El Capitan - 18th March 2009

Deej finally had the chance to let us play his Christmas present from Kieron, El Capitan. Why did we leave it so long and why is it languishing in position 358 on Board Game Geek?

We played the basic version with 9 cities and soon realised that the loan cards are an essential part of the game after quickly spending the paltry 20 notes given to players at the start of the game before even half way through the first phase. The key point was when to decide to get a loan, how much do you get and do you pay it off early (therefore leaving yourself vunerable to coming in for a loan again and wasting a turn). Andy and Kieron came in for an early small loan and James helpfully pointed out this was daft as it cost half the value of the loan just to sail in to get it! He duly came in for a massive loan.

After pay day, we were left with the tricky decision of how much of the loan to pay back. James and Kieron opted for the safe middle ground of paying half the loan back and Deej was just canny with his spending so only had a small loan. Deej and Kieron started a race to gain 9 cities first, with Deej pipping Kieron but both cashed in on having lots of fingers in pies when the second pay day came around. Meanwhile Andy was collecting travel cards like they were going out of fashion! In the final phase of the game Andy and Deej enjoyed knocking James' early placement of warehouses out of cities to reduce his final income. At the same time Deej was his usual optimising self and came out on top. I'd like to play this again soon and see what it's like with the expansion and a 5th player. Deej 230, Kieron 218, James 172, Andy 112

Ra, Wings of War - 11 March 2009

We introduced Orhan to the delights of Ra this evening. As always, plenty of Derren-ing going on, including from non-player Adrian who arrived later. Kieron had a storming game and accumulated a massive thirty points in the Third Epoch, giving him a huge lead. James and David battled for second place, but David's risk at the end didn't pay off and we was unable to pick up the final tiles at the end. Scores on the doors: Kieron 45, James 33, David 28, Andy 27 and Orhan 11.


We followed that with a couple of games of Wings of War - Andy, David and James the dastardly Germans, against Adrian, Kieron and Orhan the plucky Brits. The first game was a devastating and rapid three-nil loss by the English. Perhaps feeling too confident, in the second game the Red Baron conducted a personal reconnaissance mission whilst his two freunden had to engage the three British 'planes on their own. After taking an incredible eleven cards of damage (of which six were zeroes), James finally succumbed to the English bullets, and although one Sopwith was taken out, it wasn't long before all three German airplanes hit the deck.

Field of Glory - 4 March 2009

My first game of the DBM replacement ruleset Field of Glory, partnering Andy with the starter Alexander army against Adrian and Kieron with the starter Seleucids.


Whilst the rulebook is much prettier and better laid out than the DBM rules, its ancestry is clear and I was worried that although many of the improvements are self-evident, it might still be a bit of a grind to play. So I was really surprised that with the combination of Adrian's coaching and the handy reference sheet, the game was much simpler than I expected and even though we were learning, seemed to run quite smoothly and swiftly.

It was certainly more fun than DBM, none of the gamey measurement and angles to worry about, and more like Shako in the sense of just commanding your battle groups to do what you wanted. And what a relief to have no PIPs to agonise over distributing.

The game resulted in a minor victory for Adrian and Kieron. They sacked our camp, destroyed two of our battlegroups, and fragmented one more, earning 7 points, against our 3 points for destroying one BG and fragmenting one.