Takenoko - 21 December 2016

First play of David's new game from Adrian called Takenoko - a game of tile-placing, bamboo-growing and panda-teleporting!  With beautiful tiles featuring blossoming trees and detailed miniatures of the panda and gardener, this is a very nice-looking game - and indeed its Golden Geek award was for Best Artwork/Presentation - but it delivers on its promise because there is a very clever game underneath, with clever mechanisms and challenging choices to make each turn.

I hope I'm not being too biased by the results ;-) but even in the second game where I was struggling to score anything for a while, a long-term strategy appeared and I started collecting irrigation channels so that I could score several of my terrain objectives in the final round instead.

First game: James 29, Andy 26, David 25, Adrian 18
Second game: James 35, Adrian 29, Andy 25, David 25

Cargo Noir - 14 December

Another outing of Cargo Noir which is becoming more and more a favourite, but this time with guest gamer Otto and guest observer Betty (who drew all the family into the kitchen for dog therapy, giving the evening an additional social boost)...

David and Stu played for early expansionism, being able to buy extra fleets and syndicates early and then going for a spread betting tactic of putting fleets out with one coin only, hoping to get bumped for extra cash.  Adrian, Andy and Otto were thus confined to the more mixed economies of 4 fleets and earlier warehouses.  Perhaps inspired by Betty though, Otto and Andy engaged in a dogged (geddit?) struggle for supremacy in Rotterdam, with several turns of outbidding.  The Battle of Rotterdam ended with victory for Andy, and a higher placing because of its key cargo.  David capped his evening of good fortune on the tiles by drawing a wildcard on his last pick of the game from the bag, allowing him to buy the top 81/90 card.  (He then reported that on his journey home all the traffic lights turned green for him, so we're now expecting that he has only another 20 years to live before his soul is due in...).

Scores: David 160; Stu 155; Andy 95; Adrian 90; Otto 45

Peloponnes & Ra - 7 December 2016

Another cracking double feature of Peloponnes & Ra.  James got a huge early population growth followed by a similarly huge population slump in the final few rounds.  Adrian collected lots of prestige with extra points for his stack of money with the 2:1 card.  Andy got a better result but David won with an almost perfect balance.  Final scores: David 24/25 population/prestige, Andy 30/21, Adrian 18/40, James 12/26.

After Adrian headed off for an early night, we had a game of Ra.  Final scores: David 36, Andy 35 and James 33.  However, Andy had scored loads of points in all three epochs, ending up with "der längste Fluss" of 11 tiles of Nile, and there is a very very slim possibility that he picked up tokens representing 5 when scoring instead of 10, so should have scored something like 55 points.  Steward's enquiry generously awarded Andy the win.

"Historic" Formula Motor Racing

I was having another sort through the loft and uncovered a handful of scoresheets from Formula Motor Racing over the last couple of decades!

Highlights include: when we played inside Kieron's VW at the local dogging spot viewing point back in 1998; Camping It Up in 2003; and Serbia in 2005.

Yspahan - November 30

Stu, Andy, James and David decided to give Yspahan another go. Well actually David decided and ignored Andy's protests.

It plays very differently as a four player game. Going third or fourth in a phase can be pretty brutal as there's often slim pickings available. This means there can be a lot riding on getting the dice you need on your turn. Going for cards can be a particularly evil manoeuvre - as you can do that using any set of action dice - a great way of preventing someone else getting something they want.

We ran into a number of edge cases this time. What happens when a player runs out of tokens - we said you couldn't build any more (meaning you have to manage your token supply). Can you play both "don't pay camels" and "don't pay money" cards to get a building for free - we said no. In both cases a later reading of the rules clarification page online showed we'd made the opposite call to the designers.

Knowing how well the camel train had worked last time, David went back in, but to his surprise no-one else bothered leaving him stranded. Well Andy dipped his toe in and then decided to leave it alone. Stu collected as many cards as possible and when for precision souk takeover where as James repeated his tactic of the previous week and took over most of the shops on the board. For some reason we let him get away with this and he had a convincing victory.

James 77
Stu 63
David 58
Andy 56

Yspahan - November 23

Just James and David for games this week, so we decided to try James' birthday present to David - Yspahan. The theme is set around controlling different areas of a market and delivering goods to a camel train, but it uses some interesting game mechanics. Each turn the dice determine which actions are available and how powerful they are. This can lead to some great balance decisions - I need camels, but this turn there's only one available so do I take the one, or do something else and come back for camels on another turn. Also actions are used up when taken by a player to it is possible to be blocked from the activity you need the most.

As it was our first game, we felt a bit unsure of what we were trying to do to start with, but we gradually settled into opposing strategies. James concentrated on taking over the market, making the most of a building that gave him 2 extra points per souk. David went for the camel train, building up significant bonus points. However in the end, James was able to secure victory.

James 115
David 99

We really enjoyed this game. Unusually it has very different rules for the two player game, so we'll have to try with more players and see how it is.

Warfare 2016

Andy and I went to Reading on Saturday for Warfare 2016.  This compared well to Newbury (which is also good) as it's a bit bigger, not much further away, has a better organised Bring & Buy, is all on one floor, and there's a nice pub next door to the leisure centre that hosts the event.

Highlights from the demonstration/participation games include:

Minion racing...

WW2 Horsa Glider landings...

Lots of zombies... (in 1/32 i.e. Scalextric scale!)

European armies in Egypt...

And a well-presented Eastern Front game (with a soldier who didn't move quick enough to escape my camera)...

I bought some additional Samurai figures (with the aim of pushing me to get on with them) and a fair bit of scenery, mostly from the Bring & Buy.  The highlight is this enormous mountain.  It's about 30x22 inches so don't think I can get away with using it for DBA(!), but it'll make a great piece of scenery for pirates (featured in the photo to show the scale) and Japanese.  It's a bit crazy but I had to have it...

Not the Anderida weekend (12th November) Part 2 - Peloponnes

After the game of Macao proved less than successful we reverted to an old favourite to get us back on track.

The usual mayhem ensued with each of us at some point declaring that we may as well give up. Andy and David ended up very balanced in scores compared to James and Stu's prestige heavy approach. In the end it was the pain of feeding your people after the last turn and the consequential population loss for James and Stu that gave David the win.

David 22/24
Andy 17/18
Stu 35/15
James 31/15

Not the Anderida Weekend (12th November) Part 1 - Macao

In an effort to recreate the spirit of our Anderida weekends we decided to have a Saturday afternoon get together for games followed by the best fish and chips in the country.

First up was a chance to revisit an old game - Macao. The only previously recorded blog entry on this game ended with me noting that we must play it again soon. So three and a half years later we did. Unfortunately it's probably fair to say that the complexity of the game and the busy nature of the cards detracted from the really clever wind rose game mechanics. I have a feeling it may be several more years before it gets another outing.

Final score:

David 95
James 81
Andy 56
Stu 56 (on wall tie breaker)

Cargo Noir - 2 November 2016

Another go at Cargo Noir, but this time without the (ahem, unnecessary) house rule of rotating the first player marker...  With much banter and Derrening, and the reappearance of James' bottle-top fleet, Andy managed to outfox everyone with a win based on highest single card.  Scores: Andy 130*; David 130; Stu 125; James 105; Adrian 75.

Peloponnes & Ra - 19 October 2016

One of the classic double acts of games.  First we played Pelopennes with the Victoria expansion, which allows players to purchase a 2nd tile at face value once in the game - or alternatively score an additional 3 prestige or population points at the end.  David has the population-producing civilization tile again and by the middle of the game was at the maximum 20 population.  Andy bought up all the stone producing resource tiles and relied on the luxury goods from his over-production to meet this food demands.  After a wobbly start, James built up a good set of buildings and bought coinage in the last round so that his pile of money was worth 1 prestige point for every two, rather than every three coins.  The different strategies resulted in a very close result, with Andy taking the win.  Final scores: Andy 30/29 population/prestige, James 27/34 and David 27/31.

Then a quick game of Ra with the usual teasing and Russian roulette moments.  Final scores: James 63, David 54, Andy 35.

St Petersburg - 12 October 2016

Andy forced us to play St Petersburg (yet again).  It's a good job we all think this is a marvellous game!  Andy hadn't yet spotted David's understated write-up of Andy's win a couple of weeks ago so here's a photo of the finishing position for posterity (clockwise from top, David, Andy, James).

This week, Andy's noble strategy didn't quite pay off, beaten by David's prestige buildings plus some nobles and ultimately by James' prestige buildings plus even more nobles.  Final scores were uncharacteristically (for this game) spread out: James 159, David 139, Andy 114.  I thought this was a particularly impressive score but I'll admit David pipped this by two points in a three-player game last year.

Five Tribes - 5 October

A second play of Five Tribes, the game of meeple dropping, camels and Djinn.  A fun game even if it isn't really possible to have a coherent strategy - Five Tribes is more a game of trying to optimise your luck from turn to turn.  Broadly, the players who relied more on scoring points for territories on the board (James and David) didn't do as well as those who aimed for the off board scoring (from yellow meeples in particular).  It was a close finish though:  Stu 141; Adrian 140; David 128; James 113.

Remember the Alamo!

Back at Colours I picked up Sarissa Precision's Adobe Hacienda MDF kit at the Bring and Buy.

Easy to construct and paint...

The build inspired me to paint some Alamo-era Mexican Army soldiers from Artizan Designs that Andy had given me.

The hacienda has internal rooms, removable upper floor, removable roofs and etched detail.

All ready for the next Wild West game!

Reply from Rostherne Games

I came across a twenty-two year-old letter when tidying the study.  It's the response from David Watts, creator of Railway Rivals, after I phoned him to tell him of our (in retrospect) slightly insane obsession with the game, playing it every Wednesday, and creating our own maps.

Even though we very rarely play it now, it will stay in our affections as the game that the gang formed around and was named after!

Pond life

I bought a pond kit from Charlie Foxtrot models at Colours earlier this month.  It's a couple of shaped pieces of MDF with a piece of perspex for the pond.

First stage was a series of blue and green washes on the base and a brown base for the surround.

With the addition of some rocks, pebbles, rushes (made from an old broom) and grass, it all comes together nicely.

The piece of perspex gives good depth to the pond which is highlighted by painting on some weed and lilypads.  I had some ducks painted up already (on tiddlywink counters) so I added them for the finishing touch.

To show the scale, here's Pike and Jones hunting ducks.

St Petersburg - 28th September

Another excellent game of Rivals-favourite St Petersburg for James, Andy and David.

The usual mish-mash of strategies resulted. We all went for aristocrats, but Andy came out on top. David lagged behind James and Andy, but some big building upgrades led to him closing the gap as the game came to a close, meaning that a lot of choices in the later phases revolved around how to trigger the end of the game (or not depending on your point of view). In the end David ran out of turns and Andy's aristo collection paid off.

Final result: Victory for Andy on 138, James 133, David 122.

Industry - 21 September 2016

James dug out Industry, a birthday present from Kieron three years ago, played a few times but only recorded once on the blog - and a first play for both Adrian and David.  This is a neat game of bidding and development.  David got a lot of in-game points through the development of technologies, Adrian got a lot of end-game points through ports and other bonuses, and James (clearly not wanting to give the first-time-players a hard time ;-) got not a lot of points at all!  A very tight run battle for first place in the final scoring with Adrian getting 69 points, just one point ahead of David on 68, and James trailing on 53.

Dominion - 7 September

A return to Dominion (last played by Rivals in July 2009!) for James, David, Stuart and Adrian.  It is a really clever and fun game; yes there is some luck, but there's lots of judgement too, and enough variety for two very different rounds - and it's no surprise that there are 3 or 4 expansion games available.

We first played the Starting set up to get into the rules again, and then the Size Distortion set up after Stu had to go.  The scores for the Starting set up: Adrian 45, David 33, James 21, Stuart 18.  And for Size Distortion: David 28, Adrian 19 and James 7.

A great 4 player game, worth getting out sooner than another 7 years...

Romans vs Persians - 13 August 2016

A belated write-up of a figures game at Jonathan's last month.  The game pitched the Romans against the Persians and used the very playable Augustus to Aurelian ruleset.  These rules work really well with the randomness resulting from the use of a card deck balanced by the "Carpe Diem" cards.

The game objective was to capture carts transporting Roman ale and Jonathan provided the real thing from nearby Corinium.  There was a big cavalry battle on one flank, some shooting but not lot of contact on the other, and an infantry scrap in the middle.  Kieron and Jonathan's Romans carried the day against Andy and James' Persians.

Alea Iacta Est & Colt Express - 31 August 2016

Another game of Alea Iacta Est where different strategies resulted in very close scores.  Andy initially resisted but soon succumbed to his usual Fortuna strategy, James went for SPQR cards, David all out on provinces and patricians, and Adrian with a balanced approach.  Final scores: David 42, James 40, Adrian 38, Andy 37.

This was followed by more fun with Colt Express.  We randomised the characters this time so we didn't get the character and special ability that just happened to match the usual colour we each play with.  Adrian made an early bold push to the loco and picked up the case of money.  Strangely, David and Andy also gravitated to the front of the train, allowing James to sit in the end car picking up the numerous items of loot there.  When the train reached the station, Adrian and James had collected the same value of loot but the shooting done by James and David (mostly at each other) earned them both an extra $1000 as top gunslingers.  Final scores: James $3250, Adrian $2250, David $2050, Andy $950.

Biblical DBA - 24 August

Another excellent DBA evening last night, this time with Biblical period armies - including Adrian's Xmas and Birthday presents from Andy (Sea Peoples and Hittites).  The four armies were asymmetrical (the Nubians' bows deadly to the New Kingdom Egyptian and Hittite chariots; the Sea Peoples' Blades bad news for the Nubians' bow) and there were a good range of troop types.  In the event, Andy's Nubians lost to the Sea Peoples and Hittites but beat the Egyptians, accruing 8 points; Adrian's Sea Peoples lost to the Egyptians but beat Hittites and Nubians (10 points); James' Egyptians beat the Sea Peoples but lost to Nubians and Hittites (8 points); and David's Hittites lost to the Sea Peoples but beat the others (8 points).  So a closely fought and enjoyable night. 

The Sea Peoples invade Nubia

The Hittites invade Egypt

Nubian bow strike Sea People auxilia

The Sea Peoples invade Egypt

The Hittites march on Nubia

Nubian bow shoot down the Egyptians

More Wild West scenery

This weekend, I made a few more flat-pack kits from Sarissa Precision for my Wild West town: a water tower, a windmill water pump, and a stagecoach.

St Petersburg - 17 August 2016

An outside game at Andy's for Kieron's last game with us this visit.  He wasn't allowed to choose the game though as Andy insisted on thrashing us at St Petersburg again.  It was a close run thing - David's buildings were scoring high but Andy's collection of nobles got the largest final bonus.

Final scores: Andy 84, David 70, James 63, Kieron 60

We finished the evening with a good few go-kart races on Andy's track.

Artificium - 11 August

James' second new game of the evening was introduced as a "typical David game". Artificium plays quickly over five turns and is about building up production lines by chaining the playing of cards to maximise your point score. There's a slightly nasty part where one of the cards lets you select a player to send back which smells a little of kingmaking for all good Rivals but if it's in the rules...

As predicted, David won, but only just...

David 58, Kieron 56, Andy 54 and James 47

Colt Express - 11 August

James brought round a couple of new games this week. First up was Colt Express, a clever mash up of a skirmish game with some elements of a card builder like Dominion and advance planning like Robo Rally. It follows the same theme as one of James' figures games, with the players controlling wild west train robbers.

The game uses a clever game mechanic of having the player pre-program their moves from a limited selection. You can choose to shoot, fight, steal goods, move and so on, but have to plan it out in advance. Some of your choices are made openly, others secretly so you have an idea what your opponents are planning, but not the complete picture.

Our first game resulted in James getting stuck in and shooting up the other robbers, especially Andy and Kieron. Andy nipped around collecting a lot of low value items off James and Kieron. David ended up at the other end of the train being hunted by the Marshall until he was able to get him out of the way (with the unwilling help of James) and grab the big prize.

End result: David 2250, Andy 2150, James 1500 (including sharpshooter bonus), Kieron 800.

Peloponnes - 27 July 2016

Stuart writes:

A game of two halves:

First half - peaceful everyone buying, building, growing and feeding

Second half - Boom (Decline) Boom (Tempest and Earthquake) Boom (Drought and Plague).

The third Boom hit nearly everyone's population very hard e.g. Deej going from 17 down to 6.  Andy's stone mountain, Jame's pile of luxury goods and Kieron's massed tiles didn't ease the pain. Plenty of lovely civilizations with no-one to live in them. In the end it was Stuart's immunity to the last Boom that made the difference. 

Scores

1st Stuart 27/27     2nd Deej 18/30    3rd   James 18/26       4th Kieron 12/31       5th Andy  9/29  

Rule 23

After another classic "Rule 23" event from Adrian last week, I thought I'd blog about the origin.

My recollection was that this from a game we played in the mid-nineties called Kings & Things.  After having played it many times, we spotted a rule that said that the first player in each turn was supposed to change i.e. the second player became the first player.

This makes sense in many games where there are limited options and each player should have the same opportunities across the whole game, but in a fighting game like Kings & Things, it essentially means that players are encouraged to fight the first player because everyone else has two turns to their one them when that person "misses a go" as they shift from being first player in one round to last player in the next.

Anyway, the belated discovery of a crucial rule in a game has become known as "Rule 23" ever since.

So I dug out a copy of the Kings & Things rules and found the first player change rule.

It's rule 29!

This either means I've misremembered the game which is the source of our "Rule 23" legend, or we played an edition of the game with different numbering of the rules.

Can anyone solve the mystery?  Otherwise, it looks like our very own "Rule 23" story is itself subject to a kind of "Rule 23" effect!

Cargo Noir - 13 July

Cargo Noir with an inadvertent house rule at Adrian's this week.  The host confused the existence of a first player counter with all the various games that use said counter to rotate the first player around the board (Stone Age, Puerto Rico etc).  Implementing this accidental variant had the effect of stalling David's game for 3 of the 9 rounds of play - or so he said anyway...  Despite the addition of this new rule the game still played well and makes for a fun evening.  The end result was very close - Andy stormed to victory on 135 points; Stu, James and Adrian all had 125; and David (plus extra rule) got 95.

Village - 29 June 2016

Three of us for a game of Village this week.  Andy continued his usual strategy of visiting the market at every opportunity, James unusually didn't go travelling to every location and instead spread his options, but David stormed home with points from every element of the village, in particular from his domination of the church throughout the entire game.  Final scores: David 57, James 45 and Andy 38.

Peloponnes Card Game - 25 May 2016

First play of the card game version of one of our favourites, Peloponnes.  Unsurprisingly it has lots in common with the board game but with some interesting twists: resources aren't stockpiled, production is only used to construct buildings (with any excess going to luxury goods - the only track still remaining in the game); the cards double-up as money and resources.

One claim of the game is that not all the disasters will occur - but they did for us, one in the 2nd turn - and the card-disabling effects of these disasters was devastating.  At the end of the game David and Andy had more cards disabled than still available, with significant impact on their final population.  BGG Forum suggests starting each disaster counter one step earlier so that four of the same disaster cards have to appear to make it happen, rather than just three.  We will try this next time.

It also felt to us that the civilization tiles didn't feel very balanced with one seemingly providing a strong advantage and another making it very difficult to develop, but no-one has mentioned this on the forum, so we won't tweak this on the basis of just one game.

All in all, not as good as Peloponnes but certainly an interesting and playable alternative, with the advantage of portability.

Final scores: Stuart 21 Prestige/14 Population, James 10/8, Andy 9/5 and David 10/4.

Dead of Winter - 11 May 2016

With just two this week, a chance for the first play of David's game Dead of Winter.  Another zombies game, but unlike Kieron's favourite where you play just a single character, each player has a group of survivors to control.  The survivors have different strengths and abilities, and additional characters are discovered during the game - which gives you more dice / actions.

The board has a survivors hide-out which you can barricade as it is attacked by zombies, plus half a dozen locations where a stack of cards represents items you can search for e.g. medicine, food, additional survivors.

Each game has a mission card with victory conditions to achieve.  Our first game was to defeat a certain number of zombies within a certain number of turns (achieved).  The second was to completely search (i.e. take all the cards) from two different locations (also achieved... just).

The game is cooperative but with more players, each has a specific additional victory condition - so although you are still trying to meet the mission victory conditions and survive, there is still a way to have a bit of competition, but not in a full-blown Battlestar Galactica deceive-your-friends kind of way (so Andy will be content).

The rules were pretty straightforward but took a while to go through, suggest we just get cracking next time.  It certainly looked the part - printed pictures of the zombies and all the different characters, rather than coloured plastic like in Zombies.

It was a lot of fun - look forward to playing it with more players.

Notre Dame & Ra - 5 May 2016

A good night for Stuart with a double win.  Despite the name of the game, Stuart managed to win Notre Dame with 60 points without a single visit to the church, followed by James 53, Andy 50 and David on 43.

A much closer result with Ra and Stuart pipping David to 1st place by just one point.  Final scores Stuart 50, David 49, Andy 30 and James 26.  I still really enjoy this game although I've forgotten how to play it well - must try harder to rise out of the lower quartile!

Peloponnes - 27 April 2016

A full house for another fun game of Peloponnes.  A lot of high scores but the final round of disasters and population feeding hit a few of the civilizations hard.  Adrian won with a high and balanced score of population/prestige 33/35, followed by David 30/28, James 27/27, Stuart 20/36 and Andy 18/30.

Ra - 13 April 2016

The first of a series of games nights at Andy's over the coming weeks - with special guest gamer Keren, whose speciality was making bids that inadvertently (but entertainingly) had the most devastating impact on David's game (the table overflowed with sympathy....).

Andy was much more alert than we hoped and built his usual extensive collection of buildings, accumulating a huge score in the final round but the winner was James with hardly any buildings but a steady collection of points in each of the three rounds.  The final reckoning of bidding counters saw Andy slipping to third place after giving five points to Keren.  Final scores: James 48, Keren 41, Andy 39 and David 34.

Lancaster - 3 February 2016

Four player Lancaster for a little Plantagenet fun on a Wednesday.  As per usual the difficulty of optimising all elements of the game (knight placement, battles, the laws, and collection of nobles) made for a damn close run thing.  Final scores: Adrian 51; James 49; David 45; Stu 41.

St Petersburg - 10th February 2016

We took a trip over to Andy's this week, and quickly settled down for a game of St Petersburg. During set-up we took the decision to remove the Observatories from play. Our previous experience (including James' victory romp two weeks ago) is that if the Observatory comes out early the person who obtains it has a massive advantage. This did mean that the building pile was two cards light, but we decided to give it a go.

Compared to last time, the game was a lot tighter, with everyone but Stu trying to keep pace on aristocrats while looking to take an advantage elsewhere. Andy built up a large income in workers, but was lacking in victory points. David failed to build his worker supply, but managed to generate reasonable income from the other phases to compensate.

For much of the game Stu and David were neck and neck, but David managed to pull ahead at the end.

Final score was David 93, Stu 75, Adrian 71 and Andy 68.

I think the game played better without the Observatory. Something else we could try is to put them into the second half of the deck.

St Petersburg and Port Royal - 27th January 2016

A series of unfortunate events resulted in Andy missing the news that the venue had switched from Adrian's to David's and consequently enjoying the chance to explore a lot more town than he was intending.

Given the delayed start we decided to go straight to an old favourite - St Petersburg with no need for rules reading and a quick setup. James looked to be disadvantaged in the first turn with the last most expensive pick of workers, but his luck turned when he had first pick of buildings and the Observatory appeared. With its ability to select a card pile and either buy, hold or discard the top card, James then built up an advantage in workers, and then with finances assured, switched to building a large collection of aristocrats. A couple of lucky draws cemented his victory (but I think he'd have won without this). Although it wasn't immediately clear, it turned out that the rest of us were scrapping for second place.

Final score: James: 108, David: 75, Stu 66, Andy: 61

The was enough time to bring out one of David's Christmas presents: Port Royal. This is a quick card game based around the idea of collecting people and ships to build up victory points. It has some clever mechanisms:

Face-up cards have the value of what is shown on the card, but face down cards are used as currency. This means that you can't rely on certain cards coming up later - they may well have been used to pay for something without you knowing about it.

It has a push-your-luck gameplay. You keep drawing cards to create a tableau from which you can make your purchases. However if two ships of the same colour appear your turn is abandoned. Drawing a lot of cards can also give others the chance to purchase cards on your turn, but this can be a source of income as you are paid a tax. Some of the characters have special abilities that encourage you to go for large draws, creating an interesting conflict.

The game played well, although the utility of some cards wasn't hugely apparent on first play. It was reasonably close until the end when Stu and James jumped ahead through completing expeditions to finish the game.

Final score: Stu: 18 James: 17, David: 15 and Andy: 13

Yo Ho Ho And A Bottle Of Rum

Another of the Sarissa sets was some pub and shop signs.  The biggest of these is for The Drunken Parrot - the new name for the public house next time we play a Pirates game with my wooden frame buildings.

I also painted up a smaller Red Lion sign to fix to the pub in Walmington-on-Sea.

Dad's Army accessories

I got a load of Sarissa Precision laser cut kits from Louise for Christmas (how did she know?!).  Some of these are for Wild West games but others were for Dad's Army.  These are items that help "decorate the set" but can also be used as part of the scenario.

A bit of decoration for parkland and streets are these sets of benches:

I also got a set of telegraph poles:

I found that wedging them between two steel rules was the best way to hold them straight whilst the glue dried in the base.  I painted them up and decorated the base.  Eagle-eyed readers will notice there are only five in the final photo - the cat chewed up one of them whilst they were on my painting table!

The final item is a searchlight:

I used tin foil to form the reflector and painted the inside a metallic grey.

Now to design the next Dad's Army scenario...