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Wallenstein, anyone?

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jwarrend
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spielbyweb.com is a site that allows PBEM-style play of German games, including one of my favorites, Wallenstein. Nestalawe are going to be playing a game, and we'd like to invite anyone here from the community to join us. To join the game, simply go to spielbyweb, register for an account, go to "games waiting to start", find the game BGDF, click join, and then give the password, which is "design". The game seats 3-5 players, and we'll start on, say, Thursday, or when we have 5 players, whichever comes first.

If you've never played the game before, this is a great way to learn! I recommend reading the rules first at the BGG entry, but other than that, jump in and learn as you go!

-Jeff

Nestalawe
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Wallenstein, anyone?

Yeah, c'mon ya'll, bring it on!

I am a complete newbie, but I will promise to provide a challenge ;)

Brykovian
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Wallenstein, anyone?

I'll join ... though I am a complete newbie as well.

Hmmmm ... so I get to meet Nesty on the battlefield once again! ;-)

-Bryk

Nestalawe
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Wallenstein, anyone?

He heh, Bryk my old friend! Did we ever fight on opposite sides? Or were we always brother in arms?

Brykovian
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Wallenstein, anyone?

Allies, mostly, as I remember it ... different teams sometimes, but I don't ever remember having to take you or Nemesis on head-to-head ... to which I am greatful! ;-)

-Bryk

Nestalawe
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Wallenstein, anyone?

Ah, Nemesis was a legend! And the damn luckiest player I ever saw, man, if you had seen his WOK4 missile results...

sedjtroll
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Wallenstein, anyone?

I have joined. I guess I'll have to read the rules now, but I've been wanting to try this game.

It's turn based, right, where you log in and see if it's your turn? Rather than all of us sitting there at the same time necessarrily?

If it's the latter then I should bow out.

- Seth

Nestalawe
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Wallenstein, anyone?

Yes its turn based. Its always far too hard to get 3+ players from across the world at the same place at the same time for an hour or two...

Jeff, it looks like you are the experienced one here, can you confirm if we have to login to check, or do we get emailed when its our turn? Also, do we go turn by turn or do we all send in our moves for a turn at the same time?

Xaqery
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Wallenstein, anyone?

I would love to play but since I am very new here I will wait to see if the game doesnt fill up with others. If it doesnt then I will join in a day or so.

I will now read the rules :-P

- Dwight

sedjtroll
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Wallenstein, anyone?

I realize it's my turn, but I haven't learned how o play yet! I've got rules all printed out, I just need to understand them and take my turn. Sorry for the delay!

- Seth

Nestalawe
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Wallenstein, anyone?

No worries, I'm not sure I know what I'm doing yet, but I don't think my actions are too random. Though after putting them in realised I messed one up already...

Nestalawe
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Wallenstein, anyone?

sedjtroll wrote:
I realize it's my turn, but I haven't learned how o play yet! I've got rules all printed out, I just need to understand them and take my turn. Sorry for the delay!

- Seth

Hey Seth!

Let us know if you need any tips on this one! Consider this as a learning game anyways, as all of us are beginners except Jeff, who is gonna cream us anyways ;)

To begin with all ya do is set an Action for each of your provinces. We allhave seven privinces (at the moment...) and there are ten possible actions... The five cards that are revealed show the order those actions are going to be played out - the other five actions are hidden so we don't know what order they are going to come up...

I think one of he main things to be aware of in the game is that if you don't have enough grain at the end of the year to feed all of your provinces (one grain per province) then some of your provinces will go into revolt, which is a bad thing...

Jeff, do you have any quick comments on how we should approach the game?

Cheers,

Nestalawe'

hpox
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Wallenstein, anyone?

Crap, I wanted to join. It asked me to activate the the account, got distracted and forgot about it.

I hope there will be a next time... :) Have fun!

Nestalawe
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Wallenstein, anyone?

hpox wrote:
Crap, I wanted to join. It asked me to activate the the account, got distracted and forgot about it.

I hope there will be a next time... :) Have fun!

I'm a multi-gamer, so create a new game and I at least will join you - maybe Xaqery will be able to join as well, and anyone else of course... ;)

hpox
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Wallenstein, anyone?

Alright. The game is BGDF#2, pass is bgdf. See you there :)

sedjtroll
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Wallenstein, anyone?

I'm glad hopx has started another game, because I'm holding up the first one something fierce! I'm really sorry about that. I haven't found the time to even look at it yet.

On the up-side, I have a playable proto of Antike now, just in time for National Games Week (there's an event at the mall tomorrow, right in the food court - that ought to be interesting)

Again, apologies all around.

- Seth

sedjtroll
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Wallenstein, anyone?

I HAVE FINALLY TAKEN MY TURN!
And what a lousy turn it was! At least, the little forray into Bryk's house.

The combat didn't work out like I intended... was I right to assume I had more guys in the tower than anyone else based on the number we each had in supply (mine was lowest)? Also, I didn't realise I'd have to leave a guy behind (though that makes sense).

I understand now that any Green cubes that come out of the tower will help the defender (unless they're in revolt, which is not the case here), and I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that other players cubes DON'T have any effect - right?

So going in with a 1-guy advantage and more guys in the tower than bryk - though less than bryk + farmers - was probably ill conceived.

Does it tell us how many farmers 'fell out' in the initial drop? I mean, would it be possible to know in the first turn how many of each player's cubes and farmers there are in the tower? Say I have 3, Bryk had 1, and there were 4 farmers... if that were the case, and I had 1 more guy in the territory than Bryk, is it even odds on who wins?

- Seth

sedjtroll
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Wallenstein, anyone?

More importantly, you can only assign 1 action per country, right? I didn't try otherwise, but I imagine the computer won't let you.

- Seth

jwarrend
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Wallenstein, anyone?

sedjtroll wrote:

On the up-side, I have a playable proto of Antike now, just in time for National Games Week

Isn't Antike published?

Quote:
was I right to assume I had more guys in the tower than anyone else based on the number we each had in supply (mine was lowest)?

That's correct, but of course, as you'll see, the tower doesn't always behave probabalistically!

Quote:
Does it tell us how many farmers 'fell out' in the initial drop?

No, this is a shortcoming of the implementation. People have asked for this, but it hasn't been implemented.

Quote:
More importantly, you can only assign 1 action per country, right? I didn't try otherwise, but I imagine the computer won't let you.

Yes. Definitely don't try it; I suspect it would bounce both actions, or perhaps it would let you take whichever one came up first in the order.

-Jeff

Nestalawe
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Wallenstein, anyone?

sedjtroll wrote:
I HAVE FINALLY TAKEN MY TURN!
And what a lousy turn it was! At least, the little forray into Bryk's house.

Good stuff sedj! The game is finally underway ;)

hpox wrote:
Alright. The game is BGDF#2, pass is bgdf. See you there :)

I'm in! I'm sure we can scrounge up a few others...

Xaqery
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Wallenstein, anyone?

Ok I have read over the rules. It seems to be a sophisticated Risk with a couple other interesting aspects. IM IN!

(of course I need to read the rules more)

- Dwight

Nestalawe
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Wallenstein, anyone?

We're all learning, so you're not alone ;)

sedjtroll
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Wallenstein, anyone?

jwarrend wrote:
sedjtroll wrote:

On the up-side, I have a playable proto of Antike now, just in time for National Games Week

Isn't Antike published?
Yes, but I haven't been able to get a copy yet. I intend to buy it asap, but until then I'll havee to make do with, well, settlers boats and clip art. Oh wait, the actual game uses settlers boats and the exact same clip art... as well as Carcassonne meeples.

:)

sedjtroll
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Wallenstein, anyone?

I think I'm beginning to get this game (Wallenstein). I think I may begin to like it any minute now. My first impressions were that there's a lot of 'randomness' or chaos that you have absolutely no control over - especially with regard to the events, but also with regard to the order of actions that you don'tget to see when you program your moves.

Xaqery
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Wallenstein, anyone?

Ok, I am almost ready to submit my action planning.

1 - Are the event cards in the order they will play? CHURCH PEACE for now (Spring) ?

2 - What are check-boxes in the Your Provinces section? I am afraid to check them :P

benedict
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Wallenstein, anyone?

No, there will be an event chosen randomly from the 3 after everyone has determined their actions.

Not sure about the check boxes, perhaps they are there as a player aid so you can see which provinces you have assigned to an action???

sedjtroll
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Wallenstein, anyone?

benedict wrote:
No, there will be an event chosen randomly from the 3 after everyone has determined their actions.[/q]
Right, one of the things I thought was silly at first. I dunno what I think about that now. So oes that mean for 3 rounds (out of 10?) there will be an event? I'm not sure I get how the events work :/

Quote:
Not sure about the check boxes, perhaps they are there as a player aid so you can see which provinces you have assigned to an action???
I believve they are a player aid, just as you say.

- Seth

jwarrend
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Wallenstein, anyone?

sedjtroll wrote:
So does that mean for 3 rounds (out of 10?) there will be an event? I'm not sure I get how the events work :/

The game consists of two years, each of which consists of three turns (Spring, Summer, Autumn) and a scoring round (Winter). During each of the three turns, one of the events will be chosen after the players have selected their actions, and this will apply during the action resolution phase. So, you have an idea what could happen, but don't know for sure which event will apply. After the 3 turns, the scoring round happens, which starts with grain loss. The amount lost is equal to the "grain" value of the 4th event card. (You additionally lose one grain per owned province, and shortfalls lead to revolts). This means that you also have some info about how much grain you'll need, but again, you don't know for sure till the scoring round.

-Jeff

sedjtroll
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Wallenstein, anyone?

jwarrend wrote:
During each of the three turns, one of the events will be chosen after the players have selected their actions, and this will apply during the action resolution phase. So, you have an idea what could happen, but don't know for sure which event will apply. After the 3 turns, the scoring round happens, which starts with grain loss. The amount lost is equal to the "grain" value of the 4th event card. (You additionally lose one grain per owned province, and shortfalls lead to revolts). This means that you also have some info about how much grain you'll need, but again, you don't know for sure till the scoring round.

Ah, thanks... makes much more sense now!
As the year goes on you can be more and more sure, to a max of 50%, as to which card it'l'l be (25% the first turn, 33% the second, and 50% the third), right?

So an annoying thing that might happen is the last 2 cards - one has a high number nad the other a low one, so you have a 50% chance of having to save a bunch of grain... right?

Do you spend grain on anything else in the game? Is the number used for anything else?

jwarrend
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Wallenstein, anyone?

sedjtroll wrote:

So an annoying thing that might happen is the last 2 cards - one has a high number nad the other a low one, so you have a 50% chance of having to save a bunch of grain... right?

I don't know that I necessarily consider that annoying, but yes, this can and does happen. The possibility of grain revolts is just one more thing you need to take into account in your planning, both in terms of how you spend your actions and how many guys you leave in each province.

Quote:

Do you spend grain on anything else in the game? Is the number used for anything else?

No to both.

-J

Xaqery
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Wallenstein, anyone?

I have Questions.

I read over the rules again and it doesn’t seem to be covered.

In our game we are in spring and the first person that is moving / battle this turn just completed. Hpox moved into a empty providence with 3 armies. None of my providences are near the battle. The text said the following:

3 of hpox's attacking armies plus 0 from the cup and 1 defending peasants plus 0 from the cup go into the tower
-- 5 of hpox's attacking armies and 5 defending peasants come out of the tower
-- The attack fails: 5 of hpox's armies return to the supply
-- 2 of Xaqery's armies and 1 of Nestalawe's armies remain in the cup

Question 1 - How did 5 come out of each when only 3 and 1 go in?

Question 2 - How did I and Nestalawe get involved?

Question 3 - Did I miss part of the rules?

Thanks in advanced for your help.

- Dwight

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