End-of-year thoughts: Getting back into Warhammer

As a byproduct of our by now largely moribund Rogue Trader tabletop role-playing campaign, I've gotten back into Warhammer, kind of. At least to the extent that I have opinions on it again.

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Rules bloat is getting completely out of control in Warhammer 40,000. Let's take my Chaos army as an example. Back when we decided to get (re)started with Warhammer 40,000, my players were going to have an Imperial army, so the obvious thing to do, both fluffwise and based on the models I had at hand, was to build a Chaos army for them to fight. Since I have a theology degree, clearly my legion choice was Word Bearers. We got through the first and second games just fine with the Imperial Guard and Chaos Space Marine codexes.

For our third game, we wanted to use my old Space Marine vehicles and some Imperial Knights, which meant more codexes, but I'm fine with that; especially since at the time, the Renegade Knights codex was a free download.

However, since I'm playing Word Bearers, I was interested in the new Dark Apostle rules in the Vigilus Ablaze campaign book, and I bought it so we could use the new prayers in our game. I had also planned to field some Obliterators, but the Shadowspear boxed set came out around that time, with new rules and points costs for them. I was completely perplexed by the idea that a boxed set could suddenly change the matched play rules for a unit, and ended up not using them.

The next thing that happens is that a new Chaos Marine codex comes out. I was a bit annoyed by this, to be honest! I felt like I'd shelled out over 60€ on two books, only to have them immediately superseded. I was around for 3rd edition, when they also released two codexes for some armies - but it was explicitly done because a new edition was coming, and the new codexes would be "forward-compatible". This time they've said no such thing.

Then it turns out that the new codex actually doesn't include the specialist detachment rules in Vigilus Ablaze, so I guess I didn't completely waste my money. Should I still buy the new codex, though? Absolutely not, because right on the heels of the new codex they announce the next line of campaign books, the first of which, Faith and Fury, will include new legion rules for the Word Bearers! So do I get Faith and Fury, or do I wait for a third codex that maybe incorporates the legion rules in Faith and Fury, or maybe doesn't? I'm also delighted I didn't buy the new loyalist Marine codex, because guess what? They're also getting a pile of new rules in Faith and Fury!

Back in third edition times, we got quite a few rules updates in White Dwarf, and they also came up with Chapter Approved books, so if you wanted to do something clever, it was quite possible you'd have to lug around some WDs and a Chapter Approved book in addition to your codex. People did complain! But what makes eighth edition potentially much stranger is that now rules are popping up in all kinds of places, from 40k boxed sets to expansions for other games, like Kill Team and Blackstone Fortress. You can make a whole battalion with Blackstone Fortress rules, although I think you'd be better off with Renegades and Heretics from the Imperial Armour book. This can be a bit confusing.

By the way, in the middle of all this, Chapter Approved comes out once a year and they keep tinkering with the points values. I had some success with Chaos Cultists in our first games, but when they went up to 5 points each and lost access to legion traits I started looking at Renegade Militia instead - only for Chaos Cultists to drop back to 4 points in CA 2019.

But really, the worst thing is the new codexes. I like codexes! I own most of the 3rd edition ones, I think, and at least the CSM 3.5 codex. But the fact that the current ones might be superseded within the same edition has just completely put me off buying any. I know I want some Machine Cult units for my Imperial army, and now that we've been playing Munchkin 40,000 and enjoying some Necron-based humor, I might even like to look into Necrons - but why buy a codex when for all I know, a newer version is coming out next month? And why buy a campaign book if the rules in it are going to be reprinted in a more convenient book later that year?

To take another example, I really like the Adeptus Mechanicus Archaeopter that was shown off at the Warhammer 40,000 Open Day, and I'd like to make an AdMech detachment for my Imperial army. But again, what's the point of getting a Codex if a new one might appear at any time and make it obsolete?

The lesson seems to be to only buy new books if I'm going to be using the rules in them imminently. Saves money, I guess. I can't imagine this is the outcome GW had in mind.

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Then there's Age of Sigmar. Apparently when I wasn't keeping up with things, they decided to blow up the Warhammer Fantasy world, the chief objectives seeming to be to make Sigmar into Fantasy Emperor, introduce his tremendously boring Fantasy Space Marines and change all the names into something easier to trademark. So instead of orcs you now have Orruks, dwarves are Duardin, and so on. It all feels more than a little silly, like calling the Imperial Guard "Astra Militarum" (which means "stars of the soldiers" but never mind), but all over the place. The fluff is also kind of weird, because they've kept so many of the old Warhammer Fantasy units but changed the backgrounds. For example, you still get Black Ark Corsairs, but now Black Arks are just ships, rather than magically floating elven castles. And so on.

On the other hand, they're doing a bunch of interesting things with it, like flying sharks and steampunk dwarves with flying ships, so I'm actually kinda on board with it. Also, with the Cities of Sigmar army book, I can have an army with elves, dwarves, humans and flying sharks, which sounds like a fun thing to collect. It's just that I'm not one bit interested in any of the new fluff.

On top of all this, though, last month GW announced they're bringing the Old World back. To be honest, I don't really care. I'm getting bored with nostalgia.

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Finally, though, there was this blog post, published after the author died of cancer. In a moving post in general, what really stuck with me was his admonishment to stick to projects and finish them, both as a way to control your spending and, well, to get things done. With more modelling projects underway that I can count, I felt that. So I think that's going to be my new year's resolution for 2020 and indeed the decade in general: I will finish modelling projects before starting new ones.

So in practice, that means building up tournament-sized Imperial and Chaos armies for next summer, and actually finishing all the damn models! Once they're done, I'm going to see about turning my very eclectic Warhammer Fantasy collection into something Age of Sigmar-ish. Luckily, Cities of Sigmar makes that look surprisingly likely. Even though I very rarely play and am mostly a collector, I still prefer collecting an army that would make at least some sense on the tabletop, in some more-or-less current edition of the game. And I do enjoy playing when I get the chance!

Especially when working on abstract things like lecture courses or academic articles, I've found it thoroughly relaxing to be able to work with my hands and concentrate on building or painting something. I'm going to try adding the additional dimension of actually finishing projects. We'll see how it goes.

CKII: The House of Solomon

And Sulaiman was Dawood's heir, and he said: O men! we have been taught the language of birds, and we have been given all things; most surely this is manifest grace.

- the Qurʼān, 27:16

Like I said in my previous Crusader Kings II post, there have been so many changes to the game since I last played that I need to figure it all out again. When I finished my teaching last fall, it felt like a good time to do just that. One of my lecture courses was on the Cold War, and I talked about the last emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie. He reckoned himself part of a dynasty reaching all the way back to the Biblical King Solomon. How am I supposed to not think about Crusader Kings? I tried playing as a tribal ruler in Africa before, and it didn't go great. Maybe I should try being a successor of King Solomon?

I set the start date to 769, found the Solomonid King of Abyssinia, and got started. The goal in this game is going to be very simple: survive. In reality, the Solomonids made it to 1975, when Emperor Haile Selassie was murdered by communists. In Crusader Kings, this isn't very easy to do; the defensive advantages of the Ethiopian Highlands aren't that great in the game, and the Prophet's alleged command to his followers to leave the Abyssinians in peace is nowhere to be found. Allegedly, the Prophet sent his daughter Ruqayyah and her husband ʿUthmān, the future Rāšidūn caliph, to safety in Abyssinia when the Quraysh were still opposed to Islam, and in gratitude commanded his followers to respect the Abyssinians' Christian faith. In Crusader Kings at least, the Abbasid caliphate is already firmly established and not particularly well-disposed toward Abyssinia, and I'm not sure if there's a lot I can do to stop being swallowed up by them. I'm just going to have to hope they have better things to do - and that the Catholics invent crusades soon.

In the game, the Solomonids are miaphysites, which may well have been the case if they actually ruled as far back as then. I'm planning a series of lectures on the Crusades, and I think much of, if not all of the first one is going to have to be dedicated to Christology, because it's very difficult to understand the Middle East before the Crusades without understanding the Christological debates that split Christianity into so many different sects long before the east-west divide.

To make a long and complicated story very short, the issue is the physis (φύσις) or nature of Jesus. Early theologians believed that Jesus was both divine and human, but how did that work in practice? By the time the Gospel of John came to be written, Christianity was already being expressed in the language of Greek philosophy: in the beginning, there was the logos (λόγος). While this made Christianity a lot easier to sell in the Hellenic world, it also gave rise to several intractable theological problems. By associating Jesus's divinity with the Platonic ideal of the logos, it creates an issue with Jesus's actions and experiences because the logos resides in the perfect and unchanging realm of ideas. If he is the logos, then he must be perfect, and implicit in the Platonic definition of perfect is that a perfect thing cannot change. If Jesus cannot experience change, can he be said to have actually suffered on the cross? And if he didn't suffer, did he really redeem mankind?

The official opinion of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and indeed Anglican and most Protestant churches is duophysitism, as defined as the Council of Chalcedon in 451: Christ is fully human and fully divine, having two natures (hence duophysitism) which cannot be separated from each other. An opposing view was championed by Cyril of Alexandria, a complete villain and vicious antisemite, whose thugs murdered the philosopher Hypatia: Cyril maintained that Christ had only one nature, which united the divine and human. This position came to be called miaphysitism, and became the creed of the Oriental Orthodox churches, including the Coptic church of Egypt and the church of Ethiopia. Hence Crusader Kings II models miaphysitism as a branch of Christianity with a Coptic pope resident in Alexandria but mostly practiced in Abyssinia.

A more extreme formulation of the same idea is monophysitism, a doctrine that maintains Christ had only one nature, in which the divine and human were not united, but the divine nature of Christ effectively replaced some parts of the human nature. Apollinarism, named after Apollinaris of Laodicea, maintained that Jesus had a human nature, but his soul had been effectively replaced by his divinity. I've always thought of it as saying that Jesus was, in a sense, a man possessed by god. The even more extreme doctrine of Eutychianism maintains that Jesus's human nature was dissolved into his divinity, and therefore Jesus really only had a divine nature. Monophysitism is condemned as a heresy, and is modelled as a heresy of miaphysitism in Crusader Kings II.

In the first century or so of my campaign, monophysitism is key. It's apparently a popular heresy along the upper Nile, and we used this to our advantage early on: an independent province or duchy would experience a monophysite revolt, convert, and we'd declare holy war and conquer the heretics. After some heresy-driven consolidation, we ended up at a rough strategic balance at the uppermost reaches of the Nile on the game map: the miaphysite realms of Abyssinia, Makuria and Alodia, all miaphysite and all approximately as strong. We and the Makurians were under pressure from the Muslims to the north and east, the Alodians from the pagans to the west.

The first dramatic change to this balance was when Alodia converted to monophysitism, which led to several serious wars over the exact nature of the divine person of Christ. The second was when the Abbasids swallowed up almost half of Makuria and all of Alodia.

The Abbasid expansion made life a little bit more complicated for us. Luckily, the caliph's attention was elsewhere, but we still had to fight off several holy wars from minor Abbasid rulers. We defeated an invasion from Yemen, but the sultan of Egypt then invaded with a far superior force. Our only chance was to defeat his two armies separately, and we were rewarded with a tremendous stroke of luck.

Soon thereafter, King Rema Armah was succeeded by his son, but we don't talk about him.

King Rema Armah's grandson Kifle Solomonid died at the young age of 34; the stress of defending the kingdom and trying to keep Makuria standing got to him. He was succeeded by his son, King Benaim (859-921), and that's when things really started to get interesting.

In 879, the Abbasids exploded.

Muslim dynasties in Crusader Kings II can suffer from decadence. If their decadence gets high enough, they can get Howardianly invaded by a more virile nomad tribe, which usurps the dynasty and shatters their realm. In our case, the Abbasids were overthrown by the Muhallabids, and all of a sudden the map looks very different!

In the year 900, appropriately enough while we were still in the middle of a holy war, the Catholics invented crusading. Apparently the Umayyads of al-Andalus expanded far enough into France to trigger the crusades, which works for us.

Now that crusades are a thing, in 903 King Benaim founded the Miaphysite holy order, the Order of Saint Anthony. Apparently there was never any such chivalric order in Ethiopia, but many westerners thought it existed and it was in fact created by the Ethiopian monarchy in exile in the 1980s, so hey, why not. In the game, they provide a tremendously useful force of heavy cavalry that's available for free when defending against a holy war. This is an excellent investment for us, and I for one am delighted that the Umayyads were so interested in France.

Eventually, the Abbasids recovered the caliphate, but not their territories in Persia and beyond. King Benaim was able to take advantage of the chaos to conquer the Horn of Africa and even grab Socotra, where we founded a vassal merchant republic of our own.

With that additional income in the royal pockets, it was time to start construction on my first ever great work: the Great Library of Aksum. One of the (frankly ahistorical) downsides of starting in Abyssinia is the abysmally low technology level, and I feel like we need to do everything we can to change that. A Great University would be even better, but we don't have the tech for it, and anyway the Great Library was always my favorite wonder in Civilization.

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As the story has it, the historical empire of Aksum was destroyed by Queen Judith of the Jewish kingdom of Semien. My Abyssinian kingdom was spared a Judith, but that's not to say they didn't try. Semien had tried to stab us in the back several times, launching a holy war when we were distracted somewhere else, but we'd managed to hold them off. After King Benaim's death, they made another attempt.

Instead of a Judith, they had a King Pirkoi, who was pretty much a military genius. When my idiot vassals decided to start a rebellion for more council power, Pirkoi launched a holy war and managed to conquer Aksum. The morons and their council cost us the heart of the kingdom. I had the ringleader executed, and damn near quit the whole game there and then.

Things looked great for King Pirkoi. He'd conquered Aksum, humiliated the dynasty of Solomon, and was now the proud owner of the Great Library of Aksum. Empires have been started with less, by lesser men. It would be a real shame if something happened to him.

A key part of the success of our plot was the enthusiastic participation of his wife. Pirkoi was succeeded by his son, who was still a child when we retook Aksum in a holy war. The second holy war saw an invasion of Semien itself, the capture of the young king, and the extinguishing of his kingdom.

While all this was going on, we also made an unusual addition to the royal treasury.

Ever since the Hermetic Order was founded, I've tried to get my kings to be members. The Learning boosts really help with developing technology, and I've also started a collection of magnum opuses. The stat bonuses they offer are simply too good to pass up.

Meanwhile, we've also worked to develop tolerance so we can advance the status of women in Abyssinia. While I like that you can work to change the gender laws in Crusader Kings II, I'm also disappointed that the default "traditional" model everywhere is maximum misogyny, when we don't actually know that was necessarily the case at all. Still, at least the game makes the most basic argument for gender equality: full status of women doubles the amount of available commanders.

In 974 we got a whole new kind of challenge: the plague. The royal family survived in seclusion, with food threatening to run out when the pandemic moved on, but the destruction was almost complete.

By the millenium, the Muhallabids had returned to the throne again, and their empire stretched from Spain to Afghanistan. In 1008, they won a jihad against Byzantium for the kingdom of Anatolia.

This is how things stood in 1024. Eastern Europe was dominated by the pagan realms of Serbia and Novgorod; Catholic Sweden had risen to a surprising stature with lands all the way down to the Adriatic; and a Nenets noble had founded the Holy Roman Empire in Italy. Dominating the Middle East and Africa is the Muhallabid empire.

Facing this massive Abbasid/Muhallabid blob, there's not a lot I can do except strengthen my realm, hope they stay busy elsewhere and bide my time. In other words, try to survive. We've almost made it to the starting date of the vanilla game, after all, with a strong kingdom, a flourishing dynasty and several great works to our name.

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Finally, some thoughts.

In the past, I've tried to get my realm to primogeniture succession as fast as possible, but over this campaign I've actually become very fond of feudal elective succession. Of course, you need the right circumstances for it, but if you can manage to have at least most of the significant electors be from your dynasty, the risk of game over is very low, and I think the benefits far outweigh the costs. You can pick the person best suited to be king, instead of being saddled with potentially useless children, and since the electors will rarely pick minors, inconvenient regencies are very rare. When you can avoid the risk of the title passing to another dynasty, I feel like feudal elective is a really good system. Best of all, it has no technology requirements, so you can move straight from gavelkind to feudal elective.

It does come with some surprises, though. For instance, one duke who was elected king turned out to have founded a mercenary company, which is not something I'd have done in our current situation. I couldn't figure out how much money I was making out of it, and I wanted my troops back, and had a hell of a time catching the company between jobs so I could disband it. Seeing as how that seemed to make next to no difference to my economy, it didn't seem like a great deal. Although I did get the achievement!

Also, in these post-Monks and Mystics days, you're guaranteed at least one surprise Satanist per dynasty, and maybe more with feudal elective. Still, I think it's worth the occasional werewolf.

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Next time: a new millenium.

Let's Play Marvel Champions: the Card Game

In August, Fantasy Flight announced the upcoming Marvel Champions: the Card Game, a Marvel-themed co-operative living card game. Frankly, it sounds exactly like the Lord of the Rings LCG that we've spent quite some time with, except with only one hero. Clearly we had to try it.

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To get the obvious part out of the way: yes, it is very much like the Lord of the Rings LCG, and will be immediately recognizable to anyone who's played the current crop of living card games, or indeed Magic: the Gathering, where all the basic mechanics are from. Each player controls a hero, who has a thwart (willpower in LotR), attack and defense stats, as well as hit points (a lot of them!).

There are some clever bits, though. Each hero has an alter ego, who has no combat stats, but instead has a different ability and a recovery stat, which they can use to restore hit points. What the villain in the scenario does depends on which form your hero is in: if you're a hero, the villain attacks you; if you're your alter ego, the villain advances their scheme. It's quite clever and gives the players a lot of control over how the game proceeds.

Each player also has a deck of 40-50 cards, which includes 15 hero-specific cards. In time-honored card game fashion, these basically consist of allies, attachments and events. Each deck can only include cards from one aspect (color/sphere) and basic (colorless/neutral) cards, so with just the core set, deckbuilding consists of choosing a hero and an aspect.

The only real twist is that you pay for cards by discarding other cards for resources. Each card has one or more resource icons in the bottom left corner, showing what kind of resources it produces, and there are resource cards specifically meant to be discarded for resources. Because you replenish your hand at the end of every turn, there's a real incentive to do as much as you can every turn, which suits the theme of the game very well.

Another fun thing is something FFG did in Arkham Horror, which is that each hero comes with their own unique weakness: both an obligation card that's shuffled into the encounter deck, and an individual nemesis and associated encounter cards that can be summoned into play by the encounter deck.

I love that one of the core set heroes is She-Hulk, by the way. As you can see, the cards are nice to look at and quite functional. The visuals throughout are in the contemporary Marvel comics style, with surprisingly few nods to the cinematic universe. It's interesting, for instance, that even though the Captain Marvel movie was a big deal, Yon-Rogg is definitely not Jude Law!

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We got stuck in with the recommended tutorial decks, i.e. Spider-Man Justice and Captain Marvel Aggression facing Rhino. Another key difference to the other LCGs is that instead of us trying to accumulate progress on a quest, we're trying to stop the villain from accomplishing his aims. I suppose this speaks to how superheroes are generally reactionary, but maybe that's a topic for another day. In this case, Rhino is trying to break out of prison, and we're trying to stop him.

In this case, it's mostly a simple enough matter of beating up on Rhino until we reduce him to 0 hit points, while stopping him from gathering too much threat on the main scheme (quest). We focused on the beating up part; when some minions turned up, I got to play a card with a picture of a raccoon on it.

There are four different kinds of resources in the game, but you don't need a resource match to play your cards. However, as the raccoon card shows, sometimes you get benefits from using a specific kind of resource for a certain card.

Finally, after some surprisingly devastating Swinging Web Kicks, Captain Marvel took Rhino out with an Energy Channel, and we were victorious.

A second attempt with the Captain Marvel Leadership and Iron Man Aggression ended up with my Captain Marvel eliminated from play, but she bought enough time for Iron Man to gather his gazillion tech upgrades and beat the crap out of Rhino.

Back in the Lord of the Rings card game, my partner plays a mono-Tactics deck with a heavy emphasis on attachments, based on Boromir and Legolas beating everyone up. Oddly enough, it's apparently a very short step from that to an Aggression deck with a heavy emphasis on attachments, based on Iron Man beating everyone up. Who knew?

I also tried my Captain Marvel deck solo, and enjoyed the experience. Solo play in the Lord of the Rings card game is quite different to multiplayer, because it's so much easier to control the pace of the game. Here, that's so much easier overall that the difference doesn't feel nearly as big, but I found solo Marvel to also be quite good fun. It was very rewarding to finally knock out Rhino with a maxed-out Energy Channel!

After the first scenario, we tried the second one, where instead of a straight-up fight to beat up Rhino, you get... a straight-up fight to beat up Klaw.

I'll be honest: the first two scenarios play out exactly the same way, and that was a bit disappointing.

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With potentially the entire Marvel universe to play with, it's not like this game is ever going to run out of material. As a household of Marvel aficionados, naturally we have lots of opinions on who needs to be included in the game as it expands. I mean seeing as how there's already a raccoon card, they're clearly going to do the Guardians of the Galaxy at some point, so I very much want Nebula and Valkyrie heroes. And obviously Nikki. Ally cards we need include Jessica Biel's character from Blade: Trinity. In fact, I'm holding out for a Blade-themed deluxe expansion or whatever they're going to call the box sets.

My list of heroes we absolutely need to see in the game:

Dazzler
Karma
Domino
Moondragon
Wildstreak
Vendetta
Death's Head
Misha from the Warheads

Although to be fair I guess I might have to accept Misha as an ally. And finally, of course, my favorite Marvel character of all time: Motormouth. I will be very disappointed if we don't get a Motormouth hero pack!

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So we've had fun with the core set! There's a couple of things I'm a bit leery about, though, in comparison to Fantasy Flight's earlier LCGs. We've been told we're getting hero packs, villain packs and story boxes; the first will include a new hero and a ready-to-play deck, the second has a new villain and some scenarios, and the story boxes will presumably have some of everything. So whereas with the Lord of the Rings you'd buy an adventure pack and get a hero, a pile of player cards and a quest to play, now we have to pay double (on top of a considerably more expensive core set!). Okay, we get more cards, but that leads to my other question: how is deckbuilding going to work?

While it's definitely a good thing that the core set comes with four playable decks (unlike, say, the Arkham one), restricting each deck to a single aspect means there's no deckbuilding to be done with the core set. In the announcement of the Captain America hero pack, we were told that that hero pack will come with 15 Captain America cards, 17 Leadership cards and eight basic cards, plus a new card for each other aspect. That's not exactly a lot in terms of deckbuilding. If the Cap deck is playable right out of the box, I guess some of the basic cards have to be at least functional reprints? The resource cards, for instance. So for a Leadership player, there's the 17 new cards and maybe something new in neutral; everybody else is getting three copies of one new card. This isn't exactly going to be a fast-growing cardpool.

I get that not everyone likes deckbuilding, but hell, I do. I'm fondly recalling the Lord of the Rings core set, with which you could build all kinds of decks by mixing two or even three spheres. I'm kinda bummed that it looks like it's going to be quite a while until I get to do any proper Marvel deckbuilding.

The other thing that feels a little bit disappointing is that so far, the core set scenarios have felt very similar. We have to stop the villain from gathering enough threat to win, and do enough damage to them to beat them up. And that's it. If all the quests are going to be like this, then I'm afraid this is going to get kinda old pretty fast.

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So, a verdict. Marvel Champions feels promising, and we've enjoyed playing it. Would we recommend dropping 70€ on a copy? Frankly, not really. At this point so much depends on where the game goes. Hero and villain packs will apparently be dropping throughout next year, and for me at least, whether the game is worth playing or not is really going to depend on whether they take both deckbuilding and the villain decks in new and interesting directions or not. Overall, we feel cautiously positive - but let's see.

Game of Thrones board game 2: Electric boogaloo

Last fall, we were lucky enough to play a five-player game of the Game of Thrones board game. To make a long story short, House Baratheon came out swinging, everyone else kind of dithered, and eventually House Tyrell beat back the Baratheon offensive and won. A good time was had by all, so we decided to do it again, and actually managed it only a little over a year later!

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We rustled up the full six players this time. Here we are, again in a picture prudently taken before we started playing (one of us didn't want to appear in the photo).

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A post shared by Michael Halila (@michaelhalila) on Nov 9, 2019 at 1:49pm PST

Top Game of Thrones board game tip: take a picture of the board with your phone at the start of the planning phase. It makes it easier to negotiate with other players away from the table, and it's easier to reconstruct the game afterward!

Those of us who participated in the previous game all got a different house this time: our resident Joffrey Baratheon superfan picked House Baratheon, the winner of the previous game with Tyrell got Martell, and I ended up with House Lannister. Having spent the previous game cooped up in Ironman's Bay, I would now start on its southern shore, where at least I have a chance to get involved in the south - provided the Greyjoys let me!

Luckily, I reached a good accord with both Greyjoy and Tyrell. The Greyjoy-Lannister border was set between Riverrun and Seagard: the Greyjoys were interested in the north, while I believed the war would be won in the south. I also agreed to keep the Searoad Marches and the Blackwater neutral between myself and Tyrell, and arrived at an understanding with the Baratheons on our spheres of interest. I suppose it's possible to play this game without elaborate secret strategic negotiations á la Diplomacy, but why would you?

This was the situation at the start of turn 3. The Baratheons have taken King's Landing, and the Greyjoy army has landed at Seagard while their fleet covers Pyke. Tyrell, Martell and Stark are spread quite thin, and I feel I have to keep my forces somewhat concentrated in the face of the Greyjoy and Baratheon armies.

The third turn also saw our first player-versus-player combat as the Starks took the offensive and kicked the Greyjoys out of Moat Cailin. I advanced to Crackclaw Point, as per my accord with the Baratheons, for an attempt on the Eyrie. I can now admit that I was also looking for a good jumping-off point for an attack on the Baratheons; so far in both games, the Baratheons have found the lure of the Reach irresistible. Last time, they ended up overextending to the southwest and taking a beating, and I had a feeling something similar might happen this time as well. Meanwhile, things also kicked off in the south with battles in the Reach and at Starfall, where due to a combination of combat cards, both ended with the embattled areas deserted! For the moment, it looked like the Martells and Baratheons were co-ordinating an attack on House Tyrell. As the Greyjoy fleet sailed north into the Bay of Ice, my ships took up positions in the Sunset Sea.

Turn 4 saw the Martell fleet drive the Tyrell ships back into the Redwyne Straits as I happened to entirely coincidentally be blocking their retreat. Not only was decimating the Tyrell fleet in my interest, but it was also a great excuse to start extending my fleets southward, so I could get in on the fall of the Tyrells. At this point, two full-scale but almost entirely separate wars were going on: one for the Reach in the south and another for the North. One of the things I particularly like is that each turn, we draw a card from three Westeros decks, which set some global conditions for the game. For instance, if I remember correctly, one of the Westeros cards for turn 5 was Web of Lies, which prohibits playing Support orders. That really changed things, delaying most of our offensive plans by a turn. But soon enough, the wars were in full swing. By the time turn 7 rolled around, the Greyjoys had taken Winterfell, but were outflanked by a Stark landing at Moat Cailin. The Baratheons took the Tyrell capital at Highgarden, but were driven back by a counterattack; Tyrell and Martell chased each other around on sea and land. I sat tight.

Turn 7 was when I made my move. I had maintained a strong force at Riverrun, ready to pounce on Seagard, which I now planned to do. However, before I got around to it, there was great drama in the south: House Baratheon allied with House Tyrell in a surprise attack on House Martell. I should admit that in this case, I and the Martell player had one advantage: having played with the Baratheon player before, we were strongly expecting a dramatic but ultimately ineffective betrayal. It finally arrived on the seventh turn, and changed my plans quite a bit. The Tyrell offensive was so exuberant that it left Highgarden almost completely undefended. So, with ships deployed from the Golden Sound to the West Summer Sea, my army at Riverrun landed in Highgarden. I also moved in on the Reach, denying Baratheon the supplies they were getting from there. I was lucky enough that a Supply card came up in the next Westeros phase, forcing the Baratheon player to reconcile their armies.

On Turn 8, I decided I was going to win the game. I held five castles and strongholds: Lannisport, Riverrun, Harrenhal, Crackclaw Point and Highgarden. The Tyrells' participation in the great Baratheon plot had uncovered not only Highgarden but also Oldtown, with their army in the Dornish Marches. I barely held Highgarden against their counterattack, and having routed the Tyrell army, took Oldtown. Flint's Finger was theoretically there for the taking, but back in the planning phase I was concerned that it wouldn't stay that way, and I didn't have the troops to attack it if it was supported by the Greyjoy fleet. Instead, I went for the more cinematic option and had my army at Crackclaw Point mount a surprise assault on King's Landing. House Baratheon had indeed overextended themselves, and Gregor Clegane not only routed but destroyed the defenders of King's Landing and won me the game.

It's hard to imagine a more satisfying way to win the game, especially as House Lannister: watch everyone else beat each other up and then seize victory from under their noses. In reality, I was very lucky: I found myself between the Greyjoy-Stark death struggle for the North and the war in the south, free to intervene in either when the right time came. This wasn't without its risks, of course: I had to sit tight for several turns until I felt that Greyjoy was sufficiently committed to the north that they wouldn't stab me in the back, and there was always the danger that either war would be decisively won by someone, who would then almost certainly win the game.

Sea power was absolutely essential to my strategy. The small fleet in the Golden Sound was enough to screen my capital from the Greyjoys: in the time it took them to destroy it, I could at least try to reinforce it. I maintained an army of two knights and a siege engine at Riverrun for most of the game, mostly to deter the Greyjoys, but because of my chain of ships to the west, they could threaten Highgarden and Flint's Finger, even ultimately Starfall. Given how tight the supply limits can be, getting the most out of your armies is vital, and naval power is the way to do it.

**

I really do like this game a lot. It's a lot simpler in practice than it looks, and I think everyone's picked it up fairly quickly. It also lends itself well to Diplomacy-style negotiations and shenanigans, which I find a particularly enjoyable part of the game. I also mentioned the Westeros decks, which ensure that things like mustering troops, calculating supply limits and wildling attacks are impossible to predict. As a military historian, I want to say that the combat mechanics that mostly lead to armies chasing each other around and not necessarily getting a whole lot done are excellent.

What the above adds up to is a game where I feel like it's very difficult to know what will happen in advance, and where the players' decisions and interactions with each other are crucial. In other words, the players make the game, and I'm pretty sure they make it differently every time.

All in all, it was a ten-hour slog including a break for food, so I have to say that this is one of those games where you know you've played it. I'm very grateful to everyone who participated, and we'll do it again. Maybe another year or so from now!

Let's Read Tolkien 63: Minas Tirith

Pippin looked out from the shelter of Gandalf's cloak.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Peregrin Took is sleeping on a horse. He's riding to Minas Tirith with Gandalf; on the way, they see the beacons lit to summon help from Rohan. The wizard and hobbit pass through the wall of Rammas Echor and enter the farmlands around Minas Tirith, and finally arrive at the city of Minas Tirith, built on a spur of the White Mountains overlooking the valley of the Anduin.

Pippin and Gandalf make their way through the city and to the citadel on its highest level. Where the court of Rohan was a wooden hall with rich tapestries, the citadel of Gondor is a bleak place of marble and stone, with statues of dead kings and an empty throne. With no king, Denethor the Steward rules, and he interrogates Pippin regarding the death of his favorite son Boromir. Provoked by Denethor's questioning, Pippin offers to serve in the guard of the Citadel to repay his debt to Boromir, and Denethor accepts.

Afterward, Pippin meets Beregond of the Guard, who shows him around, and Pippin goes wandering around the city with Beregond's son Bergil. They watch the last reinforcements from the south of Gondor arrive, and then the gates are shut, and the city prepares for war.

**

So here we are in failing Gondor, as per Faramir and Elrond. As my faithful reader points out, Tolkien doesn't really seem very interested in Gondor as a place that people live in. I've talked a lot about how I think Tolkien is really good with geography - ever since early in the Hobbit - and I feel I should be more specific: Tolkien is great with natural geography. Human geography doesn't seem to interest him in the same way at all.

I talked about Gondor and Gondorian declinism earlier, and it's on display here.

Yet it was in truth falling year by year into decay; and already it lacked half the men that could have dwelt at ease there. In every street they passed some great house or court over whose doors and arched gates were carved many fair letters of strange and ancient shapes: names Pippin guessed of great men and kindreds that had once dwelt there; and yet now they were silent, and no footsteps rang on their wide pavements, nor voice was heard in their halls, nor any face looked out from door or empty window.

The contrast between Gondor and Rohan is present throughout, from the liveliness of Edoras to the tomb-like silence of the Citadel, Denethor's and Théoden's personalities down to the furnishings of the throne-rooms. This contrast between the vital, northern men of Rohan and the withering, sepulchral Gondorians is Tolkien at his most Howardian.

Finally, there's another Tolkien anachronism at the very end of the chapter: a blackout.

"Can you find the way?" said Beregond at the door of the small hall, on the north side of the citadel, where they had sat. "It is a black night, and all the blacker since orders came that lights are to be dimmed within the City, and none are to shine out from the walls."

It's quite difficult to think of any "in-world" reason for this, but like the damage-control parties and anti-aircraft batteries of Laketown, no doubt it's a deliberate anachronism looking back to the world wars. The general dark and foreboding feel of the chapter, especially the last part, goes beyond Tolkien's theological contrast between Rohan and Gondor into his experience of "the shadow of war", as he puts it in the second edition Foreword. I think it's this experience that produces a powerful verisimilitude in this chapter.

**

Next time: more horses.