Love Island - 28 November 2018

At long last, the scenery I bought two years ago at Reading made it to the games table yesterday evening.

Coupled with a shrine on a small island connected by a bridge, the table was set for a clash between two rival buntai factions of six figures each.

Andy and Stuart's samurai arrived by a couple of newly-painted watari bune (river ferries) acquired from Oshiro Model Terrain. 

David and James' samurai prepared for action.

The buntai were quickly engaged.

First blood to David and James.

I introduced a climbing rule for the figures to clamber up and down the terrain - failure was rolling 1 on a D6.  Stuart's comedy character failed this a couple of times, ending up lying stunned and wounded at the bottom of a small cliff.

The Ronin rules and their use of attack and defence combat tokens went down very well.  Inevitably, a lot of the critical wounds were the result of attacker and defender getting extreme rolls, but there were combats that took several rounds where figures were stunned or lightly wounded, and continued the fight.  We thought though that we would modify the climbing rule to slow armoured characters and allow unarmoured figures to continue into combat.

Eventually, just two of David's and one of James' figures were the last men standing - bloodied but victorious.

Wagon Train - 24 November 2018

Another Legends of the Old West scenario played with Stuart.  A lightly armed group of "innocent bystanders" had formed their wagon train into a circle...

...threatened by Stuart's band of Native Americans about to attack...

Fortunately for the civilians, help was at hand in the form of the US Cavalry, who entered the game if a 6 on a D6 rolled in the first turn, a 5 or 6 in the second turn, and so on.

And fortunately, James' roll brought them in on the second turn, and they split up to support the circled wagons.

The Indians rode up to the wagons and exchanged fire with the handful of armed civilians, losing a figure each.

After some disastrous hand-to-hand combats, the US Cavalry got wiped out pretty quickly, leaving the civilians at the mercy of the Indians.  The unarmed women put up the strongest resistance, battering the braves with their handbags, but eventually were overcome.  A clear win for Stuart.

Century: Eastern Wonders - 21 November 2018

First play of David's new game Century: Eastern Wonders which is a companion game to Century: Spice Road.  Eastern Wonders can be played as a standalone game or integrated with Spice Road.  Even the box art integrates...

Eastern Wonders uses the same core dynamic as Spice Road with four commodities which can be traded one for the other to create sets that can be used to buy treasures for victory points.  This time, instead of a hand of cards, players sail their ship across a series of islands, creating markets which can be used to trade the various commodities.  So different enough to feel like a different game rather than a re-implementation but familiar enough to get playing quickly and enjoy the connection with the first game.

David was the first to collect a fourth treasure and initiate the final round, winning the game with 79 points against James 73 and Andy 56.

Warfare 2018

Andy and I head off to Reading last weekend for the annual Warfare games show.  Fewer visitors this year but still as many traders and demo games so plenty to see, and easy to see it.  I enjoyed looking around but restricted my purchases to a single pack of figures from Bad Squiddo Games who specialise in female miniatures - fortunately not the usual designed-for-teenage-boys figures that many other manufacturers come up with.  I bought this set, no doubt inspired by the more active female roles in the recent Dad's Army film, so they'll be a fun addition to my Home Guard project.

Here are some of the highlights from the demo and participation games...

Treasure Island with 54mm figures

WW2 North Africa

Playmobil Pirates

English Civil War attack on Bristol

Elephants!

Pirates - amazing game using Legends of the High Seas with superb scratchbuilt scenery (I want that fort!)

WW1 Trench Warfare

WW2 Stalingrad - incredible detail

Pegasus Bridge and Eastern Front - WW2 tournament games

BKC Eastern Front - 29 October 2018

There was quite a furore last year following the publication of BKC version 3.  Pendraken bought the rights from the author of version 1 and 2 but took ages to release their update and the changes, particularly to the army lists, were not well received.  After waiting months for the promised re-write, Andy and I finally got our money back at Salute this year.  Version 4 is reportedly in advanced preparation and release is planned for Christmas.  We'll see.

In the meantime, we went back to version 2 for an early WW2 game Andy arranged between Germany and Russia, utilising a dedicated approx 4x4ft board that Andy had painted along with recently purchased buildings and hedgerows.

Andy's Russians were defending the town and had to hold off James' German blitzkrieg.  James advanced tanks to line-of-sight of the town's defenders and starting the attack, supported by devastating mortars on the hill.

German infantry were transported on the other flank, before dismounting and making an assault on the town via a swamp.

The Germans were supported by a Stuka which did some damage to Russian troops in the town before being taken out by some sharp shooting by the Russian command unit.

It was James' third Command Blunder that actually did him some good - one of his commands had to advance full move towards the nearest enemy.  This resulted in a pretty effective Close Assault on the Russia defenders. 

At the end of the seventh turn, the town was being cleared of Russians but the Russian reinforcements were holding the ford behind the village, so a minor victory for the Germans.

We managed with the rules reasonably well - still a struggle to find the thing you're looking for but it didn't hold us up too much.  We won't rush to buy version 4 until we've seen how it goes down on the Pendraken forum.  Good to get the tanks out on the table again!

Roman civil war - 28 October 2018

Adrian and I went round to Jonathan's on Sunday for another big figures game.  Jonathan fielded the usual table of well-painted figures along with a new set of scenery tiles for a clash between Roman factions vying for control of the declining empire.

We used the excellent Augustus to Aurelian ruleset again.  These rules work really well with the randomness resulting from the use of counters being drawn to activate commands, along with Event cards, and the crucial "Carpe Diem" chits.

The lines of deployment were formed by a short initial skirmish: Adrian and James both had five units to bring on.  They could move 12 inches but not within 12 inches of an enemy, and not further than 18 inches of another friend.  So as we brought on units and pressed towards certain game objectives, a non-linear deployment line was created.  Very clever idea.

The objectives were the central point of the plain (2 points), a ford with abandoned baggage...

...and a dilapidated fort, worth one point each...

The close deployment lines meant that ranged attacks happened immediately and close combat wasn't far behind.  On one flank, mounted troops clashed resulting in Adrian's horse chasing off James' camels.

Adrian's allies holding the ford proved unreliable and James' troops came from the hill to chase them off.  On the other flank, James' cataphractii (with the help of a motley crew of mercenaries deployed by Jonathan's youngest) entered and held the fort.

As time ran out, Adrian was holding the central plain...

...and James held the ford and the fort.  Two victory points each - a well-fought draw and a great game.

Peloponnes & The Mind - 26 September 2019

A full house this evening for another great game of Peloponnes where David, yet again, drew the population growth civilisation.  There was a lot of money floating around in this game but with a famine and an earthquake before the last feed, food stocks were hit and some populations took a dive.  Final scores were Adrian 27 population and 30 prestige, James 33/21, Stuart 18/20, David 15/29 and Andy 12/16.

We then tried out a new game called The Mind.  This was a nominee for the 2018 Spiel des Jahres and won the critic's prize.  Essentially very simple: from a deck of cards labelled 1 to 100, players receive a hand of 1 card (then 2, 3 etc in following rounds) and, without communicating, they have to empty their hands in numerical order.  Get it wrong, lose a life.  With four players, try to complete Level 8 before losing four lives.  There are also shuriken cards which can be used to enable each player to discard their lowest numbered card, but we didn't quite work out how to use that to best effect.

We got as far as Level 6 a couple of times and were steadily improving how we played, learning what how long to wait for particular gaps between cards.  The group thinking does synchronise as you play.  Similarly, when it goes wrong, it tends to go wrong again quickly.  But when it runs really smoothly, it does feel rather good.  A fun little game for the end of an evening.

David - your potential exploit about discarding 100 is discussed here.  I guess it's probably better to play out and hope not to lose life, rather than definitely throwing one away...

St Petersburg - 19 September 2019

Over to Andy's for another game of firm favourite St Petersburg.  David and James both achieved 79 points but David took the win with five roubles remaining to James' two, and Andy scored 54.

Peloponnes & Medici - 5 September 2018

Two incredibly close games this evening.  The first was Peloponnes where, unusually, none of the disasters or final feeds had a really devastating effect on anyone.  David won with 29 prestige and 30 population, then Andy with 33 and 28, and finally James with 35 and 27.

We next played Medici - the old Spiel des Jahres winner from Reiner Knizia with a great bidding mechanism and opportunities for brinkmanship.  We haven't played this for almost two years but it's a cracking game.  Final scores were James 142, Andy 140 and David 139.

Airlines Europe - 22 August 2018

First play of Airlines Europe, the revised version (21 years later) of Airlines, which we played a few weeks back.

I'm pleased to say this lived up to expectations.  Same essential gameplay as Airlines but much clearer and less fiddly to play, and with vastly improved production values including the lovely little aeroplanes.

It's quite a short game (just over an hour with the three of us) and the first scoring round arrived much more quickly than we were expecting.  Good fun to play, some judgement in when to declare your interests in airlines, and some interaction in either grabbing the coat tails of other players' successful airlines or trying to take them over.

And in a further indicator of a well-designed game, the scores were incredibly close: Stuart 74, James 73 and David 71.

Russian Railroads - 2 August 2018

James brought his new birthday game - Russian Railroads over first a first play. This is definitely one of those games where the playing of the game is easier than the rule reading would suggest.

Players are building 3 Russian railways through placing different types of track, obtaining trains, developing engineering, building factories and recruiting engineers. As you develop the railway track, bonuses and opportunities are opened. For some bonuses the power of the trains is important. Recruiting engineers gives some in-game advantages and the most engineers earns an end-game bonus.

The game uses worker placement to decide actions, so awareness of what others want to do is needed to make sure you don't get blocked out.

In some ways the game reminded me of Tzolk'in where a number of different tracks offer many different ways of scoring points. In the same way as with that game, working out which of the many options to pursue is critical. Some options score early, some build for big points later.

David bought a lot of engineers and used them early to score bonus points and get an early lead.

James went all out on the Kiev line, helped by an early acquisition of a level 9 train. This line earns massive bonus points and for a while looked like an unbeatable combination as he caught up with David and then took the lead.

For this first game, Andy and James both balanced track building with industry and factories. This was a bit limited as the factories only really started appearing towards the end of the game, earning Andy some big points in the last couple of rounds.

At the end, David completed the Vladivostok line and was able to bring the high scoring white track into play with some double score markers. This combined with the most engineers bonus let him overtake James and win the game.

Scores: David 291, James 255, Andy 195.

Airlines - 26 July 2018

This is a classic from Alan R Moon, inventor of dozens of games including the Spiel des Jahres winner, and occasional Rivals game, Ticket To Ride.  James got it in a swap for Porto Nigra, a rather nice looking game but one that was always going to get overlooked in favour of others in the collection.

In Airlines, players are competing to become majority stockholders in several companies with the player owning the most valuable portfolio at the end being the winner.  Each turn, a player chooses between expanding an airline or playing stock from his hand. Expanding an airline adds to its routes on the board and increases its value but exposing your stock cards too early means that other players may not also expand that airline.  Scoring happens three times during the game and again at the end, but only stock played out counts, not what you are still holding in your hand, so timing your investments is key.  Clever game mechanism and pretty good player interaction as you keep an eye on the others' stock and try to takeover "their" companies.

This game was published in Germany in 1990.  And it has not aged well.  The artwork and production values of modern games is brilliant, and unsurprisingly Airlines really looks drab in comparison.

More significantly, keeping on top of which airline can expand routes in which region of the board is a bit of a challenge.  This is frustrating because otherwise it is a really good game.

Fortunately, the game was reimplemented as Airlines: Europe in 2011 and reading the rules, it looks (as one would hope) to have kept all the good bits of Airlines and got rid of the fiddly complicated bits.  And the counters are replaced by lovely little aeroplanes!  So I've bought a copy.

We had a full house for our game which was great.  Andy got a bit stuck with his initial cards and, after helping Stu earn plenty of points for his monopoly airline, only really got a good set of points in the final scoring.  Throughout the game, first place switched from James to David to Stuart in the three scoring rounds, but the gaps got a little wider at the very end.  Final scores: Stuart 84, David 79, James 69, Adrian 51, Andy 27.

The Castles of Burgundy - 18 July 2018

Another outing for The Castles of Burgundy - the third this year.  David established an early and strong lead but James reeled him in and overtook in the last few turns of the game.  Final scores: James 237, David 217, Andy 161.

Remember the Alamo - 14 July 2018

Stuart visited for a games day on Saturday and we played another Wild West game using the Legends of the Old West ruleset.  In the scenario, the wives and sweethearts of the Texian defenders killed at the Battle of the Alamo were hunting down the Mexican politician and general Antonio López de Santa Anna.

They had learned that he was holed up in a hacienda protected by a small number of Mexican soldiers.

The 3 feet by 3 feet playing area contained a hacienda, cantina, windpump and assorted scenery (cacti, rocks, well, stagecoach and barrels).  Stuart took the eight-strong Texan widow posse and entered at the bottom of the table.  James hid the General in one of the buildings, along with four soldiers with a further three arriving as reinforcements from the top of the table during the first few rounds.

The widows took up defensive positions around the stagecoach...

...out of range of the rifleman who climbed up the windpump tower...

...but within the sights of the rifleman who came out on the balcony.

Downstairs, a grenaderos opened the side door to get a bead on the Texan women but was swiftly gunned down - the first casualty.

There was then a long fistfight inside the building which the Mexican kept winning but failed to land the finishing blow.  Inevitably, he was knocked out cold the first time the widow won the combat.

The widows wouldn't get their revenge hiding behind the stagecoach so they started closing on the hacienda, taking several losses from the troops occupying the first floor.  But they eventually reached it, and started fighting up the staircase.

Having cleared out the cantina, they could also shoot across to the other building:

The widows had a lot of success in close combat, and the Mexican posse had lost half its strength by the tenth turn.  However, the battle continued for another five turns until James finally failed his "Head for the Hills" dice roll - the same turn that Stuart also had to make that check for the first time, but was successful.

At this point, we considered that the remaining Mexicans, including the General, had surrendered to their grisly fate, and so Stuart won the game.  But we were having fun playing so we let the General have a second chance.  With his faithful Capitan, Santa Anna climbed out of the window...

...and, pursued by the widows, managed to race off the board and escape.