Pelopennes and Ra, 29 June

Five players this week at Adrian's - a last minute change of venue. We started off with the clever Pelopenes, fast becoming a firm favourite. The usual reversals of fortune were to be found with badly timed disasters and various minor frustrations. The final scores were Orhan 22, Adrian 21, Andy 17, Kieron 15 and James 12.

We then got out Ra for a solidly entertaining second game. The gameplay and banter were as good as ever and the points at the top were close. Orhan pulled off a second victory of the evening with 45; Kieron 43; Andy 41; Adrian 39 and James secured a second defeat with 17. All good clean fun.

El Grande & Dixit - 22 June 2011

A nice drive out to Andy's place for a four-man games night - numbers depleted at the last minute by infection and chess!  First game was an old favourite - El Grande.  We haven't played this for 18 months and it is starting to look rather underwhelming compared with the production values of more recent games.  But underneath it's still a cracker, with a fair bit of opportunity for crown-like behaviour.

David had a great game, getting the additional 8-pointer scoring tile onto his home territory early on, and securing it with the king for the most part - giving him 12 points several times.  Kieron got nobbled by circumstance a few times and seemed to spend most turns only deploying one man onto the board.  Andy and James fought a close battle for 2nd place in the middle.  Final scores David 114, Andy & James 104 and Kieron on 76.

Not quite enough time to squeeze in another game of Pelopennese, so we had a game of Dixit instead - the card game with slightly disturbing images.  Kieron had a blinder and got miles ahead but then stalled three points from the finishing post, giving James time to catch up and snatch victory.  Final scores James 30, Kieron 29, David 18 and Andy 15.

Ra & Pelopennes - 15 June 2011

A quick four player game of Ra whilst we waited for David.  An odd game with a very quick first epoch with no (perhaps one?) civilization tiles.  Orhan and Kieron raced ahead with 52 and 48 points respectively, whilst Andy and James battled for last place with 20 each - which became 15 for Andy when he was found to have the lowest set of bidding chit scores at the end.

Then a couple of games of Pelopennes, both of which took an hour.  Orhan won the game with 24 points (of prestige - everyone else had population as their lowest score), Andy on 18, Kieron and David on 15, and James on 12   We played again with four of us - Andy planning to leave early but then got transfixed by the game - this time a win for Kieron on 24, with David 18, Orhan 17 and James (last again) on 14.

Pelopennes is fast becoming a favourite game.

Seminary Ridge, South of Gettysburg - 11 June 2011

A welcome return to Jonathan's games attic for an American Civil War game.  Jonathan had painted around six hundred (yes, six hundred!) 28mm figures to accompany the hundred he painted for the Texas-Mexico scenario, so there was a lot of lead on the table.  The Union army were in blue uniform, the Confederates less formal in a mixture of greys and browns.  We used the excellent Black Powder rules again and the figures, although individually based, sat in trays of six to aid movement.

The scenario covered the southern flank at the Battle of Gettysburg.  The larger Union army were holding Seminary Ridge and defending the Emmitsburg Road running Northeast towards Gettysburg.  The Rebs had to take the ridge, and break the units supporting the Union flank, thus putting Meade's victory at Gettysburg in doubt.

Above shows the initial Union position (North being the far short table edge) as commanded by Kieron and James.  The Blues occupy the ridge in the foreground and across the road in the background.  The Rebs, commanded by Jonathan and David, are about to deploy from the Western edge.  The Union have a single artillery piece at the edge of the wood...

...and their commander is ready for action.

The Union line along the southern part of the ridge...

After a couple of rounds, all the Confederates had entered the table and started firing on the Union troops on the ridge line.  The Confederates started to do some serious damage with their group of three artillery pieces.

The view from the Confederate lines...

Jonathan's Texans charged out to attack the Union artillery piece.  They didn't quite reach but survived to inflict enough damage that it broke anyway (see below and note the casualty markers, with figures dropped back from the tray to signify a disrupted unit).

David's Alabama units advanced and took cover behind a hedgerow and started shooting up the opposing units.  Jonathan started inflicting damage on the Pennsylvanian troops in the northern part of the ridge, although they proved pretty hardy, with Kieron keeping them going for far longer than expected with a series of good morale rolls.

Perhaps frustrated by the lack of Light Horse to manoeuvre, David ordered a unit into skirmish formation...

...and they starting sneaking through the woods around the southern flank of James' mixed Union brigade...

...eventually popping out behind the Union lines...

Fortunately, Union reinforcements were on their way.  Kieron and James delayed the first reinforcing Brigade so that it come on further south at the same time as their second reinforcement entered at the north.

In the middle right of the above picture, the reinforcements have arrived and starting to march south to support the depleted troops on the ridge.  In the left of centre, Jonathan's troops have pushed on and taken the edge of the northern ridge and hold the central ground.  In the far distance...

...Kieron's reinforcements have crossed the bridge and started to deploy, but a failed command roll and disrupting fire from Jonathan meant they got no further.

We were now getting into hand-to-hand combat and both sides were taking casualties.  A Pennsylvanian unit broke and Jonathan started to occupy the northern part of the ridge (in the background of the picture below, and in the foreground are the other type of casualty marker Jonathan uses - shell cases).

The two original defending Union brigades were now broken and falling back, and the Confederates moved into positions holding the ridges.

But the Union still held the northeast and the road to Gettysburg, and had a fresh brigade threatening the southern part of the ridge.  So they had probably just scraped a minor victory.  The final layout...

After we left, Jonathan played through another couple of turns (we had played eight) and the Union army did indeed push the Confederates back off the southern ridge.

But the whole game felt in balance throughout the day.  The Black Powder mechanisms worked really well, and were fairly straightforward to use without feeling like they were over-simplifying things.  And of course, the table covered in little men and scenery looked fantastic.  A great game.

Peloponnes - 8 June 2011

After a quick show-and-tell of my purchases from Sunday's Expo, we got stuck into the most promising of the new games - Peloponnes.  This is a light civilisation game with many mechanisms common from other games but with some interesting new features.  For example, players bid for Land or Building tiles but when outbid, they have to move their bid to another tile rather than increase their bid.  It's a resource management game too with food to feed your population, wood and stone for your buildings, and luxury goods to act as wild cards.

The rules were generally good and clear but we came unstuck right at the end as we were surprised to then find that the rules say there is no income in the eighth and final round - so the call on resources is very high and most of us had significant population shrinkage right at the end.  Victory points are decided by taking the lower of your population (x3) or your prestige (plus money divided by 3).  With Orhan down to 2 population, Kieron on 3, and Andy, David and James all on 4 (so 12 points) - it was the David's higher prestige of 26 that gave him first place, with Andy a close second.

However, I've now scanned the BGG forum and found a posting where the designer himself confirms that players do indeed collect income in the final round before resolving the last disasters and feeding their population for the final time.

This would definitely have affected the final scores but I'm not sure exactly how but before the last round, it looked like Andy and Orhan were ahead.  Anyway, with the current score line, at least Kieron broke his Maltese run of finishing last in every game last week.

When I bought this game (for the princely sum of £9!) I got an expansion that will allow us to play with 6 players (as well as a box signed by the designer!).  I have now also downloaded another couple of expansions from BGG that will give even more variety.

General feeling (which I think will be strengthened now we've resolved the final round income in a way that felt instinctively right to us, even though the printed rules were wrong...) was this was a good game that we should play again soon.  Now we know the rules, I think we'd fit two games into one evening session.

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.