Hang 'Em High

Andy and I enjoyed a Wild West game this afternoon.  First outing for the cards I made as part of my COVID-coping strategy.  Andy's outlaws were trying to rescue one of their own before he was hanged by the Lawmen at high noon.  This was one of the rulebook's scenarios with special rules for moving bystanders, and cutting/shooting the rope.

The Lawmen started scattered around the town.  Andy split his Outlaws with the 2 stronger characters taking the top route and the other four along the bottom.  The four soon met a couple of Lawmen and took them out straight away.

Across the square, there was a sustained fistfight - one Deputy was lost and the Sheriff took out one of the outlaws.  The Lawmen wobbled over their "Head For The Hills" morale check but put their duty above their own lives and continued the fight.

At noon (turn 10), the guilty man dropped, taking his first wound.

The other Deputy emptied his sawn-off shotgun into the Outlaws attempting to rescue their friend but managed to miss everyone.  Shots continued to be exchanged but the Sheriff singlemindedly continued the fistfight, knocking the Outlaw nearer and nearer the john, and eventually taking him out.

As the game neared the end of the 12th turn with the hanged man about to expire, three of Andy's Outlaws took a bead on the rope and two of them managed to hit it, freeing the fugitive, and winning the game.

Spot the mistake!

 

No, it's not that Andy deployed his Achaemenid Persian mounted troops (left of picture) in a bog.  But that James misread the Assyrian army list and deployed a 14 element-strong army!  And neither of us noticed.  And it also made not the slightest difference.

Whilst James raced across the playing area with a succession of sixes on his PIP dice, Andy struggled to extricate himself from the bog with PIP rolls of 1 and 2.

But when it counted, Andy's combat rolls of 5s and 6s crushed James' 1s and 2s.

The Assyrians, distracted by the supposedly easy-to-kill Scythed Chariot (without realising it didn't count towards the break point), were soon minced to pieces, including James' general.  Final score 5-1 to Andy.

New Year Games Bonanza - 2 January 2020

A lot of players and a lot of games for the first session of 2020.  Lucas, Kieron and James started with Byzanz, a neat little card game with bidding and collections.  In a promising sign of a good game, the final scores were really close: 32, 34 and 36 points.

Andy was then subbed in for a game of St Petersburg.  Kieron went for buildings only leaving James and Andy to collect large numbers of nobles, with James winning with a set of nine.

After Adrian and Stuart arrived, we played James' new game Flash Point: Fire Rescue.  This cooperative fire-fighting game had a great theme, looked the part and modelled the spread of fire really well.  Perhaps we were lucky with some of the rolls but we rescued the target number of victims with ease, so we didn't really experience the peril.  Next time,we'll play in heroic mode with more initial explosions and hazards to make it more of a challenge.

Next up was Ra.  The usual shenanigans.  Another win for Andy.

Lastly, Lucas, Kieron, Andy and James played 7 Wonders - yet another win for Andy.

St Petersburg and Carpe Diem - 18 December 2019

Kieron, Stu and Andy at David's this week for some nearly festive games. Surprising none of us, Andy insisted on playing St Petersburg and spent the entire game mocking his fellow players, before cruising to victory through extreme financial domination. Once again the game plays surprisingly quickly with four players, lasting only 5 rounds, so it is really unforgiving if you fall behind.

Final score: Andy 57, David 53, Kieron 40, Stu 38.

Then an introduction to Carpe Diem for Kieron. David had discovered the second edition rules had done away with the somewhat confusing movement rules and replaced them with a simpler (but equivalent) move left/right mechanic. This proved to be easier and quicker to play.

This game seems to be as much about not making mistakes as it is about picking a good move, but David managed to get ahead in the first round and just about hold on until the end.

Final score: David 98, Stu 91, Andy 72, Kieron (who was "playing to learn") 68.

Seven Wonders, Sushi Go, Ra - 18 July

Five player games at Adrian's saw us fit in two old favourites and a new try-out.  First up was Seven Wonders with Adrian and Kieron returning to the fold in first and second place (Adrian 62, Kieron 55, David 50, Stu 49 and Andy also 49).  We then tried the beautifully designed Sushi Go for two rounds of raw fish fun: Andy won the first, and Kieron the second (Andy 54, 41; Adrian 53, 42; Stu 51, 44; David 48, 46; Kieron 42, 53).  Finally David stormed to victory with Ra with Adrian barely breaking even (David 58, Stu 30, Kieron and Andy 17, Adrian 13).  A fun evening.

Clank! & Medici - 24 April 2019

Back to the dungeon for original Clank!  With his very noisy robot causing lots of clank, James made a quick smash-and-grab and an early (low-scoring) exit.  David wasn't far behind.  Stuart and Andy made it above ground with Stuart collecting enough money and gems to more than make up for not securing the bonus 20 points for exiting.  Final scores: Stuart 87, David 73, James 68 and Andy 55.

Then we dusted off an old classic from Reiner Knizia, Medici.  Andy usually wins this (with luck and his Derren bidding skills) and managed to continue his run of winning a game each week.  Final scores: Andy 125, David and James 117, Stuart 57.

St Petersburg, 11 April

A textbook play-through of St Petersburg.  High scoring all round yet no one could fault Andy's technique.  Scores Andy 121, Adrian 116, David 111.

Clank! In! Space! - 3 April 2019

Another play of this fun new game.  Adrian made a swift dash for the treasures and ejected early in an escape pod with 81 points.  Andy wasn't far behind but collected a few more counters before his exit and won the game with 87 points.  David made it to the cargo bay with 57 points before succumbing and James, after acquiring a huge 97 points, had this reset to zero as he didn't even make it back to the cargo bay!

Payroll raid - 24 January 2019

A belated write-up of the first quick game with the paddle steamer (now with added - but removable - bow wake and stern wash).

James' US Cavalry were escorting the quarterly payroll on the Louise Marie.

Andy's band of Mexicans launched two small boats to intercept the paddle steamer.

We modified shooting from a moving deck to another moving deck to make it a little harder, but still some shots hit home.

Andy's Mexicans started to board the paddle steamer and engage in hand-to-hand combat.  The fat Mexican leader failed about three times in a row to make the jump over the side.

Eventually, everyone was on the paddle steamer for an almighty scrap.

The US Cavalry lost their first Head for the Hills morale test and the surviving soldiers promptly jumped overboard and swam for the shore.

Leaving the fat Mexican to crack the safe and escape with the payroll.

Shrine Skirmish - 30 May 2018

A couple more games with the Ronin ruleset, this time a large group of Samurai attacking a shrine defended by Sohei monks.

In the first game, Andy was the attacker and James the defender.

The attackers were deployed in waves but Andy had rolled a 6 to determine how many game turns he had to achieve the objective of taking the shrine (D6+6) so realised he had plenty of time to get all his figures on the table, and then swamp the poor monks.

James held back at the top of the steps hoping to funnel the attackers into a smaller group to help balance out the numbers (the attacking faction had twice as many points as the defending one - pretty much twice as many figures, and mostly stronger ones).

We missed something in the rules that allowed Andy to pile in on the monks and defeat them pretty swiftly.  We moved each players figures alternately, but it should be alternate figures on each side, which removes the opportunity to have all the figures pinned straight away.

Andy also sent a few figures around the side and back so that he could desecrate the holy shrine in various locations.

It was a bloodbath.  The Sohei were all slaughtered for no Samurai losses - just a couple of wounds.  Andy got 24 Victory Points (6 x 3VP for killing Sohei plus 6VP for the shrine) to James' zero.

We set up again in the evening when Adrian joined us.  Andy and Adrian took a share each of the attackers and James was again the Sohei.  With the correction to the rule, this time James brought out the monks to fight, but also drawing back out of range in order to prolong the game (the attack was to last only 10 turns this time).

The Sohei were also equipped with a couple of bows this time to try and even up the firepower.  We quickly realised this was a waste of time against armoured Samurai although it did have some effect on the unarmoured figures.

The Sohei fought better this time, killing a couple of Samurai.  Half of the six Sohei were killed in the 10 turns but the shrine remained disputed.  However, the attackers still won on points: 9 VP for Andy and Adrian, 6 VP for James.

This is a good ruleset with an interesting combat mechanism but I think the factions need to be designed carefully to ensure they are balanced.  For each rank of character (1 to 5) they get a corresponding number of tokens to use in each combat - so a rank 3 character can defend against a rank 1 character and then get two free attacks in.  So higher ranked characters seem much more powerful for not an excessive amount of extra points cost.

Anyway, a couple of great games - and fantastic to finally start getting my Japan figures and scenery on to the table!

Classic Double - 9 May 2018

Peloponnes and Ra double bill.  Andy made it this week before his holiday so we let him crush us.  Andy population 40/prestige 34, Dave 33/29, Stuart 24/24, James 24/20.  An unexpectedly early earthquake pretty much wiped out James, resulting in the smallest final civilisation ever:

After catching up with news, we had a late finish with a game of Ra.  Final scores: Stuart 47, Andy 41, David 40 and James, last again, on 26.

Ronin Skirmish Scenario - 14 February 2018

At long last, almost three years since I visited Japan and started developing this project, I finally got round to testing the Ronin rules with Andy.

Ronin is a short set of rules produced by Osprey.  The rulebook also contains lots of information for different Buntai (groups) and a set of scenarios.  It has the standard Initiative - Move - Combat sequence but has two important characteristics that make it different from the Warhammer skirmish games we play (Legends of the Old West, and Legends of the High Seas).

The first characteristic is that instead of a player moving all their figures before the other player, the players move one figure each alternately, so you feel more like you are playing with a set of individuals than a group.  The second characteristic is how hand-to-hand combat works.

Ronin uses a (as far as I know) unique system of combat counters.  Each figure has a rank of 1 to 5 with a corresponding number of combat counters (black and white Go counters).  During combat, characters use black counters to attack, white to defend, and further black counters to enhance initiative and attack roles.  Players select a different set of counters for each combat so there is a need to think what your opponent might do and then what risks to take with whether to enhance your rolls or not.  We had a quick one-on-one fight to test this (which pleasingly was won by the first figure I finished painting) and found it was much simpler to play than it is to describe!

Then the first proper game - a standard skirmish on a two feet square board with a bamboo grove and a couple of buildings.

We had three Samurai figures each.  I made up stats cards for each character.

The three Buntai started on opposite corners of the playing area...

...but were quickly facing up to each other...

...and then getting stuck in:

Blood was spilt and James' Buntai was victorious - earning 9 Victory Points for killing Andy's three Rank 3 Samurai.

We then tried another skirmish with a larger Buntai and some additional random minor objectives (e.g. kill the Leader, kill 75% of the enemy).  Each Buntai had a Rank 4 Samurai, two Rank 3 Samurai, two Ikko Ikki and a Ninja as a "sword for hire".

Starting from opposite edges of the playing area, the figures again quickly closed up...

...and then got stuck in:

This time Andy wiped out James' Buntai, losing half his figures the process, and so winning 18 Victory Points to 9.

It was great to finally play with these figures and a relief to find the rules are good to play.  Given the focus on individual figures rather than groups, Ronin will easily work with more players without the need to create complicated multi-Buntai scenarios.

Village & Spice Road - 2 January 2018

Final games night with Kieron before he set off for Africa the following day.  First game was Village where we mostly stuck with our usual strategies - James travelling, David to church, Andy to market - and Kieron to the council, where he coined it in for several turns.  For the first time, Andy's strategy paid off and he scored 54 points ahead of the rest of the group clustered together: David 46. James 45, and Kieron 43.

Then we introduced Kieron to David's excellent game Spice Road.  This is a clever card game where players build up hands of cards to grow and enhance their spice resources, and compete with each other to get the right spices to buy up market cards.  Final scores: James 64, Andy 56, David 52, Kieron 50.

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.

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!

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.

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

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

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

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.