Biblical DBA - 24 August

Another excellent DBA evening last night, this time with Biblical period armies - including Adrian's Xmas and Birthday presents from Andy (Sea Peoples and Hittites).  The four armies were asymmetrical (the Nubians' bows deadly to the New Kingdom Egyptian and Hittite chariots; the Sea Peoples' Blades bad news for the Nubians' bow) and there were a good range of troop types.  In the event, Andy's Nubians lost to the Sea Peoples and Hittites but beat the Egyptians, accruing 8 points; Adrian's Sea Peoples lost to the Egyptians but beat Hittites and Nubians (10 points); James' Egyptians beat the Sea Peoples but lost to Nubians and Hittites (8 points); and David's Hittites lost to the Sea Peoples but beat the others (8 points).  So a closely fought and enjoyable night. 

The Sea Peoples invade Nubia

The Hittites invade Egypt

Nubian bow strike Sea People auxilia

The Sea Peoples invade Egypt

The Hittites march on Nubia

Nubian bow shoot down the Egyptians

More Wild West scenery

This weekend, I made a few more flat-pack kits from Sarissa Precision for my Wild West town: a water tower, a windmill water pump, and a stagecoach.

St Petersburg - 17 August 2016

An outside game at Andy's for Kieron's last game with us this visit.  He wasn't allowed to choose the game though as Andy insisted on thrashing us at St Petersburg again.  It was a close run thing - David's buildings were scoring high but Andy's collection of nobles got the largest final bonus.

Final scores: Andy 84, David 70, James 63, Kieron 60

We finished the evening with a good few go-kart races on Andy's track.

Artificium - 11 August

James' second new game of the evening was introduced as a "typical David game". Artificium plays quickly over five turns and is about building up production lines by chaining the playing of cards to maximise your point score. There's a slightly nasty part where one of the cards lets you select a player to send back which smells a little of kingmaking for all good Rivals but if it's in the rules...

As predicted, David won, but only just...

David 58, Kieron 56, Andy 54 and James 47

Colt Express - 11 August

James brought round a couple of new games this week. First up was Colt Express, a clever mash up of a skirmish game with some elements of a card builder like Dominion and advance planning like Robo Rally. It follows the same theme as one of James' figures games, with the players controlling wild west train robbers.

The game uses a clever game mechanic of having the player pre-program their moves from a limited selection. You can choose to shoot, fight, steal goods, move and so on, but have to plan it out in advance. Some of your choices are made openly, others secretly so you have an idea what your opponents are planning, but not the complete picture.

Our first game resulted in James getting stuck in and shooting up the other robbers, especially Andy and Kieron. Andy nipped around collecting a lot of low value items off James and Kieron. David ended up at the other end of the train being hunted by the Marshall until he was able to get him out of the way (with the unwilling help of James) and grab the big prize.

End result: David 2250, Andy 2150, James 1500 (including sharpshooter bonus), Kieron 800.

Peloponnes - 27 July 2016

Stuart writes:

A game of two halves:

First half - peaceful everyone buying, building, growing and feeding

Second half - Boom (Decline) Boom (Tempest and Earthquake) Boom (Drought and Plague).

The third Boom hit nearly everyone's population very hard e.g. Deej going from 17 down to 6.  Andy's stone mountain, Jame's pile of luxury goods and Kieron's massed tiles didn't ease the pain. Plenty of lovely civilizations with no-one to live in them. In the end it was Stuart's immunity to the last Boom that made the difference. 

Scores

1st Stuart 27/27     2nd Deej 18/30    3rd   James 18/26       4th Kieron 12/31       5th Andy  9/29  

Rule 23

After another classic "Rule 23" event from Adrian last week, I thought I'd blog about the origin.

My recollection was that this from a game we played in the mid-nineties called Kings & Things.  After having played it many times, we spotted a rule that said that the first player in each turn was supposed to change i.e. the second player became the first player.

This makes sense in many games where there are limited options and each player should have the same opportunities across the whole game, but in a fighting game like Kings & Things, it essentially means that players are encouraged to fight the first player because everyone else has two turns to their one them when that person "misses a go" as they shift from being first player in one round to last player in the next.

Anyway, the belated discovery of a crucial rule in a game has become known as "Rule 23" ever since.

So I dug out a copy of the Kings & Things rules and found the first player change rule.

It's rule 29!

This either means I've misremembered the game which is the source of our "Rule 23" legend, or we played an edition of the game with different numbering of the rules.

Can anyone solve the mystery?  Otherwise, it looks like our very own "Rule 23" story is itself subject to a kind of "Rule 23" effect!