Richard Simon - Apr 10, 2005 9:16 am (#9618 Total: 9702) Guys I went to school with would copulate with anything that moved but I never saw any reason to limit myself. >EotS boxcover A topic of some discussion at GMT East. Thanks to Andy Lewis, Alan Rothberg (who, if he had showed up before Saturday night, could have actually enjoyed some of the fruits of his labors) and several others, a good time was had by all (well, most, anyway). Lots of games being played, a few of them even GMT I got to renew a few old friendships and, hopefully, make a few new ones. Sword of Rome and Empire of the Sun seemed to be the star attractions but there were a number of others that received a lot of play, Since Andy Lewis's kids started Little League this weekend, I was forced to slum with the adults. In addition to the usual (game) suspects, there were a number of new prospective games on display. Since I have a GMT East tradition of hardly ever playing any published games, I spent most of my time with David Fox's Band of Brothers, company/platoon Battle of Bastogne. Although my die rolling caused David to opine that the Laws of Probability, that apply to everything else in the world, do not apply to me (In 12 -- count 'em -- consecutive situations where the only roll that would not help me was a zero (on a ten-sided die), I rolled -- you guessed it -- a zero), we still managed to get through the morning of Day 2 with the casualties being confined to the cardboard heroes. Interesting situation: two recon elements, which disappear at the end of Day 2, make a quick swipe at the main road junction. Gary Haggerty took his role as recon commander quite seriously as he managed to virtually circumnavigate the town. Others will undoubtedly have their own tales of horror to tell so we'll leave it here. But I think it's safe to say that......"You should have been there!" Brian Youse - Apr 10, 2005 2:01 pm (#9633 Total: 9702) Coming soon to MMP's preorder system: Feudal Lord! Can you direct your Samurai and become Shogun of Japan? Thanks, GMT Made it up to GMT East for a day and had a great time. What a fun little con in a terrible place. Ok, driving through the city is akin to ripping out my fingernails, and Ken's last-minute "Right Idiot" only cost us 20 or so minutes (when we were within sight of the hotel). Lots of new stuff in the pipeline being shown. All of it looked interesting. Andy, Ken Dunn, Wray, and myself got to play Sword of Rome (FINALLY!) and (well, I) had a great time. I won by 3 points with no units left on the map as the green/yellow guys. Rome had no units on the map (having finally been squashed at the hands of my last few g/y guys). Greece had, I think, 6 CUs on the map, and the Gauls had about 10 CUs on the map. Wray said its not usually this bloody but for the life of me I can't figure out why it wouldn't be. Thanks Wray for teaching us newbies (Ken and I) and to Andy for the patience of checking people in and getting totally ganged up on by anyone I could ally with. Andy failed his Personal Morale Check on Turn 5, but by then my crying tale of woe about how bad my position was had kicked into high gear, and for five actions I had alliances with every other nation so that all we could do was attack Rome. It was fun, guys, hopefully next year'll fall on a date I can attend again and/or you'll move to Northern NJ and make my life easier. John R. Teixeira - Apr 10, 2005 3:38 pm (#887 Total: 904) Since Curt Schilling is now a Red Sox, they will win the World Series (Wargamers=Winners). I've had this tagline for over a year now (heh-heh) Mark Van Roekel and I drove up to Mike Nagel's house in South Jersey Thursday night. We at giant cheese steaks and then watched "King Arthur", the director's cut, which wasn't bad, but not particularly good, either.Mike was a gracious host, as always. Drove up to White Plains Friday morning , arriving at GMT East at 10:00 a.m. and promptly sat down to play 'Sword of Rome" . It was a lot of fun and somehow (don't ask me how), I won as the Romans. Then there was a lot of wandering around and messing with Empire of the Sun before sitting down with Mark Kalina ( a really nice guy) and playing my favorite GMT game, Reds! Saturday saw a great game of Paths of Glory with Brian S (also a nice guy)and a rematch with Mark K. with Reds again. Mark V.and I left about 8:30 p.m. and got back to Richmond around 0400 (we needed to earn major spousal points). This was my first GMT East and I really enjoyed it.Very low key con w/ nice facilities and good gamers. It was nice to put faces to all of the names I see on CSW. I wore my World Champion Boston Red Sox shirts all weekend. Life is good. lew ritter - Apr 10, 2005 5:07 pm (#888 Total: 904) Author of screenplay about Abolitionist John Brown I was only able to make the convention on saturday. However, I made up for lost time by playing four games!!. Flying Color's Mike Nagle's excellent sailing ship fleet action game. Wooden Ships and Iron Men meets Frigate. Fleet action without the overwhelming detail of a Close Action or the original WS&IM. Battle of Minorca, British and French fleets pounding away at each other. Trying to get close enough to rake or grapple. It is currently heading up the P500 list. Lots of action between myself and my opponent Admiral Byng(Lee Setser). Mike was gracious to sit by us and provide rules help. I got to play Downtown, Son of York (a clever card game on War of the Roses) and finished the night with a slammin game of Advanced Tobruk. I also bought a couple of games. Did I need them? No, but could I resist the almost 40-50 % discount on some of the older GMT games.- No. What's a convention with out buying something. Thanks to all the people like Andy Lewis and Allan Rotherberg for organizing it and making it a great day. Ran into a lot of familiar faces and people from the NYC area. Looking forward to WBC and GMT East 2006. I think I crammed three days of gaming into the one day of almost non stop action...Mission accomplished. John McGuffog - Apr 10, 2005 9:11 pm (#889 Total: 904) Like Lew I enjoyed GMT East very much. Also like Lew I got only one day (Saturday) in. Unlike, Lew I spent all my time playing the Battle of Soltsy scenario in Roads To Leningrad with Frank Cavallaro. Actually, I was pinch hitting for another player who started the game and needed to go do something else. I took over with the 13 pm turn and in 7 hours of play we got to finish the 15 pm turn with Frank (Soviet) with the clear advantage. The Germans got off to a slow start not getting through the Soltsy bottleneck until 14 am and then 8th Panzer needed 3rd Motorized's help to do it. But the biggest problem for the German player (me) was Frank's excellent play. At the Sudden Death Victory Check the German had 18 pts and needed 24 pts. This was probably the closest the German was going to get to victory since at 15 pm turn I was at 16 vps and needed 28 to win. Finally, like Lew I took advantage of GMTs discounted game prices to pick up a few games at the start when I registered. I could have taken more of a hit here, I went back several times during the day to buy the last copy of World At War but Andy was busy playing a game and I didn't want to disturb him. Finally, a big thank you to Alan, Andy and Frank for a great day. Allan J Rothberg - Apr 11, 2005 12:08 am (#890 Total: 904) Putting the dys in dysfunctional. All, Still unpacking all my goodies (and dirty laundry) from the Con. Alas, Real Life (TM) kicked me in the butt Friday so I (I!) didn't get up to the Con site until Saturday late afternoon. Alas that meant that I missed meeting a lot of people who had to leave by then. Pfui! Anyway, I had the extreme pleasure of seeing a lot of old friends and meeting a whole slew of new friends. My only disappointment was that because the time I had at the Convention was so short, I got to spend too little time (or even no time!) with everybody there. I think year we set a record for the most family members in attendance at the Con site (including an identical set of young Cristadoros!) although any of them spent most of their time doing an unbelievable amount of sight seeing in NYC. My thanks to Andy and Dave and all the folks at GMT for making this possible, and everyone who attended for making it so great. As far as I am concerned the only way to top this year's Con is to repeat it again next year. More individual stories later. (And if you want to know what games I played, ask mvr where my priorities are.) Mark Kalina - Apr 11, 2005 6:57 am (#891 Total: 904) Compass Games, LLC - Publishers of Silent War by Brien Miller and Great War in the West by Tim Taylor - On Deck: Red Storm Over the Reich by Ted Raicer and Spartacus by John Firer - http://compassgames.com Thanks Andy and Allan! I want to thank you guys for a weekend filled with fun. I haven't been to many game conventions/conferences in recent years. The weekend was full of great gameplay, friendships made and renewed. It's enjoyable to witness games being played as well. Had a great time playing against John T. (thanks for the kind words!) as well as Mike Nagel for kindly re-teaching and playing a fun ATS scenario with me. Can't wait until next years GMT East! Bill Ramsay - Apr 11, 2005 7:49 am (#892 Total: 904) If you never try anything new, you'll miss out on many of Life's great disappointments. I had a pretty good time this year at GMT East. Highlights include # Being beaten by John Buck in Battleline. # Winning at Lightning Midway against John Buck. # Played a game of Downtown with Jon Gautier. I had a good time, although Jon shot down two of my A-4s just to get me back on the losing side of things. # Losing in a spectacular manner as the Austrians in Struggle of Empires (while continually announcing my unrest) against Richard Simon (Prussia), Bill Terdoslavich (Spain), David Fox (France), Garry Haggerty (Britain) and Bill Cooper (United Provinces). # Losing as the Russians in Friedrich with David Fox (Prussia), Garry Haggerty (Austrian - winner), and Peter Card (France). # Finished off my game-playing on Sunday with a 1-1 series of Battleline with Garry Haggerty. # Had the pleasure of meeting Brian Youse and Ken Dunn from MMP - nice guys, even if they didn't give me my copy of Armies of the Oblivious. # Also had the pleasure of meeting Mark Kalina and Ken Dingley of Compass games. I'm looking forward to seeing what they can do. # Bought a few games to fill in the holes in my collection - Roads to Leningrad looks interesting. # Got my copies of Empire of the Sun. I don't understand the controversy about the cover - it's not like the cover makes fun of the good guys. The game got a lot of play, and looks to be one of those games that will definitely reward repeated play - deeper than it looks. # Studiously avoided looking too closely at David Fox's Band of Brothers Bastogne game, if only because I don't want to steal any of his ideas. The game looks very good though, now that David's retained the services of Garry Haggerty to make the playtest components legible. As usual, a really enjoyable weekend, marred by only a few victories. I'll post pictures on my website in the next couple of days - as soon as my kids let me use my computer at home. Brian Sielski - Apr 11, 2005 9:49 am (#895 Total: 904) Looking for North NJ FTF opponents for: Streets of Stalingrad, Up Front, Hannibal, and Rise of Rome Was it the 6 turn game or the full game that you played? Curious. Bob Sohn - Apr 11, 2005 10:41 am (#897 Total: 904) Cranbury, NJ T'pike Exits 8/8a Brian, 6 turn game won by the Roman Martinus Samplelus defeating Dave Bohnenberger (Gauls), me (Greeks) and designer Wray F. (E/S). Good quick game of about 3 - 3.5 hours on Sunday morning. Both Martin and Wray knew the combat and cards inside out, and that kept us moving at a good clip. Due to work and family, I got there mid-afternoon Saturday; not the Friday early morning that I was hoping. Started Price of Freedom (PoF) with Renaud, but we were not able to finish since he had another PoF game going that restarted and I had my annual For the People (FtP) match with Mike Johnson. I really like PoF as a quick way of playing the entire strategic level Am Civ War with a CDG system in 2-3 hours. A must have. FtP was about 7 hours with breaks and dinner tossed in. The good guys won (Union and me) in the next to last turn when Confed accepted unconditional surrender as CSA's SW was nearing 10. Weird game as I amphib'd a lot and shut down Eastern Gulf early, and with very few battles there were lots of sp's on the board. Confed had Mo and Ky for a while and would have made it tougher for Union, but took something like a 20 sw hit promoting Jackson and Longstreet to head armies (both USA and CSA had 4 armies at end). I think this hurt the CSA's long term game. Mainly a Union naval game (blockade at 3 and AA was at 2) with some burning of recalcitrant confederate cities in the last couple of turns to drive down SW. Also, an early Emancipation on a dicey Medium battle victory helped the Union cause. Lots of fun playing with Mike, and interesting to note that having hardcopy of v2.6 rules in the boxed game is different than having the electronic v2.6b rules at home. I was also able to test out my card shoe, and it was mixed success. I didn't have the huge stack to deal with, but I do miss my double-protected cards. Thanks Mike, and see you next year. Lost in Battle Line against Mike the card shark, and came in last at Royal Turf (curses to that Earl Gray) with 5 other guys (sorry, I'm forgetting the names). Nice game (RT), and sorry to hear that it's out of print (although, Andy was saying that it was being reprinted). Very late night meant a late breakfast at the diner on Sunday. My own version of 24: a symmetrical 24 hours that started at 2pm and ended at 2pm. Picked up my "lost" copy of Sword of Rome, and bought Empire of the Sun, an updated PoG map (a game that I have yet to play) and 2004 Replay season book. Thanks to Andy and Allan for a great convention as always. Michael Johnson - Apr 11, 2005 11:08 am (#898 Total: 904) BOSTON, MA Thanks to all for the great Con. Thanks to GMT for the effort in getting EotS there. With all the EotS games going on over the weekend, many of those small errors I was making were made clear. I think as I age, I need to sleep a bit more at these cons, I am still a pile of mush. btw Home Opener Sox vs. Yanks today, 2PM is the RING presentations etc. Rumor has it that Teddy Bruschi is going to toss out the ball. Allan J Rothberg - Apr 11, 2005 1:49 pm (#899 Total: 904) Putting the dys in dysfunctional. I would be a completely remiss if I did not give special thanks to: Bill and John for transporting material up to the Con site while I was stuck at home; Bill and John again for taking pictures at the Con; Bill again again for fending off the ravening hordes while I was delayed at home; Peter for purchasing and transporting the latest Flashman memoirs across the ocean for me (Peter, what was the tax rate on the book purchase?); Mike for helping me to land a copy of TSS (the rules are printing even as I type this) and for supplying the fine ladies of the Convention with the latest in hand bag attire (a nice touch, that); Jim for that glass of Sam; Chris for running his DiF campaign, again (next year I think we will split things up into a beginners's teaching game and an aces' furball); Andy and Dave for keeping everything together during my absence; the old hands for making the newbies feel welcome and showing them that the Con is no more than just a bunch of friends having a good time playing games; and everyone who ran demonstrations and showed off designs in progress (and there seemed to be no end of people doing both!). William Terdoslavich - Apr 10, 2005 11:54 am (#23149 Total: 23170) Shamelessly pitching my book on CSW--The Jack Ryan Agenda--pre-order on amazon.com, coming out in May. Spent two days at GMT East and had a blast. After playing Struggle of Empires four times in a row, it was really refreshing to take a break and play a wargame with hexagons, dice and CRTs. Only this game is not in print yet. I got to be one of the test players for Dave Fox's "Band of Brothers"--the 101st at Bastogne. Spent Friday and Saturday playing it and I was pretty crispy by the time I was done. Dave Imperato, Rich Simon and Garry Haggerty were at the table as well. The game is at the infantry company/tank platoon level, 300 yards per hex, about 6-9 daylight turns and three night-time turns. There is still some minor stuff that needs tweaking and fixing, but it still played well and we had fun. The game also provides some frightening insight into how bad a challenge it was for McCaullife to manage a world of hurt with no room for mistakes. (And I made a few big ones!) You can lose the division if you play badly. With just 12 battalions of infantry and four battalions of armor, you have to maintain this huge perimeter against repeated German incursions and attacks. The only problem is that you can't use everything you want when you need it. The chit-pull system activates some of your assets, but never all of them, and never in the order you want. You have to try and think ahead where your major problems will be and adjust accordingly when things don't work. The first day had a "Buford at Gettysburg" feeling as the four tank battalions had to screen the east against two powerful German recon forces--basically a recon battalion each juiced up with 1-2 tank companies and a smattering of infantry. Just try to hold the ground long enough to get your shots in, make some roadblocks and pull back a bit. But every shot counts. Shoot back too soon and you can't shoot again. I found this out the hard way, plinking at armored cars, then having to take punishment from second-wave medium armor without being able to reply. Die-rolling became perverse at times. Rich Simon had a knack for rolling zeros when he needed nines. But once he hit stride with his artillery, he had no trouble scraping an armored battalion away from its blocking position (and it hurt!). Haggerty took his recon force on a lovely drive around the Belgian countryside. My problem was that I had to detach units to mask every avenue of approach after leaving the northern approach uncovered. Big mistake--he had a clear shot at driving smack into Bastogne (and ending the game). Two armored battalions barely squeeze in to screen the north. Things about this game: Stacking is not necessarily a good thing. Its nice to concentrate for an attack, but arty (when it's spot on) will crunch everything in the stack. Even if it does not kill, it forces morale checks and causes suppression. You can stall an attack without having to kill it. The defenders have a lot of ground that must be covered. Hold the roads, keep the tank destroyers handy and buy time. Going cross-country, especially in combat mode, takes time. You could go in travel mode, but take a hit here and the column shift goes to the guy shooting at you. Also, as Americans, be careful about which assets you attach to which units. Dave Imperato was acting as "chief of staff" managing this tangle, for which I was thankful, as this can be a real handful to manage if the sheet is NOT in front of you. It is really important not to get battalions from different regiments mixed up,or you will have some real grief coordinating or untangling anything. Keep the damn roads clear. To play the whole campaign game is impossible to do in one sitting. But there are many good sub-battles within the scheme of things. After taking a breather, we settled down to play Struggle for Empires, and I came in near last (again!). Some things just don't change. Also saw many people playing Empire of the Sun. This one looks really good. Jon Gautier - Apr 10, 2005 10:01 pm (#9554 Total: 9636) www.alisonwines.com in the beautiful Hudson Valley On the table at GMT East this weekend was Downtown. This was my first playing, although I'd been reading the rules for the last month. Bill Ramsay was good enough to play one of the intro scenarios (D2—Beginnings) with a newbie and I showed my lack of class by flaming a couple of his A-4s. Such a tank of sharks this hobby. I then played the same scenario with Lew Ritter, with him taking the DRV. While Lew and I were playing, Alan Campbell and Michael Dardia of Brooklyn Metrogamers were getting into their first games of Downtown and really mixing it up. I’d echo what many have already said: when I first saw this game and the topic, I said: “No way; not for me.” But it wasn’t LBW’s now legendary shilling (which I never thought excessive, but it’s become larger than life in the retelling) that got me to buy the game. It was all the people who spoke of what a great game it was. They are honest shills, if there can be such a thing; they are legion and they are growing. Folks, I have only played this a couple of times, but I know in my bones that it is a great game. It has many hallmarks. It is, I suspect, a labor of love, but it is a labor of love that was meticulously playtested and developed—unlike many other such projects that finish as seriously flawed masterpieces. As you would expect with a labor of love, the research is astounding. But Downtown is more than just a trove of information. It tells a coherent story and in doing so achieves what the best wargames achieve: they become tools of historical understanding and comment of no less importance or interest than books. I have learned a great deal from this game and I know it has much more to offer. I also suspect it is very innovative, but this is a point I must leave to those with more than my limited experience of air games What else? The rules are a model of clarity. The graphics are lovely and easy to read. The play aids are helpful (lots of heavy stock cards with the charts and tables). There are a ton of scenarios, great designer notes, cool-ass box art, and for the linearists out there (we know who we are) the whole package is pretty heavy—so you just know there’s value there. The rules deserve extra mention. I would not blame the gamer who looked at them and balked. There is a ton of stuff in there and it looks very, very technical. But they are beautifully written and organized and quite easy to read. Even when you finish them, however, you are left wondering where in the hell you are to start. But the game has a number of learning scenarios to teach basic concepts before moving on. More importantly—and many people have pointed this out—all the seeming complexity seems to melt away once you take the leap and just start playing. The play aids and the rules index are a great help, but the really great thing is that although this game is involved, the system is very clean and easy to pick up. Things just seem to make sense and fall into place when you start to play, and there are few better tributes to good design and development. Oh, I almost forgot. Downtown is a gas to play. The game is all about planning, tactics and execution. Player’s get oodles of choices to make, from the initial setup all the way through to the last bomb run. What altitude should my approach be at? What’s the best formation? Where should I place my fighters? How fast should I fly? Downtown is asymmetric. The American have got the stuff, but they are fragile and each bombing run presents a seemingly impossible task. The DRV player feels out numbered and overwhelmed, but he needn’t do much to achieve a mission kill. So the game is interesting and offers variety in choices and outcomes. The scenario I played was well balanced and very, very tense. If you don’t know already, this isn’t a dogfight air game. It is, to me who has little experience with air games, more operational in flavor, since scenarios cover multi-plane raids and can factor in everything, and I mean everything, that the planners back on the carrier or in some Hanoi bunker would be thinking about: SAMs, radar suppression, AAA, enemy fighters, target selection and approach (for both sides). During play, you get more tactical, and think about timing, sequence, weapons, speed, altitude, and even fuel. While there is a ton of maneuvering, there is really no plane-against-plane dogfighting, which is handled more abstractly with a sequence of die rolls for engagement, maneuver, combat and damage. Any reservations? A couple. Wristage is high, so get yourself one of those neat Nied dice towers. Also, as Michael and Alan pointed out, if there was a lot of dice rolling in a small intro scenario with just a dozen or so flights, and no SAMs, jamming, Fire Cans, Iron Hand missions or B52s, imagine what it must take to play one of the “Gorillia Package” Linebacker raids. It was also pointed out that perhaps some things might be broken out too much. For example, a bombing run over a target that contains AAA will make a AAA to hit roll in the entry hex, the target hex, and the exit hex. A hit means a damage roll. The actual bomb run requires a couple of rolls. So there can be up to eight rolls for one bomb run (more if a pilot bails out). So the question was whether that could have been compressed to two or three rolls without doing violence to the system. Fairly minor points; I, for one, can’t wait to see how a Linebacker II raid plays out. Michael Nagel - Apr 11, 2005 11:51 pm (#907 Total: 999) www.relativerange.com ... now with Flying Colors! Finally getting caught up on all this e-mail ... Thanks to all for yet another fantastic GMT: East! Highlights: Missing a quick victory in Sword of Rome by "this much!" After jumping out to a quick lead as the Greeks, I was quickly stomped by the Romans, Samnites and Carthaginians. At least I got to break an alliance with Tex ... otherwise I might have lost my "Wormtongue" nickname! Getting in two turns of Borodino with Rob Tyson ... after six hours! Trimuph and Glory is a fantastic system, but Borodino proved too much of a monster to complete. Hosting a demo of Flying Colors (Battle of Minorca) between Lew Ritter and Barry Setser. Barry (as Admiral Byng) beat history by closing and pounding the French. The French valiantly tried to even the score by attempting to capture one of the enemy ships, but were handily replused by the valiant British deck crews. With one vessel sunk and two more vulnerable, the French turned tail. Getting a chance to demo Sun of York with Lew. At Battle of Blore Heath, the Lancastrians under Lord Audley made a valiant charge against the Yorkist center ... right in time to meet the Yorkist knights as they came up the line! What should have been a quick victory turned to bloody slugging match. Unfortunately we did not have time to finish as I was signed up for ... Chris Janiec's Down In Flames Bombing Mission! Chris has hosted these games at the last few GMT:E's and they're always a kick! This time around, the Japanese were sending a batch of Bettys to bomb Guadalcanal. On the way, the escorting fighters encountered several elements of American TBDs on the way to hit their fleet! The Japanese escorts had to decide to continue their escort duties or to turn to engage the surprise threat. To make matters worse, none of the Japanese players could discuss their situation as their aircraft did not have radios. Frustrating fun! I managed to get in two full scenarios of Critical Hit's Advanced Tobruk System ... one desert (v Lew Ritter) and one east front (v Mark Kalina). Playing the Germans in both, I faired much better against British armor than against the Soviet human-wave. I also started a third game v Britt Strickland, but unfortunately ran out of play time. Special thanks to Britt for his patience and appologies for not being able to finish what looked like a killer scenario. An awesome time, all around! Peter Stein - Apr 12, 2005 10:51 pm (#913 Total: 999) "It's Risk. It's a game of world domination being played by two guys who can barely run their own lives."- Seinfeld I didn't squeeze in as many games as I normally might, due to my condition. I assure you I sounded a lot worse than I felt (and teaching Manifest Destiny twice didn't help). Though I did go to bed Thursday night not really sure I was going. I got in around noon and after giving my adoring fans a chance to drool over me, I was eating lunch with Dennis Nicholson, wondering what we were going to play. In walks Mark McLaughlin- problem solved. We had a rollicking game of KUTUSOV, Mark takes Nappy War to the invasion of Russia. Neat mechanism to tie in morale and attrition. When one starts going down, the other is not far behind. Our game was rather light on killing as Dennis (as the french) was rolling bad, and I and Nick Smith (the russians) were rolling worse. Until one crucial battle near the end when i got 7 hits on 7 dice and the rout was on. Saturday AM we had a full table of 5 for Manifest Destiny. Despite my rapidly declining vice we were able to get through in a bout 5 hours with Marc Guenette edgeing out a win. I then did something I rarely do at a convention- I took a nap I puttered around until dinner time when i ate dinner with old friends from NY. Fortunately Bill Ramsay was also there to keep us informed that the Mets were losing. Saturday night we uphled the GMT East tradition of playing BANG! I thought I was doing well as the Sheriff and had knocked off an Outlaw and a Deputy (oops). But then my deputy accidentally put a card on top of the deck that made the Dynamite go off on my turn, and the bad guys quickly finished me off. (We won't name the Deputy who did such a dopey move, but we do hope he did a better job running the DiF tournament.) Sunday AM was another game of MD, this time with Andy Lewis finally getting to play. More bad dice, more losses. A good weekend, even though I sounded like death at times. 'll tell you about the flight home from hell some other time. Next year I'll see if i can sucker some CABBIES to show up.