Jailbreak - 4 January 2019

First play with the new Wild West town.  Stuart's Lawmen had jailed José María Flores, leader of a gang of Mexican bandits, and were due to hang him at noon.  The objective of James' bandits' was to break Flores out of jail and save his neck.

Three of the Lawmen started at the Sheriff's Office where Flores was incarcerated, with a further three entering the town from the southern edge.

The Mexican gang entered on the northern edge - in the distance in the next photo.

James' cunning plan was to dynamite the side of the jail and whisk Flores away on the a horse rather than entering a drawn-out gun battle with the Law.

The single stick of dynamite was planted and the rules were consulted... the dynamite exploded with a whimper rather than a bang, but even if it hadn't been a dud, a few more sticks would have been required to demolish a brick wall.

So the gun battle was on.  Especially after Stuart shot the horse the Mexicans planned to escape on.

Stuart had one of his Lawmen up on the water tower and the others crept around the corners of the Sheriff's Office.

The Mexicans burst into the Sheriff's Office ready for a fight...

...which they got, being rather swiftly knocked out in succession:

Round the back of the office, the Mexicans had better luck, including shooting the deputy off the water tower.

With both posses at their breakpoints, they needed to pass a Head for the Hills test... and the Mexicans failed.  They scarpered from the town, leaving José María Flores to his grisly fate:

Stuart had won the scenario but we had time to play out an alternate ending pretending the Mexicans hadn't run away.  This time, the Lawmen were overrun and Flores rescued from jail to fight, rob and steal another day.

Paddle Steamer

I completed today the paddle steamer that Andy got me for Christmas.

This is another excellent MDF kit from Sarissa.

It comes with a large number of sheets, four of which have to combined and compressed together to form the hull.  Here's how mine spent a night...

The kit goes together well but a lot of care is needed with the thinner pieces that form the barriers and struts around the deck.

This is where I made my first modification.  The side roofs for the promenade deck were designed to be removed.  Instead I glued them which provided the strength to allow me to remove several of the roof struts where they crossed the internal rooms.  This improves access which I think will make playing with figures on the steamer a lot easier.

There are pros and cons for whether to paint before or after constructing MDF kits.  I prefer to do it afterwards but that meant a lot of masking as I wanted to keep the planking looking like wood.

You can also see in these images where I cut out the internal roof struts.  You can also see my second modification - I added some stairs between the decks and cut out access holes in the floor of the first deck, framing them up with some spare window frames from another kit.  Again, for playability, I wanted it clear where figures are going to move from one deck to the other.

After a session in the spraybooth and removing the masking tape, the lower deck looked like this:

I sprayed the paddle wheel bright red, painted the railings a similar red and painted the deck with shellac.

The kit came with a cardboard funnel which didn't extend to the lower deck.  So my third modification was to create a funnel in three parts from 14mm dowel and install them at each level.  This means that when the roof is removed, the funnel is represented on both decks and playing figures could be positioned appropriately.

I also glued an old poker game set of figures to a piece of planking which would fit nicely into any of the rooms on the steamer, or indeed in the saloon or hotel Wild West buildings.

To finish it off, I glued some string around the capstans and surfaced the roof with black vinyl sheeting, and made some nameplates to show off the name I gave it... Louise Marie.

This is a really nicely designed kit, lots of fun to make, and I'm looking forward to playing with it in a future Wild West game.  It is also available for hire for colonial games!

Carpe Diem & Photosynthesis - 16th January 2019

Smarting from his crushing defeat at Carpe Diem last week, David arranged a rematch. Everyone was keen given we all remembered the rules and after the fairly long set-up we got underway.

We certainly played better this time and Andy in particular designed a very neat arrangement.
Towards the end David made us of some excess bread to collect tiles he wouldn't normally have been able to get, surprising the others who had forgotten the rule. It was interesting that it was the first time in two games that one of us had done it as we'd previously been saving bread to be used to complete the task cards.

Doubling up on the forgotten rules, James also forgot that he needed to complete his villa in order to collect the bonus points.

Everyone else's failing memory helped David sneak a close win. Honour restored?

David 96, Stu 91, James 86, Andy 62


Flush with his success, David produced a second game for the evening - Photosynthesis. In this game you play seeds and trees and attempt to collect victory points by seeing trees through their life cycle. You achieve this through your trees collecting light, and the most intriguing part of the gameplay comes through working out which trees are in shade and which can collect sunlight. Each round the sun moves around the board changing the light dynamic.

David and James followed a similar approach dropping seeds all over the board, growing trees and generally getting in each others' shade. Stu set up a sort of defensive formation and was soon collecting vast amounts of light most turns except when his own trees blocked each other. In the end this approach won.

It's a really odd game - not really like anything else we've played.

Stu 95, James 86, David 72.

Carpe Diem - 9 January 2019

First play of David's new game Carpe Diem.  A clever tile building game where players construct Roman gardens.  Some neat mechanisms and a variety of ways to acquire victory points.  Good fun.
Final scores: Stuart 84, James 81, Andy 48, David 45.

A Wild West town that won't blow away...

After many games over more than a decade, I decided it was time to upgrade my Wild West town.  Amazingly, I managed to sell all my cardboard buildings and so got a good contribution towards the cost of MDF replacements.

I bought half a dozen buildings from Products for Wargamers at Salute last year.  They have good levels of detail and a variety of styles, not quite as detailed as 4Ground but much better value for money.

I did have trouble with a few missing parts and duplicates (eventually sorted out) and the lack of full bases to construct the buildings upon.  The latter problem was solved by a kind colleague of Louise's who cut a set of bases for me, along with a personalised sign for the saloon.  These new bases meant that I could adapt the internal floors to use as first floors in the two storey buildings.

I bought a general store, a hardware store, undertaker, bank, hotel and saloon, and I finished painting them a few days ago.  All the roofs are removable so figures can fight inside.

They came in the usual MDF flat packs:

Prior to priming:

And after priming in grey:

The final products:

In addition, I bought a Sheriff's office with cell block extension, plus a range of smaller buildings, from TTCombat.  These were cheaper and used thicker MDF.  They aren't quite as detailed and the small building kits didn't align that well, but they're good enough.

I also bought a minehead from the excellent Sarissa and added a track and a couple of mine carts.

These are all the new buildings but for future reference, here are images of the other buildings I have which are suitable for Wild West scenarios: a stable, water tower, wind water pump and gallows, along with the two "south of the border" buildings (all but the stable and gallows are Sarissa products and I've blogged about them previously).

You might think that would do it but I got a railway station (essential to make the most of my excellent locomotive and carriages) and a church from my in-laws for Christmas, as well as a paddle steamer from Andy - so the wonderful smell of laser-cut MDF will be around the house for a few more weeks yet.

Exit: The Secret Lab - 2 January 2019

Thin on the ground for the first Wednesday of 2019 so David and I played this "escape room" game that I picked up at a charity shop earlier this year... Exit: The Secret Lab.  It was missing a couple of pieces but I recreated them from an image on Board Game Geek, and I was keen to try it, particularly after a show-and-tell where Stuart said he'd played and enjoyed it.

This can't be played a second time - not just by the players who will subsequently know the answers to the puzzles, but by anyone, as the materials are drawn on and cut up to solve some clues.

There is a booklet, a decoder wheel, and plenty of cards with clues, hints and solutions.

We really enjoyed it - challenging but do-able.  We finished it in about 90 minutes with the use of just three hint cards (out of 30) and two of those were for the final clue which used the pieces I'd printed out - and we were partly scuppered as I didn't get the scale exactly right!

Notre Dame & Skull - 19 December 2018

It had been a while since we played Notre Dame.  I tried a new tactic of ignoring the rats and taking the damage each turn - it almost worked but David acquired lots more victory points through good use of the characters.  Final scores: David 70, James 55, Stuart 54, Andy 37.

Then we tried my Christmas present from Adrian - Skull.

This is a bluffing and bidding game - a simpler but much more colourful game than Perudo, with Skulls and Flowers rather than numbers.

One of those games which looks very simple but there is more to it.  It worked pretty well with three (Andy spectated) but we suspected it would work better with more - and indeed I played this again with six players with friends over Christmas and it was fun with more interaction between the players.