Porta Nigra - 20 September 2017

First play for this new game bought at Colours.

Despite some clever mechanisms, nice pieces and production, this game ultimately left us a little disappointed.  One reason was that unusually for a building/resources game, there is no economy to create to progress the game, so it feels the same all the way through.  Another factor was that the final scoring contributed about two-thirds of the final score, so the in-game scoring is less important (James was last before the final scoring, but just inched ahead of David in the end).  Of course, it may be that now knowing how the game plays will mean we approach it differently.  Probably worth another go before a final ruling.  Scores: James 211, David 204, Andy 171.

Colours - 16 September 2017

Andy and I headed off to Newbury yesterday for Colours, meeting up with Adrian and Jonathan.  Colours is now just a one day event after a hiatus last year.  It didn't feel any more crowded despite the loss of the second day although I wonder if there were slightly fewer traders as the ground floor had a bit more space than previously.

I headed straight for the Bring & Buy as usual and this year picked up a couple of board games.  The first is Mombasa, an African trading game, currently 8/10 and #57 overall on BoardGameGeek and winner of numerous game awards in 2016.  The reviews look excellent and so I was surprised to find the game is effectively brand new, with counters yet to be pressed out!

The second game is Porta Nigra, lower down the overall rankings on BGG but still a very respectable 7.4/10 (for reference this is below Ra but above Peloponnes).  This is a building game set in the Roman period, inspired by the "Porta Nigra", a large Roman city gate located in Trier, Germany built in 200 CE and still standing.  I particularly liked the stacking building pieces.

As always, there were plenty of impressive looking demo and participation games.  Highlights included a Lego sub-sea exploration game (temptingly on sale with dozens of vehicles and sharks but I resisted!):

...a WW2 desert game:

...and a game of the Franco-Austrian war with some stunning scratchbuilt buildings:

The First Samurai

After a burst of activity making Japanese buildings and scenery following a visit to Japan in April 2015, the file box of 28mm figures waiting to be painted hadn't got much further than being based and primed in the subsequent two years.

The project had built into such a big thing, I struggled to restart it, and always had plenty of other projects to work on.  Andy's solution was to keep the file box closed and just concentrate on painting a single figure, which he chose, from the "Samurai fighting with swords in everyday clothing" set.

So here it is.  And fingers crossed the painter's block is gone!

Camping It Up

I finished these in August but forgot to post about them.  You might have spotted that the Mamluk army I posted about a couple of months ago didn't have any baggage.  What I bought at the time was a set of tents - Mongolian yurt, Arab desert tent and Chinese tent:

And a set of dioramas - pig roasting, market sellers and campfire

My aim was a flexible set of bases that can be combined to form baggage for my Mamluks and my forthcoming (don't hold your breath) Mongol and Yuan Chinese armies.  They will suit of course a variety of other nomadic, Arab or East Asian armies, and combining two of the dioramas without a tent could be baggage for pretty much anything.

All of the tents and dioramas came from Baueda.  The exception were the market figures which came out of one of Andy's boxes of bits a few years ago!

Roll for the Galaxy - 6 September 2017

Just two of us for games this week, so a chance to Roll for the Galaxy as a two-player game.  The constraint to just two possible phases is relieved by the roll of an additional white dice which has the potential to bring another phase into play.

In the first game, David went for Stuart's tactic last week of cheap and fast building but it wasn't enough to beat James' fewer but more valuable tiles.  19 points for David, 29 for James.

In the second game, James developed a range of Consumption (Blue) worlds and developments which established a strong economy and a big score of 52 against David's 38.  However, only at the end did James notice that his Reassign benefit only worked for a subset of his workers not all of them, so he had been a bit free and easy with his dice in the last few turns.  David graciously judged it still a win for James but not with quite such a margin ;-)

Roll for the Galaxy - 30 August 2017

First games night of the new term and a chance to catch up as well as play a couple of games of Roll for the Galaxy.  David ran away with the first game with plenty of conspicuous consumption - something like 43 points with Stuart on 34 and James 33.  In the second game, Stuart played a fast and cheap building strategy to minimise the benefit of the development tiles that James and David were paying high costs for.  James and Stuart drew on 25 points but James' extra workers gave him the win in the tie-breaker.   

Artificium & Ra - 29 June 2017

Another play of Artificium, a clever resource chaining card game.  David scored 62, Andy and James both 54.  The rules claim that "if two or more players have the same number of victory points the game is tied and all tying players win!" which suggest Andy and James were the joint winners, but we generously allowed David his victory.

We played Ra - for the first time in quite a long while.  Lots of fun and winding up as usual.  Andy just squeaked a win by a single point.  Final scores Andy 50, James 49 and David 31.