Caylus - 4 April

A first outing for Caylus with just Adrian, James and David playing. This game sees the players building both a town and a castle in order to obtain enough victory points. There is an interesting balance as you need to build up the town in order to get enough industry going to enable the building of the castle. However players are allowed a great deal of freedom - you can ignore the castle altogether and earn points by providing services to other players, or build up a supply of gold instead.

This freedom made a first play quite difficult as we had no idea how different strategies would play out. The opening rounds were very interesting as it took a while for those investing in buildings to see the effects of their builds. It dragged a little in the middle before leaping to a sudden entertaining end-game.

There was a reasonable amount of interplay, as each player's actions limit those the next player can take, but it mainly involved adapting a strategy as the turn progressed instead of actively attempting crown moves. James may disagree on this point...

As the game concluded we all appeared to be in with a chance of winning. The end result then was a bit of a surprise as my gold hoarding took me well past the others for victory.

I think Adrian has the final scores?

Vinci - 29 March

A first time hosting at my place since moving saw a full house for a return to an old favourite - Vinci. This great game has each player develop a series of civilizations during the course of the game, meaning that throughout the game you find yourself dealing with different opponents on different parts of the board keeping the gameplay fresh and unpredictable.

Although Andy had never played Vinci before, with (surprisingly) helpful advice and some good early moves he shot into an early lead with me close behind. Unfortunately his next civ choice was poor and progress stalled. The rest of the game saw everyone else fighting for the lead, although Kieron dropped back as Andy adopted the somewhat odd strategy of "always attack Kieron". Was this inspired by Stu and Kieron apparently playing as a team again? Those rivals who languish as "not-us" could only ponder.

The last couple of rounds saw Andy pick up a powerful Field General/Slaver combo allowing him to make up a load of points. Meanwhile Stu managed to hold off the other rivals through clever use of Diplomacy to record yet another win.

Final scores: Stu 105, Kieron 102, David & James 101, Adrian 100, Andy 80 - a good close game. Lots of fun, lots of interaction and banter and lots of attacking other players - a great rivals evening!

Mare Nostrum, 21 March 2007

The second outing for 6-player Mare Nostrum, this time at Kieron's. We opted to use the complete set of heroes and wonders, but kept the pre-programmed starting positions. The game saw less trading than usual in the early rounds. Stu as Egypt built up a commanding lead from his tax revenues. Although he was threatened (a bit feebly) by Kieron's Greece, and Andy worried him by almost moving a piece into his territory, we didn't display the killer instinct necessary to stop Stu winning rather easily. James on the other hand, who, as Rome eschewed building legions in favour of shopkeeping, was royally clobbered by Deej (Atlantis) and Kieron. This stopped him winning, but couldn't stop him securing a clear second place. Adrian (Babylon) did nothing all game. So the final scores afforded 10 points to Stu, 6 to James, and 2.5 to everyone else (an equal share of the remaining points for grabs).

Mare Nostrum felt a bit funny. Perhaps it was the lack of trading, or the abruptness of the win, or the starting positions, but at any rate despite it being a fun evening, the game lacked bite. If nothing else, having a situation where the Egyptian player will almost certainly win unless others attack them is a strange starting concept.

Games averages: James 6.42; Stu 5.38; Kieron 4.67; Deej 4.23; Adrian 3.97; Andy 2.36.

DBM: Aztecs vs Alexander - 13 March

Our first game of DBM for the year saw us testing our Anderida armies much earlier than usual. We went for an extreme version of the Aztecs - two large commands of hordes, an ally consisting of massed bow and a final stronger command of blade and warband. Alexander's had two heavy infantry commands plus one mounted command.

Alexander invaded, and at this point the Aztecs noticed that they couldn't place any rough going. Ooops. Still a couple of woods went down - nicely giving Alexander's army an anchor for a flank protected by auxilia. Meanwhile the Aztecs deployed in a historical manner with the hordes on the flanks and the tougher stuff in the middle. The Aztec deployment covered the width of the board. Alexander's just over half with an incoming flank march.

And so it began - first roll and the flank march arrives! No time for the hordes to react - they suddenly start to face knights, cavalry and light horse on their flank. It took a while, but the hordes didn't stand a chance and over the course of the game were completely annihilated!

The hordes on the other flank were unopposed and charged towards the woods and auxilia in the hope of breaking through and turning the pike block. It took most of the game for them to get there and although they had superior numbers (by about 3 times) their lesser fighting capability meant that a breakthrough wouldn't happen fast enough. They were joined by the Aztec heavy command (backing away from a toe to toe confrontation with the superior pike). In the middle the ally bow command desperately tried to turn and face the oncoming mounted threat (as it piled through the horde). In doing to they exposed their flank to a devastating artillery attack and came very close to breaking.

By the end of the game it was an easy 6-4 for Alexander. Another turn (or maybe two) and it would have been 10-0.

So what did we learn about Aztecs?

• they look nice
• masses of hordes can be annoying for opponents, but in the end they died
  
• the horde command was too slow to take advantage of the refused flank
• their strongest troops look mediocre against pike and knights
• if we want to take advantage of the numerical advantage we need to do more than cover the entire frontage
  
• protect the bow from artillery

That said it maybe wasn't the best test. Alexander's army was lucky in terrain, flank march and some of the early fighting. However they deployed well and took advantage of their opportunities. Unfortunately having our large horde command struck in the flank on bound 2 by knights doesn't give us the best test of the effectiveness of massed hordes (I doubt many stronger troops would have fared too well under the circumstances).

Still it was good to get back to DBM - especially as I missed Anderida last year.

Whist & Ra - 28 February

Huge error. We played Contract Whist with Louise to pass the time until Adrian arrived mid-evening, and agreed beforehand that the score would count for the games log. What were we thinking?

Inevitably Kieron won, and so managed to get his first 10 points of the year - final scores Kieron 48, James 43, David 38, Stu 27 and Louise 19.

But it was obviously Kieron's night as he racked up another win with the second outing for Ra - Kieron 29, David 27, Adrian 24, Stu 23 and James 17.

Ra - 15 February

The first outing for James' Christmas game from Kieron. Ra is our second Egyptian game this year and the players compete to build monuments, develop civilizations and benefit from the flooding Nile across three Epochs. The game has a very neat bidding mechanism - auctions can be forced by cards or by a player calling "Ra", and then each player uses one of their three counters to bid for the tiles currently on the auction track.

Andy bid early in each Epoch leaving him little to do for the remainder of each phase, but David made good use of calling "Ra" allowing him to bid last with low counters. Ultimately though it was these low counters that lost him first place at the end... the final points tally includes +5 for the player with the highest sum of counters at the end, and -5 for the player with the least.

James lost the piece of paper with the results on so we are relying on the superior recall of Stuart, who writes:

The result of the first Ra game is not in doubt. I am not likely to forget a win in a game that doesn't involve combat, taking out Deej, random aggressive actions or huge amounts of luck:) Kieron and myself remember the scores being 34 to myself, 33 each to James and Kieron, 30 to Deej (who would have won without the -5 penalty at the end). I think Andy was playing, but he spent most of the game inactive so it was hard to tell.

A good game to play again soon.

Zombies - 7 February

And oh how we laughed... Not at first admittedly, but by the end of the evening, with the fixed rictus grimace of Kieron inspiring as much mirth as sympathy, the guffaws were coming thick and fast. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I remember playing Zombies once before with the Rivals, probably 4 or 5 years ago now. The game itself is pretty simple, with very heavy elements of luck. But happily for those Crowning Moments, with large amounts of interaction too. What we hadn't remembered though is just quite how punishing and relentless the game is. The layout was unforgiving too, with a very long route to the heliport infested by the living dead. All of us were wiped out and bounced back to the start at least once. But entertainment really started when Kieron, 3 spaces from victory, was slotted by a corpse. As Confucius once notionally said: "There is nothing funnier than watching an old friend fall off a roof". And after that fall from glory we all pretty much lost it, and gave up any pretence of this game being anything other than a childish dice-fest. By no means a satisfying Rivals game - but probably more laugh out loud laughs than most Wednesday nights. With the possible exception of seeing James in an Evil Balaclava. And the scores? It hardly matters, but Stu won.
:-)
I think we concluded that we won't be playing this one again in a hurry. No matter how late Andy turns up...
;-)
The averages now stand at: James6.14; Stu 5.87; Deej 4.6; Adrian 4.2; Kieron 3.36; Andy 2.4.