Red 7, The Mind, Space Alert - 17 December 2019

A bonus games session for James, Kieron & Lucas following some Christmas carolling in the street.  A few fund hands of Red 7 which Kieron called a halt to as only Lucas and I were winning.  Then a couple of games of The Mind where (as previously) we couldn't get past Level 6.  Highlight was an extended Mexican standoff between Lucas and Kieron, where the former had card 99 and the latter had 100.  Lucas successfully played his 99 after Kieron started snoring, and we won that round.

Then we played the first training mission of Space Alert which we've played once before but I clearly failed to blog about it.  This is a collaborative space exploration game with Robo Rally-like cards to program the movement and actions of your character in a frantic real-time 10 minute mission, as your spacecraft scans the area whilst being attacked by space anomalies and aliens, as announced by the accompanying app.  After laying out the cards, the round is resolved at a slightly slower pace to see what actually happened.  The spaceship took a fair bit of damage but we survived our first mission.

I really like this game but both times now we've played with three players and an android (to make up the numbers) and it's really hard to coordinate that fourth character effectively, so I'm keen to play with four or five of us in future.

Peloponnes & Ra - 11 December 2019

A classic double bill for the (almost) surprise appearance of Kieron.  Peloponnes was the usual fun with groans as the disasters wiped out our progress.  Andy pipped James to the bronze medal by the virtue of having a single luxury good left at the end of the game.  We resolved to not let Kieron win any more now he has decided to return!  Final scores: Kieron population/prestige 27/31, David 24/32, Andy 18/17+, James 18/17, Stuart 12/27.

Then Russian Roulette with Ra.  A very unusual first epoch where the Ra tiles were really slow to come out.  Which of course meant the other two epochs were particularly frantic.  Final scores: David 39, Stuart 34, James 31, Kieron 29 and Andy 22.

St Petersburg and Carpe Diem - 18 December 2019

Kieron, Stu and Andy at David's this week for some nearly festive games. Surprising none of us, Andy insisted on playing St Petersburg and spent the entire game mocking his fellow players, before cruising to victory through extreme financial domination. Once again the game plays surprisingly quickly with four players, lasting only 5 rounds, so it is really unforgiving if you fall behind.

Final score: Andy 57, David 53, Kieron 40, Stu 38.

Then an introduction to Carpe Diem for Kieron. David had discovered the second edition rules had done away with the somewhat confusing movement rules and replaced them with a simpler (but equivalent) move left/right mechanic. This proved to be easier and quicker to play.

This game seems to be as much about not making mistakes as it is about picking a good move, but David managed to get ahead in the first round and just about hold on until the end.

Final score: David 98, Stu 91, Andy 72, Kieron (who was "playing to learn") 68.

Warfare 2019

Andy and I went to Warfare at Reading last Sunday.  It's the last time at the venue - they want to make it bigger and move nearer London in the hope of improving attendance.  Fortunately, the show is moving just 15 mins east to Ascot Racecourse, so looks like it's still worth the trip.  I didn't spend much but enjoyed looking around the stands and, especially, the demonstration games.

Some nice dioramas from a model manufacturer:

An amazing tower with decorated interior (tapestries, four posters etc) which had been built by the wargamer's children and their friends:

The moonbase wargame also seen at Salute:

Attack on a Saxon village:

A wintry Wild West game - with snow covered roofs, ingeniously created with white aquarium sand glued to acetate sheets - so the sheets can be removed.

The biggest game of Battleships I've seen... Cold War in the Med:

A submarine pen (bespoke product made with Blotz):

Pegasus Bridge (background) and V2 rocket (foreground left):

The Shire:

Ambush! Mission 4: D-Day Night Drop to Destiny - 30 October 2019

David and I met up to play another Ambush! scenario.  Continuing the campaign with the squad from the last game, we set up for Mission 4: D-Day Night Drop to Destiny (only afterwards realising that we should of course have played Mission 3 next...).

I had updated the small yellow German character cards with some beautifully illustrated versions that had been uploaded to BoardGameGeek.  A huge improvement to the look and feel of the game.

Inspired by that, I added some headshots from the Band of Brothers characters to the squad sheet for some additional colour. 

It was all downhill from there...

The eight US soldiers and their cache containing a bazooka and four charges entered from the eastern edge of the map and were randomly blown all over the place.  One soldier landed in the river and was swept away, presumed drowned.  Two others landed together but the rest were so spread out that they were out of command and many of them panicked following a series of unlucky initiative rolls. 

As the US regained their bottle, German soldiers and snipers started appearing all over the map, killing or wounding several more US soldiers before they had barely finished packing away their parachutes.

The US discovered a General and his aide-de-camp but after some one-sided firefights, the Germans had a firm upperhand.  The General was being driven away in a Kubelwagen and the Germans had blown one of the two bridges we were tasked to capture.  It was late, we had definitely lost, so we paused the game at this point.

The following day, I was keen to discover the fate of the remaining soldiers.  The highlight was blowing the General up in his Kubelwagen with a bazooka (surprisingly only panicking the driver who then drove off the map!) and the lowlights were one soldier failing three times to shoot two Germans with his SMG in the same room as him, and the remaining bridge being blown up.

The map was soon covered with KIA and Incapacitated markers.  Two wounded US soldiers limped around the map clearing up the town of the remaining Germans.  The US earned 9 Victory Points for discovered Germans but failed to capture the General or the bridges.  There was a loss of 12 VPs (2 each for the six lost soldiers) so a disappointingly negative score well short of the 10 required for victory.  A dismal outcome but still a fun game.

Ambush! Mission 2: Advance to Chasoul - 2 October 2019

From the back of the box:

Ambush! is the solitaire game of combat, adventure, and heroism in World War Two France. Using a ground-breaking development of the programmed paragraph solitaire system, Ambush! gives the player control of an American squad, faced with a variety of missions against an ever-changing, hidden German foe. The variable events, innumerable tactical options, and wealth of unexpected occurrences make Ambush! a solitaire gaming experience unlike any that has gone before. The easily learned rules are specially designed to get the player into the action within minutes. The player selects and arms his squad, providing each soldier with command and initiative ratings, perception, weapons skill, driving skill, and movement capability. After selecting one of the eight missions provided, the player sends his squad into a mission map to conduct operations called for in the mission. Soldiers move freely, as far as the player wishes, checking for events each time they move...until the sequenced action rounds are triggered by the whine of German bullets!

I played this a lot with Duncan in the mid-nineties.  But apart from a couple of games with Kieron and one with David, it hasn't come out much in the last twenty-five years.  In that time, I've collected all the expansions, so was keen to kick-start it again when there was an opportunity.

David and I dusted off our (decade-old?) Squad Record from Mission 1: Bloody St Mick and set up for Mission 2: Advance to Chasoul.

Our squad had to check out all the buildings in a village.  We approached from the west and decided to swing round and approach the village from the south.  Privates Greggs and Harris stepped out of the woods and surprised a sniper in a small building.  Harris instantly bought it but Greggs rushed in and assaulted the German who promptly surrendered.  A Pyrrhic victory as Greggs had to spend the rest of the game very honourably escorting the captured prisoner.

Further round the village, after spotting and disarming a boobytrap in another building, Sergeant Barraclough spotted a second sniper, and sprayed the distant building with his sub-machine gun, taking out the enemy with a lucky shot.  Shortly afterwards, Private Dawson surprised three Germans in the woods and a big scrap ensued, with Barraclough capturing the officer.

Suddenly, a Messerschmitt ME109 flew overhead strafing the village but fortunately missing the squad.  It returned again later and Captain Abernathy raised his Browning Automatic Rifle, took aim and against all the odds, penetrated the fuselage and downed the fighter. 

With all the Germans dispatched and the village cleared, a reinforcement Jeep with a handy Medium Machine Gun unexpectedly arrived.  Private Johnson put up with all the insults when he finally arrived at the railway station where the squad and their two prisoners had gathered.  After a moment to remember Harris' sacrifice, Dawson started to brew up.

The squad gained 19 points for the buildings explored, 1 point for the appearance of the ME109 and 7 points for the various Germans killed or captured, for a total of 27 points.  They lost 2 points for the regrettable death of Private Harris and so just managed to achieve the victory condition of 25 points.  With their chests (and stats) suitably swelled, they set off - next stop Belgium.

Monastery attack - 17 September 2019

Six samurai controlled by James attacked a monastery defended by 4 monks and 4 hired fighters, controlled by Andy and David.

The monks' fighters were drawn from the newly painted groups of bowmen and aquebusiers:

These started to inflict some damage on the samurai rushing the front steps, although the heavy armour proved pretty impervious to arrows.

The least bloody samurai then mounted the steps and engaged the monks.

Except one who nipped around the back...

There was a lot of bloodshed on the top of the steps and the lone samurai survived his engagement with three fighters until the end of the battle.

At the end of the ten game turns, all of the monks were dead and so James claimed a victory.  But as a couple of hired fighters were still limping along in defence of the monastery, David & Andy claimed a victory too.  Only the GM and blogger knows the true result...