Airlines - 26 July 2018

This is a classic from Alan R Moon, inventor of dozens of games including the Spiel des Jahres winner, and occasional Rivals game, Ticket To Ride.  James got it in a swap for Porto Nigra, a rather nice looking game but one that was always going to get overlooked in favour of others in the collection.

In Airlines, players are competing to become majority stockholders in several companies with the player owning the most valuable portfolio at the end being the winner.  Each turn, a player chooses between expanding an airline or playing stock from his hand. Expanding an airline adds to its routes on the board and increases its value but exposing your stock cards too early means that other players may not also expand that airline.  Scoring happens three times during the game and again at the end, but only stock played out counts, not what you are still holding in your hand, so timing your investments is key.  Clever game mechanism and pretty good player interaction as you keep an eye on the others' stock and try to takeover "their" companies.

This game was published in Germany in 1990.  And it has not aged well.  The artwork and production values of modern games is brilliant, and unsurprisingly Airlines really looks drab in comparison.

More significantly, keeping on top of which airline can expand routes in which region of the board is a bit of a challenge.  This is frustrating because otherwise it is a really good game.

Fortunately, the game was reimplemented as Airlines: Europe in 2011 and reading the rules, it looks (as one would hope) to have kept all the good bits of Airlines and got rid of the fiddly complicated bits.  And the counters are replaced by lovely little aeroplanes!  So I've bought a copy.

We had a full house for our game which was great.  Andy got a bit stuck with his initial cards and, after helping Stu earn plenty of points for his monopoly airline, only really got a good set of points in the final scoring.  Throughout the game, first place switched from James to David to Stuart in the three scoring rounds, but the gaps got a little wider at the very end.  Final scores: Stuart 84, David 79, James 69, Adrian 51, Andy 27.

The Castles of Burgundy - 18 July 2018

Another outing for The Castles of Burgundy - the third this year.  David established an early and strong lead but James reeled him in and overtook in the last few turns of the game.  Final scores: James 237, David 217, Andy 161.

Remember the Alamo - 14 July 2018

Stuart visited for a games day on Saturday and we played another Wild West game using the Legends of the Old West ruleset.  In the scenario, the wives and sweethearts of the Texian defenders killed at the Battle of the Alamo were hunting down the Mexican politician and general Antonio López de Santa Anna.

They had learned that he was holed up in a hacienda protected by a small number of Mexican soldiers.

The 3 feet by 3 feet playing area contained a hacienda, cantina, windpump and assorted scenery (cacti, rocks, well, stagecoach and barrels).  Stuart took the eight-strong Texan widow posse and entered at the bottom of the table.  James hid the General in one of the buildings, along with four soldiers with a further three arriving as reinforcements from the top of the table during the first few rounds.

The widows took up defensive positions around the stagecoach...

...out of range of the rifleman who climbed up the windpump tower...

...but within the sights of the rifleman who came out on the balcony.

Downstairs, a grenaderos opened the side door to get a bead on the Texan women but was swiftly gunned down - the first casualty.

There was then a long fistfight inside the building which the Mexican kept winning but failed to land the finishing blow.  Inevitably, he was knocked out cold the first time the widow won the combat.

The widows wouldn't get their revenge hiding behind the stagecoach so they started closing on the hacienda, taking several losses from the troops occupying the first floor.  But they eventually reached it, and started fighting up the staircase.

Having cleared out the cantina, they could also shoot across to the other building:

The widows had a lot of success in close combat, and the Mexican posse had lost half its strength by the tenth turn.  However, the battle continued for another five turns until James finally failed his "Head for the Hills" dice roll - the same turn that Stuart also had to make that check for the first time, but was successful.

At this point, we considered that the remaining Mexicans, including the General, had surrendered to their grisly fate, and so Stuart won the game.  But we were having fun playing so we let the General have a second chance.  With his faithful Capitan, Santa Anna climbed out of the window...

...and, pursued by the widows, managed to race off the board and escape.

Phalanxx - 5 July 2018

Another outing for a more recent game from Bernd Eisenstein (of Peloponnes fame).  A good mixture of dice placement, map expansion and conflict, and card collection.  James pipped David to first place at the last stage of end game scoring.  Final scores: James 63, David 60, Andy 35.

The Castles of Burgundy - 20 June 2018

Stuart had never played this before so David and James explained the rules, shared their insights and then were comprehensively thrashed, although closed the gap somewhat in the end of game scoring.  Final scores: Stuart 204, James 192, David 174.

Clever game this.  We haven't yet tried it with the alternate player mats where everyone's layout is different.  Not sure about that but we should give it a go to see whether it adds or subtracts from the game.

Shrine Skirmish - 30 May 2018

A couple more games with the Ronin ruleset, this time a large group of Samurai attacking a shrine defended by Sohei monks.

In the first game, Andy was the attacker and James the defender.

The attackers were deployed in waves but Andy had rolled a 6 to determine how many game turns he had to achieve the objective of taking the shrine (D6+6) so realised he had plenty of time to get all his figures on the table, and then swamp the poor monks.

James held back at the top of the steps hoping to funnel the attackers into a smaller group to help balance out the numbers (the attacking faction had twice as many points as the defending one - pretty much twice as many figures, and mostly stronger ones).

We missed something in the rules that allowed Andy to pile in on the monks and defeat them pretty swiftly.  We moved each players figures alternately, but it should be alternate figures on each side, which removes the opportunity to have all the figures pinned straight away.

Andy also sent a few figures around the side and back so that he could desecrate the holy shrine in various locations.

It was a bloodbath.  The Sohei were all slaughtered for no Samurai losses - just a couple of wounds.  Andy got 24 Victory Points (6 x 3VP for killing Sohei plus 6VP for the shrine) to James' zero.

We set up again in the evening when Adrian joined us.  Andy and Adrian took a share each of the attackers and James was again the Sohei.  With the correction to the rule, this time James brought out the monks to fight, but also drawing back out of range in order to prolong the game (the attack was to last only 10 turns this time).

The Sohei were also equipped with a couple of bows this time to try and even up the firepower.  We quickly realised this was a waste of time against armoured Samurai although it did have some effect on the unarmoured figures.

The Sohei fought better this time, killing a couple of Samurai.  Half of the six Sohei were killed in the 10 turns but the shrine remained disputed.  However, the attackers still won on points: 9 VP for Andy and Adrian, 6 VP for James.

This is a good ruleset with an interesting combat mechanism but I think the factions need to be designed carefully to ensure they are balanced.  For each rank of character (1 to 5) they get a corresponding number of tokens to use in each combat - so a rank 3 character can defend against a rank 1 character and then get two free attacks in.  So higher ranked characters seem much more powerful for not an excessive amount of extra points cost.

Anyway, a couple of great games - and fantastic to finally start getting my Japan figures and scenery on to the table!

Roll for the Galaxy - 23 May 2018

Double bill of the excellent Roll for the Galaxy.  James won the first game 44-34 with lots of developments and a bonus for having them.  David won the second game 46-37 with alien technology, in particular a combo that generated tons of money every time James went exploring!