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.