State of Play: no 6x6 progress, but a siege at Vienna

 

 

With T overseas, I corralled B for an off-the-books Monday night game. I had proposed Great War Commander, but given the late hour we were starting, I thought better of it and brought Fire & Stone: Siege of Vienna 1683 (Capstone Games, 2022).

Nice art.

Fire & Stone was a fairly recent acquisition and a bit of an impulse buy. I’d read some good things about it and the small scale of the play area (three by four hexes) intrigued me. I basically bought it to bring an order up to free shipping. (Why is it we’ll happily spend an extra $60 or $70 to save $10 on postage? Tune in to my new psychology blog Why We Do Dumb Things Pretty Much All the Time.*)

Anyway, I was running late, and with the set-up of a still unfamiliar game, we agreed to play it through as a learning game. We ran through four of the five rounds (each round is up to five actions per side). B would have a different take, but I could see my Habsburgs loosing through army elimination withing another couple of actions to the withering onslaught of B’s Ottoman infidels, or from a complete collapse of morale, so we called it. Next time we’ll both be more familiar with how the gears of the game mesh, and I think I’ll be trying a fighting withdrawal strategy.

I'll be posting a Stripped Down for Parts of Fire & Stone later today or tomorrow, so there's something to look forward to. Until then, marvel at the little tiny cannons!

 

* Or read Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman, and/or You are Not So Smart, by David McRaney