So the general setup is as follows. Left hand opponent opens the bidding with 1 NT (strong, balanced, 15-17 HCP), partner doubles (for penalty, promising 16+ HCP), right hand opponent passes. Which kind of hands should make any non pass bid now?
Note that at least 31 HCP are already accounted for, so own hands is guaranteed to be fairly low in HCP and partner didn’t provide any information about shape or suit preferences.
Background, I recently played a hand on bridgebase where I did the doubling and my robot partner bid 2 hearts. I was fairly clueless what I should expect from partner there.
Introduction by Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East’s Game Developer, Fred Schachter: When ACME Designers Chris & Mark, as well as myself, first read in BGG James Lowry’s entertaining ACME Game After Action Report, we thought “Wow, wouldn’t this, with a bit of editing, be grand to share with InsideGMT’s audience?!?” and so this article came to be.
Hopefully, readers will enjoy the Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East gaming experiences of James and his three fellow ACME adventurers as they seek victory to become “The King of the Fertile Crescent”. What’s remarkable is that this was their first time playing the game! James has a wonderful blog covering gaming as well as a range of other topics of interest to gamers, so if you enjoy his ACME presentation, there’s more, much more, available at: www.rindis.com/blog
Back on the 25th of May (the day before Memorial Day), I had some people over to my home for FtF gaming. Patch was originally scheduled to attend so we could have a five-player game, but he couldn’t make it, thereby leaving me, Dave, Mark, and Jason to learn the rules for a four-player game of Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East.
It has been a while, but our group has played its brother game, Ancient Civilizations of the Inner Sea a few times and enjoyed it, so I figured this would be easy for us to get into. I panicked when I looked at the rules before everyone arrived that morning and realized I didn’t remember nearly as much as I thought I did. But once we were looking at the actual game spread out on the table, everything started coming back. Short of the new rules, we just needed to go through the details of conflict (again) and follow the sequence of play on the aid cards.
Mark and I had gone over the ACME Playbook ahead of time, and we decided upon the “Cyrus the Great” scenario as the only historical four-player scenario utilizing the full map. In hindsight, a more compact scenario would have been better, as we needed a bit of the board to save table space; notably my smallish table held the main board and our supplies of tokens fine enough, but we didn’t have a good place for the cards of available deities. The random draws for civilizations gave me the bullseye—I mean Babylon.
The scenario’s other civilizations use the game’s standard, somewhat compact, setups, but this scenario’s special rules grant Babylon the entire Fertile Crescent at the start of the game. The real changes in ACME from its ACIS predecessor are the terrain rules, and the game board’s green fertile areas are powerful, as instead of only growing with two-disk settlements, you can just have single disk camps and grow, or, best of all, have three disk cities to get VPs and growth disks.
With that setup, my initial growth was phenomenal, and only stalled later for a single turn, when a horde of barbarians came storming out of the deserts which kept me from having control of a bunch of fertile areas. After that, they were largely cleared out and my growth resumed to put me back from a poor board position to max out the number of disks in use. (Each civilization has fifty disks available for board position and growth, which then get sent back to stock by events played against you and competition. It’s very much like the stock in Tresham’s classic Civilization board game.)
Mark had the Medes & Persians to Babylon’s east and was a constant thorn in my side (as he should be). But I didn’t have a lot of other troubles, so while he got more powerful as the game went on, he could never really challenge me in the Fertile Crescent for longer than a turn at a time but progressively took control of areas just east of there. He also refused to join in on the initial rush to acquire a deity, so he didn’t get VPs that way, and at the end of Epoch III (which the scenario starts in), he was trailing well behind in points.
Dave had the Lydian Kingdom of the board’s northwest, and Jason Egypt, safely tucked in the board’s southeast with the Nile—the board’s other fertile area (but only five areas to the Tigris and Euphrates’ thirteen). To my relief, the two of them largely focused on each other, partially powered by Dave’s aggressively sea-oriented offensive strategy as he strove to gain a foothold on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast. I was more focused on pure growth and managing my frontiers at first, so Dave also took a lead in cities, followed closely by Jason, and I slipped into third place in VPs.
We broke for a late-ish lunch at the end of Epoch III, and Epoch IV saw the earlier conflicts come into ever-sharper focus. Mark was getting his act together and caught up to me in points (fueled by that bad turn with the barbarian invasion), and he started catching up to the other Civilizations as well. I swept away the Fertile Crescent’s barbarian invaders and concentrated on cities (and growth!) for a revival during the game’s last two turns that put me near the VP lead again, but I didn’t quite catch up to my rivals.
Both Epochs ended after three turns (it varies from two to four), and IV concluded with a Lydian (Dave -Blue disks) win with 36 VPs, followed by Egypt (Jason – Green Disks) at 34, Babylon (me – Light Colored Tan Disks) at 33, and the Medes & Persians (Mark – Red Disks) at 27 VP.
Presumably, a fourth turn could have favored me for a win, but the VP gain caused by twelve cities caught everyone’s attention, and with the borders of Egypt and the Lydians now truly at my doorstep in the west, I was looking at a lot of negative attention at that point. (On the other hand, you can see in the photo below that Dave was still dealing with the aftermath of two rounds of barbarians.) I had actually gambled on this turn to build as many cities as I could (and since my cities could generate growth and VPs it’s not the serious decision it is for everyone else) to get back in the lead. Sadly, I didn’t quite make it, and didn’t have the extra turn to carry the momentum forward.
I think I like the long, skinny map set up of ACIS better, and I don’t see enough difference between the wonder and deity mechanics for it to matter all that much save that an ACME civilization can have but a single deity. But the terrain mechanics (including desert and mountain, which are also important) really make ACME the better game in my view.
Certainly, all of us have enjoyed both “brothers”, ACIS and Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East, and they will see the table again. ACME has a wealth of scenarios and seventeen different civilizations, each with their own unique abilities (we didn’t leverage ours very well; too busy getting used to the flow of the game), and options for putting together any mix of them in non-historic scenarios. We’re really still just in the wading section of this game. Thanks for this gem of a game GMT!
Our Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East’s gameboard at the end of Epoch IV’s Turn 3. Note how red, the Medes & Persians, had established a city in the Fertile Crescent next to my homeland (the big tan square block). This was his third, and most successful, incursion into fertile terrain, and I’d been too busy to push him out. A theoretical turn four would have turned into a big fight in there. We’d had comparatively few barbarians this game, but two turns of them in Anatolia had taken a severe toll on blue’s, Lydian home, which had been full of cities for almost all of Epoch III. Perhaps the most surprising board position is the VP markers. Nine VPs from first to last isn’t much, and I was surprised at how much the “pack” stayed together for the entire game.
Since it launched in 2021, Vampire Survivors cannot be stopped. Poncle’s phenomenal bullet hell roguelike is one of the most successful indies on Steam, amassing a 98% positive user rating from nearly 240,000 reviews across its lifetime. That’s for good reason, too, as not only is the core experience infinitely replayable, but a collection of updates and DLC have vastly expanded what’s on offer. Vampire Survivors is easily one of the best value propositions available on PC today, and now Poncle has another one for you. The studio is publishing the incredibly vibrant and kinetic Berserk or Die, which has a truly bizarre control scheme, and it’s available right now.
You’re the last soldier left on the battlefield, and with enemies approaching from all sides, you’ve got one job: survive. Set on a gorgeous 2D plane, that’s the core premise of Berserk or Die from Nao Games, a new action indie game all about chaining together flashy moves.
This isn’t like Castlevania, Contra, Ninja Gaiden, or any manner of classic platformer, though, because in Berserk or Die, you can only move by attacking. Hitting the left or right side of your keyboard attacks in that direction, and the more keys you press at once, the wilder and more powerful your moves. That’s right, you’re encouraged to smash your keyboard to bits with as big a strike as possible. Once you’ve obliterated enough enemies your special gauge will fill up, and you can then shake your mouse and unleash a move that’ll wipe through all the enemies on the screen.
With multiple characters to choose from, and an array of weapons to equip them with, you’ll have more than enough ways to keep gameplay feeling fresh. If you manage to survive until nightfall, you can then visit a lone peddler to sell your wares, heal your wounds, and buy upgrades. You’ll do all this to a soundtrack from Vampire Survivors composer Filippo Vicarelli, too, so you just know it’s going to get your blood pumping.
“Nao Games shares the Poncle spirit of making games that are immediately accessible, affordable, and a bit out of the ordinary; for fun.” Poncle’s Luca Galante says. “When I first met Shibata-san and played Berserk or Die, I knew this was a game that deserved to be seen and played by more people. I’m really happy we got to support Shibata-san and hopefully make that happen.”
Berserk or Die is available on Steam right now, for $3.99 / £2.99. Just head here.
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With its weapon-building systems and deliberate, targeted combat, Blades of Fire has a lot of fresh-feeling ideas. Its control scheme is strange and will force you to press each button with care. Its granular forging system makes you consider every weapon in your arsenal. But however differently it approaches them, the game only offers the same thrills as other action games of its ilk. Blades of Fire feels unique, but just can’t get weird enough.
The creators of Blades of Fire have played a lot of videogames. Developer Mercurysteam has spent a decade-plus working on classic series like Castlevania and Metroid. As might befit that pedigree, its latest effort is a bone-deep rethinking of action RPG trends. From moment to moment, Blades of Fire plays unlike anything else. The God of War and Dark Souls influence is apparent, but the game also has subtler inspirations. The swinging positionality of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, for one, and the gonzo action and stilted earnestness of Dragon’s Dogma for another. In an era of perfunctory crafting systems, Blades of Fire’s crafting alters every swing of every sword. However, despite its relentless cleverness, it can’t help but feel mundane and overdrawn. It lacks the verve of the genre’s best because it is so focused on its influences, resulting in a game that can feel lifeless and self-conscious. Blades of Fire might be a weird original, but it’s never quite weird enough.
On paper, Blades of Fire couldn’t be more typical. Protagonist Aran de Lira is a tough, gruff, and capable man. His family is dead. He lives alone on the edge of an oppressive kingdom, whose evil queen (also Aran’s childhood friend) turned all steel into stone, obliterating any challenge to her realm. When an old friend gives him one of the hammers that forged the world – allowing Aran to build an arsenal of steel weapons – he travels to end the queen’s reign once and for all, with the help of the puckish student Adso. For the most part, your adventure goes how you’d expect, with powerful foes to best, ancient mysteries to solve, and dank dungeons to explore.
Blades of Fire’s first gimmick is its forging system. You make every weapon from relative scratch, customizing each aspect of its construction, like the form of a sword’s crossguard or the length of a spear’s staff. Enemies drop magical items that temper the steel and wood you use to construct your weapons, making them better at blocking damage, piercing armor, or enduring as many fights as possible. Each variable changes the weapon, some by a little and some by a lot. No single one is good at everything, so you’ll have to craft to suit individual encounters or specific enemies. Unlike some of its RPG inspirations, Blades of Fire has no stat-based builds. You might develop favorites, but you’ll inevitably have to use multiple weapon types to progress.
As for combat, it features some novel ideas. While this is an action game at its heart, there are no real combos (though some attacks flow better together than others). Instead, you’ll pick the direction of your swings. Each weapon also bludgeons, pierces, or slashes foes, and these different damage types will be better (or worse) at hurting specific combatants. You can also swap between using a weapon’s blade or point. Slashes might help you better handle multiple swarming zombies, while stabbing could pierce a knight’s heavy armor. This system is the game’s biggest asset. The control scheme is unfamiliar enough that your muscle memory from other action RPGs is mostly useless. Enemy weaknesses and weak points also force you to pay attention and swap weapons, even in the heat of battle.
Adso will be your constant companion throughout, though you can send him back to camp if he annoys you. He is quite helpful, even if he’s useless in combat. Instead, he takes notes, detailing strategies to best enemies. Your relationship with Adso and his role as a helper closely models Atreus in 2018’s God of War reboot, but with a key difference: they have no history together. Most of their dialogue can trigger at one of multiple points, so their relationship has to remain somewhat static, meaning their dynamic lacks tension. I’m not saying their relationship has to be hostile, and they’re more richly explored in cutscenes, but the game’s structure makes it difficult for them to have an arc together. The fact that you can send him back to camp for extended periods underlines this. The game isn’t confident enough to invest in him.
These issues extend to Blades of Fire’s tone and setting. Generously, it feels like a Grimm fairy tale. The characters are broad legends. The lands they wander are old (and usually some variety of haunted). But it features a gentleness and a sense of humor. It bears a goofy grin, before it bares its fangs. In practice, however, it can feel like a Dreamworks cartoon with blood and guts. The effect is less the campfire chill of a good, brutal tale and more the muddled fantasy novel your friend in high school was writing. It’s enthusiastic and earnest, even charming, but is ultimately juvenile.
Blades of Fire’s world is dense, even if it often feels small. Some complain about the backtracking in Metroid, but every time you return to an old area in those games, your means of traversal will have expanded. Blades of Fire is packed with secrets, and it gives you free rein to explore at your leisure, but it regularly fails to surprise.
It’s also a very long game. I played nearly 20 hours before leaving its first map. This does give Aran’s journey a truly titanic scale, but it incorrectly assumes that its sometimes-exhilarating, often one-note combat is enough to sustain it over dozens of hours. So many of Blades of Fire’s enemies are basic reskins, even within the first few areas. Once you have an enemy’s attack patterns down, it becomes a chore to fight them time and again.
Blades of Fire is therefore best played at a leisurely pace, just like how an epic fantasy novel is best read. You should play it enough that you maintain muscle memory, but not so much as to burn yourself out on it. Still, I’m not convinced that playing it over a longer period would alleviate my frustrations. Even its title is staggeringly unevocative. Blades of Fire cannot be described cleanly as derivative, but it only approaches the same feeling I get from other games of its kind from a new angle. I want more from a game that demands so much of my time.
