This year’s primary Christmas theme: driving. Driving north, driving west, driving south and east again, down snowy roads, and down highways slick with rain and bracketed with ditch-dwelling cars. We arrived safely at each of our many destinations — thank God and the new tires we purchased last week — but the hours on the road were many and stressful, so it’s good to be back.
Our secondary Christmas theme: Playing AT-43. I picked up a pair of starter sets for my two pairs of nephews, and spent some quality time playing / teaching them how to play the game. When I purchased the games, I was informed that the basic rules pretty much break down if you want to play anything beyond the starter units, and I saw this to be true.
The game runs on a Universal Resolution Table (or something like that) that comes with the starter set but, near as I can tell, is never actually mentioned in the rules. Instead, the starter rules direct the player to a series of tables on the back cover derived from the universal table. These tables could be slightly easier to explain to the newcomer, except that the rules never actually explain how to use the tables. Oh, any gamer worth his 2d6 can figure it out from context and the examples, but it does beg the question of why you’d bother with “training wheel” rules if you’re not going to properly explain how to use them.
Nevertheless, both sets of nephews were thrilled with the games. And why not? The figs are gorgeous. The game is fun. And with me to teach them the rules, they didn’t even have to deal with the minor complaints above.
Now I’m left to decide whether I want to get myself a starter set, or just pick up some unit boxes and a copy of the actual rulebook. I’m thinking of the second option (it’s cheaper), but man, that Gogloth is sweet.
