Japan Project - Garden items

One of the items I spotted at Salute had sold out by the time I found them, but were available again at Colours last weekend.  It's another laser cut MDF kit...

...but with all the accessories (paper, grit, stones, moss) to make up a Japanese-style garden with four lanterns and seven assorted planters.  It's really designed for more modern gaming but I think it will fit.  And there's plenty of leftovers to make a larger Japanese rock garden.

Amun-Re - 16 September 2015

James and Stu at David's for a return to Amun-Re.

The Old Kingdom had James doing everything he could to keep the sacrifice phase low to support his caravan income alive. Stu meanwhile used his massive farm income to make large offerings and claim the 3 item bonus. David avoided the extremes and was able to collect the second place bonus for minimal payment.

The first half completed with us each gaining the same temple set bonus, but by building for the "most pyramid" bonuses David and Stu pulled away from James. David managed to complete a bonus card for three extra points. However as with many of these games, the first scoring is only a small part of the whole picture.

Moving into the New Kingdom, James built up a massive income, while David struggled to make any money as he was less successful than James at holding down the sacrifice offers. Stu collected a large number of cheap build power cards and was able to use them to develop several large pyramid complexes.

James' purchasing power really told as we added up the final scores. Before the final money bonus, James and David were tied on 41 with Stu on 40. Then James revealed his loadsamoney wad and the final score was James 47, David 45, Stu 42. A really close and enjoyable game.

Footnote: I went back to the rules to check a few things afterwards and discovered a few things we weren't doing right. You can discard a power card at any time in exchange for a gold. Useful especially when you realise you aren't going to make the bonus cards work. The 8 income card is placed onto a province and replaces that province's income for this round. We should also be stricter on when cards can be played (something we realised part way through), although it is a shame the cards don't have that information on them. Finally (and crucially) you can't play more than one power card of a particular type in a phase. In other words you can only play one cheap build card each round, and during the scoring phase you can't use more than one of each type of bonus card.

Colours 2015

After last year's hiatus, Colours was back again at Newbury Racecourse today, but just today rather than the whole weekend.  Andy and I drove up in the morning, and I bumped into Adrian a few times who was there in the afternoon.  I missed Jonathan but he was spotted by Adrian.

I really like this show - I hope they can keep it going.  It certainly seemed to be popular with traders and wargamers - probably a bit more crushed than usual since folks only had the one day to get there.

I bought a resin river (seven 12 inch long pieces), a Nissen Hut and pill boxes for Dad's Army scenarios, a pack of Japanese garden items, and some paints and basing materials.  Not a bad haul.

As usual, some great looking participation and demonstration games.  Here are my favourites:

Ben-Hur in Playmobil

 Amazing scenery in an American Civil War game

Another colourful game (ECW?)

 Stunning interior

A close up of the bar area

Modern Afghanistan

Wings of Glory with clouds, zeppelin and lots (and lots) of planes 

'Allo 'Allo game (I loved the mat - googled it when I got home - £59!) 

Beautiful painting on one of the figure manufacturer stands 

WW1 stretcher bearer game

DBA - a second helping

I also really enjoyed our DBA evening this week - all the good bits of DBM (nice looking battle, variety of troop types) without the 3.5 hour play time.  So those 6-1 dice rolls can't ruin an entire half-day - just finish your 45-60 minute game, and hope for better luck next time!  Here's a few more photos:

DBA - 9 September 2015

After a break of many years, we played a DBA later medieval mini-tournament this week.  Andy played Ottomans, James Burgundians, Deej Teutonic Knights, and Adrian Polish.  The two competitions in parallel on the kitchen table worked well and we were soon back into the flow of the rules.  DBA 2.1 is a very good game, simple enough to get 3 games completed in an evening, but involved enough for it to be a real challenge with each game on a knife edge throughout.  The results were:

Teutonic Knights beat Ottomans

Burgundians beat Polish

Polish beat Ottomans

Teutonic Knights beat Burgundians

Polish beat Teutonic Knights

Burgundians beat Ottomans

Which left James, Deej and Adrian on 2 wins out of 3 each, and Andy alas with the wooden spoon of no victories - which we could all blame on the rather underpowered Ottomans (who lacked any Knights or hard-hitting infantry).  We'll do this again soon since the format worked very well indeed.

The Teutonic Order invades Turkey

Polish cavalry charge the flank of the Burgundian army

The view from the Ottoman lines as the Polish attack

The Teutonic and Burgundian Knights clash

The Polish prepare to charge the Teutonic Knights

Nations - 2 September 2015

We tried out one of Adrian's 2015 Xmas presents at Stu's last week - Nations, a new game from a Finnish designer which continues in the tradition of Civilization but adds an abstract Eurogames approach.  Players buy card upgrades each round to increase military power, state stability, and production of various resources.  Golden Ages can provide extra resources or victory points as can winning battles.  Starting wars has the general affect of causing grief to the other players and encouraging a military arms race.  And this was the tactic that started a Stu/James militarism vibe that went through the game and probably contributed to Stu and James coming out on top - that, plus the construction of Wonders of the world that gave James more options than the rest of us.  Although we only played 5 of the possible 8 epochs, we started late and had to go through the rules so this is probably a game we could finish comfortably in an evening.  Final scores: James 35; Stu 28; Adrian 22; Deej 15; Andy 7.

Notre Dame & Ra - 26 August 2015

Just the three of us last week, so we tried Notre Dame.  The closeness of the regions with three provided easier pickings with the carriage movement, and Stuart and Andy pretty much cleaned up before James got a look in, but he did get an early visit to the Cathedral instead.  Rats came and went, character cards provided variety, and we had a good close game.  Final scores Stuart 51, James 49, Andy 43.

Time then for perennial favourite Ra.  With three players, each has four bidding tokens, so potentially more opportunities to win bids, but the best bid token (13) wasn't even used in two of the epochs, due to rapid arrival of Ra cards.  Final scores James 47, Andy 34, Stuart 26.