Hacienda & Maori - 27 February 2013

Disappointingly only two of us made it to Andy's place this week.  James brought along his collection of unplayed Christmas presents and we started with Hacienda.  This is a game by Wolfgang Kramer, designer of many many games including El Grande, Tikal, El Capitan and Princes of Florence from our collections (so probably second to Knizia in the games we play).

The players are Argentinian ranchers cultivating land, breeding herds, and building haciendas.  Money is spent on land and animals, and earned through harvests and taking animals to market.  Points are scored in the middle and the end of the game from things like largest herd, building around water, and numbers of markets visited.  This latter element brings the players into conflict, trying to build to markets before they are full.  Another fun and clever game that played in about 90 minutes with just three of us.  Yet another win for Kieron on 155 points, with James just behind on 152 and Andy trailing on 72, having perhaps bred animals and taken them to market before cultivating enough land to earn more points.

With Kieron not 100% healthy, he then left, and Andy and James tried out Maori.  This is a cracking little game with a ship that explores around a sea of tiles that are collected by each player on a board, building up a map of islands that score points depending on the huts, palm trees and garlands they contain.  We were chatting as well but I think once we'd gone through the simple rules, we played this game in not much more than 20 minutes.  Definitely a good one to finish up an evening with.  Neat idea, great quality pieces and opportunities to steal the pieces others want, and (slightly reminiscent of Ra) some brinkmanship in whether you wait for the perfect tile to be pulled out of the bag.  James won with 62 points (thanks mainly to a huge four tile island with lots of palm trees) with Andy on 40.

Show and Tell, 24 February: Austrian Hussars

Alternating again with the 28mm Sudan stuff, I finished basing my most recent 15mm Shako cavalry regiment - the Austrian 2nd Erzherzog Joseph Hussars.  The figures are A&B.

The 2nd Hussars were raised in Transylvania and wore distinctive light blue uniforms and red shakos

The trumpeters wore identical uniforms but their shako bore a red plume

These figures were undercoated in matt white given the light uniform colours

The view from the Austrian lines...

Size reference shot with a 2p piece

Peloponnes & Strozzi - 20 February 2013

Another game of the classic Pelopennes.  More discussion about whether certain starting tiles gave an unfair advantage... I don't think so and BGG forums haven't picked up on the issue.  We decided it was about how effectively you managed your luck.  Kieron had a great game, winning with 30/28 People/Prestige, Stuart 2nd with 21/25, then Andy 30/19, James 18/19, Orhan 18/18 and David 12/31.

We then had a quick game of Knizia's Strozzi (Medici with ships).  Another streets ahead win for Kieron on 205, with James 170, Stuart 170, David 165 and Andy 155.

Show and Tell, 17 February: French Imperial Guard

Am still adding to the 15mm Shako collection in between painting 28mm Colonial British, Zulus and Fuzzy Wuzzies.  This week it's 2 more battalions, the 1st and 2nd of the 2nd Grenadiers of the Guard.  The figures are Essex.  I've now got 6 French Guard battalions painted up.

Given the predominance of dark blue on these figures, they were undercoated in black

The flag is the 1811-1813 pattern

Phoenicia - 13 February

The first outing of Adrian's Xmas present from Orhan, Phoenicia from Rio Grande, with Adrian, Orhan and Deej.



Boardgamegeek suggested that the rules for this one were hard to follow so we took advantage of the entirely rewritten geek set.  The game itself combines city development and worker placement with auctions for the development cards.  In theory this is quite a neat mechanism and players are able to follow a range of different strategies to acquire victory points.   In practice however it's a little bit fussy and hasn't got the streamlined simplicity of, say, Puerto Rico.  Nevertheless it's a clever and fun game and we concluded that it merited at least another go sometime.  In terms of this first play, Adrian's strategy was to max out on people trained as farmers, Deej had a balanced portfolio in his city, whilst Orhan concentrated on few people but working in the highest tech industries.  His approached prevailed.  Final scores: Orhan 39, Deej, 34, Adrian 31.

Game of Thrones - 6th February

A first outing for A Game of Thrones for James, Kieron, Andy and David. I'd set everything up prior to everyone's arrival and funnily enough we sat down next to our usual colours, so James played Lannister, Kieron was House Barathon, Andy was Stark and I played Greyjoy.
First impressions were of high quality production, but the army playing pieces were nice looking but the different types (footman, horse and siege engine) were too similar in appearance. This certainly caused a few mistakes as attackers miscalculated the strength of defensive forces.

The initial setup is very asymmetric. Stark had plenty of space in the north, but not enough to enable a victory. Greyjoy and Lannister are placed close together and could easily spend all game fighting, forcing a certain level of diplomacy. In the four player game Baratheon is left with a large swathe of valuable southern territories to take uncontested, forcing the other players to do something about it or lose.

Gameplay has lots of interesting features. Victory is achieved by controlling 7 castles or strongholds. There are mechanisms for supply and mustering troops that mean you have to watch out for over extending. You don't know when you will be able to muster new troops, or when you will be forced to account for them. And the order system is neat - you simultaneously place counters face down on troops and then reveal. Orders are then resolved one by one, allowing you to adapt a little. Finally there are tracks representing control of various political entities giving the controlling players certain advantages.

The game went in waves - early on Baratheon made the most of the easy pickings and raced to 5 victory points. Stark pottered around securing the north. Greyjoy and Lannister raced to secure territories nearby and rattled sabres but avoided out and out fighting. It quickly became clear than Baratheon was going to win quickly and only Lannister was close enough to do much about it.

The next round saw combat ensue as Lannister successfully launched an attack to stem the Baratheon onslaught. Meanwhile Greyjoy who had felt totally squished between Stark and Lannister and unable to do much suddenly realised he could use his fleets to bypass Lannister territory and transport a force into the soft southern underbelly - opening the opportunity for a second front.

Lannister was now in the lead. Baratheon and Lannister traded blows resulting in an exchange of territories but no gains. Greyjoy, moving last found that Baratheon had retreated leaving the second front unchecked. There was no opportunity to attack Baratheon but instead Greyjoy was able to pick up a couple of cheap castles and move to 6 points.

So as time was running out we played one last round. Greyjoy needed one more VP and gambled it all on a single attack - everything else set to defend existing gains. It worked and then we realised we hadn't quite appreciated the endgame rule - the game ends the instant someone reaches 7. One of those rules that although mentioned hadn't quite sunk in. So it was a somewhat hollow victory, but hey in the Game of Thrones you play or die (bet you didn't think I'd say that).

Overall I think this is a great "war" game. It takes a lot of preparation but the mechanics work well and provide a number of interesting choices. The asymmetric startup forces you to play differently and make the most of what you have.  James commented that it felt a bit like the typical whack the leader type of game, which is how it played out, but I do wonder if that was at least in part us not realising how we should have been playing until a couple of turns in. None of us contested Kieron's advance until it was almost too late - we should have been pressing in a lot faster. Also reviews suggest that 4 player is not the best configuration.

Lancaster - 23 January

Another outing of Lancaster with 4 players.  Once again appreciation all round for a really well designed and clever game.  And once again consternation and wonder at David's extraordinary optimisation skills, trouncing the rest of us by winning pretty much on every victory point category.  Final scores, David 84, Adrian 54, James 52, Orhan 51.