOO warm -- so we had to prop open a door to let cold air in, LOL!)

First up was my initial game in the Combat Commander scenario. As there were still relatively few people here, Marty and I decided to play a game. I won the coin flip, and chose Scenario 14, Poles trying to break out through the German lines in 1939. I figured Marty would take the Germans, but he surprised me and took the Poles. So I had to switch my mentality to the defense... After a brutal firefight, the Germans were able to keep most of the Poles from breaking out, and won with 8 VPs in a close game. There was a stretch of bad cards for the Poles, and the 1 card discard hurt them for several turns, and this helped the Germans turn the tide. A well timed German "walking wounded" reinforcement really caused havoc with the Polish rear.

Cory came by and wanted to play some Combat Commander, so, since I love this game AND was running the tourney, I sat down to another game. This time we played Scenario 4, American Paras trying to root out tough German units from a chateau in Belgium after the Bulge fizzled out. I got the Germans again, and set up my infantry gun in some woods, waiting to plug advancing Yankees. Alas, on Cory's first activation, he broke the weapon team manning the gun, and, believe it or not, I was unable to get a single shot off the whole game -- and about 2/3 of the way through, the gun was eliminated. Groan... The battle did go better for me elsewhere, and some quick time checks slowed down the American reinforcements, so I didn't have to face much fire from the engineers with flamethrowers. This game had something happen that I'd never seen before -- multiple blazes that morphed (breezed?) into a huge fire that filled about 1/4 of the board. The blaze closed down Cory's advance lanes on his left flank, and allowed me to concentrate my firepower on his right. Once the dust settled, the Germans had a convincing 34 point victory.

After schmoozing with folks for a while, I got into another Dominion game, this time with Marty, Grant LaDue, and a youngster, Jeffrey Wilson. Jeffrey came with his father and turned out to be an excellent game player, and a quick learner! Though he had never played the game before, he ended up winning by one point! I finished a distant 3rd, but had fun (37-36-21-15). What a great filler this game is!

Next up was a 6-player Pacific Typhoon game with Michael and Don from Nova Scotia, Marc and Francois from Montreal, and Michel Boucher from Ottawa. Most folks had played before, though a couple had only played the game's older cousin, Atlantic Storm. I had some good cards, and even though the table turned against me -- get Winslow! -- I was able to hold on for a victory. Final scores were 44-30-30-25-18-11.

Back to WW2 Europe, and Michael Kiefte and played Scenario 28 from the Paratroop Battle Pack. This has American and German paras fighting it out in "Hedgerow Hell" on June 7th, in Normandy. Once again, I drew the Germans... We both had good units and several machine guns. I also had some off-board artillery and a mortar. Well, I have to say that, in a nutshell, this may have been the most exciting game of CC I ever played. We went back and forth all game, with victory points never getting to more than 4 for one side. There was a big dead pile, and we were both able to protect our objectives. The game was coming down to a shootout, and we were absolutely plastering each other. I held the initiative when a time check came up that ended the game with VPs at 0. I smiled at the initiative card, and breathed a huge sigh of relief, pulling it out by the tiebreaker. Michael played a great game, and it really was one of those games in which there really were no losers. Man, that was some game...

The Bocage

Later on, I went out to dinner with Cory and Marty to a Vietnamese place. The Pho there was pretty good -- not great, but not bad, either. We enjoyed a leisurely dinner, and more guys from NBW showed up there later. It was relaxing, and I was beat once dinner ended. And it was freezing outside. Some silly Celsius number that translated to about 5F...

Played a final game of Pacific Typhoon before hitting the sack. This one was a 5-player with Robin, Jeromey Martin, and 2 of the 3 Jeffs who made it up from Rochester (Heideman and McBeth). Those bastards ganged up on me (what's new? LOL!) and Jeromey ended up winning a close one over Robin: 33-32-29-23-19. Yes, I had the 19. Game was played quickly, which is a good thing, so it was fun. Off to bed, as there were still 2+ days of gaming left!