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!!

Holiday gaming!

Just because we up sticks and go away on holiday to Derbyshire for a week, doesn't mean we stop playing :) Firstly we had a game of the old favourite Citadels, deftly won by Anita.

Couple of days later we had a play of Zooloretto - not played this in a while - again won by Anita! Both great games to enjoy over a beer, wine (juice for the kids!) and Doritos!

Memoir 44 Campaign Book

Another addition to the Memoir 44 game; after winning £70 in the World Cup office sweepstake, I used a bit to buy a cheeky gift for myself from Battlequestgames - the Memoir 44 Campaign Book 1 (by the sounds of it there will be several of these on the way).

It looked quite thin but it is action packed with masses of scenarios, campaigns, a sheet of thick punch out components (re-enforcements, landing craft, obstacles, smoke counters etc), plus new info cards, campaign tracking sheets. A brilliant book and well worth it.