Lancaster - 4 December 2013

An introduction for Stu to the excellent Lancaster for a 5-player games night at Adrian's.  This is a very well designed game where the theme (each player takes the role of a Lord in the service of Henry V) matches the mechanics perfectly.  There are only 5 turns, each of 3 phases, but the options and enjoyable complexity means that the game still takes a decent evening to play.  The only slight complaint is the down time for players with fewer knights to place when Andy, James and Adrian spend several rounds booting each other off the most lucrative spaces on the board.

The game admits of different tactics: Kieron took an early lead by bagging victory points from the counties; James started off going for Castle extensions but then switched to a strategy of collecting knights; Adrian did the reverse of that; Andy and Stu acquired high value Knights quite early on.  There was some intense voting where cunning use of voting cubes by James swung a crucial law onto the statute books.

The end result though favoured those that racked up the points for the end game scoring options and Kieron and Stu's early leads were surpassed.  Final scores: Adrian 78, James 77, Stu 52, Kieron 48, Andy 26. 

Show and Tell, 1 December: French Command Figures

A couple of French command figures from the Old Glory pack that Andy got me recently, to be used I think as ADCs.

Siege of Osaka

Jonathan put on two games for us this weekend based around the Siege of Osaka.  The first short skirmish game pitched the Army of the West (Adrian, Kieron and Orhan) against the Army of the East (James, Andy and Simon) with a set of complementary objectives (kill the opposing general, protect/kidnap the concubine, retrieve the secret message).  A simple set of rules with each side revealing cards to activate different classes of figure (ninja, samurai, etc) each turn.  The ninjas provided the most excitement - Simon's treehugger silently taking out Kieron's ashigaru in the woods, Orhan's blowpiping everything within sight, and James' murderous ninja taking out both concubines and most of their escort with a bomb.



The second longer game used Warhammer for a much bigger battle between the clans of the West and East.  Army victory points were won by taking physical objectives on the battlefield with extras such as killing the first unit, and individual generals gained prestige points by taking standards, killing certain opponents or outperforming their rivals.  Highlights included Simon's monks appearing on the opponent's rear the turn after their reserves arrived, and the devastating effect of Orhan's "Ferocious Charge".  The battle nicely ebbed and flowed, with the Army of the East just taking victory at the end but with Orhan's general accumulating the most prestige.  Lots of fun and another amazing layout and painting project from Jonathan.

The victorious commander of the Armies of the East!