Power Grid - 9 December 2009

Five of us settled down for old favourite Powergrid with one of the original boards: America. Orhan started in the North East corner shielding cities he could link to later, Andy did similar in the South East. Kieron started nearby but David and James both started in the mid-West and Kieron ended up encircled.

Some differences from previous game: no ludicrously high bidding wars (missed you, Stu), fewer replacement power stations bought, and the final position saw three players all able to power the most cities. So it all came down to money, and the three revealed note by note until James just pipped David to take first place.

Scores: James 14 cities and 248 elektros, David 14 and 230, Andy 14 and 196 (he had to spend more to reach the 15 cities built that ended the game), then Orhan with 13 cities and Kieron with 12.

Field of Glory, Assyrians v Egyptians, 6 December

Orhan and I began the FoG training for next year's Anderida with a Biblical bash involving Orhan's first version of Neo-Assyrians (with Phrygian allies) versus a scratch list I put together of Libyan (ie Late) Egyptians - based around the figures I had for the 2002 Anderida DBM army (complete with Stargate).

The first thing that was apparent was that 850 points provides fewer units and a greater amount of blank space on the table: Orhan's Assyrians were 13 strong; my Egyptians 15 but with only 3 commanders. The terrain was Agricultural with pretty much all of it falling on Orhan's side - several pieces of Open and Enclosed fields messing up his deployment somewhat (very few places for his heavy infantry to go for example). I was left with the challenge of stacks of medium impact foot (Invincible Meshwesh) and light foot making a dash for the terrain on Orhan's side. I deployed the 3 units of Light Chariots to screen Orhan's centre and my right flank - which was totally open and dominated by his 2 Heavy Chariot units.

The battle opened with the sole unit of Light Horse (Orhan's Skythian mercenaries) catching one of my javelin skirmish units in the middle of the field - I fled, Orhan caught me. Curtains I thought, but some excellent dice for the Libu and woeful roles for the Skythians meant that the Libu held (albeit Disrupted and then for one turn Fragged) until a Chariot unit could get in and flank charge the Skythians, who broke the next turn. However, this engagement held the Chariots long enough for them to be hit in turn by Orhan's Elite Guard cavalry. These wiped out the Chariots over a couple of turns due to good dice rolling (and being able to re-roll 1s, 2s and 3s coz Orhan threw a general into the fight). The Guard cavalry, although Superior, a bit shooty, and with light spear and sword were nevertheless not quick killers, lacking lances. We both weren't sure that that they were really worth the points.

Elsewhere on the field, my Light Chariot on the right held off the Heavies long enough for them never to get into the battle. The Meshwesh that got into the rough marmalised a couple of units of light and medium foot facing them. My superior Nubian light foot and a Light chariot unit broke through shooting alone a heavy foot spear/bow combo unit. And two more units of my light foot broke through Orhan's centre.

We stopped at the point where it looked like a clear victory for the Egyptians and then analysed the army lists and options. Some thoughts:

850 points is quite small. Going for lots of Superior, Armoured units didn't feel sensible.

Light Chariots are quite hard. We weren't sure how hard Heavy Chariots were coz they were too lumbering to carry a wing. If they'd got into the fight though they might have been nasty. Impact foot destroy average medium foot quickly. Having lots of light units was quite effective. We didn't bottom out whether 4 troop commanders or 2 x field and 1 x troop was better. I think that we both considered that getting some early playtesting in with armies for next year will be worth it - the game feels very different to the Pike/Blade/Elephants/Cataphracts of Anderida 2009; which is good.

The Princes of Florence - 2 December 2009

A Rio Grande game, still in the top twenty on Board Game Geek and the winner of a clutch of awards, but barely (perhaps just once or twice) played by us - and certainly not mentioned on the blog before. The Princes of Florence rulebook does its very best to stop you wanting to play the game - even with Kieron avoiding his usual "free association" style of sharing rules, it was really hard to understand. Finding it difficult to get into isn't helped by the terrible graphic design - cards and boards are mostly a yellowish colour with a really challenging font and limited use of pictures. (Some folks on BGG feel similarly - it seems there is a different version that looks lovely - see here for example).

Eventually we got through the rules and found to our complete lack of surprise that it was much simpler once you actually started playing. The game involves developing medieval and renaissance cities to attract various professions. It involves bidding, trying and changing strategies, making the most of cards you pick up, and fitting tiles together to develop your city. So a bit of everything really.

And it's a lot of fun with different approaches to take, for example Stu pursued builders and cramming his city, James went for as many artisans as possible, David went for Prestige bonuses. It was a close game with the lead changing throughout. Orhan took a strong lead in the middle of the evening but the endgame was between David and James, with David just jumping ahead by one point in the final Prestige tally. Scores on the doors: David 55, James 54, Orhan 48, Kieron 43, Stuart 42. A game we should play soon enough that we don't have to go through all the rules again!

Saga, Ra - 25 November 2009

We got out a four-player game perhaps only played once before - and certainly not since we started this blog - namely Saga. This short game has the players using knights to conquer kingdoms from each other. Some clever mechanisms but an element of luck in getting the timing right, so you can take a kingdom before someone takes one of yours. Since the bulk of the fame points come from your knights defending a kingdom at the end of the game, and ownership of kingdoms does switch around a lot, the ranking of the players during the game is quite fluid. Final scores: James 40, David 36, Orhan 29, Kieron 26.

Then another outing for regular favourite Ra. The usual (but never boring) banter and Derren-ing ensued. Orhan was unCivilised and suffered the consequent penalties; James played the pharaoh and monument strategy, and secured his second win of the evening with possibly the highest score yet in Ra. Final scores: James 63, Kieron 43, David 33, Orhan 14.

Ticket to Ride - 11 November 2009

A light evening of post-Anderida reminiscing and a short game of Ticket to Ride. We played using James' expansion pack providing larger cards (are we really getting so old as to need large format games now?) and more route tickets.

David and Kieron built long sweeping routes - around the north and south of the board respectively while James and Adrian scrapped in the middle. Andy was squeezed out early on and collected vast numbers of cards before building a decent route in the last few turns. In the meantime the rest of us tried to augment our scores with additional tickets.

For Kieron this worked well, he kept picking up routes he'd already connected. He ended up making 8 routes earning a whopping 204 points. For David it was a mixed blessing. Although earning the reward for longest track, 4 out of the 10 cards he collected were missed. Somehow Adrian had collected a large number of very cheap routes, so despite making them all he failed to earn many points.

Final score: Kieron 204, David 119, Andy 118, James 115, Adrian 104.

Was this Kieron's revenge for Anderida?

Ra - 4 November 2009

A partial break from Field of Glory before the Anderida competition this weekend. We reviewed the opponents' armies to get a feel of what we might be facing. And then relaxed with a game of Ra.

The usual Derren-ing, Russian roulette with the tile track, and mix of good luck and disaster. David came up trumps with a huge collection of monuments and a final score of 39, with Andy 31, Kieron 22 and James languishing on 15.

Verrat! and Ulysses - 30 September 2009

With the welcome return of Stuart to games night, we finally got round to trying a couple of the games I bought at the Bring-and-Buy at Birmingham's Games Expo earlier this year.

The first was Verrat!, a four player palace intrigue game, meaning "Betrayal" in English. Uniquely in all our games nights, here was a game where the reading of the rules lasted longer than the game itself. As we stepped through the rules, we were increasingly excited about the clever game mechanisms but as we played, we very quickly realised that if everyone clubbed together and thought about it, they could make it impossible for the leading player to complete their objectives and win (and so the game would last forever). Alternatively, they might not spot one option, and that leading player could quickly and easily (but unsatisfyingly) achieve victory. So a win for David but a new eBay item for me.

The second game was Ulysses, a 3-5 player exploration/influencing game. Sadly the influencing turned out to be very limited and victory was assured by collecting enough cards to crush your opponents. Again not a very fun game to play - a view shared by the others even though they didn't do as dismally as I did. A win for Stuart and yet another eBay item for me.

Still, it was a much more fun evening than the games reports might suggest!