Peloponnes & Ra - 11 December 2019

A classic double bill for the (almost) surprise appearance of Kieron.  Peloponnes was the usual fun with groans as the disasters wiped out our progress.  Andy pipped James to the bronze medal by the virtue of having a single luxury good left at the end of the game.  We resolved to not let Kieron win any more now he has decided to return!  Final scores: Kieron population/prestige 27/31, David 24/32, Andy 18/17+, James 18/17, Stuart 12/27.

Then Russian Roulette with Ra.  A very unusual first epoch where the Ra tiles were really slow to come out.  Which of course meant the other two epochs were particularly frantic.  Final scores: David 39, Stuart 34, James 31, Kieron 29 and Andy 22.

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.

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 ;-)

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

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.

Peloponnes & Ra - 20 May 2015

This was the penultimate games night before Kieron departs and the last occasion for board games, so a couple of favourites were brought out.

First Peloponnes without any of the expansions.  James benefited from a civilisation that grew in population every round but Andy suffered from an earthquake and Adrian lost a group of people in the final turn, giving final scores (population/prestige) of James 39/33, David 28/35, Kieron 33/27, Andy 24/22 and Adrian 15/31.

Then Ra which is always fun.  Fittingly, this was yet another win for Kieron who stormed home with 52 points, master builder Andy 2nd on 40 points, then David 32, Adrian 29 and James just 23.

Vasco Da Gama - 25th March 2015

4 rivals came tonight for the very last night at Kieron's before he moves out. This one game is one of Deej and Kieron's favourites and is the last game to be packed!

Kieron took an early lead as very few ships were sailed. Andy decided to go for the money grab to restrict options which worked early on. However, due to lucky minus money cards coming out, the costs of actions were not too prohibitive until the very last turn when, poised to slot his ship into the last vacant top row slot, Andy found himself having to pay to sail because a positive card finally appeared and he was one coin short! This left Kieron free to put a 3rd ship in the top row and he sailed to victory for an unprecedented 4th win in a row (although he is claiming a 5th due to a win for the French in Sunday's Napoleonics)

Final scores: Kieron 74, Deej 64, Adrian 56, Andy 42

St Petersburg - 18 March 2015

First play of David's present to Andy, the second edition of St Petersburg.  This introduces an extra phase and a market, and allows a fifth player.  Kieron went straight into the market and developed a healthy lead.  Others joined the market later, and Andy and James pursued the original strategy of collecting nobles, slightly hampered by a lack of shuffling that left all the noble upgrade cards at the bottom of the pile, and consequently unplayed!

Final scores Kieron 73 (another win!), James 67, David 58, Stuart 55 and Andy 42.

Cleopatra and Ra - 4 March 2015

Egyptian night at Adrian's, starting with a game of Cleopatra and the Society of Architects, the Days of Wonder 3D crocodile-fest which Andy and David had never played.  Cards representing building materials and special characters are collected and then exchanged for building extensions to Cleo's palace.  Employing corrupt practices allows the players to build more and faster, but the most corrupt ends up being fed to the crocodiles.  The philosophy of going all out to build was taken to heart by James who ended up on 62 points, but was the most corrupt by a significant margin so was consumed by the crocs.  Kieron was thus the winner on 49, David on 41, Adrian on 37 and Andy on 36.  A fun game, which we should play more regularly than the 5 or so years between this game and its last outing.

We then had the obligatory go at Ra, David triumphing on 41, followed by Kieron on 39, James on 36 and Andy and Adrian equal last on 32.  Nefertititastic.

Caylus Magna Carta - 27th November 2014

Only 3 rivals arrived after a sick note from Stu so we dug out a game which works well with 2 or 3.  Kieron sat on the rules to prevent James reading them, as he knew all of them by heart!
This is a great little game which might win the prize for most fun per cubic cm!
Andy's strategy was to collect resources and go for buildings. James and Kieron fought for victory tokens from the castle. Kieron pipped James due to slightly earlier castle visits which lead to him collecting better tokens.  K:36, J:35, A:30ish

20th Century - 19th November 2014

5 rivals assembled at Kieron's for another go at this clever game which has many favourite elements in it. James decided to be the hare and raced off to a huge early lead which he kept right to the death. He amassed a VP income of 23, but as a result he was bereft of science and covered in garbage!  Andy went for an eco tactic which almost worked. Stuart went for a frugal game by only buying 1 tile per turn. Deej and Kieron tried a more balanced approach with Kieron focussing on trying to keep the garbage low and science income enough to avoid disasters.  This proved just enough to pip James at the very end. Final scores

Kieron 112, James 108, David 106, Andy 102, Stu 91

Peloponnes & Medici - 15 November 2014

Following the Dads' Army game we had a five-player game of Peloponnes, which David triumphed even more spectacularly than last Wednesday, winning with 36 population and 34 prestige points.  James just beat Kieron into second place 24/31 vs Kieron's 24/25.  Stuart got 16/31 and Andy 15/14.

After some pretty fiery (but tasty) curries at one of the local curry houses, we returned back to mine for a six-player game of Medici.  Plenty of opportunities for Derren-ing, and Kieron won with 116 points, followed by both Adrian and David on 105, James on 88, Andy on 74 and Stuart on 66.

A great afternoon and evening, combining a figures game, board games and a social.  Looking forward to part 2 in a few weeks.

Village & Alea Iacta Est - 28 August 2014

A small but select gathering for games this week.  We first played Village without the beer & inn expansion.  Andy majored on the market, James went travelling, and Kieron joined the council, enabling him to later produce lots of free goods to sell in the market to compete with Andy.  Final scores Kieron 68, James 53, Andy 42.

Then Alea Iacta Est which plays without the Temple/Fortuna elements with only three players.  A very close result with Andy on 47 and Kieron on 48, but James' useful set of Senate cards gave him the win with 59.

Alea Iacta Est and Circus Flohcati - 25th June

We started the evening with a game of Alea Iacta Est. Lots of fun with the usual Derrening and helpful suggestions, combined with a couple of nya-ha-ha moments when a round was finished unexpectedly.

Final score was Adrian 49, James 43, David 36 and Kieron 33.

Burnt out by his victory, Adrian departed mumbling some excuse about early starts and important meeting tomorrow.

We then tried out Circus Flohcati (one of Reiner Knizia's two flea circus themed games), a game aimed at the whole family and one that plays extremely quickly. We ended up playing three hands and while it was fun, it didn't engage us as much as we'd hoped. Kieron ran away with the first two hands (luck or judgement???) but although James convincingly won the third it wasn't enough to catch up.

Final score: Kieron 171, James 162, David 140

Hanabi & Love Letter

A very relaxed evening playing a couple of card games.  The first was brought by Stuart and called Hanabi, currently quite popular on the BGG Family Game list.  This is a cooperative game with a unique mechanism - you hold your cards the other way around, so everyone else knows what you have, and tries to give you information during the game to enable the playing of a sequence of cards to set off one of five fireworks.  Really clever and led to some good-natured frustration when ESP failed.  I think we played it about three times in the end.

We finished with a very close game of Love Letter (using James' home-made Dad's Army set of cards).  I think we all got to three cubes each but Kieron got the fourth cube first, winning the game.

Zulus - 1 May 2014

A Thursday night for a second go at the Zulu siege skirmish game with new appropriate scenery (2 mission station buildings, a dry stone cattle kraal and sandbag defences) and a reversal of sides - Deej and Kieron as the Brits and Andy and Stu as Zulus.

A plethora of Zulu cards coming up early resulted in large forces surrounding the mission station and managing to rush the defenders without the chance for them to fire many volleys.  Both buildings were overrun with the Redcoats managing to recapture the hospital once before having to fall back.  Mid-way through the game it looked like it was all up for the British but a run of Red cards allowed them to stabilise the position.  The relief column arrived reasonably quickly in the second run through the pack allowing the British to claim victory.

A good game but again quite an abrupt end.  Next time we'll try it with all 4 Aces having to come up in the second pack run through for a victory to be declared, allowing hopefully for more tension to build up.

The moment before the relief column arrived - the handful of survivors have pulled back to the inner courtyard as the Zulus charge in

Beowulf & Ra - 2 April 2014

We had a second play of Beowulf - bought because although it's a film-tie, the game was designed by Reiner Knizia.  It's a three act abstract game with no real link to the saga but the artwork and playing pieces are quite nice.  At the end of Act II, it was pretty much neck and neck, but in Act III David played a particularly nasty tile on James, who retaliated with an even more powerful tile that enabled him to swap that nasty tile with a very good one next to several of David's playing pieces, reducing his final score by about a third in one swoop.  Not as fun as it sounds ;-)

We concluded that anyone with that tile could have swung the game in such a way to win it.  In other words, all the strategy and clever play in the rest of the game gets undermined by these two over-powerful tiles.  It is definitely a good game and one we'll replay, but we'll remove those tiles next time.  Final scores: James 235, Kieron 187, David 157.

This left us plenty of time to dust off Ra.  This never fails to please, with a bit of Derren-ing and a bravura performance by Kieron right at the end.  Although pulling out one more Ra tile would end it, Kieron successfully played Reiner Roulette and completely filled the tile track with points, jumping up into first place and winning the game with the last draw of a tile.  Final scores: Kieron 40, James 37, David 30.

Thebes - 22 January 2014

We dusted off a four-player game we hadn't played for a long time, the archeological dig game Thebes.  Great theme, a fair bit of luck, and lots of sniggering opportunities watching each other (mostly me) pull token after token of sand from the excavation bags instead of artifacts.  Final score: Kieron 55, David 49, Andy 46, James languishing far behind on 30.

Shako, Enconter at Grub - 2 January 2014

The first figures game of 2014 played out at Adrian's with a small-scale Shako engagement between Kieron, playing the Austrians, and Orhan as the French.  The scenario was an encounter battle set during the 1809 campaign with lead elements of Berthier's French Corps racing for the town of Adensberg and bumping into Austrian forces that the Archduke Charles had dispatched from the South with the same idea.  Both sides' aim was to seize the key river crossings around the village of Grub (or should that be Gruss?..).

With Adrian as umpire, each player mapped out their initial march orders, noting that enemy forces were to their front.  They were invited to specify whether their formations would advance with all possible speed (and hence be at risk of being in march formation upon encountering the enemy) or more cautiously.  The first two turns thus played out at speed with the formations represented by card markers (and with some extra markers moved by the umpire to represent the fog of war).  As units came into visual range they were put on the table.  This set up allowed a rapid move to action and, as it turned out, an asymmetric deployment.

As the French, (General Friant) Orhan's plan was to race his forces onto the heights above Grub, using his light and heavy cavalry to screen the northern flank, his light infantry regiment to occupy the lower town and guard the eastern ford, and to deploy his guns covering the main bridge and the approach to the upper town.  Orhan expected Kieron's Austrians also to seek the highest ground so determined to be there first.

Kieron's plan though did not conform to Orhan's expectations.  General Keller sent a sole unit of heavy cavalry up to the northern heights, raced his light cavalry through the upper town and marched his infantry determinedly straight through the upper town to take the bridge.

T'he Austrian infantry cross the western ford to enter the upper town unopposed

Austrian Kurassiers reach the northern heights, beat off the first attack of the French cavalry and are confronted by the deploying infantry division.

The initial cavalry clash was a victory for the Austrian heavies forcing the French cavalry back.  Meanwhile on the other side of the battlefield, the Austrian hussars raced around the town and scouted the eastern ford, finding it blocked by deployed French light infantry in square.

The Austrian hussar brigade races for the eastern ford...

Not wanting to allow the Austrian Kurassiers to threaten his flank Orhan again threw all his cavalry units into an attack, only for Kieron's roll of double six to see all the French thrown off again.  But as skirmishers started to take a toll and a gun battery positioned itself to fire at the Austrian horse from the heights, they retired to screen the Austrian right for the rest of the game tying up all the French cavalry on that side of the board.

The Kurassiers 'Matrix moment' when a double six allowed them to beat off three attacking French units

In the centre, General Keller ordered his main infantry division to storm the bridge from the upper to the lower town.  In the teeth of punishing French cannon fire from the heights, the fusilier battalions charged across.

As General Keller and his staff look on from the North-Western bank, Kurstein's Division charge across the bridge...

... and encounter fierce resistance from the French 8th Light Infantry regiment whose volley fire throws the first attacking battalion back, but breaks as the second comes on undaunted (in a classic DBM-style 6 v 1 dice throw).

The tough Austrian line infantry pushed across the bridge and into the lower town, routing a Polish line infantry battalion and occupying the buildings there.

As more line infantry descends from the heights to try to stem the Austrian tide, the first Polish battalion is pursued through the streets of lower Grub.

Kieron now felt the time was right to unleash his light cavalry across the eastern ford.  One French hasty infantry square was crushed, the second held up a unit of hussars.  By now though the battle was won.  With the upper town, both fords and the bridge firmly in Austrian hands, and the French only just hanging on in the lower town Friant ceded victory to Keller and withdrew the remaining French troops.

The Austrian light cavalry charge across the eastern ford

An aerial view shows the Austrians crossing into the lower town, with French defenders disrupted

The view from Keller's position - Grub is taken.

We found that an engagement such as this with 9 infantry battalions, 3 cavalry regiments, 2 gun batteries and a couple of skirmish stands per side was both easily completed in an evening (the playing time was just over 2.5 hours) and gave the players a meaty enough command to keep them profitably occupied.  I'll look to organise more of the same in 2014.

Vasco de Gama - 31 October 2013

Halloween games for a reduced cast at Adrian's.  With 4 players we went for the clever Vasco de Gama.  Very clever mechanisms result in challenging choices but never complete dead ends.  What looked like some early hardships ultimately allowed Kieron to develop a commanding lead which he managed to retain, with the rest of us bunching up a full 10 points behind.  Final scores Kieron 82; Deej 72; Adrian 70; Orhan 69.