Monks and Ikko-ikki

Some more Perry Miniatures figures completed for my Japan project.

Armed Monks attacking with naginata (pack SAM54):

and Ikko-ikki advancing with mixed weapons (SAM38):

Ikkō-ikki were mobs of peasant farmers, Buddhist monks, Shinto priests and local nobles who rose up against daimyō rule in 15th- and 16th-century Japan.

Century: Spice Road and 7 Wonders - 21 December 2017

A pre-Christmas games night saw us play the first of many Christmas gift games - Cenury: Spice Road. It's a fun game with clever mechanics as you collect and play action cards to trade spices from one type to another. When you own the right spice combinations you can claim victory point cards, so you have to pay attention to how many moves you are away from acquiring a card and whether someone else will get there first. You also have to decide whether to go quickly for cheaper cards and finish the game early or build up to the big scoring cards.

We played two rounds. In the first, no spice production cards appeared and we all made do with a small hand of cards each. In the second game we went for bigger hands of cards and a greater variety of actions as we figured out how to use them more effectively.

First game: David 66, James 62, Andy 56, Adrian 51
Second game: James 77, Andy 71, David 67, Adrian 65.

Adrian had to go home early so we finished off with a game of 7 Wonders. Exceptionally Andy didn't all out for blue buildings but had a lot of military success and bought a lot of guilds in the last round.

Final scores: Andy 67 (including 31 on guilds), James 54 and David 50.

Ra & Alea Iacta Est - 13 December 2017

A double celebration tonight - of David's achievement and Kieron's visit.  Since we had an old favourite with us again, we played an old favourite Ra, with the usual Derren-ing and hilarity over others' misfortune.  And we even let Kieron win.  Final scores: Kieron 35, Andy 34, David and James both 28, Stuart on 19.

Then a game of  Alea Iacta Est in which Stu had us in hysterics in the last turn of the game as he failed to roll a 2 ten times.  Final scores: James 47, Andy 44, David 42, Kieron 36 and Stuart 33.

And before I went to bed I got one more clue on the Christmas quiz.  I worked out what an uneducated burglar says to a policeman who has arrested him: "Let go" with a dropped "t" becomes "Lego".  I should have got that earlier ;-)

Accessories for figures games

Andy and I attended Warfare at Reading a few weekends ago.  Probably not much different in size from Colours but all on the ground floor in two big sports halls.  And conveniently close to a Toby Carvery that does preposterously huge Sunday lunches.

I bought a handful of bits and pieces including a flat pack MDF water feature set with two plinths for customer-provided statues.  So finally a use for those old Salute giveaways.

Richard the Lionheart as a bronze statue:

And Hannibal in marble:

Nice little kit with perspex acting as the water and easy to swap the statues around:

I also bought a flat pack well as additional street furniture for Wild West games:

St Petersburg & Port Royal - 6 December 2017

Four of us at Andy's for games so of course we had to play St Petersburg (and eat fridge cake).  Another close game, harder to get big collections of nobles with four players, especially when you go through the buildings as quick as we did.  Final scores: James 50, Adrian 43, David 41, Andy 40.

We also played Port Royal again - I didn't make a note of the scores but I think that although I got to 12 victory points first, Adrian overtook me to reach 13 in the last round.

First couple of buntai finished

I've now finished painting and basing my first buntai (squad) of Samurai.  These are Samurai fighting with swords in everyday clothing (pack SAM43 from Perry Miniatures).

Reverse view:

And a group of Ninja with various weapons (SAM41):

Chap on the left good for rooftops but will look pretty wierd on the gaming table anywhere else.

Now I've got figures painted up, I want to give the Ronin rules a test run before putting on a big game when I've painted some more Samurai.

Village - 16 November 2017

We hadn't played this for a while so a good opportunity to try some radically different strategies.  Or not.  James went travelling, David went to church, Andy went to market and Stuart did a bit of everything.  With Andy's market victory points being pretty much his total score, he went from zero to (almost) hero in the final scoring, shooting past Stuart, and finished a couple of points behind James, who was only one point behind David.  But all that excitement paled into insignificance in the shadow of Stu's most dramatic anecdote round yet...

Final scores: David 53, James 52, Andy 50, Stuart 38

Lastly, here are some miniature figures riding bugs.  Because they can...

7 Wonders - 9 November 2017

At David's for 3 more rounds of 7 Wonders. Two games were close. Adrian 47, Andy 49, James 52, David 54 and Andy 45, James 45, Adrian 47, David 51.

However the other game was an Andy masterclass. He scored well in all except science and thrashed the rest of us. James 40, Adrian 45, David 56, Andy 75!

Peloponnes & Alea Iacta Est - 13 October 2017

Last games night before Andy heads off to Darkest Africa, so a play of a couple of trusted favourites, Peloponnes and Alea Iacta Est.  For I think the first time, we got to the verge of all five disasters before any single one occurred...

...so they came thick and fast in the second half of the game.  The final disaster of Plague was the decider as Andy and Adrian were decimated but James was protected.  Final scores: James population/prestige 30/32, Andy 24/25, Adrian 18/31.

We spotted a minor Rule 23 in Alea Iacta Est - fortuna tokens gained by players are supposed to be shown face-up.  Adrian made good use of these tokens, supported by a relevant SPQR card, and got the win, but the scores were close:  Adrian 46, James 44, Andy 40.

Mombasa - 4 October 2017

First play for the other new game from Colours.

A late start, learning new rules and a 2.5 hour game resulted in a late night.  And a sleepless one as our brains continued to fizz with all the thinking we'd done playing this game.  There's a lot going on -  not too much that all the fun and chatting disappears, but definitely one to play when we're all feeling alert.  Different strategies to collect points, a more flexible game than first appears - James despaired that he'd screwed his game by playing the wrong cards, but his resulting effort in exploration instead more than compensated.

Unusually, no rules for resolving a tie, so David and James were joint winners with 153 points, and Adrian with 121.

Porta Nigra - 20 September 2017

First play for this new game bought at Colours.

Despite some clever mechanisms, nice pieces and production, this game ultimately left us a little disappointed.  One reason was that unusually for a building/resources game, there is no economy to create to progress the game, so it feels the same all the way through.  Another factor was that the final scoring contributed about two-thirds of the final score, so the in-game scoring is less important (James was last before the final scoring, but just inched ahead of David in the end).  Of course, it may be that now knowing how the game plays will mean we approach it differently.  Probably worth another go before a final ruling.  Scores: James 211, David 204, Andy 171.

Colours - 16 September 2017

Andy and I headed off to Newbury yesterday for Colours, meeting up with Adrian and Jonathan.  Colours is now just a one day event after a hiatus last year.  It didn't feel any more crowded despite the loss of the second day although I wonder if there were slightly fewer traders as the ground floor had a bit more space than previously.

I headed straight for the Bring & Buy as usual and this year picked up a couple of board games.  The first is Mombasa, an African trading game, currently 8/10 and #57 overall on BoardGameGeek and winner of numerous game awards in 2016.  The reviews look excellent and so I was surprised to find the game is effectively brand new, with counters yet to be pressed out!

The second game is Porta Nigra, lower down the overall rankings on BGG but still a very respectable 7.4/10 (for reference this is below Ra but above Peloponnes).  This is a building game set in the Roman period, inspired by the "Porta Nigra", a large Roman city gate located in Trier, Germany built in 200 CE and still standing.  I particularly liked the stacking building pieces.

As always, there were plenty of impressive looking demo and participation games.  Highlights included a Lego sub-sea exploration game (temptingly on sale with dozens of vehicles and sharks but I resisted!):

...a WW2 desert game:

...and a game of the Franco-Austrian war with some stunning scratchbuilt buildings:

The First Samurai

After a burst of activity making Japanese buildings and scenery following a visit to Japan in April 2015, the file box of 28mm figures waiting to be painted hadn't got much further than being based and primed in the subsequent two years.

The project had built into such a big thing, I struggled to restart it, and always had plenty of other projects to work on.  Andy's solution was to keep the file box closed and just concentrate on painting a single figure, which he chose, from the "Samurai fighting with swords in everyday clothing" set.

So here it is.  And fingers crossed the painter's block is gone!

Camping It Up

I finished these in August but forgot to post about them.  You might have spotted that the Mamluk army I posted about a couple of months ago didn't have any baggage.  What I bought at the time was a set of tents - Mongolian yurt, Arab desert tent and Chinese tent:

And a set of dioramas - pig roasting, market sellers and campfire

My aim was a flexible set of bases that can be combined to form baggage for my Mamluks and my forthcoming (don't hold your breath) Mongol and Yuan Chinese armies.  They will suit of course a variety of other nomadic, Arab or East Asian armies, and combining two of the dioramas without a tent could be baggage for pretty much anything.

All of the tents and dioramas came from Baueda.  The exception were the market figures which came out of one of Andy's boxes of bits a few years ago!

Roll for the Galaxy - 6 September 2017

Just two of us for games this week, so a chance to Roll for the Galaxy as a two-player game.  The constraint to just two possible phases is relieved by the roll of an additional white dice which has the potential to bring another phase into play.

In the first game, David went for Stuart's tactic last week of cheap and fast building but it wasn't enough to beat James' fewer but more valuable tiles.  19 points for David, 29 for James.

In the second game, James developed a range of Consumption (Blue) worlds and developments which established a strong economy and a big score of 52 against David's 38.  However, only at the end did James notice that his Reassign benefit only worked for a subset of his workers not all of them, so he had been a bit free and easy with his dice in the last few turns.  David graciously judged it still a win for James but not with quite such a margin ;-)

Roll for the Galaxy - 30 August 2017

First games night of the new term and a chance to catch up as well as play a couple of games of Roll for the Galaxy.  David ran away with the first game with plenty of conspicuous consumption - something like 43 points with Stuart on 34 and James 33.  In the second game, Stuart played a fast and cheap building strategy to minimise the benefit of the development tiles that James and David were paying high costs for.  James and Stuart drew on 25 points but James' extra workers gave him the win in the tie-breaker.   

Artificium & Ra - 29 June 2017

Another play of Artificium, a clever resource chaining card game.  David scored 62, Andy and James both 54.  The rules claim that "if two or more players have the same number of victory points the game is tied and all tying players win!" which suggest Andy and James were the joint winners, but we generously allowed David his victory.

We played Ra - for the first time in quite a long while.  Lots of fun and winding up as usual.  Andy just squeaked a win by a single point.  Final scores Andy 50, James 49 and David 31.

Mamluk Egyptian DBA Army

I finally finished the Mamluk Egyptian DBA Army that Adrian bought me a couple of birthdays ago.  They are opponents for the Knights of Malta among others.  The original pack was a V2 army so I bought a number of additional figures to address the changes and flexibility required by the new V3 army list.

The Cavalry General is accompanied by four compulsory and two optional Mamluk cavalry units:

Other mounted are Turkmen and Bedouin light horse:

And the infantry comprises (from left) Psiloi archers and naffatun throwing incendiaries (which I converted from Assyrian slingers), Auxilia javelinmen and Warband ghazis (armed with swords and kite shields), an element of mutatawwi'a horde, and two halqa Bowmen.

Ready for battle!

Clash of Clans - 15 June 2017

Andy and I met this week to fight for the first time with the Samurai armies that Adrian painted for us.  The leaders of our clans first met on the battlefield to discuss peace terms but then decided to roll their aggression dice instead.

As defender, Andy (top of photo) laid our the terrain and James (bottom) decided to attack over the difficult hill and hold the banks of the river within reach of the initial deployment.

Unfortunately, when testing the river, James rolled a 6 (one of few he rolled ;-) which meant the river slowed progress and could only be crossed by single elements or columns.
 

A series of 2 PIP dice from James and sixes from Andy, meant James couldn't safely get across the river and Andy pressed up on his right flank and repositioned to hold the difficult hill on the left.

Soon Andy burst across the river in numbers and pushed James off the bank, taking casualties.

On the other flank, James started attacking Andy's Auxilia in the difficult hill - which we accidentally allowed to fight as Blades but they still started taking losses.

Both clans had lost two elements each but James left flank was in disarray and under a lot of threat from Andy.  So James managed to get in and around one of Andy's blades and his general for a couple of 50/50 rolls that would either win it - or leave him even more vulnerable.  Sadly for Andy it paid off, with rolls of 5/2 and 5/1 killing off Andy's 3rd and 4th elements, and giving James' Hojo clan the win.

A slow game as we're still not acquainted fully with the V3 DBA rules but a lot of fun.  Key learning points were:
 - a difficult river isn't a particular class of Going that means elements use their Bad Going speed, everything moves at 1 BW per turn
 - we forgot about command distance which is important when Generals are in terrain or troops behind hills
 - and Andy's Auxilia who played as Blades made us wonder when we would ever use the 4 Auxilia option over Blades, since the latter are so much better, and none of the Samurai historical enemies have Knights.  We decided we'd just agree to both use them or both not in future civil wars!

Phalanxx - 8 June 2017

Another play of this interesting game.  Andy was building up his army strength to play a particular card but unfortunately (or fortunately for us) there wasn't enough game time for him to attack - which is necessary for the end game bonuses.  So David and James pulled away in the final scoring, with David just inching ahead.

Final scores: David 60, James 57, Andy 37.

Peloponnes and 7 Wonders - 25 May 2017

James and Andy at David's and we settled on old favourite Peloponnes to start the evening. A number of extreme strategies ensued as James (faced with the increasing population civ) went for high wheat producing tiles. David went all-in on wheat resulting in a peak of around 40 luxury goods. Andy approached things with more balance which is arguably an extreme strategy for him.

James found it hard to keep his population fed and expand his empire at the same time. Andy was able to pick up a final round tile to boost the points for his low population bringing him into contention, but David's massive luxury goods stockpile enabled him to weather the disasters and just edge ahead.

Final score (Pop/Prestige): David 36/31, Andy 28/36, James 27/22


With some time to spare we played a round of 7 Wonders. James played extreme again, ending up as the only person collecting science cards. David tried to do a bit of everything else, but didn't get much traction. Andy went for military and prestige buildings and managed to secure victory.

Final score: Andy 55, James 52, David 51

Puerto Rico - 17 May 2017

A welcome return for Puerto Rico (still number 12 on Boardgamegeek) for James, Adrian, Stu and David.  Two rounds of exceptionally well timed production and sales set David up for what proved to be an unstoppable victory.  At some point we'll play it regularly enough to try out the expansion pack with a new set of buildings that has been sat in the box, unplayed, for about 15 years...  Final scores: David 45; Adrian 40; Stu 37; James 32.

Imperial Settlers - 10 May 2017

Second play of Imperial Settlers.  Stuart won with the Romans, using their Engineers to destroy other players' cards.  David was second with the Japanese, with the reduced opportunity for trading this time with the threat of trade disruption from James' Barbarians, who came last.

I was concerned that the result was exactly the same as last time we played it.  I was partly right - but not about the settlers.  I managed to come last with the Romans the first time we played it, and Adrian won with the Barbarians with a huge score!  So it's me not the game... or at least possibly my bad luck in which cards in the deck actually come out.  Definitely one to play again soon.

Final scores: Stuart 51, David 44, James 40

7 Wonders - 1 May 2017

David, James and Adrian went over to Andy's for a rare Monday night of games with special guest Kieron on a flying visit back to Blighty.

Much talking and catching up was broken up by three games of 7 Wonders. Kieron will never quite be sure if we let him win two games because we miss him...

Scores:
Andy 52, James 44, Kieron 42, Adrian 42, David 40
Kieron 55, Adrian 54, James 53, Andy 51, David 50
Kieron 68(!), James 49, David 47, Andy 40

Yspahan - 26 April 2017

Another two player game of Yspahan.  David has a very high scoring first round and James outscored him in the subsequent two rounds but not quite enough to close the gap.  Final scores David 104 and James 95.

Samurai DBA Army

Adrian gifted Andy a beautifully painted Samurai army for his birthday.  He had kindly offered to paint one for me as well - and presented me with it yesterday too, so we don't have to wait until August to fight some civil wars!

Mine is the Hojo clan.  Here's the general with the clan's crest of Mitsuuroko (“three scales”) in the background.

The Hojo are known for fostering Zen Buddhism and for leading the successful opposition to the Mongol invasions of Japan, which means that I could use my Mongol Conquest army as an opponent, even though it's not listed in the DBA rulebook.

The army comprises a General and mounted Samurai, which can be double-based with foot.

Four Samurai (blades):

Nobushi and Ashigaru bowmen:

The remaining four elements of the army are either followers with naginata (auxilia):

or Sohei (Buddhist warrior monks) blades:

The army has a statue of Buddha to protect as its camp:

Altogether, this makes a very impressive army:

Even more impressive close-up... Thanks Adrian!

St Petersburg - 29 March 2017

A great games night to celebrate Andy's birthday - starting with fizz and cake (and jelly!) - and then gifts of books and figures (of 1:32 and 15mm variety - photos to come).  We had a full house including a Messenger chat with Kieron.

With an early start for Adrian the next day, he spectated whilst the rest of us played Andy's favourite, St Petersburg.  Which Andy won.  Again.

Final scores: Andy 52, James 47, Stuart 41, David 37

Village - 22 March 2017

We hadn't played Village for a while but we still remembered and played exactly the same strategies as usual: Andy in the market, James travelling, and David a bit of everything.  James ended the game the turn after visiting the last of the six towns, a little too early for Andy to clear up at the market, although his final visit there enabled David to pick up another couple of sales and win the game.

Final scores: David 54, James 51, Andy 44

Cargo Noir - 9 March

A return to the black markets of Macau for a full house of Rivals and an initially asymmetric game of Cargo Noir.  Starting strategies included going for maximum ships versus maximum syndicates, there was the obligatory battle of Rotterdam (Andy versus David; Andy won) and an endgame that saw lots of random drawing from the bag.  Final scores were David 140, James 135, Stu 120, Andy 105 and Adrian 95.

7 Wonders - 15 March

After a long absence we returned to 7 Wonders. Special guest Adam acting as an observer and giving David advice about getting as many military cards as possible.

I suspect this is the first time the phrase "Get in there Daddy" has been used at games night.

We rattled through 3 games.

Scores:
David 54, Andy 53, James 44, Stu 41
David 53, Stu 52, James 49, Andy 47
Stu 57 (on tie break), James 57, David 43 (on tie break) Andy 43

Peloponnes - 22 February 2017

A couple of games of Peloponnes this week.  The first a pretty close run thing until the last plague and feeding which hit all players except James.  Final scores population/prestige James 27/28, Andy 21/25, David 18/32, Stuart 12/33.

The second game had the rare occurrence of an earthquake in the second round, destroying James and Andy's brand new builds.  Andy then played the most almighty project backstep, prompting James to do similarly, so a rather more erratic game.  Final scores population/prestige David 40/28, James 18/30, Andy 30/15, Stuart 15/21.

St Petersburg - 15 February 2017

Adrian and James travelled to Andy's for the latter's favourite St Petersburg.  Andy established the strongest economy and collected the same number of nobles as James, who just edged ahead with extra points from buildings.  Final scores James 73, Andy 67, Adrian 55

Knights of Malta first battles

Andy and I played a couple of games of DBA this afternoon using version 3 of the rules.  We spotted quite a few more changes that a cursory flick through the rules hadn't uncovered.  These included:
 - defender rolls for terrain placement (like DBM)
 - attacker then chooses their battlefield edge (with no dice roll)
 - defender can no longer swap 0-2 elements around after the attacker has deployed
 - deployment limits allow elements closer to the centre but further from the edges than v2
 - overlapping elements can shoot and be shot at
 - Bow is more effective with a 3 basewidth (BW) range
 - single elements conform to groups, even if they are partly in Bad Going; now has to be completely in Bad Going to not conform

These generally feel like good improvements and the increase in movement (now counted in BW rather than inches, so 40mm instead of 25mm) means that battle is formed swiftly.

The Knights of Malta first battled their historical opponents, the Ottomans.

We forgot a couple of movement restrictions and Andy's cavalry and light horse left the dunes far quicker than they should have done, and so James' spears and knights hadn't really formed up before they were being engaged.  However, after a string of extreme rolls in the first bound (6-2, 5-1 etc) Andy lost three cavalry to James bowmen straight away.  A few turns later, James had won 5-1.

Andy kept a tally of all the dice rolls, and although his PIP dice totalled 23 against James' 18, his combat rolls were only 33 against 47.

In the second game, Andy fielded Burgundian Ordonannce.  James deployed a defensive line and used his army's Littoral option of deploying two spearmen on the edge of the waterway on Andy's flank.

These spearman defied Andy's two bowmen and artillery piece all game, and killed one of the bow, strengthened by the flank support they gave each other.  Andy's knights eventually reached James' defensive wall and slammed into the infantry.  We made another mistake of allowing the bow flank support from the blades, when that is only against foot not mounted, so the two knights that were destroyed were only one if we'd played that properly.  So a second win for the Knights of Malta with 2-0, as we played a timed 60 minute game rather than playing to 4 elements lost, as per the rules.

The rules are still written in legalese but there are more diagrams to explain things in this version.  I may be biased by today's result, but I think it plays well.  We played slowly as we wanted to test the rules properly and not play a version 2 rule without checking, so I think future games will be quicker.  Good fun though!