Virtual Games Night - 1 April 2020

After our successful test session last week, we had a full-on international games night this week using Zoom to chat whilst we played.  David, Kieron and James started with the quick and fun push-your-luck dice game Can't Stop, which dates back to 1980.  When Stuart and Adrian joined us we had a couple of games of 7 Wonders - which plays even more quickly when the implementation is highlighting which cards you can build for free, or which require spending and from whom.  And we finished with a game of Puerto Rico - which we have played about once every three years over the last decade or so, but I suspect we will play a bit more often now.  The plan for next week is to try Roll for the Galaxy.

We're learning how to use the Board Game Arena website - we had to expel non-Rival players who had joined before we reduced the numbers, and Kieron accidentally ended up playing Can't Stop (very slowly) with a completely different group at one point.  But apart with some oddities that David and James encountered playing Caylus at the weekend, the implementation of the games is extremely good, with lots of additional help provided.  It is inevitably a very busy site and took a while to log in, and we had some delays but nothing that messed up anyone's turn or the game itself.  Three of the Rivals are now Premium members (~£4 a month) which unlocks a wider range of games and guarantees you can log in even when the site is busy.

Japanese figures finally finished!

I finished the mounted Samurai yesterday - a present from Adrian some time ago...

I painted them up to match the six armoured Samurai I have so that those characters each have a mounted and foot version.

I had painted a few more figures that hadn't made it to the blog so for completeness, here's the rest. 

Tokugawa Ieyasu and his loyal retainers

Taiko with drummer and conch player

Villagers

Unarmoured Samurai

And here's all the figures for this project in their box:

It's only taken five years to get to this point!  My reward is to build the Pagoda that Andy got me last year.  And perhaps we'll get a game when we're out of isolation...

Ambush! Mission 3: A Cold Morning in Belgium

Just David and James this week, so a return to the classic Avalon Hill map-and-counters solitaire game Ambush!  After October's disastrous Mission 4, we agreed to treat that as an "exercise" particularly as we should have been playing Mission 3 anyway.

Your squad, on garrison duty in a quiet sector of the front, is bivouacked in a small village just east of a running river.  On this misty, snowy morning, your men have been ordered to patrol nearby bombed out buildings to check for German scouts.

 We deployed in three buildings on the eastern edge of the town (I think the mission designers expected us to deploy someone in the church building in the west - it was the highest point but with the mist limiting visibility to six hexes, we thought it was better to cluster together).

This mission doesn't have activation checks and the mission proceeds by random events and paragraph checks.  After a single artillery strike near us, we then heard some rumbling as we explored the bombed out buildings, and a Panzer IV arrived in the north-east of the map, along with a group of three Panzergrenadiers, three Volksgrenadiers in the east, and three veteran infantry in the south-west.

David's half of the squad had limited cover crouching in the bush and Private E was killed by the full force of the Panzer's bow machine gun.  The rest of the men ran to the same hex as the Volksgrenadiers to engage them at close quarters with the significant side benefit of preventing the Panzer on firing on them, as the Germans will not fire into a hex containing their own men.

The Panzer trundled on, blew up our parked Jeep and eventually trundled off the map.  The game was slow to play with so many Germans activated at the same time but we steadily reduced their numbers.  Eventually a US runner appeared to tell us the obvious - Germans were still in the area and we should get out.  But this at least then gave us a way to attain all the Victory Points needed for a victory - successfully leave the map by the northern edge, and blow the road and rail bridges as you go.

Having taken out all the Germans, another group were activated on the eastern edge of the map, so we decided (also looking at the clock approaching midnight!) to ignore them and the bridges, and just exfil.

We acquired 7 VPs for searching the bombed out buildings, 12 for activated Germans (acquired regardless of whether you incapacitate or merely evade them), 1 for capturing a veteran NCO, 16 for exiting our 7 surviving squad members and the runner, and -2 for the loss of Private E.  A grand total of 34 points, comfortably exceeding the 25 needed despite our ignoring the bridge objectives.

With 32 combat points received for successfully completing the mission, we can hopefully improve some of the squad's stats and improve their chances of completing Mission 4 for real next time.

 

Hit Z Road - 5 February 2020

One of James' new games... and it's a corker.  The artwork is next level - the conceit of the game is that it has been devised by a child who survived the zombie apocalypse and they've had to adapt what is to hand to make the game.  So the box is amended and tatty, the resource counters are bottle tops, player markers are things found in wallets (e.g. credit card, loyalty card) and the cards are mostl playing cards.  And best of all, some of the cards and counters are adapted from real world games, most of which we own, like 7 Wonders, Splendour, Ticket To Ride and Dixit.

And fortunately, the gameplay lives up to the production values (so finally, a zombie game that even Kieron might play...?).  There's a bidding mechanism so players interact to choose the best routes as they travel from coast to coast with the zombies in hot pursuit.  And there's dice rolling as your survivors battle it out with the groups of zombies who they regularly encounter.  Which brings the double joy of managing to survive for another round by some lucky rolls, and sniggering whilst your competitors group of survivors are unexpectedly decimated.

There was a bit of an issue with the resource runaway leader - if you've got most resources, it's easier to win the bidding, and then take the route that gives you the most resources back.  It would be interesting to see how much that is the case next play, now we have a feel for the distribution of resources and zombies throughout the game rounds.  But we also found a good variant on BGG where the second of the two cards in each route is hidden - which rather fits the theme well: you might be able to see down the road but not round the corner.

James was first to run light on resources and despite a fiery death for a horde from his molotov cocktail, his last survivor succumbed in the sixth (of eight) rounds.  Andy and David were both taken out in the seventh round - giving the Stuart the automatic win without needing to count the victory points we had attained.  Stuart did a lot of fleeing rather than fighting so actually had a lower number of victory points.  But he survived, which is more to the point.  Looking forward to playing this again.

Quacks of Quedlinburg, 22 January 2020

Naff name, great game.  That was the verdict from Wednesday's try out of Quacks of Quedlinburg at Adrian's.  A beautifully produced game involving potion creation via ingredients drawn, a la Ra, from one's own personal ingredient bag.  Pull too many of the wrong ingredients (which alas are compulsorily included at the outset) and your potion blows up.  Too few of the right ingredients and your potion isn't worth very much in terms of victory points or cash to buy new ingredients.  All in all it's a game of managing jeopardy and opting for menu strategies that allow different approaches to brewing up.  Or blowing up.  At any rate it was good fun and James stole the show with his effective use of Yellow stuff.  Final results James 81, Adrian 60, Stu 58, Andy 53.  Definitely worth another go.

Notre Dame & Colt Express - 8 January 2020

Another game in rat-infested Paris with worker placement and card game Notre Dame.  Andy's 4 block strategy gave him lots of double coins or rat removal but didn't generate the prestige points needed.  Stuart stayed out of Notre Dame itself, collecting plenty of prestige points from the character cards.  David, James and Andy visited Notre Dame each turn but James' extra cash enabled the larger donations, ultimately pipping Stu to first place by just two points.

We then played Colt Express with the Horses & Stagecoach expansion that David got James for Christmas.

As well as the obvious, this also adds hostages who can be ransomed (but cramp your style during the game), whisky flasks that give bonuses with the cards, and an extra strongbox defended by a shotgun-wielding character.  That sounds a lot but it all complements the original game really well, giving more variety and opportunities to shoot James.  Stuart and David got the strongboxes but a later punch-up saw Stuart take them both and climb to the roof in the last move to avoid sharing any booty.

New Year Games Bonanza - 2 January 2020

A lot of players and a lot of games for the first session of 2020.  Lucas, Kieron and James started with Byzanz, a neat little card game with bidding and collections.  In a promising sign of a good game, the final scores were really close: 32, 34 and 36 points.

Andy was then subbed in for a game of St Petersburg.  Kieron went for buildings only leaving James and Andy to collect large numbers of nobles, with James winning with a set of nine.

After Adrian and Stuart arrived, we played James' new game Flash Point: Fire Rescue.  This cooperative fire-fighting game had a great theme, looked the part and modelled the spread of fire really well.  Perhaps we were lucky with some of the rolls but we rescued the target number of victims with ease, so we didn't really experience the peril.  Next time,we'll play in heroic mode with more initial explosions and hazards to make it more of a challenge.

Next up was Ra.  The usual shenanigans.  Another win for Andy.

Lastly, Lucas, Kieron, Andy and James played 7 Wonders - yet another win for Andy.