Apples to Apples! And another Ticket to Ride ordered...

With £50 of Battlequestgames vouchers in hand from Christmas, we paid a visit to Andy to see any new games we could get. We spotted Apples to Apples which came highly recommended by Andy. To be honest the name of the game and the description on the back did not interest me! I know that a book shouldn't be judged by its cover, so I said I'd check it on 'Geek and come back. Reviews on Geek were very favourable too but again, we couldn't understand why. So we took a gamble and got the game. And we're glad we did!

The basic premise, at the start of the game someone is nominated the Judge. Everyone is dealt 7 red cards. Each card has an event, person, place etc on it. Then a green card is dealt to the table - it has a word on it, an adjective. For example, scary, impossible, maddening, polite etc. In a turn, the other players take a card from their hand that they think matches this green card best and place it face down in the centre of the table. These are mixed up by the judge who then turns them over one by one. The judge then chooses which they think is the best match and whoevers card that was gets a point - depending on the number of players depends on how many points you need you win.

The game is fantastically easy and simple to play, so all ages in our family can play - and it is extremely funny as some of the choices of words are extremely silly when matched. It is a game that can only be played and never described properly as the back of the box and I fail to do here - I don't think humour can ever be fully described, only experienced.

We also ordered Ticket to Ride: Marklin - a German map that uses model trains on the pictures of the cards.

Anitas and Roshnis first play of 7 Wonders

A few days after our first game of 7 Wonders, we got Roshni and Anita to have a game with us. Playing 5 players radically changes the length and excitement of the game - for the better in the most part. Obviously there needed some explanations and pointing out rules, but they picked it up fairly quickly due to the most part the game being based on symbols rather than text - this being I think the key to its greatness as a game. Now we had a situation in play that meant we all had a city to our sides, but also a player we couldn't reach to buy resources off - leading to a few friendly "ahgahga I wish you were over here!" moments.

Also it was during this game we realised in our first game we had made a critical gaming mistake - in my first post of this game I stated that everyone chooses a card simultaneously to build and then reveal one after the the other. In our first game, we were choosing a card one at a time and revealing it, therefore giving an advantage to the last player in the turn as they would know what resources, buildings etc the previous players had played. Oh well, each new game comes with mistakes when learning the rules. :)

The game play speeded up with the resolution of this rule and we very much enjoyed the game.

End of game - the Hanging Gardens of Babylon 

and the Statue of Zeus have been completed

Christmas brings lots of gaming!

With Christmas well and truly here and the days counting down, plus the kids off school and the office closed for the holidays, it's time to start breaking out the games. And firstly we played our latest addition, 7 Wonders. I'd heard some good things about this from Andy at Battlequest and it stood out on the 'Geek website - especially after it jumped to the number 1 spot for family games, which really piqued my interest. I read the reviews and tried to avoid the hype and decided to make the purchase. And I can say I'm glad I did; it's become our favourite game. It's accessible to all because the game relies on the mechanic of matching symbols - "I want to buy this card, it says I need symbols ABC, do I have those in my production list, if not, can I buy them from anyone else to my left or right?" Maya picked up on this very easily being only 7 and was easily able to keep up with myself and Kavita.

The game lasts 18 turns, one for each Age. The cards are dealt out so each player gets 7 each - a clever mechanic ensures there is only 21 cards in an age for 3 players, 28 for 4 players etc etc. Each player then chooses a card to build - be it a building or a resource (stone, bricks, ore etc). In the first Age most resources are free to build. Some buildings are free also and if built, they will allow you to build buildings in other Ages for free rather than having to pay a resource fee. A resource fee is a list of resources you must have or can buy from others to your immediate left and right before you can build that building. The advantage of building a structure is that if can give you victory points at the end of the game, cheaper purchases of materials from your neighbours, better defences from attack etc.

A turn is conducted by everyone choosing a card face down to build and revealing it one after the other. Once the turn is over, the remaining cards in your hand are passed clockwise or counter-clockwise, depending on which on what Age it is. This way your hand is always fresh and not one person can have a Winning Set of cards.

After each Age, there is also a round of Battles between the cities - war breaks out between neighbours - here Military(red) structure cards come into play; in a battle with your neighbour whoever has the most of Crossed Sword symbols wins - if they are equal it is a draw. If you win, you get a Current Age win token (1, 3, 5) and if you loose you get -1.

You can also build parts of your wonder - they are built in 3 stages, each requiring resources and a card from your hand to build - each part also gives an advantage, be it victory points, money, science points etc. The game ends after the last card of the third age (each age lasts 6 turns - a turn is where you use a card then hand on your cards to the next person - the final card is placed in the middle of the table with everyone elses last card.).

When the game ends, the players have to calculate their victory points - this is takes a while as there is a fair number of cards to calculate by games end and differing cards have different ways of getting a victory point.

In conclusion, this can be a quick game or a short game, depending on how well the rules are known, so the more plays you do, the quicker you will find the game. It is immensely enjoyable to play, it has strategy, trading, building, battle without too much heavy thinking on any part - very very enjoyable.

7 Wonders!

Also today I bought 7 Wonders...it looks great! More on it later.

Start of the Christmas play list!

Christmas holidays....so....

Snow...check
School holidays...check
Work holidays...check
Time for some games...check!

It's getting a bit hard to convince everyone to play a game these days, especially Kavita as a) shes a teenager b) she has loads of homework to do and c) it's probably no longer hip and cool to play games with the folks and the younger siblings but we don't care; I much prefer playing these games as a family than in 2's and 3's. Besides it's good to get a distraction from work once in a while that doesn't involve the television or my own personal vice, the Xbox.

Today we got out a selection of games and picked two to play - the new family favourite Niagara and Citadels which we haven't played in a while. Anita won Niagara with some tactical uses of the river flow to collect that all important pink gem right at the edge of the falls and again with Citadels, although Kavita got 8 locations as well in the same round, Anita had all 5 coloured districts and more gold value cards. In all a great little play and I hope we get to play tomorrow. I am hoping we'll get a game of Aquaretto in as we've had it ages but never played it!

Gaming in front of an open fire

An open fire as in cosy, coal and logs and not in the guns n bullets variety. Anyhow we decided to crack open a few games with our backs to the lovely glowing fire. Firstly it was all time family favourite Zooleretto. It was a hard fought game between myself, Roshni and Maya. This time we used the proper "Remove an animal depending on the number of players" - we removed Kangaroos and Flamingoes. This made the game go so much better as we didn't end up with a surplus of animals each at the end. There was still room to make plays for each others spare animals and even run out of animals before we'd completed Pens. The game felt much much better. Roshni won in the end.

Then came a couple of games of Mayas all time favourite, Diamant. This involved all accept Kavita as she was doing homework. Such an easy concept yet devilishly addictive - it requires a combination of luck and nerves to make sure you outwit your opponents yet come out with enough gems to make the effort worthwhile.

Maya won the first round, whilst Anita won the second.

More online gaming - joined Yucata

After a full get together with David during a lunch break last week, he's introduced me to another couple of online gaming websites - one to me that stood out was Yucata - a German game site that supports English. I joined it as it had quite a few games I've wanted to play - including Stone Age and Fearsome Floors :)

Meeting of minds

Finally managed to meet Dave Estall today, another boardgamegeek-er who is literally based around the corner from work. He'd said about popping in during lunch as he often works at home; and today I happened to be walking past as he was parking up. Great to meet another gamer offline - he kindly invited me around - saying the next time he'd be working from home was at lunchtime this Friday, so I'll make the effort to pop over. Hopefully we'll be able to get some quick games in during these up and coming cold and wet Winter months!

Trying to set up a VASSAL game...

Hmm, not since last weeks Memoir game have I had an opportunity to play a game with anyone - and I'm still trying to set up a remote M44 game with Matt via Vassal. He should be downloading the files today and hopefully we'll be able to set up some games in the near future.

Breakthrough at Kiln! Memoir '44 star player Roshni wins again!

Breakthrough at Kiln - December 1941, after the German attack on Moscow had ground to a freezing halt, Russian forces tried to cut them off; in this scenario Roshni as the Germans had to break through the heavy defensive Russian lines to a frozen river in the south. They also had to make a feint to the left to draw Russian forces off, aware from the breakthrough.

The start, heavily entrenched Russians prepare to hold off the 

German drive to the frozen river to the South

A push is made for the Russian trenches - badly hit Germans 

still manage to force the Russians to retreat 

Flee!! Out of the blinding snow, German tanks rumble on!

The German troops, biding their time, then push out 

of the city ruins and charge the trenches

With the right hand Russian defences broken and the centre tank forces 

destroyed, there is nothing stopping the German forces successfully making for 

the river as History dictated.

Quick lunch time play of Niagara

Whilst working at home today and the girls being off for Dwali, we thought we'd snatch a quick game of something at lunch time. Seeing as Kavita hadn't played Niagara yet, we thought we'd settle for that, although Anita was tired and opted for a snooze instead. Kavita quickly picked up the rules and we were all dashing about picking up gems. But before I knew it, Roshni had formulated a strategy and had grabbed 5 purple gems and won in a double canoe dash for the finish line! We were just about to start a new turn when I thought Hang on - has she won?! and it turned out she had! lol

Gaming day jolly!!

Yay! Monday was a day of getting together with my best mate Matt at his place whilst he had the place to himself for a few days to play games, eat pizza and drink beer! It was also an opportunity to introduce him and his game-aspiring daughter to Euro gaming :) I had brought most of the games with me to try and squeeze in as much as possible.

Firstly we played Diamant as a good introduction. This went down a storm - very popular as it is very easy to learn but difficult to master - Hannah, Matts daughter, got the idea straight away and loved it - eventually winning the game.

Next out of the bag was Zooloretto - obviously it took a bit to explain the rules, but the game proceeded quite well, with only a few references to the rules - this game has a great system where although it is a fairly complex game, say compared to Diamant, there is no text in the game to get confused with; no cards to read or text to ponder over. Again highly enjoyed by all - and again won by Hannah. :)

It was time then to drop off Hannah to her grandparents; after which Matt and I explored the contents of 7th Fleet and Gunslinger, just to get an idea of what ye olde '80s punch counter games were like - actually Gunslinger looked quite attractive to play and if I'd known the rules we'd have given it a go.

So we had a go at Back to the Future the card game - I've played this a few times solo play, so this was a good chance to test out the rules with two of us. The concept of how to play took a bit to understand (even for me and I'd played a few times!) but after getting into the swing of it, it was a great game - won by Matt in the end.

Next was Niagara - Matt loved the idea of the plastic discs acting as the flowing river and there was much merriment in pseudo-Mexican voices. The ending was full of tension as we both had our fill of gems, me 5 different coloured gems, Matt his mixed collection of 7. We just needed to get one more gem each to the finishing line. With our last paddle cards and the end in sight, we raced for him - Matt pipping me to the post!! Another game lost! :)

Next was Memoir '44 - actually two games of Memoir as it was so popular with Matt. The only unfortunate thing I found was that set up took too long and was actually a bit confusing with two people on opposite sides of the table whilst looking at the map in the book. Something to consider in the future. But the games went off really well - the first an American attack against heavily entrenched German positions - including several elite German tank platoons; leading to a win by Germany that followed the course of History. Then it was another try at an Omaha beach landing, this time with Matt as the Americans. This turned into an unmitigated disaster for the Yanks as one after another unit and platoon were destroyed or mown down on the beaches of France.  Notch one up for me! this would turn out to be my only win of the day...

Finally we had a game of Last Night on Earth - and as I'd not played this before, game play proceeded a little slowly at first as Matt read the rules, counters were punched and cards were shuffled. The scenario we took was Get Petrol and Keys for the Truck! or something like that. This involved my humans searching for petrol and keys whilst fending off the undead! Unfortunately one character after another died and then the Sun set and it was game over man game over! A good game, if not 100% my cup of tea in its mechanics. Perhaps another couple of games will win me over.

In all, a hugely successful gaming day/night! Cannot wait to do it again!

The gaming jolly is on!

Excellent news for me - not so good for the rest of the family gaming wise, but still they'll be having fun (girlie night in for them). I'm going to be meeting up at my oldest friends place after not seeing him for about 2 or 3 years and having an enormous gaming jolly all day; introducing him to as many Euro type games as possible! Doing as much gaming as can be physically fitted in from Monday morning to into the early hours!

Gaming at last!

After 3 weeks of virtually no gaming at all, due to spending a lot of time in the loft clearing it out, making room for a work desk, storage etc, we finally managed to play a couple of games - Maya, Anita and I played a good game of Niagara, where Anita won by a deft little steal of a gem from me, then a quick pick up of another gem on the next turn. Then we played Zooloretto and Maya and I came joint 1st as I used the last of my coins to remove an animal from my barn, hence saving me from an extra -2 points at the end of the game!

It was nice to be back in the boxes and playing again after so long.

No gaming for 3 weeks!!

It has been now 3 weekends without any board gaming! We've been up in the loft mostly, clearing it out and getting rid of the 90% junk up there, empty boxes, old unwanted toys and clothes etc. The aim is to have it re-insulated, have proper boarding put down, put in a loft ladder and hopefully some windows and finally desk space for the girls to study. Also it will provide some much needed storage space, especially for the board games we have! Also we found our copy of Man o'War and Warmaster, plus a boxed copy of Plague Fleet and Sea of Blood which I had forgotten about.

Space Hulk Death Angel arrives!

Another great game from Fantasy Flight Games (Makers of Citadels), Space Hulk Death Angel, arrived today, nicely wrapped in plastic still - but that is how it will have to stay until Christmas! :( Oh well, at least I have it...

First two games of Niagara - excellent!!

Today we played our first game of Niagara and although the rules looked long, they summarised onto one one page and we had a fantastic time! This has become our favourite boardgame - firstly Maya, Anita and I played a game with Anita producing a sudden and shock win - you're concentrating so much on ensuring your boats don't go over the falls that you hardly notice who is claiming what gemstone! Maya was able to get into the game straight away with no trouble and with little reading, it is open to an early age. The first game was so successful, that we wanted to play again - this time Roshni joined us as she had finished her homework. With Kavita still working on hers, we dashed up and down the river again, this time I won. Brilliant simple fun but oh so full of strategy! And the mechanics of the flowing river is just brilliant. 

Disaster at Dieppe arrives!

I've been on tender-hooks for each for this! The whole idea of trying to represent the huge catastrophic disaster of the Canadian-British assault on the Dieppe front in 1942 was very appealing. The battlemap comes also with 6 SdKzFW German armoured cars and 6 Long Range Assault jeeps for use with the other side of the map, a battle based around Tubruk. These are represented by plastic vehicles like the other maps, plus some paper info cards which I hope in the future are republished as card. I haven't had the chance to play around with it thoroughly, so a fuller report later.

Niagara arrives!

Our latest family addition, Niagara, arrived today after our surprise win on Ebay! I doubted very much we would find a copy for sale, let alone one for auction, but one was going in Mint condition and we won with one bid! We also had our doubts it would be Mint condition, so we had taken a gamble because parts could be missing, but the owners said it was 100%. We got it today and had a good look through - not only was it 100% complete, but there was also 2 extra gems (instead of one) of each colour!

I've had a scoot through of the rules and it seems very good - although the rules do cover many pages, a fair amount is for Examples and diagrams. The dynamic of how the river flows is brilliant - the board is placed upon the upturned lid and base, so a waterfall hangs over the edge of one box edge. The board has a channel cut into it with plastic discs representing the river water. The canoes used for going up and down the river to get the gems to win the game, float on the discs. At the end of each turn, more discs are pushed into the start of the river, causing the other discs to move along the channel, penny-pusher style, eventually causing one or more to fall off the waterfall edge, taking any hapless canoes with it!! Players use Paddle cards with numbers on them to navigate the rapids, between 1 and 6 and a cloud card to manipulate the weather (for better or worse), thereby increasing or decreasing the speed of the river each turn. It does sound a little complex, but the rules compress into one side of paper in a Summary, so hopefully it'll be pretty cool to play.

We will try it out on Sunday.

Death Angel - space hulk card game ultra cheap!

I saw this one when it was first previewed and I thought Hmm maybe. I found it it had solo play built in and thought again, ok, maybe, but later. I checked out the price and saw Andy had got it in for £20. Again not bad, but I thought I'd wait until Christmas. Then I noticed someone selling it on Amazon for £10 + p&p brand new! One left in stock! I grabbed it straight away as I knew it was going out of stock all over and I thought I could have it put away for Christmas.

Weekend play

Just played one game this weekend - Nordic Ticket to Ride; and I won by a staggering 148points to 114! Tried to introduce Roshni to Back to the Future but a lot of the aspects of the incidents from the films, not the game play, were lost on her as she'd not seen the film in ages! So we stopped and said we'd watch the films and give it a go again.

Also took a stroll to stretch the legs which just happened to pass Battlequestgames :) Popped in for a look around and got talking to Andy about Back to the Future. He mentioned it was based on Fluxx and loaned a shop copy to try out. Turns out it's a pretty cool game after a quick rules check and solo play. Try and squeeze a game in with the family before it has to go back. Also the Disaster at Dieppe add on for Memoir is due in next week, so I hope to collect on Thursday.

Managed to also secure a second hand copy of Niagara - Anita found a second hand copy on Ebay going cheap and because we were not 100% if it was for us, we got that instead of a brand new one. Hopefully with us in a few days.

Memoir 44 Hedgerow Hell arrives!

Yay! In super quick time (just over a week), Hedgerow Hell arrives in a box full of polystyrene packaging. It looks great, especially the little trucks!

Great Scott! It's Back to the Future!

1.21 gigawatts! Yay, one of my all time favourite films has been made into a game! And a great game too! I'd seen this previewed on Boardgamegeek and heard it was based on a previous game called Chrononauts. I picked up a copy from Battlequestgames at the weekend as it was a cheap purchase.

Both of these have been released by Looney Labs - Chrononauts had been very successful, but was supposed to have several bugs in the game play. Here, these have been ironed out apparently. Hard to say for me because I haven't played the original, but this version I can say is excellent.

The idea is that you have a series of cards, line A to D, number 1 to 6. Each card represents a moment in time, an event or storyline. And as in the films, if something is done in one part of the timeline, such as Older Biff giving Younger Biff the sports almanac, this has effects which Ripple down the timeline. This is shown in practise by flipping cards marked by the Event or Linchpin as it is called. Each Linchpin has a number of Ripplepoints it affects - such as if Older Biff gives Younger Biff the sports almanac, this has all sorts of connotations down the timeline such as Biff willing millions, killing George McFly, marrying Marty's mother etc.

The idea of the game is that you play as one of the descendants of a character from the film. I have read complaints that these characters have no background or depth as they are not seen in the film or if they are, don't have any characterisation. The aim is the character has three things to do in the timeline, set it in a particular way. Some want George McFly dead, some want him publishing his story. Some want Marty to get injured in a car crash, others don't. The idea is to take a card in hand and use one of those cards in play. This might involve placing an object on the table that will help you with another card. For example you can't use the Mark 2 time machine (the flying one), unless you have the Mr Fusion card in play. The time machine cards allow you to "edit" these Lynchpins as how you see fit, thereby affecting the timeline.

Some cards allow you to affect a specific event and only that event (Such as the metal pie tray stops Buford Tannen from shooting the blacksmith - Doc - in the back), some cards allow you to change any other time event if you have X card in play. To win, you have to have your three Lynchpins set, the timeline set how you want it then finally change history, stopping Doc inventing the flux capacitor. Even this may not win the game because there is 5 cards for this linchpin and only one is successful!

It's an interesting game to play - I've played it a few times by myself against another fake player. It is a very sublime game because you think it is very quick, that you can change a few items and you've won, then suddenly someone changes an event again causing another ripple then you are loosing!!

One caveat - you must have seen Back to the Future to play this!! Lol - Roshni and I tried to play, but the lynchpins didn't make much sense as she couldn't remember much of the film - so we all sat and watched BTTF part 1!! Part 2 up soon.

New game! Nordic Ticket to Ride. And a replay of Ticket to Ride Europe

Crikey it is turning into a game fest couple of months - games ordered, preordered, purchased from afar - apparently the new Space Hulk and Back to the Future card games are out soon too which I'll take a look at (Although Anita has put a bit of an embargo on game purchases for a while). Friday I picked up a copy of Nordic Ticket to Ride, a snow bound version of the popular train game, covering the Scandinavian arena and parts of Russia. It uses some of the rules introduced in Europe (Tunnels and Ferries), but leaves out Stations and some of the rules introduced in the Marklin Edition. Very nice version - up to 3 players only - using white, black and purple trains. The cards are lovely, the European size and the trains/carriages are covered in snow. There is even one huge 27-point link between Finland and Russia! This is one great game - lovely for two players over a glass of wine! Anita beat me by 3 points! 

Then we had a go at Ticket to Ride Europe - Anita had big reservations when we first got this - the rules for tunnels especially seemed overly complex, when added in with Stations and Ferries. Therefore we've not played this one for a while, but with the experience from the Nordic one, we played again and found it very enjoyable. 

Disaster at Dieppe and Hedgerow Hell battlemaps ordered!

The latest Memoir '44 battlemap Disaster at Dieppe and the rare out of print Hedgerow Hell have been ordered (HH from the States, so I have a week or so wait for it...)!

Match Attax!

Now this is a weird one; I hate football. Well hate is a strong word, I love it when my team won the sweepstake in the World Cup and netted me £70, but apart from that I don't get the attraction of seeing a whole load of overpaid guys running about after a ball. Then came MatchAttax. Apparently these have been about for a while, and Maya has been on about them for ages, collecting a few, doing a few swaps at school, but not really knowing why and what for.

Eventually she convinced me to get her the collection tin and storage book for somewhere to put her collection so far and we had a couple of games to find out what it was like. It is sort of like Top Trumps - you select your players and lay them out in a 2 attackers, 4 midfielders and 4 defenders with 1 goalie. Then a player selects a card to attack with by tapping the back of the card and the defending player selects a card they hope will deflect the "shot". The attacker reads out their cards Attack score whilst the defender reads out the Defence score. If the attack is higher, a goal is scored otherwise it is deflected.

This is continued back and forth until all the cards are expended; it's also possible to Sub in up to 3 players and use once per game a Managers defence/attack score to bolster up a "just missed" score.

In all, an enjoyable little game that is perfect for younger and older kids alike.

Here we go, here we go, here we go......

First proper playtest of Zombies!!!

Today decided to crack open Zombies!!! to see if the rules played ok for a single player. Been through the rules several times before, but obviously only an actual play will make 100% sense of them. So I decided to play 3 characters at once against the zombies of the game - all three going in different directions to find the helipad. The game plays ok and pretty quick, gameplay is smooth and fast. The only thing that put me off was the Event cards - I'm pretty squemish and I have to say I didn't use the cards! Stupid really considering the content of the game but I found that in solo play, you can play against the game pretty well without them. A friend found the same thing with his two daughters who wanted to play, but are 7 and the cards' content he found a bit too much for them.

All in all a pretty good fast game if I ever fancy a solo.

A weekend of gameplay - 3 player Ticket to Ride and Germany changes history!

Blimey what a busy gaming weekend! We tried to get in as many games as possible with Citadels and Dominion on Saturday and Ticket to Ride: USA and Memoir '44 on Sunday. 

Citadels was another great game as usual, big family winner this. I just managed to win this with Roshni just denied an extra 4 points for all 5 colours in her Citadel cards by Anita Warlord destroying one of her coloured cards. 

Then we had another go at Dominion - this time was much better than the last with the game over in about 50 minutes. This time we learned the lessons of the past and used our money to buy more money and then use this to buy victory cards. Although the game is supposed to be only for 4 players max, we managed to  include Maya as a fifth player - she was happy to just buy up kingdom or money cards and randomly attack the rest of us with a Militia card, but as long as she was happy that was all that matter. 

Sunday we started with Ticket to Ride and this time Roshni played with Anita as a team, Maya played alongside me and Kavita by herself. This proved to be interesting as we'd only ever played TtR with 2 players/teams, so Kavita playing was a curveball - as Anita discovered! All of her normal gaming tactics seemed to go out of the window in the face of two rather than one opponent! :-) Kavita won in the end. 

Initial set up - look at those tanks!

Finally in the afternoon, Roshni and I took on our first Soviet vs German Memoir scenario. Wow, this turned into a huge battle! The Germans were on a push for the gates of Moscow with a huge en-masse of tanks and soldiers. The middle and right Russian positions could not withhold the attacks, even with the backup of artillery, and moved back to more secure positions. To the left, brave Soviet peasant infantry tried to hold out with German tanks in one direction and Commissars waving pistols in the other. A German tank platoon split a wedge between the left and centre Soviet commands by taking the bridge over the river. Then German tanks, which had been badly hit, in the centre, took the hills overlooking the city and forced a general retreat to the bottom right of the board. The remaining left hand command were left to their own devices and eventually destroyed by a huge tank advance! 

The Germans take the hills, ready to capture the Bridge!

The left command is crushed!

With German guns firing from the hills, there was little to do, but try to rush them from the right and try to retake the hills, but all was lost with the loss of the Left command and the capture of the bridge over the river! The road to Moscow was open and history changed again! 

With the left, Bridge and hills taken,
little remains but for the Soviets to retreat!

Sold! Queens Necklace and Mystery of the Abbey!

Both of these games have gone - to a better home I hope - and we'll be ploughing the money back into a new game - either Niagara or Stone Age. We'll have to check both out on BoardGameGeek to see what they are like, but Niagara has got a lot of thumbs up. EDIT - Niagara it is (Not Viagara as my friend thought I said!) - ordered via Battlequestgames for a good price. Can't wait to get hold of it!

First play of Ticket to Ride with the kids

This weekend we also reintroduced Ticket to Ride: USA to the kids - as Roshni and Maya were a little older now, they joined Anita and I in teams to play it out - as usual I lost to Anita but the kids found it very enjoyable so we'll be playing this again in the future.

Dusting some old games off and how to stress out a 7 yr old!

We have decided to sell off the games trunk, so this was a chance to pull out some unused for a while games and give them a play. Gulo gulo is one such game. The idea of the game is to steal different sized and coloured eggs from a wooden "nest" with a stick with an egg weight wedged in. When an egg is stolen, the player risks the stick falling. During a turn, the player turns one card over of a path of cards that indicates a coloured egg to steal or decide to go for a coloured egg previously revealed that may be easier to steal (ie bigger) but would only move the player a short way up the path.

Eventually the players reach the end of the path where there is a pile of egg cards and the player has to turn each one over, removing the indicated egg. Eventually a purple egg card is revealed - and if successfully stolen (quite a small egg!) then the player wins. If ever the alarm stick falls, the player has to move back to the last coloured egg card they attempted to steal.

This is a great and fun game, but can generate high stress in a Kerplunk manner that that can be almost unbearable! lol. The tension in the faces in the pictures says it all!!