Last night, three students and I played a miniatures war-game.  The D&D miniatures game, in fact.  We had a pretty good time.  I learned several things from the event:

1) Smaller armies with more points spent on each figure are better, when one player has a 47-point figure on the board.

2) Commanders are key.

3) Don’t forget attacks of opportunity.

4) I hate dice-based games.

One player had a 47-point figure on the board, and cleaned the clocks of the rest of us.  The advantages in firepower that one figure gave him… wow.  Plus, that figure’s 21 AC didn’t help. We couldn’t hit him often enough.  Plus, we ignored attacks of opportunity, and it sucked. We also ignored commander rules, to my sorrow.

To be fair, that player kept moving his figure on his phase, even after acting in his turn.  So while the rest of us activated each of our figures once, he activated his figure at least five times.  Ow.  We all understand the rules better now, so we should be able to play more successfully at this point.  Whether anyone will want to, is an open question.  In any case, as is usually the case with game night, I think we all had a good time.

Item #4 is more complex.  I don’t roll dice very well to begin with, for a variety of reasons.  However, they were particularly cruel last night.  Near the end of the battle, I rolled three 1s in a row, followed by a 2, followed by a 1.  Rolling that badly in combat is pretty much a sinker, particularly in the end game when you’re standing next to a character that hits every time it doesn’t roll a 1.  What are the odds of rolling a d20 four times and getting three 1s, anyway?  It seems like I had preternaturally bad luck last night.

In any case, I do wish to play again. Finding players may be slightly challenging, though. We’ll see.

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