Zulu Wars Skirmish Game - 19 March 2014

Adrian's excellent write-up and photos of this game are on his Rival Colonial Miniatures blog but I thought I'd add my photos here too.  A fun game with Adrian's lovely figures and edge-of-the-seat game mechanics.  Replay please!

Alea Iacta Est - 12 March 2014

Two very different games of "The Die Is Cast" - the first more steady as we built up provinces and collected patricians, the second felt more rapid as rounds ended quickly after sequences of six dice being placed in a single turn a couple of times.  Surprisingly though, the final scores in both games were almost identical.  The first game was James 42, Andy 39 (maximising on cornucopia again), David 37 and Kieron 32.  David won the second game with 43, followed by James on 41, Kieron 37 and Andy 33.

Confusedus, he say...

I just found a scrap of paper in the "games cupboard" dated 20 March 1996 (and yes, I've checked, it was a Wednesday).  It records a single quotation from Kieron:

It's funny, isn't it, how silence can be so much more powerful than not saying anything at all.

Appropriately, I can't think of anything to add to that ;-)

I also found a list of the games we owned at that time (it's a dot matrix print-out which must have come from my Commodore Amiga!) and an outline design of a game called Stick 'Em Up about conducting/foiling bank robberies.

Tzolk'in 24th Feb 2014

We introduced Stu to this intriguing worker placement game and he wiped the floor with us.
Kieron and Andy went for the skull placement tactic. James went out to build temples and Stu went for technology upgrades with the Special temple earning him 33 points.
Kieron actually spent most of the evening begging for money and not feeding his workers. James built a load of buildings but for little reward, although he did gain almost all of his points from temples. Andy picked up the skull temple from under Kieron's nose after a double turn on the cogs of doom  left Kieron bereft of skulls. Meanwhile Stu having moved quickly to the top level on the building technology, was amassing close to 10 buildings as well as the temple which rewarded his technologies.
Final positions were Stu on around 70, Andy on 50+, James and Kieron in the 40's. At the end we forgot to go to market which would have affected points a little, but Stu was out of site!

Amun Re - 19th February 2014

We tried Amun Re with 3. It's a great little game, but I think it plays better with 4 or 5. Andy had a bit of a brain-melt with the scoring system, and didn't bother with building pyramids in the first half of the game. I acquired a load of scoring bonus chits in the first half of the game and was very lucky to make a number of them stick at the end of the game.

David 52, James 40, Andy 20

Tzolk'in - 13th February 2014

A rare journey over to visit Andy meant games in his grand hall. Tzolk'in is becoming a Rivals favourite and once again it lived up to our expectations.

Kieron and I both spotted that one of the temple buildings offered a massive 32 points if the owner could complete 3 or 4 research lines. I decided to focus most of my game on getting that score and avoided the rush to get skulls. I also tried skipping a lot of resource collection and used food to pay for some buildings. Just as I acquired the temple, Kieron realised that he'd misread the card as he'd assumed he needed 4 lines to get the points not 3. It was looking like a high risk strategy anyway as I was a long way behind when we came to the end. However when the final scores were calculated it turned out to be worth it.
David 67, Andy 57, Kieron 50 and James 45.

BKC Reboot - 30 December & 20 January

Andy and I finally got round to trying to get back into Blitzkrieg Commander in the Christmas break.  We thought we'd ease ourselves into it gently using the BKC Lite ruleset.  This was a mistake.  We got quite confused about the rules we remembered, and what we could find in the Lite ruleset and in the main rules.  We compiled a set of questions as we played which I posted later on the BKC forum and they were promptly answered by the author of the rules.  The key thing we learned was that the Lite ruleset was based on version 1 of the rules not the revised 2nd version we had been using.  So ditch the Lite ruleset if you have one.

In the first game, Andy's Italians were defending a town from James' British.

James' schoolboy error was putting his fastest tanks ahead of his slowest tanks, so they didn't get held up.  But the slowest tanks were also the strongest, so they took a while to get into the action.

They eventually arrived and the engineers started very very slowly to clear a path through the minefield, given the suppressing fire laid down by the Italians.

We were trying the standard rules where hits are removed at the end of each round, so there was little destruction although lots of suppression.  As time wore on, the British tanks on the left flank made a mad rush through the minefield.  Only a couple made it... but then discovered Andy had secreted a flamethrowing tank inside one of the buildings.  But by that time, most of the Italian infantry had been destroyed or chased out of most of the town.  We decided on a draw in the end - the Italians would lose the town, but not within the number of turns to achieve even a minor victory.

The scenario for the second game was that the British had occupied the fortified area of the town but the Italians had been reinforced and were about to counter-attack.  James made full use of the 25% allowed for fortifications...

Andy kicked off with some air sorties (the RAF gamely lending him a plane to replace the one left at home) but the close concentration of command bases shooting at the aeroplane meant it was often scared off and eventually shot down.

Andy's tactic was a delayed flank attack with a stronger force after softening up the British with a frontal attack.  This was met (and decimated) by mortar fire - although we realised afterwards the mortars should not have been so effective, causing hits only on rolls of a 6.

The Italians kept up the bombardment from a distance, striking at any British tank that dared to leave the safety of its pit.

Eventually, the flank march was brought on and, much to James' surprise, the Italians appeared to have been reinforced by a few German tanks.

There was a fierce firefight across the minefield.  With this game we were using the optional rule where hits remain on units, so there were many more losses across both forces.  Andy again caused devastation with his flamethrower units which James will try to recognise earlier next time.  But the Italians failed to evict the British from the town and their losses were such that this game resulted in a minor British victory.

With the clarifications from the forum and the accumulation of hits across rounds, the second game played more swiftly and it was a lot of fun.  Continuing the campaign approach, the next scenario planned is for the Italians to intercept a small British force coming to reinforce the town.