Small World - May 18th

A first outing for Small World, an updated version of an old favourite Vinci. Vinci's gameplay was pretty straightforward and based around the rise and fall of empires across Europe. Players control a number of empires during the game, each with its own special powers, and have to choose the right moment to abandon one empire and move on to the next.

Small World moves the setting to a fantasy realm which fits the gameplay better, and actually simplifies the rules somewhat. The main changes are that each empire is now a race/special power combo, victory points are secret and the game lasts a fixed number of turns.

The game itself played pretty quickly.

James ended up playing only two races - his first (trolls) set themselves up in an expensive to overrun location and the followup (halflings) dug themselves in, scoring James good points each turn.

Orhan went for a more spectacular approach - picking a good combo and making a high score before moving quickly onto another.

Kieron suffered from having his active race getting hammered early on (by Adrian and Orhan?) and never really recovered.

Meanwhile Adrian and David played a more standard game, typically a couple of turns of activity before picking a good time to decline.

Final score was a victory for James on 90 points, Adrian on 89, David 84, Kieron 77 and Orhan 67. James' gameplay may have been on the dull defensive side, but it worked - just.

All in all, a good fun game, and we'll play it again soon.

UK Games Expo - 5 June 2011

Andy and I went to the UK Games Expo today (as did Adrian with Felix and his gang!).  This remains mostly a board game event, with lots of board game sellers and demonstrators, including home-made prototypes.  Unfortunately, the only lead is fantasy and sci-fi.  The RPGers are also well-represented and there are increasing numbers of folks in Star Wars and Dr Who costumes.  All in all, a good show with a nice atmosphere.

The Bring & Buy was the biggest draw for me, helping clear out the loft a little bit, and also funding the purchase of some replacements.  I was looking in particular for six player games and found three.  Pelopennes looks the best of the bunch and is a civilisation-building game with bidding.  Ivanhoe is a card game with knights and castles, and looks ok for a short game.  The highlight was finding a limited-edition prototype version of Scramble For Africa, a colonisation/war game from David Watts - the creator of our original Wednesday night game, Railway Rivals.

For comedy value, I also bought Pot Black Snooker Dice - a two player game with a miniature green baize snooker table to roll dice on and a proper wooden sliding snooker score board.

Thebes and Stone Age, 25 May

Four Rivals round at Adrian's this week for a double feature: Thebes and Stone Age, both four player games that had not yet been road-tested.

First up was Thebes, an attractively produced German game in which the players have to amass knowledge and kit in Northern Europe for archaeological digs in the Mediterranean and Levant. The key (and unique as far as we could tell) mechanism was a time track on which each player expended turns which corresponded to how long the actions they chose would take. For example travelling from one city to another would take a week (the game is set in 1901), conducting a dig could take 12 weeks. The player who was furthest back on the time track would take the next action, so the player order was very fluid - cleverly so. Risk management played a big part given the fair degree of luck and randomness in the game. Points could be acquired through methodically collecting cards, but greater points were to be found by digging up treasures - literally, by drawing tiles from a bag, with the majority of tiles being worthless (sand, dirt etc). As it played out, Kieron went to one extreme in terms of tactics, opting for lots of card collection and only excavating later. Adrian went to the other, going for early and multiple excavations. Kieron and James had below average luck in the draws, Orhan and Adrian above average. In the end the scores were Adrian 55, Orhan 50, James 41 and Kieron 31. Good fun and worth another play (as opposed to being a trade-in at the Games Expo).

Given that the game was also quick we then had a go at Stone Age. Another beautifully produced game in which players seek to optimise the activities that their tribe undertakes each turn, whether collecting food, or resources, or building buildings or inventing civilization. Sort of like Agricola, but much faster and intuitive. Multiple different routes and scoring options mean that different tactics can all be deployed. In this case Orhan's gold hoarding and tool development stole the show with a spectacular 228 points; Adrian next on 145; James on 135 and Kieron on 122. Well worth playing again.

Show and Tell, 22 May: BKC US Army Reinforcements

After going through the rules again after Easter I couldn't resist ordering a handful of things to supplement my existing US BKC forces since I had put in a Pithead Miniatures order for Andy's birthday.

The first unit is a platoon of M10 Tank Destroyers.

Then, a couple of weapons carrier jeeps which will transport either the 81mm mortars or heavy machine guns.

I'm impressed with the Pithead figures, especially the M10s. Nicely cast and they paint up well.

Battlestar Galactica, 11 May

Another outing for Commander Adama and crew with a six player Galactica round at Adrian's last week. We opted for one of the game variants that changed the initial character set up (seemingly simply to remove the better looking cast member cards...).

The game was a textbook example of cohesion and co-operation from the start, so much so that Kieron was convinced that everyone was human and that there were no Cylons. Not true, Adrian was a Cylon from the start and James found that out in about turn 2 but kept quiet lest he draw the Cylon card in turn 4. As it turned out Andy did, but played it very low key. Adrian did too, but largely because he couldn't remember whether it was worth the Cylons declaring themselves mid-game - and asking for the game mechanics would have given it all away. So it all ended up being very low key and a bit flat with hardly any plotting or derrening. The humans won quite comfortably.

Show and Tell: 300mm Army Figure

My late Grandad always had gnomes in his back garden and repainted them every year.  When my Dad was clearing the house for sale, I retrieved a very sad looking gnome from the garden.

I wanted to repaint him and give him a new home in our garden but knew that Louise hated gnomes - we still haven't cleared up the mysterious incident from our first house when my original gnome leapt from a window sill and smashed his own head in - a cat may have been involved but we'll never know...

So the solution was a gnome who wouldn't stand out too much in the garden - camo-gnome!

And here he is hiding in the flower bed.

7 Wonders & Loot - 4 May 2011

Another play of Orhan's 7 Wonders, which again proved a lot of fun with the variety of strategies that can be attempted.  A close game with the final scores of Orhan 62, James 61 (yes, I did double-check the sums ;-) Adrian 58, David 55, Stuart 52, Kieron 41 and Andy 37 (but with an incredible collection of monuments).

Then a quick first play of Reiner Knizia's Loot - a plundering pirate game.  Simple yet clever, this saw us in teams of two (Orhan doubling up) to attack merchant ships with our pirates.  Kieron & James were the Captains with 25, Andy & David the First Mates on 22, Stuart & Adrian the salty old sea dogs on 18, and Orhan the cabin boy on 4.