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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 3, 2008 3:02:34 GMT
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."In November 2025 humanity plunged into a Dark Age like no other. Within a month of R'lyeh's return the Earth’s human population declined from 9 billion to a little under 9 million. Civilization precipitously disappeared from the face of the planet. Small pockets of humans organized to try and survive what appeared to be the End of Days. Although every major population center had been methodically rubbed out of existence by nuclear weapons or biological strikes, human refugees found some sanctuary in the mountains, deserts and growing wastelands. Some humans banded together to resist their returning Overlords. --- The game is Armageddon Empires. AE is a mix of turn-based hex wargame and CCG. Essentially, you take your place on the map, lay your cards face down and then flip from the top of the pack as required. You build the pack, so you know what's in it, but not what card is going to come next. You can end up with a "lucky" run of cards, or you can get a lot of powerful cards early on that you just can't play, which force you to sit on your hands for a while, but then become suddenly very powerful when you've acquired the resources to bring them into play. I'm playing with a self-created 275 point pack, with 15 tile points on a Huge map with Rare resources and Rare specials. Humanity is relying on me. So I hoped you weren't too attached to the planet.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 3, 2008 3:50:30 GMT
"That is not dead which can eternal lie. With strange aeons even death may die. In the house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming. Yet we shall rise and our kingdom shall cover the Earth."Humanity's fightback begins in the southern central regions of what's left of Earth. With the oceans long since disappeared through some purpose of the Great Old Ones all is land, all is dust, all the same. So position doesn't bring any advantage. The cards I've been dealt are (from left to right) : 1 : Grom.Artillery unit. Attach it to an army and blow shit up. Has the special ability "Disable" - any successful attack lowers the targeted unit's attack score by two for two turns. The numbers on it (3 red, 1 gold, 2 green, 1 yellow, 2 blue) means it costs 3 action points, 1 personnel, 2 Materials, 1 Energy and 2 Technology points to deploy it into play. My home base develops 1 gold, 1 green, 1 yellow, 1 blue each turn, so I don't have the points to put this into play yet. 2 : Imperial Fire Base.Expensive to deploy, but acts as a supply centre, to keep my forces fed and watered. Also allows me to put units on the board at its location, rather than just at my main base. 3 : Industrial Complex.Generates 1 Material and 1 Energy points per turn. Very useful as I've set resources to Rare. 4 : Imperial Infantry.Box-standard infantry unit, although it can be improved through an "attachment" - giving it a heavy weapon platoon for example. 5 : Industrial Complex.See #3. 6 : Light Infantry.Costs 1-1-1-0-1 to deploy, which means I can put it into play right now, which is nice. Recon units are important in the early game for hunting down what few resources might be out there before the other guy finds them. Has "Fast Deploy" which means it can be put into play on any existing army that's in supply anywhere on the board. Which is useless right now as I don't have any armies. 7 : MeBu-II Vengeance.Yowser. Just about my most powerful unit - Shame it's so expensive to put into play. I can have up to eight cards in my hand, which means I can spend three action points to get one more right now. (Action Points : (AP) At the start of each turn the four factions roll and buy initiative - the one with the most initiative at the end gets to go first, the second most; second and so on.
Everyone rolls three dice - the highest wins. You can try to stack the deck in your own favour by spending any resource, (energy, technology etc...), to buy more dice. On most turns you'll be rolling three dice at the same time that someone else is rolling six or even more.
The person who goes first gets 14 AP; second gets 10, then 8, then 6 - going fourth for a couple of turns in a row can kill you.) Turn 1With virtually no resources to spend everyone plays fair and rolls three dice. I come second, will go second and this gets me 10AP. First things are to get the Light Infantry on the board and then have to go at my main base. (Cost : 1AP). I then have to create an "army" to put it in (cost : 3AP) - which I imaginatively entitled "1 Recon." 1 Recon moves out (Cost : 1AP) and immediately it appears its commander is Mr Lucky McLuckyton, because this happens : Let me see... do I want to grab the free stuff and keep it for myself? Hmm. Yes. Yes I do. The dump yields seven material and five energy, which is fan-fucking-tastic. Thank you very much. With five AP left, no one to move, not enough resources to put cards into play and nothing to research I buy another card from my deck for my hand. I get this : Not bad. A good unit for providing some backbone to an infantry unit for garrison work. With 2AP left I have to end my turn, as there's nothing else I can do. Unused AP are lost.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 3, 2008 4:25:53 GMT
Turn 2Even though I found that stack of resources I choose not to buy any extra dice, as I can't afford to do enough to make the extra AP worthwhile. Everyone else agrees and sticks with three dice. So coming last was just bad luck on my part. :moop: I have enough to put an Industrial Complex in play, so I do just that at my home base. Having only 6AP means that's almost all I can do though. Turn 3Everyone goes three-die again and I come fourth again. At this rate I'm going to have to buy dice just to come third. I march out my Imperial Infantry into my home base to act as a garrison, continue scouting with the light infantry and then buy a card for my hand with my remaining three points. I get MoBV-VI Tiger which is a big tank - the next one up from the earlier Panther. Turn 4Please win. Please, please, please, please, please... w00t! In your face, giant killer squids! 14 APs are all mine, which is more than I can probably use, but at least they're not someone else's to waste. Octopus can't count to 14 anyway. I scout. I can't build my second Industrial Complex as it has to go on a base and I have only one and that's already got a complex. I also can't my Fire Base out, as I have to have an engineer on a hex to build it. So I buy two new cards and get : Imperial Grenadiers - A tough mechanised infantry unit especially good against armoured targets. Research Lab - A facility that collects one tech resource a turn. With my card hand full and seven APs remaining, I build HQs for two new armies (3AP each) - mere shells right now - so that they'll be ready when I actually have forces I can deploy. First Corps will be a mixed offensive unit. I Infantry will be primarily for defending my main base as if it falls, the game's over. Not an exciting turn, but them's the breaks cards.
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Post by Sonic on Feb 3, 2008 10:15:14 GMT
Your playing poker with Moo aren't you. Coffers wasn't invited because he'd clean up even without knowing the rules; Boo's the mysterious third one who'll forever remain silent; DC is providing the third die to get in as the fourth competitor. Meanwhile Deej is the holy card provider/dealer fella. Right?
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Post by Moo on Feb 3, 2008 12:35:33 GMT
I'm folding to a re-raise in this situation. I'm out of position with a marginal hand and I have enough chips behind to still make a move with a decent hand. However, the re-raise denotes strength, certainly a stronger hand than I have on this board. I'm relying on one of two cards to drop on the turn, so if there's a call, then I'm praying for help.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 3, 2008 16:58:20 GMT
It certainly is poker-esque for the next few turns as I can't buy good cards. I've got a hand filled with high-power armour I can't afford and interesting facilities that I've got nowhere to place. It doesn't help that I'm consistently going fourth because the Lords of R'yleh continue to buy position in the initiative rolls. At one point I'm rolling three dice against four, five and eight dice. So I sit on my hands and sulk for a while, taking joy once in outrolling Skynet when it throws six dice to my three and then taking especial joy when my Light Infantry bumps into an Outsider scout and runs it down. "Outsider : When R'yleh returned the cold intelligences of Skynet determined the best way to deny a victory to the Old Ones was to fire their entire nuclear arsenal at the major civilisation centres, killing human and squamous kind alike. The ancestors of today's human empire took to their shelters leaving those without access to safety to their fate outside." Slowly though I get our facilities on line. Gene-spliced Physicist Albert Feynman, (a combination of Albert Einstein's and Richard Feynman's frozen heads in a jar), is placed into our headquarters which enables me to put my firebase down, though only next door. This lets me bring the second Industrial Complex down and when I bump into abandoned gas tanks and nomad camps I suddenly have enough resources to start buying some dice. Gaining position finally allows me to get a garrison down, after I make fateful decisions to discard some cards to make space in my hand - decisions which are certain to haunt me later on. The Headquarters garrison is decently rounded and lead by tactical genius Erik Mai. It's support heavy, with two artillery units and armoured personnel carriers, but two infantry and one armoured unit should provide enough defence against early attacks. I really need some airpower though, as I've got none, at all. On turn 20 my light infantry unit that has been out scouting around just stops reporting. No explosion, no frantic radio call for help, it just disappears. I'm intrigued about what happened to it but going to find out is rather too reminiscent of going into a horror-movie cellar to find out what happened to the kid who said "I'll be right back." I stamp "MIA" on the Light Infantry give them a medal and then forget about them. And finally, finally... It's probably the best air unit to get first of all too, even though it's not a great ground-attack unit, because it allows me to intercept incoming air attacks too. So this is us at turn 24. The "6" is my homebase, the "4" my firebase. I don't have ten armies - they're mostly shells set up when I had spare APs to be filled with troops in the future, but they serve the double function of making me look about eight times tougher than I actually am. I suspect the Outsiders are to the east or north east, while there's definitely something to the north west, because my Light Infantry didn't accidentally kill itself, but right now I'm putting my hands over my ears and going "LAH LAH LAH" and pretending whatever it is that is there, isn't. It's also clear I've made a horrible mistake in building my first pack, as I haven't put enough base cards in there, which means I'm going to find it very difficult to expand without taking over other people's bases. Still, it wouldn't be fun if I didn't make an horrendous fuck up now, would it?
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 3, 2008 20:14:09 GMT
Remember when I said I hope you weren't too attached to the planet? Yeah. So suffice to say it's not going well. The AI is aggressive and persistent and won't be distracted when it fixes something in their mind. After the R'lyeh shot down my JSF-II fighter the people at my HQ have been living under a cloud of bombs every turn since. Both Skynet and the Outsiders came to watch - the Skynet Ghost Eye was somewhat surprised when my I Mechanised Division showed up on its flank, (my recon had spotted the Ghost coming), but while I Mech was away from home, the Outsiders sent in an assassin who managed to kill three of my Generals before I took him out. Remember that those cards are trashed now and I don't get to make more - the only Generals I have left are those in my unplayed deck. I feel like I'm just about getting some balance back after the R'lyeh apparently run out of bombs to drop on me for the time being, when an Outsider army bigger than most of my armies combined appears from the east. Slaughterers eh? Don't worry, I'm sure it's just a nickname and they're all very nice.
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Post by Sonic on Feb 4, 2008 3:16:18 GMT
I'm putting money on that Moo took out your scout, while DC doesn't like flying things. Boo's done a sneaky deal with the Outsiders as he wants some takeaway, hence the slaughterers in the mix of that party.
How many more cards are there left?
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 4, 2008 3:19:14 GMT
I think I've got about 79 cards in my pack and I've used roughly 20 of them so far.
Next game I'll be building a smaller tighter pack, with more bases and more cheap units to get myself established.
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Post by coffers on Feb 4, 2008 9:51:07 GMT
Use the hex card:
The Outsiders will face Skynet in the final reckoning and Newcastle will win 5-1.
Oh hang on wrong game. :checkit:
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 4, 2008 22:37:19 GMT
Ouch.
That squishy noise will be the end of me. An end that came suddenly and violently as a second Outsider army showed up from the North East, matched by an appearance of a sodding huge squid force from the west.
The Squid were happy to go back to bombing the shit out of me and then the Outsiders strolled in and caned me good and hard.
Needless to say the AI doesn't fook about in this game.
The Outsiders took my establishments and pushed on west, defeating the Squid army through sheer weight of numbers if nothing else, (although the long range zombie launcher was a nice touch), but they got carried away and overbalanced and when Skynet finally appeared from the north, the Outsiders were in all sorts of trouble, trying to pull their armies back for defence against the machines, while under constant attack from the Squids on their heels.
Eventually the Machines and the Squid were left and R'lyeh had no answer for the T1000s as Arnie stepped on Squiddler for the win.
Time to build a new deck, with more resource exploitation, more low powered units and, hopefully, more luck.
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Post by Sonic on Feb 5, 2008 8:58:23 GMT
That's a sudden squishy ending. Homer was hungry by the looks of things.
Stu, are you playing the demo, or the full game?
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Post by Narcizo on Feb 5, 2008 11:18:42 GMT
I bet those Slaughterers are lovely chaps really. Just misunderstood.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 5, 2008 12:24:07 GMT
I'm playing the full version Sonic, after I played the 30-turn demo and found it to be a lot like crack with sugar on top.
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Post by hornet on Feb 5, 2008 12:46:41 GMT
"At his house in R'yleh, dead Cthulhu lies dreaming... of kicking your arse."
Now I'm pining a bit for the Mythos craze that swept my gaming group for a couple of months. I was justly feared for my tendancy to pick the Lyrical Poet character then play the game entirely in rhyming couplets until begged to stop. :humb:
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Post by Narcizo on Feb 5, 2008 12:47:45 GMT
Dwnloadable games are evil. Likely to be the downfall of humanity. They should make us go to the shops to buy their games. That way we won't buy them and might get a pirate copy, instead of shelling out some cash for them.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 5, 2008 13:19:07 GMT
This game might be my downfall. It's thus far generated the FM-style swearing, mixed in with the just-one-more-turn-ism of Civ II.
In the games I've played so far, I've either had a good starting position and no cards whatsoever, or a shite starting position... and no cards whatsoever. In the game above I started throwing away cards purely because they were so expensive and I couldn't bring them into play, knowing that I would be desperately lamenting their absence later on in the game.
So I'm glad I got smeared into the wasteland.
I played as the squids last night too (squids and zombies not available in the demo) and their cards have another layer added on top because a lot of their units start out as eggs you lay and then you pay to hatch them and they can turn into anything.
The fact that you can tailor a pack exactly to your playstyle is nice too. I can see already that my packs are going to be filled with light units and recon and any uber-smash-machines I get are going to have to be nicked off the opposition.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 5, 2008 13:52:27 GMT
So I started a new game, as the Humans again, with my new pack and I'm in trouble again already. I'm clearly either a) desperately unlucky or b) stupid.
Smart money is on b.
I've already got a good-sized Squid army bearing down on me, but unfortunately for the cephalopods I already had decent air power, including stealth bombers and I've flattend one of their units already. I had stealthed-scouts out so saw them coming.
However, there's a Terminator hidden somewhere among my population that's sabotaging my facilities every turn and I just can't find the right card - a high recon card - to bring into play to find the spy, which means I can't kill the spy, short of carpet bombing my own town and hoping I get lucky.
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Post by Moo on Feb 5, 2008 14:28:52 GMT
Carpet bombing is the way forward.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 5, 2008 14:30:40 GMT
There is no longer any need. I finally got the right card - Imperial Recon and they spotted the huge forking metal machine living among our carbon meatbags and we captured him.
Executing him only costs 1AP so I'm sorely tempted, but I might keep him for an exchange if one of my heroes gets captured.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 5, 2008 14:33:38 GMT
Also I wore down the Squid army as the moved closer and closer to my base and when they finally got there I beat them like a red headed stepchild. Then sprung my trap - as they hit me, I hit the base they came from with a saboteur and so the R'lyeh turned and squiddled away back toward their base, under air attack all the way back.
Amusingly I wheeled out my huge forking mech which has an attack rating of ten and rolled... a three. A fucking three! My most powerful unit e-e-ever completely castrated by the fact that I can't roll die.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 5, 2008 16:25:22 GMT
I.. just... can't... turn... this... off.
I pull out some powerful air unit cards which are nice, but can be problematic - Air cards stay in your "hand" and are played from there and return to it. So although they've very useful, they stay in your hand until destroyed or discarded and sometimes you need the extra space.
I'm not complaining for now though, as I shoot down one Skynet raider and two ground attack aircraft from R'lyeh. Skynet is seriously miffed at me as I'm holding their agent prisoner and sends in an eight strong army, but they have no air cover and I'm bombing them as they come in.
When they get within two hexes of my home base, my trap is sprung and my commandos go in and assassinate the Skynet leader and the army command structure collapses - suddenly cohesiveness drops from 8 to 3 and they have to disband from one army of seven units to two 3s and a 1 and they retreat in disorder, being chased by my aircraft and, of all things, a Squid army that sails by me in pursuit of the machines.
I then get an air defence base down on my HQ which means I might be able to discard one of my fighter planes when needed and I get a resource collector going too.
It's slow and the other factions seem to be way ahead of me, but I do at least have some decent cards in play this game.
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Post by Narcizo on Feb 6, 2008 7:49:36 GMT
I feel sorry for the poor little squiddies. It can't be easy having to fight in a desert if you're a squid.
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Post by Sonic on Feb 6, 2008 8:14:53 GMT
Goo point there Nark, and well made about those 'poor squids'. Stu - your obviously in need of an intervention.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 8, 2008 15:07:58 GMT
Following the slowly-slowly-catch-ye- monkey-squidee route I deliberately built up my strength at my home base, using my air-power to keep other people off balance. I got a screen of commandos out, with a layer of stealthed recon beyond that which made it almost impossible to get in and find out what I was doing. In this game, intelligence is very difficult to get and is key to deciding what to do and my aggressive program of air attacks quickly meant that myself and Skynet were the only ones with eyes into other people's business. The machine empire were still pissed at me for holding their agent in prison and continued to launch attacks until I wheeled out my biggest army - IX Mechanised, led by Ulysses Stark who is a "military genius" - and defeated a strong Skynet force north of my homebase. Skynet slinked off with its metallic tail between its legs and is probably in a spat with the outsiders, because I haven't seen hide nor hair of either for a long time. So with those two taking each other out for dinner, I turned westward to annoy the squid and slowly worked my way through their generals with a combination of two assassins moving in and out of their home city. Eventually they put up an intelligence centre which lead to the capture of my agent Valentine Kusanagi. On the next turn they execute my darling Valentine. On the turn after that two cruise missiles slam into their home city. These two events may be related. Needless to say I was a little annoyed and pushed IX Mechanised out to capture a Squid city in the south west that I'd been monitoring. Annoying the squid was fun, but better yet, they'd just established a brood pen there, filled with eggs. I paid a cack load of money to hatch the eggs and suddenly had a large eight-unit army filled with my new babies - squids and octopus and other beasts. I'm not looking forward to the chat where I have to tell them they're adopted. The Squid send an army south to try to retake the base, but IX Mechanised and their new cephalopod friends are waiting and after a tough battle that goes back and forth and involves a lot of tactic cards thrown into play, we finally see them off and boom, the R'lyeh are gone. I quickly rush a recon unit to the squid home city to take it over before anyone else gets there. I now control a "rim" of the map from the south through the south west to the west, with the Outsiders probably off in the east somewhere and the Machines in the North. The Outsiders haven't been spending resources on initiative dice for a long time now which means either they're on the brink of defeat by Skynet, or they're spending them on something nasty. Like nukes.
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