Bumper Short Games Night, 30 May 2007 - Niagara, Gladiators and Ra

A fun evening of short games with guest 8 year-old gamer Fred. Two games of Niagara opened up the evening. The first saw James steal victory quickly by the deadly '4 amethyst grab' technique. Wise to this, game 2 was much more tactical. Some shrewd moves by Fred won the admiration of the adults; Kieron and James, both close to victory were swept over the waterfall by the raging torrent; Adrian pipped Fred to the finish and won with a double '4 diamonds' plus '7 any gems'.

We then tried out James' new Gladiator figure game. Quite a nice little system, and perfectly suited to Fred - who systematically murdered all our fighters to be last man standing (having personally wiped out his opponents). Happily for James, his gladiator was spared by the Emperor. Kieron and mine were given the 'pollice inverso' (turned thumb) for being feeble. Finally, we introduced Fred to Ra. A super game as ever, with the usual mix of Derrening, risk taking and entertainment. Kieron stormed to victory with 47 points (having scored big on green tiles each turn); Fred was second with 31, then Adrian with 30 and James last with 21. All in all a great evening, with all the players winning a game - and thus racking up a huge number of points towards the end of year scores.
:-)

Formula De, 23 May 2007

A welcome return to this great old game (almost certainly last played in 2003!). We went for the Spa course and got a 2 lap game in. Weather flipping from sun to rain and back again confounded choice of tyres. Andy's armoured car was most unfortunate to be exploded by Kieron only 5 spaces from the pits. Fate though saw Kieron spinning out on the second lap. Adrian's early lead was eroded by both James and Deej who fought each other to the finish. Good fun.

DBM Aztecs v Anglo-Saxons 16 May

The second practice outing for the Aztecs, this time against another 'extreme' army (and winner of the 'Daftest Army' award at Anderida a couple of years back) - Kieron's Middle Angl0-Saxons. This was perhaps the first DBM game we've played in which no cavalry whatsoever appeared on the battlefield.



For the Aztecs, we fielded a smaller army than for the first outing, keeping the allied Bow command but maximising the Blades and adding the Fast Warband option. We deployed with the Warbands on our left flank, the Blades holding the centre and the allied Bow on the right. Kieron and James' deployment saw TF guarding the flanks, and, err, a big line of Spear across the table.

Both armies advanced. Our Bow shot a fair few enemy dead. The main infantry clash in the centre saw inconclusive pushing between Spear and Blade, but the Warband proved deadly - the Wb(S) (the elite 'Cuachic' warriors, see photo) cutting through the Saxon lines and breaking a command. At the time we opted to stop the Saxons were half an element off a second command breaking (and hence the army) and 3 elements of any command off breaking the army.

So a reasonably conclusive victory for Montezuma. But we won't get used to it - the Saxons are probably the best possible set of match-ups for the Aztecs. And no one would possibly be mad enough to take such an army to Anderida...
:-)

El Grande - 2 May

A four hander with Stu, Kieron, David and James. El Grande is impossible to fault - a simple but clever game with lots of opportunity for Rivalry - and we had a great fun evening full of banter.

David took an early lead with James trailing at the back, despite an effective Crown move on the first turn whereby everyone else had to send their Caballeros back to the starting pool.

The upset was around Portugal which became the Coventry of the game because opponents could be sent there without any risk of their benefiting, as it never got a score counter at any point in the game.

Stu played an enhanced score counter on the Castille and kept it well stocked with Caballeros, managing to win the maximum 8 points on every scoring turn, contributing to his winning score. James had a late surge, cashing in on a "score the five points regions" card, and overtook David, who just kept ahead of Kieron who was spread too thinly across the board. But a very closely fought game.

Final scores: Stu 114, James 107, David 105, Kieron 101