A Saturday of gaming

Wow - a whole load of games today - first Eketorp, then Zooloetto then Ticket to Ride (USA map). Eketorp was played by myself, Roshni and Maya - a fab game of warring Viking tribes (I think Eketorp is German for Viking although Google Translate doesn't seem to think so, but hey, what does Google know...). The idea is everyone gets a group of little wooden guys, a card is drawn that shows where to place several pieces of material (Bales of grass/hay, wood, clay and stone) - each worth more in points value.

Once these have been placed, players then secretly using a marked board and screen place their warriors where they want to attack or claim materials. Once revealed, everyone moves their warriors to the appropriate places - any in dispute then have to fight over the materials using combat cards marked 1 to 6; the higher card wins, knocking the other to a hospital, the bigger the difference in card numbers, the longer they have to stay in the hospital - but the cards are swapped over and placed on the board where they can be picked up again if the the players cards run out, so you can't ever have one dominating player - neat idea.

After all combat has taken place, including any attacks on villages, players take back their "booty" to store in their village. The first to 18 pieces ends the game and score is counted on the number of pieces * their value (grass/hay worth 1 whilst stone is worth 5).

This is a medium length game, but a fantastic play - everyone one can get involved and it is simple to play; combat mechanics is very simple, but effective and play never becomes stagnated. An all round favourite.

Later in the evening was a 4 player Zooloretto - again a great game, Roshni won just in time; taking the Polar Bear Cub add on was decisive. The Cub halves all Barn negative scores at the end of the game.

Finally in the evening over drinks and crisps, Anita and I duked it out in a game of Ticket to Ride: USA map. In a close fought contest, Anita passed me by 3 points when it came to the ticket count up at the end, but she failed on one ticket, loosing her 10 points - final score 92 to me, 87 to Anita! I never win at this! Yay!

Shock - games list goes down!

I just looked at my list of games on boardgamegeek - ha, its dropped to 71 - I was aiming for 100 but the big ASL sale culled a few from the ranks. A few Memoir '44 purchases should bump it up again. There have been some recent additions to the list, either from my local stockist, online or even from boot fairs.

Imperium Romanum II
Last Night on Earth
Lost Cities the Board Game
Memoir '44
Zombies!!! 2nd edition

Am looking at some new games to fill the ASL gap - possibly Power Grid...maybe...

More sunday gaming

After Zooleretto it was straight onto Diamant and Formula 1. Diamant is one of Mayas all time favourites - one she asks for all the time. It is a super easy and super tense game to play - each turn of a card could bring danger or gem stones to split between all players, who then have to decide if to Stay or Go by revealing if their hand contains nothing or a little coloured wooden guy at the same time. Once the decision has been made, players who left collect their gems and these are safe, players who remained risk their wins against the next drawn card. If two hazards occur in a draw (not necessarily together) - rock fall, snake, gas etc, thats it games over for the people left in the mine. Once the decision to stay behind was made, its super tense as to what will happen on the next card turn... Maya is great at this game and is a superb bluffer and judge of when to leave - children have no sense of danger!! Once when we all ran and she stayed, the next card was 15 stones and it was cries and shrieks of Yay and In your face!!!

The look on her face says it all for the tension and when two hazards come up!

Battlequest games due to open in Horsham yay!

Oh yeah, www.battlequestgames.co.uk is opening a shop down the road from us - a rare thing indeed an independent gaming shop, but this one is just down the road! Local gamers will go bankrupt! :)

A Sunday of gaming fun

Today was a nice sunny Sunday and before I was tasked to tackled the overgrowing garden, we sat to play some games. Poor Kavita had homework to attend to so Roshni, Maya, Anita and I had a game of Zooleretto, Diamant and Formula 1.

Zooleretto was a good blur of animals, money and competition. You have to be quick on your toes to outwit Anita at this game; yet with the competitiveness it also brings out the friendly banter of helping each other to achieve the animals we need. With this game we played with the Petting Zoo, Elephant/Zebra/Flamingo mini-add ons and Polar Bear cub add ons, giving just the right balance of complexity vs fun. A few times Anita asked Maya if she was ok or needed help but she shook her head and said "I'm thinking" lol.

Final score Anita (41), Me (28), Roshni and Maya (18)

The zoos build up; the Polar bear is still up for grabs;	The game is in full swing - they are usually a fast, frantic affair with hands all over.

History is changed!! Again!

So, I challenged Roshni to another game of Memoir '44 - seeing as the results so far were 2 - 0 to her! This time Maya got involved to see what was what. After a little bit of explanation of what the dice meant, Maya was able to pick up what was going on. The two of them shared dice rolls, which lead to be bit of excitement between them if one failed a hit, the other was encouraged to score. They also started to employ a lot of good tactics with their Command Card disadvantage.

So, the scene was set - my British forces hitting Sword beach 6th June 1944, which the girls vigorously defended. And defended they did!! It was terrible! No matter how I tried, I couldn't make head way; then about half way through, the right sector made a big push and things seemed to be going our way; one bunker was knocked out and the German artillery was forced to retreat but suddenly the left sector collapsed and the right sector took a sudden beating; then a Commando unit was wiped out and an Artillery Barrage card against a tank unit ended the British assault on Sword Beach!!

5 stars to my 1 - Roshni wins again

Memoir 44 is an amazingly simple game to play but is by no means simple in its approach - tactics, loss and wins, back and forth, I found it so much more playable than ASL. I cannot wait for Battlequestgames to open in town...more on this next post

Sword beach assault start	Things not going well for the British!	They think it's all over - it is now!

Back on with the blog and the gaming!

We're back on track with the blog - cranked it back up, copied in the old text and images and set up the new url.

Loads has happened in the two years since we've been away, bought and acquired new games - sold a load - like my entire ASL collection - shock horror - for a whopping £1057 on ebay!!! Journal 6 went for £54 - West of Alamein £101!! I used some of the money for birthday gifts and stuff (plus MOT and service is coming up) but I'm ploughing some of it back into my new favourite gaming system - Memoir '44!!!

More on that later.