Oh dear where has time gone

This blog is still alive! So am I! And I am still gaming and buying games. I just changed job in August and I've been playing catch up. I plan to consolidate over the winter - I've downloaded loads of photos and they are ready to upload; I just need to upload and blog!! Speak soon....

Huzza! God save the King! Or was it Queen at that time?

Another great game that uses wooden blocks to represent units. Cavalry charges, artillery, muskets, leaders, tallyho!! What's more to like??

Birthday geeky stuff - a copy of Flash Point : Fire Rescue!

Yay! 38 today! Celebrated with family and one of the presents was a copy of Fire Rescue! Maya loves it - although twice now we have failed to rescue everyone - first was when I had the dog at the front door only to be caught in an explosion and secondly the house collapsed after multiple explosions! Great game!

Good 3 player game of Smallworld and Flash Point: Fire Rescue at Brians

In an effort to catch up, I have several posts ready to go, but they will be light on content just to get them up with the pictures. On this night I played Smallworld and Flashpoint with Brian and Nigel Heather at Brians place. It was great - we enjoyed the three player Smallworld as Brian and Nigel were both newbies. Flashpoint is an excellent new fire rescue game where players battle fire and smoke to rescue people cooperatively from a burning building. Great games!!

Will there be a Horsham Gaming Group?

Last night we discussed the forming of a proper Horsham Gaming Group and the up and coming Horsham Gaming Event which is to be held at Nigel Heather's scout hut. The discussions were long and in-depth - sometimes to the point that there are a lot of strong opinions so you just say yes. Hopefully the club will be organised soon. 

Humans ALMOST win at Battlestar Galactica!

 Tonight was a rare visit to Andys shop on a BattleQuest games night. I opted to play Battlestar Galactica with Brian, Kevin, Nigel and Andy. Initially things went very well for us as Kevin was outed as a Cylon virtually straight away as we were playing the add on rules from the Pegasus expansion. This left the humans in a very good position to win, although we didn't know at the time we had another Cylon (Nigel) in our midst. Battling on long and hard (This can be a very long game), the odds became insurmountable - and when Nigel opted to leave for Cylon shores, things went from bad to worse and even though we were only one jump from winning, we suffered too much damage and Galactica went down ...again!!

D-Day fails!! Allies take heavy casualties!

Today was the day - today we decided to take on the behemoth that is Memoir '44:Overlord - both in organisation, number of components and number of players. Within minutes of sending out the initial email asking if anyone in Horsham was interested, the 7 available seats were taken (I was taking the place of one player naturally!). Several people missed out and they wanted to play! This was one popular event!

The location was Brians house and the players were Brian, myself as the Axis and Allied general apiece, and Nigel Heather, Jack and Steve as the Axis field commanders and Andy, Tom and Dale as the Allied field commanders. The layout for the Overlord Omaha beach landing scenario is huge - two beach boards are required with a massive amount of beach objects, wire, tank obstacles etc. The allies had a huge amount of men and tanks to attack the French coast is in reality of 6th June 1944 whilst the Germans had heavily fortified and well dug in infantry and artillery defenders. I could tell it was going to be tough.

Top left a pensive Andy prepares for Orders to attack whilst top right
Nigel thinks about how effectively to wipe out the attackers! 

The idea of Overlord in Memoir '44 is that the General is given a hand of cards and then hands out at least one to each field commander as he sees fit, or if not, relying on the local field commander to make their own initiative calls using dice - which to excuse the pun, can be dicey. The general is also allowed to verbally communicate with one and only one local commander to execute his orders and with the others, hope for the best.

There was a lot of thinking and rule checking at first
as this was new to everyone, me included!

The attack started in earnest and at first, Dale started to make head way with his Rangers in the right hand flank and in his two sectors - each commander controlling two sectors of the 6 sector map. Yes this game is huge! Luckily Nigel had kindly leant me his Memoir '44 for the extra figures and obstacles required.

Then things started to go badly wrong - tank after tank was destroyed and Tom was repelled several times in the centre. Poor Andy on the far left was being ground up by withering fire from Nigel! We were making huge losses for little gains - just like in reality...

The medals to win on this scenario were 8 on either side - luckily the Germans held several objective medals which we the allies could exploit to win. Unfortunately it didn't get that far - Andys attack was blunted against the beach defences and whilst Tom managed to inflict losses on the German centre, it wasn't enough to get over the dunes.

Dale had better luck and managed to force a breach on the right and started up from the beach and into the mainland.

Dale takes a chance and forces a breach which works,
the Germans under Steves command start to fall away!

Unfortunately, the Germans rallied and hit back and the Allies suffered huge losses, at one point it was 7-0!! With few more lucky dice rolls it was pulled back to 7-2, but then Dale took a heavy beating and the Germans won!! 8-2!! D-Day, like Operation Jubilee at Dieppe before it, failed!!

The final result - the Allies are crushed 8-2!

For all it's complexity of having 8 players and many figures and rules, Memoir '44 Overlord moved very swiftly, even with the few down times of rule checks - the Air Pack cards were very handy for this. We leant  a few lessons, but I thought that a few of the guys, especially Jack and Tom, were not that impressed with it all. But that was ok - it was fun.

Afterwards there was a lot of talk - a lot of people wanted to know about the large Overlord papermaps I have. They liked the idea of pre-printed terrain and starting locations for troops and vehicles. the large array of missions plus they are double sided means at least two massive games per map - and there are 4 paper maps!

Later on at Battlequest, Andy relayed how much he had enjoyed the game, even though he had been shredded by Nigel. He also told me that Jack and Tom had said they had thoroughly enjoyed the game and wanted to play again which buoyed me up. Plans are afoot for a rematch or another game with some others who missed out before.

A visit from Brian and Family plus a game of 7 Wonders

We had a great Saturday today - Brian came around with his family and the kids had a great time in the garden with the trampoline and swings whilst we all chatted. Then we had a game of 7 Wonders as Brians children were interested in the idea. Good day all around.

Elder Sign at a great price!

On Thursday I was looking at Elder Sign at Battlequest with Nigel. I had seen it a few times and it interests me. I like these sort of games, investigations in the 1920/30s in a Fringe tv show-esque universe - I played Mansions of Madness once and enjoyed it but didn't want to spend a fortune getting the Arkham Horror games without first experiencing it. Then Nigel reminded me someone was selling a copy of the game in Horsham for £20. An offer was made of £17.50 and it was mine! It's in mint punched condition and looks great. It's also a Fantasy Flight game so it's bound to be cracking. More on it when I get around to play (It's a single player game too!).

A quick game at Battlequest

Today had a quick game at Battlequest - had to get away early - so I just played a quick game of some game with Steve and Andy - a game about scoring the most with castles and tiles. It was ok I suppose, but a bit dull. Not my cup of tea as they say.

First game with new 7 Wonders Catan wonder

Today we played 7 Wonders using the new Catan Wonder I'd got from Andy at BQG. Maya wanted to play it so she used side A as side B has to be used in conjunction with the Leaders addon. She found it ok to use - a little tricky understand how two materials can be swapped for another, but once she got the hang of it she liked it a lot and used the swapping just the right time a few times to get the buildings she wanted.

Hero figures all painted up!

I started painting these a while again with Nigel Heather, but the white undercoat was awful - a horrible white paint by Games Workshop. I tried my best to make do with washed out details and also my eyesight not as good as it was! :) Anyhow I think this is a reasonable effort (better than grey plastic!) but the eyes could have been much better. :(

First play of Merchants & Marauders!

Today I went to Andys Battlequestgames evening and ended up playing Nigel Woods Merchants & Marauders - a massive game of trading, pirates and naval warfare. The premise of the game is to either act as a Merchant, as Julian did in our game, as a Pirate, as Nigel did, or a mixture of the two, like me - although I had to be the most sorrowful pirate on record. The idea is that scattered through out the Caribbean there are various ports to trade (marked by counters) at and also to collect improvements for ships. Also in your home port is your Chest. You can put gold you have won or made into your chest so that it can be counted up later.

Game start

With your starting ship you sail throughout the islands looking to make money and sell goods to the highest bidder. You can also make money completing missions and taking on special events and cards. Pirate ships also roam the seas and wars can break out between nations, so your sailor who may be of one nation may be blocked from entering a port because his home nation is at war with its owner. Home nation warships can also come looking for pirates and woe-betide anyone who goes up against them!

A players ship sheet showing the players sailor top left, any specialists on board,
mission and rumour cards, plus the actual ship bottom left with its
abilities in the centre. Gold is on the right. 

The game progressed smoothly with little interaction between players but with lots going on. Then war broke out between France (my home country) and England, leaving me with several important ports blocked off. This started to change our strategies - Julian was an extremely wealthy trader and I was just making it by. Nigel was scrapping about but making good headway.

Just about to start rocking the boat as it were with Julian!

I decided to pounce (after a LOT of prodding by Nigel lol) on Julians well laden ship with my own ship bristling with guns and weapons of war. It didn't seem fair as he didn't have much protection - he was quickly destroyed but his sailor got away. I got a lot of booty and gold. But this marked me as a Pirate and Man O'Wars would be after me! Nigel too also started a campaign of violence and just as three Man O'Wars showed up, I slipped into a French port, sold all my booty and my old ship, used a card to get rid of the bounty on my head and bought a trading ship! I slipped away whilst Nigels little sloop was suddenly the focus of three enormous Man O'Wars.

Nigels blue sloop is about to be pounded for indiscreet actions whilst I slip away
into the night with my shiny new green merchant ship! 

Unfortunately for Nigel, I got to throw the dice for the AI attacking ships against his sloop....I have a knack for good rolls!

Skulls mean hits - sorry Nigel! You got a few too many of these!

Nigels ship was utterly destroyed by the impact from three warships - crime doesn't pay unless you can pay to get a new ship before the Law comes!

The game ended with Julian getting the maximum points after building up his trading ship again and still scoring it big time trading. This was a very long but great game. It has lots of things to do that you can do or choose not to do which is what I like in a game. The length was a bit of a downer, but it was a great game.

Galactica - just too hard for family level with all rules?

Today we set out as a family to play BSG - as usual there is the long set up time and everyone picked their favourite characters - but quickly the game came to a stop because we found it was just too complex for us to follow properly what we were supposed to be doing. I knew what to do and tried to help the others by helping them in their decisions but I ended up playing a 5 player game by myself as the girls and Anita were making decisions they didn't understand or know why they were doing it, which was fair enough. Maya especially had a hard time with reading the cards.

This got me thinking about editing the rules slightly (or a lot!) to make the game easier to play simply because they are not used to playing games as complex as this. I thought about taking away the Admiral and Quorum cards plus having every Crisis card carry a jump prep icon - as one of the complaints was it was taking forever to initiate just one jump! Maybe also do a game end at distance 4 instead of drawing extra Cylon cards. Possibly also get the players to ignore the text on the cards and just use the colours. This may make it harder to win, but just so that the family get a good flavour of the game without being bogged down with ALL of the complexities and want to gradually introduce specific rules with each play.

I'll bring this up with them and see what they say...fingers crossed!!

Large scale (And long!) battles with Warrior Knights

Tonight Brian kindly hosted again to play Warrior Knights, a large scale game of kingdoms, knights, armies and crushing of enemies. It had all of this in the several hours it took to play except for the crushing of enemies which came quite late in the game.
Six of us played the game, which is bound to make it longer, but also it makes it more fun as there are more people to defeat, work with, crush etc.

The game is set up - everyone is ready to start crushing and conquering!

The basic premise of the game is that it is a fantasy land of many cities ready to be conquer by the players armies and then defended against incursions by other players. Every has a starting Stronghold and 4 Knights plus a leader. Each player starts with a set amount of Troops to divide between these knights, either to defend their Stronghold or have as a set army to invade other independent castles and absorb into your kingdom. The more castles in the kingdom, the more money a player will get at the end of a turn, leading to investment in more things; such as bigger armies, mercenaries and exploration of foreign lands for trade.

The mechanic for the game is that everyone has a selection of cards that allows the Baron to move & attack, gain political strength to try to become head of the parliament, hire mercenaries and gain religious faith. Everyone reveals their cards one by one and carries out that particular task and then the card (which is marked with a colour) is put on a pile of that colour. When the number of cards in one pile reaches 12, a trigger one of four phases - such as collecting taxes, a session of Parliament, hire mercenary/pay existing mercenary stage etc.

Nigel has gained enough Religious clout to become Head of the Church! 

Building of armies in our game took quite some time and it was only Julian who was making a lot of ground until Brian started making a strategic attack upon Nigel Wood. My empire was nestled in the bottom left of the map; gradually taking out more and more independent castles, but I wanted control over the access to a river near my main Stronghold and Nigel Heather was too close for my liking. After spending time and money investing in an army, I struck out at one of his castles and took it over.

I start to make my move against Nigel Heather

The pace of the game was way too slow for me unfortunately as it took so long to grow and army to a good strength and there was a lot of risk in attacking others; especially with six of us, if a sufficient enough sized army was moved to attack one player, the rest of your empire was open to attack from someone else, so most players took little chance of doing this. It turned out to be a very long game, especially because of the number of players, each trying to decide what to do and how to do it. Perhaps it would be better played with 2 or 3 players. Not sure I'd come back to it if it was another 6 player game.

End of game - Brian (green) is making heavy progress against Nigel Wood (yellow).
 I was about to attack either Steve (blue) or Julian (red) when time ran out

Zombies! Coming outta the walls and...

So what do you do when your mum comes down for a few days for Easter? Crack open a game of Last Night on Earth of course! Maya loves this game and wanted to play the Defend the Mansion House scenario which I'd never played before. Roshni wanted to play the zombies, so the mansion was played down and the four the corner pieces chosen. I played two characters whilst Maya and mum played a character each.

Roshnis zombies didn't have to roll for spawning, they just rolled for how many would turn up. There was a lot of turns to go until sunrise, but we were determined to make sure the zombies wouldn't get in or get us! They needed 9 inside for the heroes to loose. And as they only moved at 1 space at a time, we thought this was easy - especially as we had some great weapons.

At first we were blasting zombies left and right, my characters were taking them out with a shotgun and pistol; mums character took one out with a flare gun but decided to run off to the Hanger to get another one; but kept getting 1 on the die for movement! Maya decided to follow with the nurse when she should have stayed inside and healed my characters but she was determined to get some good cards lol.

But just when Maya and mum reached the hanger (because Maya kept throwing poor movement rolls), Roshni threw a Locked Door card! Luckily they had a Key card, otherwise all that would have been for nothing. But by this time, zombies were pouring into the house - my shotgun ran dry and the cop went down! No!! By then it was too late and all over as 9 zombies managed to clamber in the doors, walls and windows....

The zombies are on the march as Billy and the nurse try to find
some good kit in the diner

All characters move to the house as a large group of undead line up .
Armed with a shotgun, I take aim!

Billy makes a run for the hanger to get another flare gun -
the nurse doesn't know what to do, whilst zombies pile up 

"They're coming outta the god damn walls and...!" Too many! The cop
goes down whilst the drifter runs out of ammo. The others have fled!

3 way play of Railways of the World

As Anita has a passion for train games, Maya and I got her to sit down and play a game with us of Railways of the World. Using the Mexican map we used all the rules bar the Baron Cards and Shareholder repayments in order to help Anita to get into the game. And she liked it a lot - she attacked it with her usual efficiency on train games and quickly found the best routes to transport goods whilst I tried to catch up and Maya spent big again buying up long routes and big trains. A very enjoyable game.

The final winning track layouts - Anita wins! 

Settlers of Catan wonder for 7 Wonders arrives!!!

I'd heard about the Settlers of Catan promotional Wonder for 7 Wonders after last years Essen. It was a charity promotion - you had to pay 4 Euro or something - and it had on the A side 3 points - 7 coins and steal 2 from one other player - 7 points. The 'product' produced is two materials of the same type can be swapped for one other. Another nice Wonder to add to the growing number of "7 Wonders"!

Double game of Agricola!

This evening was a bit of a double whammy - two games of Agricola being played at the same time around Nigel Woods house :) We split the table down the middle into basically Basic Agricola and Advanced Agricola - which used the Farmers of the Moor add on. Playing advanced was Nigel Wood (The undisputed champion of Agricola), Brian, Steve and Andy whilst Paul, Nigel Heather and myself played the basic version. It went off really well because it gave the more experienced players a chance to play together whilst us lesser experienced guys could muddle through the rules together and ask the others if we got stuck.

Our game progressed smoothly and Paul turned out to be an adept player, even though he had only really played solo. Nigel's farm packed a punch in the end, but Paul won with me coming up 3rd as I couldn't seem to generate enough wheat or veg!

Nigel Wood (left) and Brian thinking about their next move
whilst Steves hand goes to pick something up

Our gaming table - Paul red, Nigel Heather blue and myself red

Across the pond, the other game progresses

Nigels farm suddenly seemed to increase in size whilst mine stood still!

Up coming dual game of Agricola

Nigel Wood posted around an email stating he was setting up a game of Agricola for this Friday (30th) and would be using the latest add on sets. The places were quickly snapped up and I thought I'd lost out. But a few people were also having a few worries about playing the advanced rules. So I had a mini-brain wave and asked if Nigel had enough space to play another game of Agricola using my own copy - but using only minor rules. Luckily there is and a few more people have been added to the play list. Some have decided to play the advanced rules whilst a few have decided to play the less advanced, but still as good, rules. The other good thing is if we find a rule were are unsure of, we have Nigel the undisputed king of Agricola on hand to ask. Looking forward to getting down onto the 16th Century farm again!

"Perhaps today IS a good day to die!" - Galactica lost! All hands!

"Basestars, ten and two o'clock! Raiders incoming! They're launching missiles!!" And that was how our epic 5 hour Battlestar Galactica game ended on Saturday night, Sunday morning!! Battlestar Galactica (BSG) is one of my favourite themed games and I'll jump at a chance to play. Steve kindly lent his parents grand house whilst they were away and 6 players came to the table, Brian (who supplied BSG, the Pegasus and Exodus add-ons), Tom (Mathematics wizz, but not so good apparently when it comes to setting up the Loyalty deck, but more on that later), Nigel H, Steve, Paul (BSG newbie) and myself. As you can see the table was covered with boards, chits and cards which goes to show the depth of the game and the excitement that was due to come.

Game well under way, my Boomer character is
in the launch hanger ready to go!

Firstly there is the Character Selection - I cheekily jumped in and asked for Boomer - we needed a pilot, but I didn't count on her getting TWO loyalty cards dealt later on (again more later). Steve went for Tom Zarek (Political leader), Nigel went for Col Tigh, Paul went for Support/Engineer Cally, Tom went for President Baltar and finally Brian went for Commander Adama. Being the only pilot I also got the CAG position - a new role that allows my character to control other Vipers whilst flying myself.

Yay I'm Boomer! I was CAG, but what?! I'm a Cylon!? Noooo!

Then came the Loyalty deck - this is a secret hand of cards that determines if you are a Cylon or not - twisting the way you play. I was dealt Not a Cylon. The game set off and straight away there was combat that needed to be resolved. With Pegasus on hand to help we made short work of a basestar but my character ended up in sickbay. That seemed a theme of the night, as soon as I got into a Viper, I'd quickly end up in sickbay! A lot of suspicion was also being laid at my feet for not displaying strong human traits for some reason. Then a lot of suspicion was being laid at Tom's feet - I didn't know why - until suddenly he declared he was a Cylon and Resurrected back to the Cylon fleet; ready to start causing havoc on the human fleet - something which he took with relish.

It's all going wrong...two humans are actually
Cylons - the only pilot and the President!

Mid way to Cobol, the next set of Loyalty cards are dealt; as I was Boomer, I get two cards as did President Baltar. I was dealt a non-Cylon and Cylon Sympathiser ... oh no! It was as it happened in the show! Boomer finds out she's a Cylon! Then we found out there was an irregularity with the cards and they were handed out again. Good - I doubt I'll get the Cylon card again and I get out in my Viper and start blasting toasters!! Except I got it again! Exactly the same card! It must have been fate. So automatically I became a Cylon and transferred to the Cylon fleet. So now my fellow humans suddenly became targets - something I wasn't really sure about - conflicted loyalties! Typical Boomer.

Things start to come to an end - with the new President also a Cylon -
two Basestars attack complete with an attack armada of raiders and heavy raiders.
Galactica suffers its fifth and almost final serious damage marker.

From there it went downhill for the humans - first came one hammering from the Cylons and they suffered some heavy damage. Then suddenly Steve (Tom Zarak) was revealed as a Cylon - leaving the humans without a President (Presidential powers passed to Commander Adama who also had taken on the position of CAG after Boomer had jumped ship) - and hope fading fast. But they battled on, taking on one Crisis card after another, but for some reason, they suffered a serious lack of Jump Prep markers. Finally, after a combined series of assaults by Centurions, several key locations taken and a cataclysmic attack from virtually all directions, Galactica suffered its 6th, and final, serious damage and she was lost, all hands.

"Game over man, game over!" Galactica is gone! 

Over 5 hours had flown by - the game had swung back and forth in favour of the humans and the cylons. In the end the cylons won - but just - the humans just needed to make one more jump to win and the cards were stacked against them. Brilliant game!