one bright spot...
Jan. 31st, 2012 11:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadger...in all the coughing, hacking, and limping of the last week.
I had a chance to hang out with my friends![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gr_c17 and john_arundel, which is always a pleasure. I also had a chance to introduce them to an old friend, the boardgame Empires of the Middle Ages (BGG link, Wikipedia entry).
I played this game constantly, when I was an undergrad, with my friends Jeff, Bryan, and Dean (we had at least one other player, whose face and habit of standing on one leg I can recall but whose name I have, sadly, forgotten). We even played it for some time by mail after we graduated.
On this most recent occasion, we played through about 7 of 20 turns in the 976-1075 scenario, with Bryan (the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II and his successors) achieving the high score, me (as Lothair of France and his heirs) in second, and Peter (as Basil II Porphyrogénnētos of Byzantium) coming in third, due to an ongoing struggle with the refractory Greek subjects of his empire, most especially Adrianople (representing the Theme of Thrace).
Poor Basil kept trying to improve the condition of the area so as to make it a suitable base for expanding his power into the Slavic regions of the Balkans and Danubia (which were ripe for the picking), but the ungrateful Thracians ate up all his attention, prospered, and then turned heretic, completely unseating his plans. The Greeks of Asia, Trebizond, and Cilicia also soaked up the imperial bounty and concern and repaid it with occasional unrest. Basil had hard going of it!
Otto did terrifically well, solidifying his hold of the central German-speaking areas by taking Switzerland and Brandenburg. He had refractory subjects too--he was never able to make much of his Italian holdings, but he kept them from revolting, and they stayed for the most part prosperous, so they were a great benefit when we counted up points.
With Lothair and his ilk, I was able to expand a bit to the south, even getting a foothold across the Pyrenees, but the big boost was conquering Burgundy. If we had had another player, he would most likely have played the Burgundians (possibly Conrad the Peaceful--I'd have to check), and he would have been a great thorn in the side of both the Germans and the French.
Our excursion, however limited (I left out all the optional rules, since this was the lads' first exposure to EMA, and we were beering freely :-), was great fun and reminded me how fond I am of this game. I do hope that, as Peter suggested, we commence a regular playing of it, so as to really get into some of the fun and intricacy of the game.
I had a chance to hang out with my friends
gr_c17 and john_arundel, which is always a pleasure. I also had a chance to introduce them to an old friend, the boardgame Empires of the Middle Ages (BGG link, Wikipedia entry).I played this game constantly, when I was an undergrad, with my friends Jeff, Bryan, and Dean (we had at least one other player, whose face and habit of standing on one leg I can recall but whose name I have, sadly, forgotten). We even played it for some time by mail after we graduated.
On this most recent occasion, we played through about 7 of 20 turns in the 976-1075 scenario, with Bryan (the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II and his successors) achieving the high score, me (as Lothair of France and his heirs) in second, and Peter (as Basil II Porphyrogénnētos of Byzantium) coming in third, due to an ongoing struggle with the refractory Greek subjects of his empire, most especially Adrianople (representing the Theme of Thrace).
Poor Basil kept trying to improve the condition of the area so as to make it a suitable base for expanding his power into the Slavic regions of the Balkans and Danubia (which were ripe for the picking), but the ungrateful Thracians ate up all his attention, prospered, and then turned heretic, completely unseating his plans. The Greeks of Asia, Trebizond, and Cilicia also soaked up the imperial bounty and concern and repaid it with occasional unrest. Basil had hard going of it!
Otto did terrifically well, solidifying his hold of the central German-speaking areas by taking Switzerland and Brandenburg. He had refractory subjects too--he was never able to make much of his Italian holdings, but he kept them from revolting, and they stayed for the most part prosperous, so they were a great benefit when we counted up points.
With Lothair and his ilk, I was able to expand a bit to the south, even getting a foothold across the Pyrenees, but the big boost was conquering Burgundy. If we had had another player, he would most likely have played the Burgundians (possibly Conrad the Peaceful--I'd have to check), and he would have been a great thorn in the side of both the Germans and the French.
Our excursion, however limited (I left out all the optional rules, since this was the lads' first exposure to EMA, and we were beering freely :-), was great fun and reminded me how fond I am of this game. I do hope that, as Peter suggested, we commence a regular playing of it, so as to really get into some of the fun and intricacy of the game.
