Robinson Crusoe - solo castaway

 While I've been recovering, my brother-in-law has kindly lent me his copy of Robinson Crusoe - Adventures on the Cursed Island.

This is a solo / co-op game of being cast away on an uncharted island.

I played the first scenario "Castaway" and randomly picked the ship's cook as my character.

The core of this game is a limited time (12 days) to build a huge signal fire and attract a ship to rescue me.  Each day my character can take two actions (placing my two action tokens, rather like Agricola).

In a solo game I have help from Friday (1 action token) and a dog (1 action, but only to Explore the island or Hunt).

To complete the scenario I will have to Explore and find a mountain (a pre-req to make fire) and Gather 17 units of wood, then Build my shelter and the woodpile.  There's a lot to do and probably not enough time.

For each action I can use one of my tokens and then roll the dice to find out whether I succeed or fail, maybe taking a wound in the process, or I can use two tokens to succeed automatically.  This mechanic neatly emphasizes the feeling of too much to do with not enough time to do it properly.  No doubt there will be a need to take some risks and rush a few of the tasks.

Learning this game from the rulebook has been a major challenge.

There is a numbered list of 17 steps to setup a game and a picture of an example game with each element of the setup numbered to show which step put it there.  It should have been so easy.  Sadly there were several mistakes and unclear instructions, so it took me a week to reach the point of starting play.  The setup instructions are for a 4-player game, with a later section to explain the differences in a 2-player game.  A further section describes the solo game as just like the 2-player game with some differences.  Back and forth through the rulebook, I got there eventually.

This game has not skimped on the physical parts and the production value is impressive.  There is a space on the board for the action to Arrange the Camp, printed with a reminder of the results, and there is even a card to cover it up with the different results in a 4-player game, but not one for a solo game.

The cost in resources (wood & furs) to build a shelter varies with the number of players, but the table printed on the board starts with 2 players and only the rulebook notes in the solo section that solo costs are the same as for 2 players.

Once the cook has a fire, I can add a fireplace and then the evening meal will heal a wound.  I'm going to prioritise fire over building a shelter and accept some wounds overnight from sleeping rough on the beach.

I explored the next hex from my camp, taking the dog and got lucky.

what my exploration found

It's a mountain (presumably containing flints, since that lets me make fires and knives).  It also contains a natural shelter (saving me 2 wood and an action spent building).

I spent the rest of the day gathering wood and food in the new mountain with help from Friday.

So far I've found 2 hexes that produce wood, and I can only get 1 unit of wood per day from each of them.  15 wood in 12 days is looking impossible unless I can explore some more, and I still need spare actions to make fire and build the woodpile...  I'm starting to see what this game is about.

Tomorrow's priorities will have to be making fire and a fireplace, then move camp to the natural shelter tomorrow night...

Update: the game slowed down as the weather took a turn for the worse, requiring me to spend time on building a roof for the shelter and causing wounds in the meantime, which then had to be healed.  My exploration found 1 more hex, which yielded an antique rapier, the only weapon I needed

A series of event cards needed actions to be spent to deal with problems.  However, by day 7 I had the hatchet, which meant 2 units of wood per day without needing to spend any actions collecting it (on top of my existing stocpile from days of gathering)and I realised that the woodpile does not have to be built (with a build action for each stage) and instead builds itself so that victory became assured.

I had constant need to refer to the 61 pages of official errata and FAQ, which made this first game slow and frustrating, but there are plenty of other scenarios and different characters to use, so there should be new interest in each new playing.  Maybe I was unfairly lucky to win this one first time.

Until next time, health & happiness to you all.

Thoughts about a scenario for Lexington & Concord

 

Looking ahead to the next anniversary of the AWI, this is going to be a difficult scenario to define in a way that makes an interesting and winnable game for both players.

My idea about the basic structure is to play two short sections, one after the other.  First will be a search of Lexington, looking for the ringleaders of the rebellion and any hidden arms and ammunition that were rumoured to be stored there.  Then the Crown troops will have the long walk back to Boston under harassing fire all the way.

There are a couple of good templates for part 2 in the existing OHW scenarios.  Scenario 23 Escape looks promising, while scenario 20 Fighting Retreat adds a couple of elements that don't seen to fit the historical situation here: the retreating force has to quickly cross a river or be trapped and eliminated, and there is a strategic hill to be fought over for the final victory.  While it could have gone badly for any Crown forces that failed to reach their boats and cross back to Boston, that crossing is near the end of the scenario, rather than on turn 2, the time limit in in scenario  20.

Sadly there is no template for a scenario where Red searches a village, sending a unit to spend some time in each building. Blue can cause a few casualties during the search, rather like the losses from fighting at the north bridge.

Sadly I'm not convinced that the Crown troops ever had a realistic chance of finding their targets.  The advance from Boston had been well observed and all the ringleaders were long gone before the troops arrived to look for them.  Unless the Crown troops have some outside chance of finding something in their search, there is little point in playing the first part of the action, other than to scatter the Crown forces and cause a few casualties among them.

Perhaps an American reader will have a different perspective?  Are there versions of the story where the ringleaders were lucky to escape capture and showed great cunning or daring to remain free?

Until next time, health & happiness to you all.

Fourth quarter reading

Another quarter ends, and I've not forgotten how to read, but haven't maintained much of a pace, which is odd because there's not much else to do when you're laid up for a week in hospital.

Ben Macintyre - Colditz: prisoners of the castle

Having grown up with the TV series, the boardgame and the film, I thought I must have heard all about Colditz before my brother-in-law passed on this book for me to read.  Certainly a lot of the escape attempts are familiar: the impersonation of Franz Josef and of Willi the electrician, for example.  But it seems that the main source material was Major Pat Reid's book, and he escaped relatively early on, so left out much that happened after that.

There's a lot of interesting material in here that I hadn't come across before.  There's the story of Majumdar and the Indian nationalist angle.  The book addresses sexual frustration and how the inmates dealt with it.  Some of the issues of where to hide escape equipment such as maps and money (before the days of cavity searches). I thought of Colditz as a camp for the "bad boys" and repeat escapers, but it was also used for possible high-value prisoners, including a nephew of Winston Churchill, who might be useful in any bargaining with the victorious allies.  The sad story of the last escape attempt was new to me and very moving, given this was the same officer who played the part of the sgt major "Franz Josef" so well with so much planning, driven to such a desperate and hopeless rush.  The strange events of the end of the war were also new to me, when the kommandant gave orders for the prisoners to be armed if necessary to defend themselves from the SS.

Recommended, even for those who think they may have heard it all before.

Stephen Fry - Mythos

As a boy, I read Roger Lancelyn-Green's and Charles Kingsley's books of the Greek Myths and loved them.  It was probably one reason I have an academic qualification in ancient Greek.

Stephen Fry's rendition of the old myths & legends is more comprehensive, organised in a sort of chronological order, where the other two just picked out their favourite stories and left it at that.  This means that he begins with primordial Chaos, followed by the titans (who are mostly the embodiment of natural phenomena like earth, sea, day, night, sleep and individual rivers) and Zeus is not even born until page 30.  Once the human race has been created, the best-known tales begin, and Fry tells them with an obvious affection, mixed with the scholarship of alternative versions which is kept apart in footnotes.

I particularly enjoyed his version of Sisyphus, which goes well beyond the boulder that everyone remembers.

John Lambshead - One-Hour Ancient & Medieval Skirmish Wargames

I found this an annoyingly lazy book.  The basic rules were already written (in his Ohe Hour Skirmish Wargames), so most of the book was there for free, but still fails to  address FAQ from the original volume.  For example, it still says that a model may not move any further after shooting (point 3 in "The Player Phase" p8), but doesn't clarify that close combat is also expected to be the end of a model's activation.

Once again the scenario descriptions mention some terrain that should be on the table, but most is not marked on the map, and the effects of terrain on the game are not clearly defined (e.g. the punishment raid on p70 has gullies and fast-flowing streams, but are they more than waist-deep as specified on p9?  and how many should there be? and where are they?).  There are rules about light infantry, heavy infantry etc with no explanation that these are defined by the level of armour the models wear.

Combat resolution is slower (both shooting and close combat) to allow a second round of contested card draws (one draw to hit, a second draw to penetrate the armour).  Attacks are more likely to be ineffective than in the original book, because in all cases the defender draws extra cards for one or other of the two draws.  The defender is allowed a counter-attack, which is resolved immediately (two more contested draws).  While the author argues that this is to provide differentiation between different grades of armour, in practice that could have been handled by card modifiers or by additional card draws on defence; the changes to the rules make combat more granular and longer-running, creating a more heroic / pulp feel to the fighting, so that it goes on longer and in more detail.

To play this game, the players will have to fill in the gaps, some of which will have significant impact on the game balance.

Anthony Horowitz - Close to Death

I saw this in a bookshop just before my family asked what I would like for Christmas, so I jumped at the chance.  If I'd done my homework I would have realised that this is the 5th Daniel Hawthorn book.  While I've only read the first two and this one refers to events in the ones I missed, so it would make more sense to read them in order.

I recommend starting with The Word is Murder.  Horowitz does something interesting with the format of the whodunnit by including himself as a character (rather like Dr Watson) and this volume continues to explore his relationship with the detective.

Enjoyable, if not a masterpiece like Magpie Murders or Moonflower Murders.  The way those two books interweave a whodunnnit book with a mystery involving the author is something exceptional in my opinion, although I didn't take to the anagram at the heart of Magpie Murders and therefore prefered Moonflower Murders.  dr gustibus nil disputandum as they used to say.

Until next time, health & happiness to you all.