Football with friends

Played football Sunday on a muddy, wet (1 inch of water) field with the brothers from Carbondale, and a few from further out (Honesdale?).

I played center and defensive lineman most of the game, but did run two series as QB, punted once (a quick kick), completed 1-2 passes, scrambled for 40-50 yards or so. Had 2 RB rushes for 30 yards. I threw one interception, recovered one of my own fumbles, had 1-2 QB "hurries" on defense at least one of which created an interception. I had 3-4 bad snaps in the game, mostly due to the slippery ball. I called all the plays on the first drive of the game for a touchdown (although I played center).

My brother did well, scored a couple of times, had a couple interceptions, and some good tackles. He brought some plays with him, and we used those a few times for a several good gainers. He had an amazing catch from Moe, slidding on his needs in the mud, getting up and running it 20 more yards. Moe had most of the offense, scoring a couple of times in the run, catching a few, throwing a few, several great tackles, plus 1-2 interceptions, and at 2 fumbles. Chris had a forced sack-fumble on defense, several hurries, many tackles. He had some good rushes, and a few catches. James had some good rushes, and several bone-crunching tackles.

Their offense was stymied by us in the first half of the game, but in the second half, Paul took over. Rushing as the QB on almost every play, he must have scored 3 times. He also scored a few touchdowns by passing on the run. Austen caught 1-2 TDs, can't remember who else scored. Burke was assigned to block me on the line, and we must have slammed into each other 30 times that game, and I am still very sore from the experience!

One of the coolest things was that a photographer from the Scranton times happened by, and recorded several shots of the action, took our names at the end of the game, and claimed she was submitting the game for the paper! I will post the photo here if she does...

I will never forget James belly flop/slide in the mud 15 yards... Great game overall, we lost 7-8, but had a great time.

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Played Star Wars Minatures game with Tab on Saturday, played football on Sunday.

We played a scenario from an expansion book, instead of the normal "point battle" where you buy a squad with a preset number of points. The scenario was based on the opening encounter from Phantom Menace, where Obi Wan and Qui Gon are attempted to battle their way into the command center of the Trade Federation ship.

The two characters start on the map 2-3 turns away from the command center doors. They must fight their way thru to them, then spend 3-4 turns cutting thru them with lightsabers. Meanwhile, 10 droids are on the map, blasting away at the Jedi, and 2 more enter the map each turn. If the droid player loses initiative (a 50% chance), 2 droidakar units (the rolling droids with cannons and shields) enter the map. The droids are almost unstoppable, as they have a 50% chance each turn of avoiding all damage because of their sheilds, and they dish out 20-30 (can't remember) on their own each turn. With 6-10 battle droids (including the security droids that do 20 damage against unactivated opponents) plunking on you on top of that, it's not clear how the Jedi can survive.

After two plays, Tab and I realized that the battle was really a loss (or a standoff) for the Jedi, as was the case in the movie. Even with incredibly good rolls, the Jedi simply do not have time to take down the blast doors before falling to damage from their enemies.

That means 90 minutes of game time was simply... wasted... on a broken scenario. The instructions gave no hint that the Jedi had no reasonable chance of winning, so we had to play the game out to determine this for ourselves. For some gamers I suppose that might have been fun. But I felt like we were tricked by the game designers into believing that the scenario was balanced, and was somewhat annoyed that we had to discover this for ourselves...