A game in the top ten family games we don't have you say? Not anymore!

Last Saturday we all took a nice walk into town, sun was shining and we thought why not. And as we were walking past Battlequest we thought we'd pop in - a more accurate description is that I persuaded the others to come with me lol. Anyhow whilst in there I spotted Smallworld, one of the few top ten family games we don't have. I showed it to Anita and another customer enthused about its good points.
I knew it was based on a game we used to own called Vinci. I was introduced to this game and found it was great. This changed though with my own copy when I found that the rules were overly wordy and the rules difficult to understand.
This version is a lot more simplified and easier to play it seemed and Anita was sold so we got it. Hopefully we find this a lot of fun to play!

Italians take a pounding in the Desert

So, we haven't played Memoir '44 in a while, so in the dying embers of the girls school Easter holiday, Roshni, Maya and I replayed a battle in the desert back in 1941 between retreating Italian forces and the British 4th Armoured Brigade in a scenario called "Beda Fomm". The basics of the set was that a large column of retreating tanks and men were caught by a small British blocking force. Whilst they held the Italians at bay, the rest of the 4th Armoured swept up from the south with a mixture of tanks, elite tank units and infantry. Roshni and Maya played the part of the Italians.

The trap is sprung! The Italians are caught by the blocking force on the main road whilst the rest of the 4th Armoured charges up from the south.

Harsh! A single Italian tank catches the full force of 4 dice hits from the tank on the hill.

A line of dice showing another crushing shot against a single Italian tank.

It's not going well for the Italians!!

The Italians are thrown into disarray - tanks burn to their front, British infantry 

charge in from the South and rear

Ouch! Still some fight in the Italians yet!

The Italians fight back!!

The British charge with an Infantry Assault...oh nuts...

Has the British Trap failed???

Then again perhaps not - that's an Armoured Assault card btw...

Surrender or be destroyed!!

Mama mia...

Like in the actual battle, the Italians tried to split their resources between cracking the roadblock and defending against the southern attack instead of rushing the roadblock in force and rolling over it before the 4th Armoured could save the small force there. Yay for the good guys!! 

Bank holiday! What does that mean?? Games! and Buy a new one too!

Bank holidays ahoy! Buy one bank holiday, get one free, even if you don't watch the Royal Wedding! Which we might. Anyhow, with a BHM and a holiday Friday so close, if you take three days off in the middle, you get eleven days off in total! Wowzers - so what does this mean for us and gaming? Well, an opportunity to nip into BattleQuest Games for starters, and to play some games.

Andy was celebrating one year since opening (wowzers again, really??!) and we celebrated with him by buying a new game ;) This one is a filler named Mow (A unilateral language word for Moo I think, being the manual is in a million and 3 languages.) - a card game based on cows and flies. I kid yee not. The basic premise is that each player gets 5 cards, each card will have a picture of a cow, a number from 0 to 16 and some or no flies. There is also a turn direction indicator, showing the flow of players; this is decided by the first player.

Each player in turn selects a numbered card, for example 8 with 4 flies and places it on the table. The next player has to then place a card higher or lower than 8. If they place 12 for example, all numbers between 8 and 12 (9, 10, 11) are now locked out and the 3rd player must place a card lower than 8 or higher than 12. If they cannot, they must pick up the cards on the table. These cards are put aside for counting up later.

There are some numbered cards with 0 flies, but as the game is based on the idea of winning by having as few flies as possible at the end of the game, it is better to retain these than a card with flies on.

As each player puts down a card, they must also pick up one from a deck to retain a hand of 5 cards. Some cards are special which allow for example two of the same number to be placed, a locked gap number to be used etc. These are few and fair between but are useful. They are also useful for allowing the player to change the player flow - eg a player who has just picked up 5 cards could get stung again with another load of cards.

Play continues until the deck has run dry and the cards on the table have been collected by an unfortunate player. The players then count up the flies on the cards in their hand and any they have been forced to collect. The winner is the one with least flies.

This is an exciting little filler to start an evening or between games. It's backstabbing nature and ease of play is of great appeal to us.

We then played 7 Wonders just for the heck of it :)

Bring out an old favourite - oh, and go on then, 7 Wonders

With the weekend nearly over, having spent most of it at the in-laws celebrating a joint birthday for Maya and her cousin Anusha, we decided to use up the rest of the Sunday afternoon/early evening playing some games. Firstly I grabbed an old favourite that hasn't been played in a while, Zooleretto. It has been some time since we last played this and I, and probably all of us, had forgot how much we enjoyed it. 

The premise of the game is to build and run the most successful Zoo - each player starts with a zoo board with three locations for animals, a 6 animal spot, a 5 animal spot and a 4 animal spot. There is also a Barn on the board for spare animals that cannot be located. 15 tiles are also separated from the bag and placed aside for the End Game. 

Each player receives a "lorry" - a wooden container with three slots. These are placed in the middle of the table and a black bag is passed around from which the player draws a tile and places it on one of the free slots on a wooden lorry. The tiles could be an animal (elephant, tiger, panda etc), a coin for financial deals (the player starts with 2) or a Refreshment Stand. 

The lorries gradually fill up, with players trying to place animals and other tiles in a combination that they want but hope no one else wants. Play continues, with drawing of tiles, until a player decides they want a particular lorry - at this point, they pass on the bag without drawing and simply take the lorry of their choice - this can be a lorry with one, two or all three spaces filled. 

Once the player has taken a lorry, they take the tiles and either place them in empty animal spots (the same animal can only go into the same enclosure - no flamingoes into the tiger pen, as much as we want to!), into their own money supply or as a refreshment stand for an enclosure. If the player has no room for an animal tile (or more), then that spare animal has to go into the Barn. Animals in the Barn cause negative points at the end of the game. 

Each enclosure has two point values (well three actually) - a Full value, a Only One To Go value and Only a Few Animals + A Refreshment. This sounds complex, but in reality it isn't. 

For example, the 1st Enclosure with 6 animal spaces scores 10/6 - this means if you fill it with 6 pandas for example, you get 10 points at the end of the game - only 5 pandas, you get 6 points at the end of the game. If you say for example put in only 3, but you have a Refreshment Stall in the bottom right of the enclosure, the player is allowed 1 point per animal e.g. 3 points in this case. No Refreshment Stall = 0 points! 

So the aim is to fill those enclosures - some enclosures also give coins for filling them up; coins can be used to open up a new 5 space enclosure, buy animals from other players Barns (1 coin to them, 1 to the bank), remove an animal from your own barn etc etc. It's all down to management of the Zoo as well as picking the animals, but it's done on a very simple level that even Maya can appreciate. That's not to say its too simple for adults. 

Animals can also have offspring, for example some animal tiles come with a Male and Female symbol, which when placed in the same enclosure, produces a small round baby animal tile which can be used to bolster an enclosure number. Animals can only be paired once, so a new male or female would need a new male or female tile to produce a 2nd child tile. 

Finally, when all of the tiles are used up, the tiles from the 15 separate ones are used for 1 round then the game ends. 

Scoring is based on the following: 

Successful filling of enclosures;

Number of similar refreshment types = 2 points per type (eg three apple carts = 1 type = 2 points)

Number of similar animal types in the barn = -2 points per type (eg 1 camel, 2 tigers, 2 pandas = 3 different types = -6 points). 

This is a highly enjoyable game to play and the final winner is hard to determine until right until the end. It's loved by every one in the family and they are always up for a game. It's full of strategy and management that's not too hard to handle, so fun for everyone! 

Afterwards we also had a game of 7 Wonders just because we love it so much! It's hard to think we'll ever find a game to replace it! 

All weekend DIY needs a bit of gaming to temper it

Most of the weekend was spent redecorating the bathroom, cleaning, painting the walls, bath side, ceiling and cabinet doors - looks a whole lot better. Half way through Sunday, we decided to sit down for a game of our favourite boardgame at the moment, 7 Wonders. Another cracking game and again no one knew who would win right until the end.

The final score was Roshni: 24, Maya: 44, Kavita: 48, Anita: 56 and me: 58! Just two points in it! Anita would have won it if but for a few minor military losses or for a few more coins.

100th Post - Battlequest gaming night!

On the event of the 100th Post for the Bradshaw Tribe Gaming blog, we're marking a visit to Battlequests gaming night. Andy started up his own gaming club last night - initial feelers out by email to see how many regulars were interested and the date was set for 7:30 on the first Thursday of the month. I went along around 8:30 to find a game of 7 Wonders already in play - Andy and two others were just totalling up the score from their last game. In the other other side of the shop, a few others were playing a game of San Juan I think. Anyhow, Andy, myself and the two others settled down for another round of 7 Wonders - again a fab game. In the end I came last and I wasn't even trying to loose lol! The two newbie went for a financial and a scientific drive each. Oddly the science guy had hardly any resources nor any other buildings but managed to come 2nd I think. Any how it was a good game.
We also had a game of Incan Gold - a sort of cousin to Diamant. It was ok, if a little over complicated compared to Diamant, but the essence of the original game was in there.

All in all a great night, meeting new people, playing great games. Hopefully get into some new games next time!

Down to some Saturday gaming!

Today was a day of some good gaming; firstly of Cargo Noir, our new Days of Wonder game we got from Andy at Battlequest - a game based on criminal families and cargo smuggling. Now depending on your sensibilities will depend on if you will like the theme of this game; remember, it's criminal families smuggling items of ill repute, such as guns, cigars, gems, ivory, cars etc. The idea of the game, which seems fairly fast paced, but does take about an hour and a half to play, is that each family has three cargo ships to start with and 7 coins. The 'board' is based around several ports throughout the World each with differing numbers of spaces to hold illegal goods, such as New York with three spaces, Rotterdam with 4 and Cape Town with 1 for example. There is also Macao, a general trading port with 8 spaces for items and the Casino.

There are also a series of cards with purchase amounts on them with victory points as well. A typical turn revolves around resolving the cargo ship events of the previous turn, selling your items in your family cargo area (a card display in front of the player) and finally re-establishing where your ships will go this turn.

The game actually starts on the 3rd phase of a pre-first turn; all players get a chance to send their ships out to locations around the world, to the casino and/or to Macao. After this the game begins with phase 1 - resolve the previous ship placements - a ship placed at the casino wins 2 coins from the casino; a ship placed at Macao allows the owner to gain one random coin from the bag or to swap an item from the eight listed for one in your warehouse and any ships at a port wins the cargo there for the coins they agreed to pay for it (see phase 3) unless they are in competition with someone else (see phase 3), otherwise they have to decide if the cargo is worth upping the stakes again the competition (paying at least one more coin) or pulling out and using the money elsewhere.

In phase 2 of a player turn, the player decides to cash in any cargo for victory cards. There is a two-tier scheme for cashing in, mixed and similar. A chart indicates how much 1, 2, 3, 4 etc mixed cards are worth and how much 1, 2, 3, 4 etc similar cards are worth (more!). A player can cash in say 3 jems, 2 cars and a cigar box for x number of points which can be used to buy typically criminal items - villas, night clubs, dive bars, right up to a Principality!

Finally in the 3rd phase, the player then re-designates where their cargo ships will go for the next turn, placing bid amounts down for cargo or attempting to outbid other players for more precious cargo they want.

It's a great game of bid and outbid, forcing opponents out of the bidding process whilst trying to be a high roller in the criminal underworld with purchases of illegal goods and items. There were several queries we had about the game even in our third play - such as according to the rules when cashed in, items don't go back into the bag but we found we were running out of items 2/3rd of the way through; amongst others. I'll question this and others on boardgamegeek to find out how to play the game better. Check on the forums at http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/90305/cargo-noir

All in all a good game; we played it twice - with 3 then 5 players ranging from 8 to adult and was enjoyed by all.

We also had another game of "7 Wonders" 5 players which again was just thoroughly enjoyed - a real hit game. Anita won for the first time with a crushing 59 points, just hedging Roshni out (with 57) as she had -3 for Military Victories.

End game for Cargo Noir - my family (bottom) wins!!