Bumper Short Games Night, 30 May 2007 - Niagara, Gladiators and Ra

A fun evening of short games with guest 8 year-old gamer Fred. Two games of Niagara opened up the evening. The first saw James steal victory quickly by the deadly '4 amethyst grab' technique. Wise to this, game 2 was much more tactical. Some shrewd moves by Fred won the admiration of the adults; Kieron and James, both close to victory were swept over the waterfall by the raging torrent; Adrian pipped Fred to the finish and won with a double '4 diamonds' plus '7 any gems'.

We then tried out James' new Gladiator figure game. Quite a nice little system, and perfectly suited to Fred - who systematically murdered all our fighters to be last man standing (having personally wiped out his opponents). Happily for James, his gladiator was spared by the Emperor. Kieron and mine were given the 'pollice inverso' (turned thumb) for being feeble. Finally, we introduced Fred to Ra. A super game as ever, with the usual mix of Derrening, risk taking and entertainment. Kieron stormed to victory with 47 points (having scored big on green tiles each turn); Fred was second with 31, then Adrian with 30 and James last with 21. All in all a great evening, with all the players winning a game - and thus racking up a huge number of points towards the end of year scores.
:-)

Formula De, 23 May 2007

A welcome return to this great old game (almost certainly last played in 2003!). We went for the Spa course and got a 2 lap game in. Weather flipping from sun to rain and back again confounded choice of tyres. Andy's armoured car was most unfortunate to be exploded by Kieron only 5 spaces from the pits. Fate though saw Kieron spinning out on the second lap. Adrian's early lead was eroded by both James and Deej who fought each other to the finish. Good fun.

DBM Aztecs v Anglo-Saxons 16 May

The second practice outing for the Aztecs, this time against another 'extreme' army (and winner of the 'Daftest Army' award at Anderida a couple of years back) - Kieron's Middle Angl0-Saxons. This was perhaps the first DBM game we've played in which no cavalry whatsoever appeared on the battlefield.



For the Aztecs, we fielded a smaller army than for the first outing, keeping the allied Bow command but maximising the Blades and adding the Fast Warband option. We deployed with the Warbands on our left flank, the Blades holding the centre and the allied Bow on the right. Kieron and James' deployment saw TF guarding the flanks, and, err, a big line of Spear across the table.

Both armies advanced. Our Bow shot a fair few enemy dead. The main infantry clash in the centre saw inconclusive pushing between Spear and Blade, but the Warband proved deadly - the Wb(S) (the elite 'Cuachic' warriors, see photo) cutting through the Saxon lines and breaking a command. At the time we opted to stop the Saxons were half an element off a second command breaking (and hence the army) and 3 elements of any command off breaking the army.

So a reasonably conclusive victory for Montezuma. But we won't get used to it - the Saxons are probably the best possible set of match-ups for the Aztecs. And no one would possibly be mad enough to take such an army to Anderida...
:-)

El Grande - 2 May

A four hander with Stu, Kieron, David and James. El Grande is impossible to fault - a simple but clever game with lots of opportunity for Rivalry - and we had a great fun evening full of banter.

David took an early lead with James trailing at the back, despite an effective Crown move on the first turn whereby everyone else had to send their Caballeros back to the starting pool.

The upset was around Portugal which became the Coventry of the game because opponents could be sent there without any risk of their benefiting, as it never got a score counter at any point in the game.

Stu played an enhanced score counter on the Castille and kept it well stocked with Caballeros, managing to win the maximum 8 points on every scoring turn, contributing to his winning score. James had a late surge, cashing in on a "score the five points regions" card, and overtook David, who just kept ahead of Kieron who was spread too thinly across the board. But a very closely fought game.

Final scores: Stu 114, James 107, David 105, Kieron 101

Return to the Temple of Obi Thumpi, 25 April

Having felt it high time to get the Darkest Africa figures out - including the new character figures that I acquired at Salute 06 - I revamped the Obi Thumpi Temple game to bring in 6 players and a slightly different approach.

James' French were allied to Deej's Belgians, at diagonally opposite ends of the table. Their objective was to open the Temple and steal its treasure. Stu and Russell played the natives, but natives led by previously abducted and brainwashed European women (obviously...). Their objective was to protect the Temple by releasing its protector (a T-Rex) from the Land that Time Forgot in the next valley. The third faction was Andy (Brits) and Kieron (Italians) whose aim was to release their womenfolk from the Temple's thrall. All well and good. However, unexpectedly the Brits and Stu's gang of natives decided to team up - no doubt native mind control skills at play there. This contributed to the general mayhem. The Francophones managed to get the Temple open and reveal the treasure, the Belgians made a successful grab for it - just as the Dinosaur made its appearance. The game was decided on the last turn - the Dinosaur succeeded in eating some of the Belgian troopers just before the Belgian hero was able to whisk the treasure off table. So the natives win, and (predictably?) Russell's extra kills and treasure finds in the game gave him victory.

El Grande - 18 April 2007

What a cracking game this is, even in its basic form without the expansions. A most unusual line-up for this games session with Adrian, Kieron Stuart and Russell. With James out of the way, it left the rest of us with a fighting chance of success but then we forgot about Russell who, on only his second games night, won again!

Russell's grande was in Catalonia but one of his early moves was to chuck loads of caballero's into Stuart's region which, needless to say, went down well! Stuart went all out to get caballero's into every territory which early on worked quite well but when it came to the crunch i.e. the final scoring round he found himself a little too thinly spread out. There was much thinking time in the game and plenty of opportunity for friendly jibes. Adrian was heard to say that he could not believe that teachers take longer over decision making than civil servants! R, K and A put many caballero's into the castillo region but Stu pointed out that two or three is sufficient to cause disruption when they are reallocated. Portugal came into the game for the first time. Russell thoroughly deserved the win by playing the region scoring action cards to good effect gaining some 20+ points in two succesive rounds. Kieron pipped Adrian in the very final region of the final scoring round. Final scores:
Russell 138, Kieron 122, Adrian 120, Stu 115

Perhaps next time we will try one of the expansions now that everyone has played it?

Caylus - 4 April

A first outing for Caylus with just Adrian, James and David playing. This game sees the players building both a town and a castle in order to obtain enough victory points. There is an interesting balance as you need to build up the town in order to get enough industry going to enable the building of the castle. However players are allowed a great deal of freedom - you can ignore the castle altogether and earn points by providing services to other players, or build up a supply of gold instead.

This freedom made a first play quite difficult as we had no idea how different strategies would play out. The opening rounds were very interesting as it took a while for those investing in buildings to see the effects of their builds. It dragged a little in the middle before leaping to a sudden entertaining end-game.

There was a reasonable amount of interplay, as each player's actions limit those the next player can take, but it mainly involved adapting a strategy as the turn progressed instead of actively attempting crown moves. James may disagree on this point...

As the game concluded we all appeared to be in with a chance of winning. The end result then was a bit of a surprise as my gold hoarding took me well past the others for victory.

I think Adrian has the final scores?