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!

"Finish them!!" Blood, sand and ancient battles

Nigel Heather asked me a while back about the Command and Colours (my spelling) system - I hadn't heard of it, but I had heard it's designer Richard Borg and therefore I knew it would be a good game because he also had a hand in Memoir '44. During our recently game of Memoir, we had a look through the two systems he had, Ancients and Napoleonic, and having played a lot of Rome, Medieval and Empire Total War on the PC, I knew these would be to my liking.

We arranged a game of Ancients to start us off with to see how it went. And I have to say I love this gaming system! As it is very much like Memoir, firstly I felt very at home with it - the large hex board, single hex overlays for terrain, command cards and dice rolling for attack and defence.

The first scenario was set in 406BC - The Battle of Akragus - the Carthagians vs the Syracusans (Nigel). As can be seen in the following pictures, units are depicted by wooden blocks with coloured unit pictures on them - these pictures correspond to easy to use crib sheets to show the units movement, attack dice number, range firepower and distance, plus other figures. Unlike wargame systems I've used in the past (I'm thinking Advanced Squad Leader here for starters), the crib sheets are not awash with tiny details on every single possible aspect of battling with the units. That was a big plus point. Just some key numbers - if you are attacking X with Y, you roll Z number of dice.

My Carthagians (bottom) attempt to form a defensive shell

Each dice has coloured markers, red, blue, green, flag (for retreat) plus leader symbols and crossed swords. This allows a great deal of simplicity in combat - if a unit attacks a green infantry type, check the crib sheet, see it uses 4 dice, is allowed to use crossed swords as a hit. Roll the dice, get 2 greens and one crossed swords, so three enemy units are removed. It's as simple as that.

There are some similarities in Memoir 44 - such as each player is dealt command cards that indicate which units on the field can be used (left, centre, right or a particular type such as cavalry), the dice combat, terrain and movement. There are a few differences which make the game, in my view, that much more tactical and requiring you to think a bit more about how and why you do things. The first is Leaders - your army can come with one or more Leaders who are added to a unit and allow a dice roll to use the Leader marker as a hit, allowing some devastating attacks. Another is in Memoir, if you move into close combat and the defender fails to break or is not destroyed, the units remain facing each other and there is no come back on the attacker. This is different in Ancients in that if the defender is not broken or destroyed, they get a chance to attack back, possibly leading to the destruction of the attacker! This changes the balance of the tactics some what and makes a more thoughtful game. There is also the extra ability to move the entire army, as long as each unit is connected to another to form a line, forward as a single unit one space - this represents the tactic in the ancient world of just moving one vast number of troops towards another in one go.

Nigel's Red heavy troops move into attack

We played two scenarios - the one listed above where I was destroyed by Nigels victorious army and the second was at the Crimissos River in 341 BC with the Carthagians (Nigel) vs Syracusans. This time Nigel was deployed in two places, one in front of my army, the other on the other side of the river. He had some very powerful troops on the other side of the river, but they could only cross at certain key points. I had to quickly move up my archers and slingers to take out as many as I could before they crossed (not many!) before they had to fall back under the weight of the attack. Then I brought my heavy infantry to bear in two directions, North and North-East towards the river, splitting Nigel further and preventing his river crossing troops from helping out his other soldiers. A couple of lucky Utilise all Heavy Troops cards allowed me to close the trap on the unlucky troops crossing the river, as any troops that tried to retreat ran into Nigels army behind them and had to loose more units for failing to retreat!

Crushing the Carthagians as they cross the river!

Bringing the game to a close, I won 5:3 (which was the same historical result), whilst the first battle was won 5:4 to Nigel. Fantastic system, can't wait to play again to see other unit types - it's a pity the add ons are so hard to get hold of.

A rather long trip through Time with Time Agent!

Time Agent...a game about editing Time in your space faring species favour; and then breaking time machine invention so it's all good for you and no one else. Sounds simple and it probably is, but 6 of us played this game from from 8 until gone 1am and still it wasn't resolved. I think there is a reason why "chit" type of games of this type died out in the 90's. The idea of the game was to use chits of individuals and groups to go back in Time to lots of LetterNumbered hexes which have either coloured lines on or an Event. The aim of the game is to find Events and get them flipped to the side you need them flipped (from a Chart) that shows how it affects your species and those around you. You can also get hexes rotated to break lines to prevent technologies and even time travel itself from being created, all of which have positive or negative effects.

And prize for a board game that most looks like
it's based on the Periodic Table goes to...

The game suffered from an unfortunate Monopolyism. Monopoly for me has a massive problem in that it is a game without end or one that the end is so hard to reach, people tend to give up and wonder why they played. This happened with Time Agent by 1am.

Going back in time (the hexes) to change Events (little hexes with text) or
rotate to break coloured lines to prevent major inventions being invented. Or something...

Eurogames and others like them have an inbuilt mechanism that provide a defined end point - a turn counter, limited cards, an event that happens. This game could and should have had one of these end game mechanisms, but it didn't, relying on the players to play the game well to end the game.

Unfortunately it'll mean I'll miss this game if it is played again.

Race for the Galaxy! And then the expansion!

I've seen Race for the Galaxy around for quite some time; a lot of people in the Horsham group had talked about it and I've seen it on Boardgamegeek. Brian recently got a copy and I liked the look of it. I love card games and anything space orientated and the the family get on well with card games, so I thought Hmmm, maybe it should be the next game! Then came Valentines Day and we each got each other a present on-line - Anita got a bracelet and I got....Race for the Galaxy! Yay! I had a look at it last night and it looks good - a huge box for what it is, a number of cards and some help boards. The artwork looks cool and exciting and I hope it'll catch the girls imagination.

There have been some reports of the symbols on the cards being hard to figure out especially for kids, so I was lucky to find a help file online that is called a Guide to RftG for Kids! Which seems perfect - I've had a read through and it seems a good start - it works you up into the game, taking out most of the cards and starting with a base set and then add in a few cards at a time. There was one small problem. It is a 4 player game. A quick look on Geek found that the expansion adds a fifth player as well as some good new cards and a Solo play mode, so I picked that up from Andys and hope to start playing soon!

A nice game of 7 Wonders and Ticket to Ride USA

Anita made a suggestion that we all play a family game and so we dug out the family favourite 7 Wonders and played 5 player in which Anita won with 57 points. Later in the day we played Ticket to Ride USA and Anita beat we hands down. As always!