May 14th 1982. Sit Rep.

This isn't a full session report as much as a "Wow I can't believe it's going so well this far into the game" type of thing...with pics. Obviously, me being so hyped on how well its going is definitely going to make it all go wrong, well maybe, we'll see. The game in question is Where there is Discord

Let's look at the turn track...

At first glance all is well. After a spectacular bombing raid on Stanley airfield, including Vulcans and 5 Harriers I've managed to cave in the Argentine Supply situation. On second glance you'll not they still have 5 Exocets. In fact they've only launched one Exocet raid but that was bounced (phew). And I took a hit in international opinion to stop them getting further missiles.

Now the Opinion track...

It's blurry but you can still see that International opinion is really low. I took a piece of advice from a session report here on the geek, to sacrifice International opinion if it keeps National up. So far it's not hurt me much even though it looks bad. I'm not too worried about losing Acension as the early warnings from them have been few and far between so far! You'll also note that I only have one San-Carlos event so far. Compared to the way these cards normally fall for me, I'm way ahead of the curve!

The card decks...

Another blurry one, sorry. Not a lot to see here, but you'll note I've been held up on my journey south, as the Sit Rep number is behind the date. A minor conveniance actually :) Card number 2 was a UN call for a cease fire which I rejected, I told you I'm on a high, and when everything is going well, why sue for peace!

The SAS...

I've stuck to my usual practice of leaving the SAS watching for Super Etenards throughout most of the game as I am so often creamed by the Exocets. That hasn't happened this game so far, in fact the Skyhawks have been my bane, they just sunk HMS Coventry. :angry:

Under the water...

My own inclination in previous games has been to drop one sub in each zone and leave them there. Yet, once again I've adopted another stratergy from a previous poster here at BGG and I've been focusing on the Coastal zone, and only moving out if there is something to target. This hasn't been as successful. None of the naval conflicts have resulted in a kill as yet. I was hoping that this change would have helped eliminate the naval threat early in the game, but no such luck.

In the air...

Not a lot to see here, but I've basicly been pumping 5 Sea Harriers a turn out on missions each turn to whittle down the Argentine supply situation. Once again, this is something I have always only sent one or two harriers out for it in previous games. It's working very well, many turns I haven't put up a CAP at all. CAP's look even less likely for the next few turns as I'm now two Harriers down. One to bad weather and another in the raid on Stanleys airport.

On the transports...

This is my secret load-out pattern, you MAY NOT copy it in your games. It's actually a new pattern for me, so wish me luck with it :)

Onto disposition of the fleet...

You'll immediately notice the inset top left. Yes it's true the Sheffield has been lost...but not in the game if you take my meaning. Do not cry, I've done enough for everyone!

You may wonder why I only have HMS Alacrity in the western zone (a type T21 no less!), well that's because those blasted Skyhawks have just sunk the Coventry which was in that zone. They'll have to be some rearrangements next turn. Perhaps the loss of the Coventry signifys the ending of my good run, even if that is the case, at least I'll have this report to look back on and smile.

Monty Python Fluxx

Until this Christmas I'd never played or even see any of the Fluxx games played. I have to admit that what I'd heard about it did sound fun but wasn't going to risk my hard-earned on a game I wasn't sure about.

Still Christmas rolled round and presents arrived and you can guess what was included!

I played one game with my wife and son, and it was pretty good, apart from me having no memory for songs and losing out because of it ( and not having seen any Monty Python for about 15 years ). We had some fun.

Then this weekend I had a bigger game with daughter #3 and her intended added into the collection for 5 people sitting round the table. We'd just had a meal and were sitting back and relaxing with some drinks when the game hit the table.

I think I found its sweet spot with five people. That's enough people so that someone has something funny to say, and that at least one other person is going to get the Monty Python joke. It's also not so big that that you sit around waiting too long for your turn.

We ended up playing two hands ( or is it rounds ) and having a jolly good time. I recommend the game to monty python fans but would offer a stern "stay away" to anyone who doesn't.

Dragonology , a review

My son received "Dragonology:The Game" for christmas. He's a simply nuts for anything with big teeth, be it dragons, dinos or even crocs, so this is way up his street.

When I saw the box I was impressed. Its about the size of a standard square box, think Lord of the Rings(2000) or Doom:The Boardgame or Memoir '44, and you're on the right track. This box is a nice heavy weight card with a loverly design printed on it, it exudes quality. What I especially like about it though is that the top of the box is also a flap! Open the flap and behind you find a transparent plastic top that lets you see the playing pieces inside the box.

When you take off the top inside you find some excellent looking bits. There are a number of character pieces that you use as pawns. These characters are full of ... well character. They are pre painted and each is different. There's the woman dressed for a tea party, an explorer and a chap in a nice suit and so on. You'll be moving these around the board. Unfortunately play has revealed that a couple of these are perched on bases too small and tend to fall over.

Then you have a bunch of dragon miniatures. These represent pretty much every type of dragon you've ever heard of. The standard four legs two wings, the chinese dragons the wyverns and so on. These are fairly small and not in scale to the player pawns.

The board is a wonderful peice of art featuring the entire world laid flat with path ways traced aross it. Along these pathways are cities, ports, dragon homes and special spaces that allow you to collect tickets or knowledge ( more later ).

The theme of the game is that your character will be travelling around the world researching information on dragons, which you then use to ensnare a dragon or three. Some of the special spaces I mentioned allow you to take a Ticket to help you on your journey around the world. These tickets are absolutely wonderful. Shaped like old world tickets and depicting airplanes, balloons, trains etc they look like real tickets!

As I said you're going around the world researching, so when you land on a city, dragon-home etc you can take a "Bit of Knowledge" card. These either give you an ability to break a rule or give you a bit of knowledge about one of the dragons. When you collect three bits of knowledge for a single type of dragon, you should make your way to the dragon's home space and collect that dragon. Once you have it, no one else can get that dragon... unless they have a card that lets them steal it!

The "Bit of Knowledge" cards are loverly to look at, they have a high sheen and the art on the front is top notch, unfortunately they choose to have odd shaped cards without a straight edge on them. They look great but do suffer from not being easily shuffled or fanned in the hand.

As to play. Well it's basically, roll the die, move, pick up a card or ticket if you can, collect a set, get a dragon, move to the end game space. And that's it. There just isn't any substance to it for a hobby gamer. For the family however to play over the Christmas break, once a year, instead of Monopoly... most definitely.

It is a wonderfully produced and smashing looking, and sadly missing any real game play.

Deepsea Desperation

Deepsea Desperation is a board game released by Greenpeace. It's a little print and play game that quite obviously is a dig at BP, and politically driven. At first glance you can see that the oil drillers are the bad guys and animals are in danger, everything as you might expect.

What did I expect?

I expected a miserable piece of rubbish. The "real" world often puts out these kinds of things and without fail thay are rubbish. Roll 'n move in a snakes 'n ladders style.

But Wait! What's this? The game is designed by Terror Bull games? The people who designed "War on Terror"! Real game designers. Wow!

That's right a small print and play given away with political motives designed by real game designers! I was shocked.

Well I printed the game and gave it a try. To be sure its not a great game, but it is a real game with tactics. Considering that it's only two pages to print and games last about 10 mins' what do you have to lose.

I hope this kind of thing becomes a trend. People pushing agendas, maybe even products, but with real playable interesting games we can get our hands on.

Not much chance , but I've got my fingers crossed.

Get the game

.

Nile - review

"Nile" is a straight forward card game for 2 - 5 players. I've been playing this with the guys at work during lunch and it's proved itself very popular. Our first couple of games went quite slow but now we're easily getting two games in during the lunch break with minutes to spare.

The cards in the game represent five basic crops, Lettuce, Castor, Wheat, Papyrus and Flax. During play you'll be playing cards of the various types out on the table in front of you into your "fields". Of course it's not that simple!

At the start of your turn, you turn over a "flood" card. The crop shown on the Flood card is then harvested by all players that have that crop planted. So if you have a field with three Wheat cards in it and the flood card was "Wheat" you would take the top Wheat card from your field and place that in your score pile. You'll be collecting cards of the various types like this throughout the game.

Once the flood has been dealt with you can "trade". There are two types of trade neither of which is actually trading with other players. The first type of "trade" is where you discard two cards and draw one from the deck, hoping to get a card that you need. The other trade type is to discard two cards and turn over a new Flood card causing extra Harvests.

After the trades you get to plant new fields by playing cards straight to the table in front of you or into existing fields. You can plant two matching cards ( for instance two Wheat ) as a new field. You could also plant two cards of two different crops ( one of each ). Additionally you can any number of cards that match into fields you already have planted.You can't however plant just anything! You cant plant any cards that match the current "Flood" card, and you cant plant a new field unless playing more cards than any other player has on the table in that crop. So if the Flood card is Lettuce, I can't play that, and if any other player currently has Flax planted I can't play that... unless I can plant two Flax and he only has one. If you do manage to plant a new and bigger field the other players have to discard their smaller field!

The last thing you do on your turn is to draw two cards.

You go through the draw deck once for each player, and as players are constantly adding cards to their score pile each iteration gets quicker as the deck is shrinking.

There are two more card types that add flavour. A single "Locusts" card when drawn makes the player with the biggest field (largest number of cards in that field) discard the entire field. The other type of card is "Speculation". On your turn you can play up to two speculation cards. These cards have two crops on them, if the next flood card matches either then you immediately get to draw three cards into your hand.

At the end of the game, you sort your score pile into the different crops and score one point for each card in your smallest pile. If you haven't got one of every crop, you score zilch!

That's it. Simple stuff, yet it is tactical and you will be making plans and actioning decisions during play.

Some anecdotes for you.

I discovered that one player was tracking what crops I had harvested and had deduced that I hadn't any Papyrus, so he made great efforts to keep a big field of Papyrus in front of him, denying me any score at all at the end. It worked too!

During another game I was again trying to harvest a Papyrus, if I got it I would have at least one of every crop type scored. I had a two Papyrus field in play and was very aware that the Locust card had not come out yet. So to protect that field I built up a field of four wheat ( so if the Locust came out they would take Wheat and not my precious Papyrus ). A few turns later I still hadn't scored it, so started discarding cards to generate new floods and did manage to get Papyrus in flood, Huzzar!.

In a similar incident I wanted to plant a field of Castor but one of my opponents had a two Castor field. So again I started discarding to cause Floods and that paid off, I flooded Castor, reducing the size of his field. Then flooded Lettuce and was able to play out my two Castor in a new field.

On a number of occasions I've felt the pressure of trying to score that last type of crop and watching the deck shrink far too quickly, adding a level of interest to the game, a tenseness.

In summary, I'm really quite taken by the game and it's proved very popular with my group.

Where there is Discord - Session Report

Yesterday was a good day for me! Why? Well I got to play a game of "Where there is Discord : War in the South Atlantic" right through.

It's a solitaire wargame where you control the British task force heading south to retake the Falkland islands in 1982 and the reason I was so happy about playing it is that I dont get it to the table very often at all.

The reason it's a rarity is that it is massive, the sides of the board actually hang over the sides of my table and the game play itself usually takes me about nine hours! I'm not able to leave games set up overnight so reserving the time and table can be a challenge.

Yesterday's was of the usual length, but do not fear, every minute of that game was great fun. I just love the way the game builds in intensity as you play. My wife noted my occasional bellows of "Oh yeah!" and "In your face!". Sadly she also noted my occasional wail of pain. It's that kind of game, it gets to you.

Before I say how it went I want to advise that anyone playing this game grabs a copy of the "Expanded Order of Play" by Board Game Geek user Doug Adams as it can save quite a bit of looking up when you haven't played for a while.

So here's what happened in May 1982...

1st : Had to reduce demands on US resources and send two ships home. I regretted this later.

3rd : Had a terrific offer from the French to train with them that meant I got to bounce all future Mirage and Dagger attacks. This undoubtably saved me a few ships.

4th : A bad day all round, not only did the world hate the interference with the banking system neccesary to stop the Argi's getting more Exocets, but worse still a surface battle group snuk through the screen and managed to sink HMS Yarmouth before getting away.

6th : HMS Avenger had to be sent to Chile rather than sent to the Falklands as a reinforcement. Once again, this came back to bite me later.

7th : Today felt like I was stabbed in the back. After sending the Avenger to Chile yesterday, today they stopped giving me intel because of all things I upped the security at Malta!

8th : Finally the weather started letting me interdict Argi' supplies. HMS Splendid spotted the Argi' Carrier group but couldn't get permission to fire, dang!

9th : Splendid got the permission it needed and sunk the Carrier. Also launched a joint Vulcan/Harrier bombing attack on the Falklands airport which was mildly successful but at the cost of a Harrier.

10th : HMS Sheffield sunk out in the defence zone

11th : HMS Invincible had to withdraw with a couple of escorts for repairs.

12th : Had an opportunity to launch an SAS mission against the Argi' Exocet supply, but cancelled it because of potential international reprecussions.

15th : An Exocet attack took place but the missle missed. Harrier "Red 2" took on four Skyhawks, he got two of them before he was shot down.

16th : HMS Ardent sunk by bombs.

17th : Two destroyers taken from picket duty to escort a "friendly" Russion trawler away from the task force at the worst of times. Immediately after, a raid by Skyhawks sunk the Invincible. I was devastated. Fortunately the remaining Harriers managed to make it off before she went down.

The very next raid meant the loss of HMS Brilliant to an Exocet. I was really cursing the Russians at this point. Then a second Exocet came in and sent HMS Brilliant to the bottom. All in all, a very bad day.

18th : The dreaded Exocet struck again, this time HMS Glamorgan. Revenge was sweet, the next attack in was by a pair of Etendards but a rapidly scrambled Harrier managed to shoot the one carrying the Exocet out of the air. "IN YOUR FACE!" Doubly sweet because intel said it was the last they had.

19th : Harrier lost to bad weather, such a waste.

23rd : After delay 3 Para land in San carlos but HMS Glasgow and HMS Andromada both lost.

24th : Both the Welsh guards and the Gurkhas failed to get a lodgement when landing.

25th : Intrepid lost, 42 Commando lost, vicious counter attacks fought off by the SBS and 8 Commando.

26th : HMS Fearless sunk. The people back home couldn't take any more and the government ordered a withdrawl.

And so the game ended in a complete loss. Looking back over it there were a couple of decisions that I went the wrong way with. I definitely should have gone with the SAS attack on the Exocet supply, those things are just too dangerous to ignore. Why didn't I attack, because of the International Opinion. i think I was being too precious about it. With every other option I had, I ensured Exocets were blocked withheld banned etc but this a big regret.

In San Carlos I should have placed "junk" ships on either side of the ones carryingout the landings, to soak up Skyhawk attacks. Failing to do this cost me a landing ship which subsequently meant I lost a unit on sure beacuse it was at diminished strength

Also I will study my troop loading more carefully next time. I felt I was almost wasting a turn/day sitting in San Carlos not unloading everything I could.

Once again, a Great Game

Legitimacy - Review

A couple of months back I sold my copy of Talisman which I'd been lugging around since the 80's. Why did I sell it? I realised that I'd become reluctant to play it. The reason I was reluctant was simply that the game was too darned long, even when I used my "play fast rules". I also found the use of counters for everything a wee bit fiddley.

The hole that Talisman left in my collection has now been very well filled by Legitimacy!

In this game you take control of a character in a fantasy land and move around the board fufilling quests collecting crown jewels and then race to claim the throne.

The charcater you play can have three stats, move, fight and magic. Move is a bonus you add to a die roll when it comes time for you to move. Fight is added to a die when you're bashing another player, and magic is a ranged attack which can take various forms depending on spell used.

All the chracters start as "Good" but if you attack another player your'll become "Evil". This doesn't change your character as such, but if you have any "Good" followers they will leave you when you turn "Evil" and vice versa. Once you complete a mission and gain a Jewel however your character becomes "good" again, huzzar!

You'll also start with a random pet, which adds to one of your abilities.

The board is based on large hexagons each of which has a colour. Your character has a colour too, and an associated board hex. When setting up the hexes as the play board you always start with the black hex and add the hex for each character. So if you have three players you would have a board made up of a total of four hexes. These hexes are cute with comical graphics and little characters hidden amoungst the artwork such as the nessie in the lake.

These hexes, contain a number of path ways and you can move your character along these (roll a die add your move stat). The paths cross from hex to hex. The paths all have various munbers of spaces along them, including named spaces and black spaces. If you choose to stop at a black space you can draw a card that might be a mission or an object. If its a mission, which is usually just travel to a named space, your in luck. Once you travel to that named space you'll get to draw a Crown Jewel card. You'll need three crown jewels to win. As a bonus some of the Jewels also have special abilities.

As you're traveling around you are able to attack or zap other players and nick their stuff, of course they'll be trying to do the same to you! This leads to some careful decisions as to which direction and how far you might travel along certain branches of the paths. As I found out while playing, it does no good to travel up a dead end path to get to a named space so you can grab a jewel, only to find yourself trapped,attacked and looted!

Once you've got your hands on the required three jewels you race to the castle throneroom at which point you'rw the winner.

This is a light game with comical artwork that is fun to play with the family. It's length is just right for the complexity.

Here's why I feel this replaced Talisman:

The game DOES NOT drag on for three hours of roll and move.
It DOES NOT have lots of fiddley counters used to track everything.
It DOES NOT have a bunch of fiddley rules for what you can carry.
It DOES NOT have you constantly going backwards and forwards trying to get to a particular space.
It DOES NOT have the equivalent "Bandits" card to spirit eveything that you worked to gain in the last two hours away to the oasis.

IT DOES play in a decent amount of time.
IT DOES use cards to track your goodies and abilities.
IT DOES vary with each play depending on what characters you choose.
IT DOES vary what spells, pets, objects and missions you have to complete.
IT DOES generate a lot of table chat and FUN!

All in all, I really like this game, comical, light, fantasy adventure in less than an hour.

Sturgeon - A Review

Today I played the new card game from "Minion Games" called simply "Sturgeon". I played with three but this game does cope with up to five.

It's an odd name for a game, but the game behind the name is pretty good.

It's not really a gamers game, but a more family orientated light filler. Once your first learning game is out of the way I think you'll get through a game in about fifteen minutes. That length feels just about right for the variety of mechanics and decision making involved.

The theme of the game is fish, yes fish. Not fishing, just fish. The table in front of each player represents a part of a shared lake. Each player wants to get two Sturgeon ( thats a fish! ) in their part of the lake. The first player to get two of these big fish wins.

You turn is pretty quick and pretty easy. You start by drawing a card into your hand, you can then play as many cards as you can, with a limitation being that you can only play one fish card. Then if you happen to have more than five cards in your hand you discard down to five. That's it.

You play fish cards down in front of you. You can simply play a "Minnow" into your part of the lake. However to play a "Bass" which is a bigger fish you have to eat ( discard ) two "minnows". To play the mighty "Sturgeon" you have to eat ( discard ) two "Bass".

However you don't just have to eat fish in your own area of the lake. Ther is another type of card, a "Swim" card. If you play a swim card as you play a Bass or a Sturgeon you can eat a fish from another part of the lake, play two "swims" and you can eat two fish from someone else part of the lake. Normally a swim card can only allow you to reach an adjacent player, but if you double up the swim cards you can reach further around the turn order.

There are other cards in the deck, one revserses the order of play, which also effects how "swim" cards are played. Another card is the Fisherman, which you can play to remove another players Sturgeon. Also you can protect your fish with "Weeds" or by making them into a school.

And thats about it. It's a simple path to victory and the play is certainly not going to strain your brain. It's a light and quick to play game, ideal for family play or as a simple filler. You might even play a round to see who'll be your start player of the next game.

The game comes in a nice shiny tuck box featuring a Sturgeon leaping out of the lake, and the game is made up of 60 cards. The cards are themselves are standard weight and thickness and feature some nice cartoon fish, and I just love the minnow hiding in the weeds, he's so cute!

The rules cover 1 side of a sheet of paper with the rear side of the same sheet containing examples of play.

All in all its a nice family game, well presented, clearly explained and all for under 12 US Dollars. At that price you can't complain, it's simply a bargain!

A MERP RPG session heading for a TPK

The party have entered an underground Orc infested dungeon like affair.

Two orcs escaped from the first combat, running down a corridor. One nipped into a side room, The other ran to the end and opened the door. the door led to a cafeteria and 6 more Orcs were muching their chow in there.

The Orc that opened the door turned and guarded it waiting for back up from his pals. The party first nipped into the side room which turned out to be the armoury and put an arrow or two through the orc who was himself grabbing a bow and some arrows.

Then they decided to deal with the other Orc, as they emerged into the corridor they found that he was standing his ground but a table had been turned on its side and pushed across the doorway and a bunch of Orcs were behind it waving nothing bigger than cutlery ( they had been eating ).

The partys sniper ( Elf with +71 Missile ) planned to start picking them off and pulled out his bow and commenced to fumble it dropping it. Then the tank came running down the corridor ( Fighter with +43 1 Handed Edged ) and he too fumbled, badly, and ended up rolling a D crush crit which broke his leg giving him a -40 to activity! We ruled that he'd tripped over the elfs bow as he ran forward.

The partys scout and wizard came rushing foward to protect the fallen warrior. The Orc tried to kill the fallen man with a big swing but HE fumbled! The sword went flying! I gave it a 30% chance of the sword flying over the barricade to the Orcs with the cutlery, and it did!

The Orc threw itself onto the warrior in a grapple attack.

The partys scout jumped into the grapple and managed to pull the Orc off the fighter in a full nelson. The sniper and Wizard put an arrow each into it.

At this point the Orcs behind the barricade boosted the Orc with the newly aquired sword over the obstruction in a flying attack. He crashed into the floor and was pin cushioned with arrows before he could rise.

A few more arrors went over the table thinning the Orc heard before the Scout could stand no more of this waiting. He decided to jump the Barricade and get into combat, but rolled poorly, ending up only halfway over the barricade! The Orcs immediately all fell on him, opening him up with thier knives.

And there we ended it. Scout dead, tank immobile ( with -40 he couldn't even move! ) four angry Orcs a few feet away, and only a weak Wizard and the Sniper left on their feet.

A fun time all round and proof that the crit and fumble systems of MERP can make for great game play :)

Five Torpedoes and down she goes...

I've just finished my first game in a couple of months of "Sink the Bismarck", and managed a reasonable score, but in a rather odd way.

The first couple of turns passed with things going my way quite nicely, I managed to down a couple of Swordfish planes quite quickly, but then things started going weird.

The early success turned into air-gunnery disaster, when for turn after turn I hit nothing at all, and the first torpedo hit the ship very quickly.

Another couple of rounds later and the air was filled with Swordfish and I was having to point all of the guns into the water to fend off torps.

It was in the water that my luck was strongest. In the end I blew thirteen torpedos and only downed five aircraft! Most turns I was pointing two gunnery dice at a torpedo, other turns all of them. Only when there was a slight breather was I able to target an aircraft.

In the water I kept getting 6 after 6, but in the air... only despair!

When you target an aircraft in one of the outer air lanes it gives you a two thirds chance of targetting the right space, as the plane only has a one third chance of deviating. However this did not work for me at all in this game. The Swordfish just kept dodging.

Back in the water my luck was outrageously good. But luck is of course fickle, and my run of 6's couldn't hold. Eventually it broke and the last three torpedos all hit within two turns.

It all ended with a not-bad score of 70 points.

The end for Talisman?

Yesterday I played Talisman for the first time in probably a year, maybe two years, I havn't actually checked.

I played it because my son had been asking. I was reluctant because I knew just how long the game takes. I've felt for a long time that the game is too long, under the normal rules it usually runs for 3+ hours.

To address the time problem I've made a few house rules, which are as follows.

1 ) When you kill Craft based monsters you can cash in your trophes for a gain in craft, just like you do for Strength.

2 ) Instead of needing 7 Strength ( or Craft, see rule 1 ) in trophies to increase a stat, you only need 5.

3 ) You can have as many followers as you can collect.

4 ) No limit to how m any items you can carry

5 ) No limit on the number of weapons, armors etc you can use, so yes, you only have two arms but can use 6 swords.

6 ) Start with 4 gold.

So thats what I changed in order to speed up the game. However, it wasn't enough. Sure it speeded up the game, but something was still wrong. It's only now the next day that I've allowed mysef to see the problem.

"Allowed myself to see", you say? Yep, I believe that I've been in denial about this game. I've actually had this game since the 80s and even bought an expansion for it back in the day. This game has followed me for over 20 years and that has given it a certain amount of "value".

But now, now that my experience of games has grown, I've come to realise in the last day that I don't actually like the game. I don't like this game that I've kept safe and secure for 20+ years and carried from home to home. That was a hard truth to uncover.

So, what is it that I dont like? Obviously it's too long. But it turns out there's more. It's just too random for my liking. As a principal I dont mind randomness in games, but here, it's gone too far. Roll to move, roll for the event card, roll for the encounter, roll for the location effects. Roll, roll, roll leading to too little choice, too much bad luck and too little stratergy.

With my new realisation I'm now planning on selling my 1983 copy of Talisman along with its expansion, making room in my collection for a game I do like!

Oh, and despite the game being so random, how come the Witch always ends up on the doorway to the inner circle?

A six turn limit.

I have now played exactly one game of Risk : Transformers.

From a read through of the rules before playing I thought I had finally found a risk variant that would work for me.

My experience of risk has been the original version which simply drags on and on longer than a game of Talisman! The other verion I played was the awful Star Wars : Clone wars disaster, which was totally broken.

So how'd it go with this game? It went very well actually!

For a start the box is just the right size, The two other versions I mentioned are in larger boxes that take up too much space. This box fitted a hole on my shelf perfectly.

Inside we have a very colourful board, Robots (transformers) and tanks for playing pieces and a somewhat bizarre L shaped piece of plastic for each factions leader, The dice are good quality and heavy.

Another nice addition is the plastic scenery. There are two turntable areas that allow you to join or break connections between two areas. You get an army into the zone, only to have your opponent swivel it so it no longer goes where you want it to go. The other two plastic zones have a sliding area that can be moved to open a factory where extra units can be created.

So what we have are some good variation to the basic game.

1) Plastic terrain pieces that move
2) Strange L shaped leader pieces ( that also fight with D8s )
3) The game is only 6 turns long

STOP! WAIT! WHAT DID YOU SAY?!?

Yes that's right the game is exactly 6 turns long. And this fixes the biggest bugbear I have with Risk, that it goes on far far too long.

So all of the usual tactics are here, take over areas, earn cards, mass for attacks etc, except now it doesn't go on for 20 hours.

After 6 turns you just count who has the most areas occupied to see who's won. Frankly thats just enough for the repetitive Risk mechanics, but here it's even enhanced by the ability to use the plastic terrain pieces to your advantage.

So I reccomend this version of Risk.

The Decktet book.

This is a review of the recently released Decktet book.

Disclosure : I designed a game that uses the Decktet, a variation of that is included in this book, and I was sent a complimentary copy.

The Details :

This softback book is the size of a regular paperback and runs to 136 pages, has a glossy colour cover and is black and white within.

In my murky past I once read a book about the various standard games that can be played with regular cards. That book ( long since lost ) basically listed the games and gave the rules for each in a dry style. This book does not do that, this book has a jaunty style that makes it an engaging read, it also contains much more than just rules!

Lets step through the pages.

After a couple of pages preliminaries it leads into a section that I found really enjoyable. In this section the author describes the genesis of the Decktet gaming system, from first ideas to final version. The text and images show how the card designs evolved and give an insight into the desingers mind and inspirations.

The next section is the biggest in the book and actually gives you the rules for a number of games. This is not some dry recital of mechanics! As I mentioned earlier, the mood of the writing is jaunty and never boring.

I should mention that the designer has a "game world" in mind when dealing with the Decktet, and many of the games have a background story about their development or place in the world. What this does is help to build a theme into the card play. With a regular deck you'd just be following suit or some such, but with this background you have a theme or a story to the game play. I have found that having that background adds to my enjoyment of the games.

In general each game description is broken up into "Setup", "Play", "stratergy" and "using the Extended Deck", the final section often giving extra rules which you might consider the advanced version of the game.

In total 21 games are presented.

Next up are a few pages suggesting how you could use the card deck within a role playing game. I hadn't thought of that until reading this section, and I found that it did inspire me to use the deck for this. Some good ideas here.

Then comes part 3, which a guide to using the Decktet for fortune telling. Obviously this is silly nonsence, BUT the process' and suggestions here are very useful once again for the roleplayer. The Gypsy fortune teller in your RPG could be played out in full at the gaming table using this guide.

For the number crunchers out there, you will find the final section of interest. It presents a number of analytical views of the deck with especial reference to how the numbers add up for the various games. this knowledge will certainly be of use to a serious player.

A final note, about art. The book is liberally scattered with black and white art, varying in style from simple pen and ink drawings to wood-cut like. All of the art adds to the "feel" of the book and the theme of the Decktet itself.

In summary, I've really enjoyed reading the book and would reccomend it for any fan of the Decktet, or anyone who wants a game related book for some light reading.

The Decktet

.

Zooloretto

We played out first game of Zooloretto tonight as a family. I've played a couple of games at work with "the guys", but today was the first at home.

I really only gave the family the briefest outline of what the game was about. Pointed at the enclosures, and said you can only have one animal type in each. Pointed at the coins, and then pointed to the coin-action aid mentioning what could be done in the very briefest of ways.

Then we started, I just told then to draw out of the bag and then put the tile on one of the trucks, which we all did for the first round. Then as my wife started the second round I told her that instead of adding to the trucks she could take a truck, but would have to sit out a turn. She added to the truck. Same info to my son who also added to the truck.

A coin tile came out and I explained that the coin tile would be swapped for a wooden coin.

We all took a full truck at the end of the first round.

During the next round a Male camel came out, so I explained the breeding rules. My son bailed early this round, realising I wanted the male camel he took that truck half full. Grr!

I soon filled my first enclosure and took the coins, explaining why I got them. During my next turn I swapped my full enclosure with a partially full one, once again explaining what I was doing.

My son queried buying a tile. I think he was eyeing up one of the animals in my enclosure so I had to disapoint him and say he could only by from the barn. He was still happy though, and took a Panda off of me. It was an attack, it was a Male in my Barn which would have matched nicely with the Female I had out in an enclosure. Grr!

So here we go. My son and I were bashing each others animal selection and meanwhile my wife was just taking trucks and filling enclosures like mad. We got into the final sections of tiles and she started spending ALL of the coins she had aquired to empty her well stocked barn.

So we ended and my wife wins followed by me and my son came in just behind. It was a close game, and the introduction of the rules as we went along obviously didn't hurt their play.

This is a fun game, and deserves it's Spiel de Jahres award.

Inns and Cathedrals

This week I've a couple of games of Carcassonne using the "Inns and Cathedrals" expansion, and it's been a good experience.

Basically it includes a number of new tiles.

A couple of "Cathedral" tiles, which are entirely city with no green edges. This adds a really fun effect. When added to a city that city becomes totally valueless unless the city is completed. If completed the city is worth extra points.

Likewise the other tiles include road tiles but they roads have inns next to the road. Like the Cathedral if completed the road is worth extra, but if not complete the road is worthless at the end of the game.

Both of these features cause a few things to happen, especially in the end game. If you draw a Cathedral tile or an Inn tile and an opponent has a big feature going you can take a gamble and play this poisoned chalice into their feature spoiling it for the end game score.

Of course you can likewise take the tile and try to make the most of it earlier in the game by scoring extra points.

As well as these great score effecting tiles, it also includes a number of extra tiles that are new, and will cause the tile-counters to have to recalculate. These are not repeats of existing tile types but whole new shapes that give you new great options.

This expansion is a worth while purchase for a Carcassonne fan. It adds new scoring options without either unbalancing the game or breaking the existing stratergies.

The DOOMaster

Well we had a rather disasterous few sessions of DOOM:The Boardgame over the last few weeks. We played through the first couple of levels and in fact into the third level without ever once making it to the end.

We cheated a little I'll admit we went into the third level with three armour each, and a host of weapons all carried forwards from the last mission ( despite losing ). Our only excuse was we wanted a chance to win.

This third level is a doozey. You have to fight your way within 7 turns to one location and immediately another objective starts with only 7 turns to reach it, and then again once more. It has a lot of long corridors so speed is of the essence.

I had some speedy abiilities so I sped off to grab some armour, only to find that the next bit of corridor was now blocked by spiders at a choke point where the corridor narrowed. The other guys then came up after but with the spiders there the path was blocked. So when it came to my turn I was blocked by friends and foes from advancing or attacking. So let me cut this sorry episode short. We never made it along that corridor, a few big-nasty spawns and it was blocked beyond hope, and we died before opening the first door.

So after this miserable defeat we decided to reset it and try again. It the first time we've ever bothered with a reset, normally we just go only the next mission to keep the variety nice and spicey!

So we reset, I sped off and gained the choke point before the enemy did and ignored the armour, which made me rather sad. I promptly broke all of my weapons and resorted to the mighty fists of fury and started battling up this corridor. My fellow marines did likewise and this time we actually made progress. Through the first door and into the room with a lot of big nasties... we got no further. A second crushing defeat.

So we reset, determined to beat this darned thing. Once again I raced to the choke point to secure our path forwards. My marines fists once again leading the way. The other marines followed my lead, we dodged around the bad guys in the corridor, battered the zombies guarding the first door and burst into the room. Some handy grenades from my fellow marines helped to clear the decks. My marine burst through the next door and came to a halt. Two Demons blocked the next corridor next to each other in a mutual Swipe position, remember my Marine only had fists so I dared not advance.

The other guys were battling the big beaties in the previous room and as it turned out the Invaders couldn't stand still and advanced on my poor guy. Sure he got severely hurt but did manage to Punch both of those doggies to death in the process.

We made the second objective and headed for the third. Unfortunately this was being stood on by a Cyber demon and my bloodied fists weren't ever able to husrt him. The next marine into the room promptly ran out of ammo, where was the third guy?

Well he was low on health and he also was without ammo. We were on 4 frags and about 4 turns until the deck was drawn out. He was our only hope (Obi Wan) as he was standing next to grenades with an imp on the bazooka. He splatted the imp grabbed the goodies and advanced towards the line of invaders blocking his way. He needed the invaders to kill him so that he could spawn forwards into the last room. They didn't attack him, just stood there blocking the way. So with a gulp he took the only option he had and shot at an invader while standing in the blast area.

Sure, he got his wish, a frag and a spawn forwards. Unfortunately it also used up the only ammo for the bazooka. Game over. The cyber demon couldn't be hurt by us, we needed the bazooka to blow him off of the objective with the bazookas Knock back.

So we sat back and considered just how darned HARD this game is. We cheated with extra armour and weapons and had still been wasted.

An idle flick through the rules a little later spotted a goof we had made. We had thought that Invader minis blocked line of sight for Spawning, thus the Invader player had been able place lines of invaders along the corridors forming road blocks, and had been spawning in the same room when he shouldn't have been able to.

So there we were, wrecked, dispointed and now dispairing at the rules error. Did it last? Did we actually cry? No and No. We did put DOOM away for a while, and broke out Memoir '44:Hedgerow Hell, you can't keep gamers down!

Speeding up Doom : The Boardgame

Here are my suggestions for speeding up the base game of Doom.

Marine players all play at once or as near simualtaneous as possible.

However before they all start making their moves, the Invader player is given the chance to examine any interrupting cards in his hand and advise the players wether he may or will not be playing any of them. The Invader player must be given some lenience by the Marine players to play these cards to thier best and even have the Marines take back a part of their turn as required.

Next, when it comes time to lay out a room the Invader player should read out the items to be placed and the Marine players do all of the searching through the boxes ( and baggies ). This speeds up the building up of the rooms.

The next point is possibly going to cause the most arguement. Limit the invader to activating no more than 8 alien-monsters per turn.

Of course, this makes the game just a little easier for the marines, but it does make the game more enjoyable, and keeps everyone busy, more of the time.

Flying the Storch

I played my first game today using the Air Pack expansion for Memoir 44. Well that's not strictly true I had played the Pegasus bridge scenario but that doesn't use any planes!

So today I played scenario 12 in which the Air Rules are in effect and the Axis side starts with an aircraft on the runway.

My son always like to play the side that starts first so he played the allies. I was surprised as I expected him to want to play with the plane. However after our game he did say that he wanted to play the same scenario again but as axis next time.

I set out the game including putting the plane that turned out to be a "storch" onto the board. I was looking forward to playing with my first aircraft...then I read the capabilities and was a little crestfallen. The Storch doesn't strafe or bomb it just looks around!? The rule is that the aircraft can not attack, but spys on the enemy, which in games rules is simply this, if the plane ends it's turn next to an enemy it acts like a Recon card meaning that at the end of the turn I get to draw two cards and keep the one of my choice.

When I started playing I thought this was pretty lame but two turns later I was changing my mind. The choice of card is a serious advantage, it not only allows you to keep your aircraft in the air but you can quickly build a good hand of cards.

My little Storch lasted a few turns but in the end I couldn't keep it in the air and it disapeared. Immediately after that my worthy opponent gained a P40 which showed my how aircraft can attack the foot sloggers. As his right flank moved up to assault my entrenched troops his P40 sweapt repeatadly across them blasting them and their sandbags to bits. It wasn't enough for him though. In the end I'd advanced my right flank and used the river to pin his troops and whittle them down.

I won 4-3 in the end but it was a close run thing, and I'm looking foward the return match

Writing Rules

I'm proof reading the rules for my latest board game design "Galaxy Conquest". It's actually hard work. I've heard around the web that writing board game rules IS hard work. I wasn't convinced.

I am now starting to believe it. When I started I just rushed down all of what I thought were the pertinent points and walked away for a ,well, a couple of weeks and now I've come back to it.

I'm amazed at how poor that first draft was. I included a reference to something called "fortification" which doesn't actually exist within the game! I was inconsistent with the terms that were there. I'd left out the entire Combat Results Table!!!

Add to that the number of typos and bad syntax. It was frankly, dross. So I've just spent another hour going over the rules searching fore these mistakes, things left out, incorrect references etc and I'm bushed, it's given me a headache.

I know it's not over yet, I'm going to recheck the rules again later in the week then see about giving them to some alpha testers and thats going to bring back another whole swath of rules questions and problems that I've missed or just haven't even thought about. I'm really not looking forward to that, and I'm supposed to be doing this fun!

Danger Patrol

A couple of weeks ago I was on RPG-Geek and spotted that a game designer had uploaded his beta/apha version of his RPG. I snagged it and had a read through.

I was immediately intrigued. It's not your usual or rather, it's not a traditional Role Playing Game, and neither is it a pure story telling game. It's a hybrid of sorts.

The background is really thin, just a few paragraphs really. The idea if the game is that all of the players as well as the games master will build the background through play.

The game is called "Danger Patrol" and that name nicely links in with the Rocket Cars and Evil Scientist theme. It's posted for free on it's own page at RPGGeek.

The game mechanics are very interesting, there is no board as such, but rather a series of 3x5 cards where each important location is noted. Each character also has a card and these are placed on the table in one of the locations. As the Games Master and the players mention things as part of the narrative they can be added to a card and then placed on the table.

The narrative is also pretty imaginative. As a Player Character is carrying out an action each other player is able to add to the story provided it increases the danger level.

So in summary I've been very impressed with this game. It keeps all of the players involved even when the story does not effect their character and it's tongue in cheek sci fi background is very appealing. The rules PDF is quite short so definitely worth a quick read.

A few thoughts of Batman

I recent bought a game called Batman Begins Shadow Assault. I bought it off ebay despite it getting very poor reviews.

Why would a sane game collector buy a game he knows is poor?

Well simply put, it's the bits! The game comes with 4 Batman figurines and 20 plastic ninjas. It was the thought of those pieces that drew me in. I was thinking that I could make or use those in a game of my own devising.

So the game arrives I crack it open and take a look. I was still disapointed even though I knew it was going to be a bad game. The problem for me is that of the four Batman's ( Batmen? ) one of then has such a terrible pose that the best thing to do with it is to feed it to the nearest hungry child. Hang on there's more. The twenty ninja figures are clear plastic. They are shown on the box as being made of grey plastic, and when I compare the figure to the box, I would have preferred the grey.

So with my disapointment hanging over me I looked at the rules to the game. Oh dear, just as the reviews said on BGG.

So is it all gloom? No, I do still have three Batman's ( that just doesn't sound right) and twenty ninjas is still twenty ninjas after all, but there is a bonus as well. The game comes with four plastic dice made for stickers. These dice have flat recessed sides where stickers can be stuck, so I'll be able to use them when I come to make a Print and Play game that needs bespoke dice. :)

A great idea Lost!

So I was cycling home and had what I thought was a great idea for a board game.

When I got home, all I could remember was that I'd had a great idea. Darn!

Anyway good news in the end, after eating my evening meal the idea came back to me, phew! It'll be a tile laying game and I'm thinking of giving it a hamster theme.

To be honoest it was the idea of hamsters that was the inspiration so there wasn't any idea for possible retheme. Now now while blogging this another possible theme has cropped up. Thank goodness for bloggs! It could be a game set in the asteroid belt...

I'll say no more, this game I'm going to keep to myself until I've firmed it up some more it has a potential of being a mass market game, simple, cute theme, playable by the whole family. If I can register Hamsteropoly I'll be made!!!!!

Another loss at Space Crusade

Well... Huh... I, erm...

Ok....

So he... KICKED MY BUTT AGAIN AT SPACE CRUSADE.

Number 1 son is basically a genius at games, or lucky to an inappropriate level. We've played three scenarios from the base game and every time he's won by over 20 points.

I will admit to being fairly close to winning this time, which makes a rare change. I'd taken out all of the standard marines on his team.

He had decided to split his marines up in order to reveal the blips on all of the boards that's something he just loves doing, I don't know why, it's a kid thing.

His Commander sprinted off on his own and his marine with the standard bolter went the other way with the reminder clearing the nearest rooms.

Having read a recent article on BoardGameGeek about tactics in Space Crusade I had decided to adopt the suggest from there that HandToHand combat is the best option for the weaker aliens. So with that in mind I placed the blips in groups just out of sight, the intention being to swamp the standard marines and once they were removed focus entirely on the Sergeant.

Of course it didn't quite go the way I wanted. His missile launcher placed a shot that removed 3 minis in one shot. Then he made a very clever move with the plasma gun guy that lined up a few Gretchins and removed them from the game. In two shots my horde on the first board was all but eliminated.

The Bolter marine who'd gone investigating on his own was my next target. he entered a new board and I placed the blips in just two rooms, in his case I had no fear of the heavy weapons damage I'd just suffered from on the first board. He advanced and then I swarmed him and took him out with a force of Gretchin melee.

His Sergeant stormed across the third board heading for the fourth. I kept the aliens out of reach as much as possible as he whizzed by. Then the missile and plasma guys followed the Sergeant. I took the chance to run all of the guys who had been hiding to jump out and say boo. A Chaos marine heavy weapon poured it on and took out another marine.

The plasma guy replied in kind taking out a couple of aliens with a single shot.

The Sergeant entered the new board and I blipped behind all of the far corners. By now his commander was Bionic and Shielded turning him into a death machine. he turned around to take on the swarm attacking his buddies behind but was jumped himself by a Gene Stealer for three points of damage.

So the sergeant was hurt and alone. I took the opportunity to wave the baggie of reinforcement counters at my worthy opponent. There may even have been an incident of the "I'm going to win dance".

The next turn he made a break for the exit and I began to panic. He had all but killed all of the aliens and that meant I was low on points. I ran the two aliens within range to block the exit including an android but it was not enough. He played a card that reduced my dice and promptly roll 7 to which I had no reply. next turn he was out.

Final result was him in the lead by 20 points. Time for sulking :(

Using my new Memoir 44 Card-Replacement dice

So yesterday I played a game of Memoir 44 using the M44 Card-Replacement Dice. I was playing against another experienced player of the game and it was the first time I'd played using the dice against another experienced player.

Obviously I went through the dice explanations and we set up the Sword Beach scenario from the base game, I was to play Axis.

When using these dice you don't use the cards at all, but rather roll the dice to see what orders you get to issue.

So we started with the allies going first and the dice started rolling. Each die roll usually allows you to order 1,2 or 3 units and about 1 in 6 times, double that. The allies actually used the the airpower die option for the first two turns attempting to take out the guns in the central region.

I choose to move my tanks forward.

Next the Allies opted to run forwards with their own tanks. One took on the guns and the other took a shot at the infantry on my right flank and then followed through, by again trying to take out the guns, which they never managed.

The dice kept giving me the option to use the guns, so at every oportunity I used them. My attack dice were practically on fire throughout the game leading me to beat back the attacks on the right, decimate the tanks in the middle and hold off the Allies on the left.

The game ended with 5-2 to the Axis.

So how did the Card-replacement dice work out? They certainly speeded up the game which was one objective. No one ended up doing nothing on their turn ( which often happens with the cards ) evey turn both players were able to do something, so that side of the new dice worked very well.

I felt the dice were an interesting variation that worked but my worthy opponent brought up an interesting point. In the Sword Beach scenario the US forces have many more units than the Axis and this is a balancing mechanism in the scenario. As an example of this, if the Axis player had a 3-on-the-left card he would not be able to order three units because he doesn't have that many, but the Allied player would be able to, thus the balance. With the new dice the Allied player was never able to take advantage of the mass of troops.

I would also like to say that all three areas of the board were fully active throughout the game, no one area stayed quiet as can sometimes happen with the cards.

In summary : The dice worked, speeded up the game, both players were always busy, but there may be scenario balance issues when using them.

First game of Lost cities

I've just had my first proper game of Lost Cities. I've previously played the game with myself just to get a feel for it but that was a couple of months ago ( I think it was that long ).

Well it was actually very good, better that I feared it might be.

The outsize cards were a joy to handle and the numbers/symbols in the top left corner worked well to let me keep an eye on what cards I had.

The game was against a complete newbie who hadn't even played by himself but you know what(?), we both had a good feel for the game and felt the brain burn ( such as it is ) when deciding what cards to play.

For example, my noble opponent played a Green handshake and I was holding Green 2,3 . I was planning on waiting a couple of turns to see if I could get a green handshake, but didn't get one. With only 2,3 in my hand I didn't want to risk starting the expedition and the fact that he had played a handshake suggested that he was holding some good green cards himself. I also didn't want to discard the 2,3 because he would have picked them right up and played them down.

In the end I had to use two spaces in my hand to keep these two cards until much later when he played a Green 5, at which point I was able discard the 2,3.

There were a few situations like this as the game went on. Another pressure I felt was the deck running out, as the game ends as soon as the last card is drawn and I'd managed to collect a bunch of cards that HAD to be played and so had to rush play them all during the last few rounds.

In the end we both had 3 expeditions on the table and I had managed to have two successful expeditions and one minor failure, my opponent had two mildly successful and one disaster, so I got a win, HUZZAR(!) for me.

Memoir 44 card-replacement dice

Last week I played a few games of Memoir 44 and watched a few more games. In more than one game both I and others got into a situation where we had no cards at all that we could use and ended up discarding cards until we got a single card we could use. Then once the card was used started discarding again.

I know and accept that this is a meaningful situation in the game and part of the playing is trying to avoid this situation.

However I posed myself a question, how could this be avoided. How can I improve the chances of getting to Order units but still keep some tactical choices.

It came down to producing some special dice to replace the cards.

I'm using two dice. One die is a region die that lets you order units as normal. Each die face indicates what units can be ordered. For instance a result of 100 means 1 unit on the left, 101 means on on each flank and so on. One face shows 1* meaning one unit in any region.

My original idea was to just use this die, but experimenting showed you still has the same problem and in fact you had the same problem, even worse!

I then tried just adding in a second of these dice and giving the player the choice of which die to use. This worked and if you make a set of these dice this is a viable option. However it felt very un-Memoir-44-like. So I worked on a second type of die to work with the first die.

On this new die are 6 new faces each with it's own effect each of which feels more Memoir-like.

One face allows you to restore one injured infantryman.

One face allows you to order one Artillery unit.

One face allows you to order 1 Armour unit.

One face allows you to Dig in one unit.

The final face doubles the number of units on the other die.

So on your turn you now roll one of each die type, and then choose one of the two results. This increased the chance of a good or at least usable result and included the Memoir like feel. I'm happy now with these results and invite you to give them a try. They won't ever replace the cards but it is an option.

Download the dice from BoardGameGeek

Space Crusade - again

Back in misty days of my youth (1990) I purchased a copy of Space Crusade from MB/GamesWorshop. It was a simple to play WH40K game in board game format. As these games go it was pretty darned good. I played quite a few games of it back then, oh those glorius days.

Then life moved on and the game was played less and was stuck in the loft for a few years.

Then life moved on again and a time came when I was home and living on the road. I saw this coming and started giving away my stuff, including all of the games I'd collected over the years, and yes Space Crusade was one of them.

Then life moved on and now I'm back inside a brick and mortar swelling and able to trawl the local charity shops looking for cheap games.

And what did I just find? Well you've guessed it, Space Crusade, for a mere £2.50 I've bought a copy of the game I used to love. I was astounded to find the game in the shop, further astounded to find it in excellent condition and EVEN more astounded to find it complete!

So I brought home this game treating it with awe, and set down to reading the rules. then yesterday i set it up and invited my son in to play.

Wow we had a good time, Bolters, Plasma Guns, Orks, Androids, Chaos Marines and the Ed-209 lookalike. Good stuff.

The game was fun, my son was all excited about it and gee, what memories it brought back. We plan to retry the game again today.

Skirmish Wars Advance Tactics - First impressions

If you've ever seen any of the "Advance Wars" games on the Nintendo game systems then you know what Skirmish Wars Advance Tactics is all about.

Some fans of the Advance Wars games have put together a free Print and Play version of the computer game. The artwork on the board, cards and counters is exceptional, it features characters and artwork from the computer game, but not in the usual poor quality, enlarged sprite kind of way. No , instead all of it is print quality and a real delight to look at.

After one game I can tell you that the game play mimics the computer play almost exactly which is great. The combat is a real dream, I know the designers put a lot of effort into calculating the combat results to match the computer games combat. Like the computer version there is practically no luck in combat. You can work out the results before launching an attack and luck only comes into rolling 1 die to see if you do an additional point of damage. That doesn't sound like a lot, but every point matters so the die rolls are critical.

The computer game is turn based, you verses the AI but here your opponent is more intelligent as it's another player, in fact up to three other players and the game handles 2-4 players.

The rules are very simple and easy to grip on and joyfully also very short with some good examples.

There is not a lot of downtime, at least in the two player game, as when battles take place you get to battle back if you survived the hammering.

I'm really impressed with the game and plan on having another game fairly soon, I think I'll even run this out to my gaming group at work. Thumbsup!

Red November - Discussion

I started today on my first four player game of Red November, which is neat little game from Fantasy Flight games.

The session went surprisingly well. We've had to leave the game set up and will hopefully finish it off tomorrow lunchtime.

So I started off by telling the guys about the games time track. Glazed eyes as a response. I explained when things can go wrong, pressure, heat, flooding timed events. It took a little longer but they glazed over again. So at that point I just got everyone playing and everything very quickly came into focus for everyone.

An interesting discussion came about as I was trying to unjam the door to the captains cabin while fires burned at the other end of the sub. Was I wasting my time? Some thought so. I explained that every jammed door, flood and fire is as important, though perhaps not as urgent as every other.

For instance if theres a fire and no equipment for putting them out, then Grog is important as without it you wont be able to attack the fire!. I'm not sure I made my point very well, or at least I don't think I convinced anyone.

We're all hovering around the 30 minute mark at the moment so tomorrows continuation will hopefully prove me right. :)

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New Game in development and getting old

I'm working on a new space conquest game. It'll be a card driven war game of sorts. It's basically red vs blue across the galaxy.

I've been working on the board for a few days and it's really sweet. The boards background is a huge space shot showing galaxies and star systems, with play areas and tracks overlayed on top. It's the background however that makes it pop out.

The mechanics are not too original, they are a variation of some well know mechanisms but are enough different to make the game play differently.

I'm putting the most effort into the rules. I'm only doing a few minutes per night on it and thats really frustrating as I want to get this done and pushed out into the world. I'm taking it easy because I don't want to burn myself out on it. The rules will include examples of play and diagrams and each of those will take time to produce, so I'm going slowly and hopefully surely.

Once the rules are complete I have still more to do. there are 50+ cards and each has to have some unique flavour text and I know thats going to drain my creative juices so I must rush. I guess that's just part of getting older. :)

Dune Express Dice

A while back I put together a game called Dune Express which I blogged about at the time. It's a dice game but does not use standard dice. Each of the dice was a special die with strange and mysterious values on each side.

I was delighted to find very clever and arty peole volunteer to create artwork for both the games board and for all of those special dice faces.

Furthermore I then had the good fortune to fall in with a chap who has a laser engraver which he uses to produce wooden Piecepacks. One small fee later and I had the dice engraved and dispatched you can see pictures of them here.

So I printed one of the boards produced by the "Crafty" chaps and kapow! A professional looking game of my own design.

I'm really happy with the dice and the board, and so thankful to all ofthe people who've applied their craft and imagination to produce such excellent dice, boards and even rules variants. I'm proud to be a member of the BoardGameGeek community [sniff].

Memoir ''44 Eastern Front - session report

The Suomussalmi battle is a very interesting scenario, there aren't the usual two sides of the board. Both sides have forces in the opposite side of the board as well as their own. Additionally the AirPower card is played as a Barrage in this scenario.

The oddities do not end there! The battle is between the Finns and the Russians, and half of the Finnish forces are ski troops this means they can move three and battle but do suffer from a maximum range of two.

Of course the Russians are also playing with their own special rules that mean they have to select a card to play a turn ahead.

A lot of variables there. It's also a very bloody battle with victory being reached at 6 medals or by the Finnish troops occupying the central multi hex town. The immediate win is obviously an attractive goal, However in this case it does feel near impossible. For the Finns to win that type of victory they have to take over three of the town hexes, fair enough, however the town in garrisoned by 6 infantry units and an artillery unit all of them in town with sandbags or in a bunker!

I played this with my son the other day and he choose to go for the immediate victory but he lost because that central block of russians is very tough and well entrenched.

The session I'm going to talk about is where I played the Finnish against his Russians.

I decided to bypass that central knot of Russians for as long a possible and to rather nibble around the edges.

On my right flank there was an infantry and a tank unit well in advance so I decided to take them on first. I moved my right most finish troops into the woods and that just put them in range of the Russians. The opening salvo just pushed the tanks back.

My son new his strengths and used his guns to return fire and I took damage from that.

On my left flank I advanced my guns, as they start on the back line and out of range. I also used the infanty on that side to take some long range shots at the russians on their own baseline.

My son's brown horde came out for blood. His right flank moved forwards opening a gap for the tanks to shoot through, he put some damage into the sandbagged troops on that side.

On the centre I advanced my left ski troops forwards into the woods to support the left flank and moved the ski troops on the right up onto the hill where they could start attacking the russians who were most advanced. Again I pushed them back rather than eliminating them.

My son now embarked on using his guns almost every turn and when every possible sniping long range at my Ski troops who could not reply due to their shorter range. I was now being wittled down.

In my next turn I barraged his guns but only got a single hit. I wasn't able to hit them again during the rest of the game.

On the russian right they pounded my sanbagged troops and forced one of them to retreat thereby losing the entrenchment.

On my right I once again pounded on the lonely tanks and infantry knocking them both for troops and getting another retreat.

The Russian guns pounded my right flank seriously reducing the ski troops in the woods.

On my left I moved my ski troops on the enemies base line north to close the gap in the line and took some shots at the russian infantry over there and started scoring some serious hits.

I lost some ski troop from the center and yet again took damage from the guns on my right.

In a last gasp type situation I moved my ski troops all with only a single troop each, forwards out of the woods and close assaulted the remaing tanks and infantry. I killed the last tank and forced the infantry to retreat onto the frozen river where they fell through the ice.

The russians took full advantage of my advancing into the opening and took out one of the units on my right and killed off another on the left for a close 6-5 win.

Over all I really enjoyed this scenario. At first it looks like an easy Russian victory but in truth the scenario is really very well balanced and a great deal of fun.

Around the World in 80 Days, review

I've just played my way through a solo, virtual 3 player, game of Around the World in 80 Days.

Background

The game is inspired by the Jules Verne novel of the same name. Each player takes the part of a person racing around the world, attempting to complete the journey in 80 days or less.

Objective

Be the person who gets around the world in the least number of days. It's not actually required to do it in less than 80.

The Board

Around the edge runs the score track from 0 to 80 which scores the number of days taken to travel the journey.

Across the middle of the board are 10 spaces scattered across the world, your piece will travel along these 10 spaces. Between each space it indicates the mode of transport that has to be used to move from space to space. Each location also has two bonus chip spaces.

The Bits

There is a heavy start player counter showing a stopwatch. Each player has a wooden meeple and a matching score token. They also get a coloured chit that the player keeps in front of them until they get around the world.

There are some bery thick card coins that you'll earn.

A standard wooden die.

Two decks of cards. The first bigger deck shows trains and ships in various denominations.

The second deck is the event deck, each card is either an event or a bonus to the player that draws it.

There are also small but thick cardboard bonus counters that get put on the board next to the locations.

Finally there is a detective meeple.

Set Up

Shuffle the decks. Deal three travel cards to each player, put the detective on his start space, pick a start player and your good to go.

Playing

The start player draws and lays out 1 more travel card than players against the boards action track.

Then players take turns. On your turn you take one of the cards layed out by the start player. You also get to carry out the action associated with the card you took. one lets you get a coin, another lets you use a balloon on your turn, another makes you draw an event card, another lets you move the detective, another lets you be the start player next turn and the last lets you discard and replace cards from your hand.

Then you can play cards from your hand to travel to the next location.

Is that it?

No, not really. There are a lot of things to consider when you step through your turn.

The trave cards come in various denomination. A train card of value 4 costs you four days to play it, so picking lower value cards is better than picking higher value cards. But that's not your only decision when picking a card. The action you get to choose when you pick a card is very important.

For instance when you take the Detective action you get to place it anywhere. Any player who ends their turn in the same space as the detective loses two days so zapping the other players with this is very important.

The Balloon action is an important selection. When you take this action you can ignore one of the cards you play to move and instead roll the die to see how many days the trip takes. Additionally if roll high you can spend a coin to reroll that die, so picking the coin action is also important.

The event option is generally a good option as events usually give you a good thing.

Also choosing to be the start player this turn means you get to choose from all of the cards next turn.

Now choosing when to move from one space to the next is also important. Not only do you have the choice to not move and collect cards, but the first and last player to each location get to reveal one of the bonus chips in that location. These give you bonus and often your opponents penalties.

Being the first to get round the world has it's own appeal even if it takes you longer because after someone gets to the goal every other player who hasn't made it yet loses a day every turn.

There are a lot of decisions here. Everything matters. Being first has bonus', being last has bonus' waiting for good cards is important, but not waiting too lonmg is also important!

Opinion

I really liked what I found here, the components are very nice, the game play keeps you interested, the ability to stuff your opponents is fun and the theme is very friendly. of course anyone who remembers the novel is going to get a kick out of the events and game theme.

I like it!

I'm an Ass!

Ticket to Ride is a game I've been wanting to get my hands on for the longest time and I finally had it delivered a couple of weeks ago. I played it with the family and it went down okay.

I took it to work this week to play with the guys at lunchtime.

I ran through the explanation and then after a few turns I remembered the longest route rule and told the guys that I'd forgotten it and told them about it. I don't know why that worked them up, but for some reason that seemed to turn the three of them against me and for the rest of the game they were working together to block me at every turn. I got peeved.

Then yesterday we played again. I found them blocking me again. I got really peeved. Were they really blocking me or just completing their routes? They say they weren't blocking me. It didn't feel like it to me at the time. So, you're thinking, what did I do. Let me tell you. I got angry AND peeved, acted like a jack ass and gave it attitude, became sullen and sarcastic.

Now was that any way to behave when you're playing a game? No! I'm such an ass. I'm ashamed. I have to ask myself why I'm playing when I'm going to act like that. They didn't deserve that kind of treatment, I had NO REASON and NO EXCUSE to behave like that.

Sorry Mark. Sorry Gareth.

DUNE express, upgrade

I've just upgraded the download file for my game design "DUNE express". This has been my gaming project for the weekend.

The game has turned out to be huge success with hundereds of people visiting tha games home page every day since it was released. Fans of the game have created alternate boards and dice and even come up with new rules and alternate rules set.

This fan work inspired me to take another look at the game and start tinkering. I tried a few things then happened on the idea to add some tokens to the game.

In the original game three faces of the Traitor die had no effect. In this new versin those three faces come into effect.

I've added three tokens , one per face of the die that previously did nothing. These new tokens are kept by the player and last from turn to turn. Each one may be discarded to ignore the effects of the Traitor die rolled by another player.

This new feature gives the players something else to consider when rolling dice and may appeal to the players if they are the defensive sort. These also give the aggresive player somthing to consider when choosing a target.

First play of Bohnanza

I've just finished playing my first game of Bohnanza, a 1997 card game for 2 to 7 players.

There were three of us playing and it was the first time for all of us. Considering that, it was a smooth transition into play. I started the session by explaining the rules. It was quite interesting to watch the family's eyes glazing over.

I don't think I was explaining badly it was just a little too much for them. I gave up explaining and instead played through one turn as the starting player. Of course even that didn't really explain everything as the trading aspect doesn't make sense to a player until they've got some beans on the table. So my first turn was planting a bean and then keeping the two cards that come up for auction.

My son took the second turn and when he drew the two cards I offered to trade cards that would add to his fields even though the cards I was trading for did me no good. That was the main hurdle and everyone could see the benefits at that point.

So play went round the table for a few turns and I made a comment about trading cards just to clear them out of my hand so I could play the cards I wanted to on my turn. This seemed to ring a bell and the trading stepped up a notch.

During one trade on my wifes turn she was asking for a Red Bean which was going to give her a score. I looked at the cards in my hand and offered her a Red Bean, but only if she also took two duff cards I didn't want that she didn't want either. She took them. I was well happy with the trade.

My son was collecting the bigger sets of cards. He was collecting Coffee Beans for the longest time and was trying to maximise the number of coins he collected. On the oter hand I was taking coins at every opportunity except on two occasions where I spent some time collecting Chillie Beans and Garden Beans, ut these were the exceptions.

My wife was doing a mixture of collecting big runs such as Coffee Beans and Blue Beans and doing some give away trades to complete the sets.

The game played on... and on... the game box says the game runs 45 minutes, for us it went on a good deal longer, but I can put that down to it being the first play. the rules say, you play through the deck three times, which we did, but it seemed a bit long for them. I think that in our next play we'll try going through the deck just twice.

I was very pleased to find that the down time in the game is minimal as you can get involved in trades during other players turns.

The final score left us with some very close scores, My son hit 22 while my wife and I both scored 23. This is a game we will be playing again.

Red November

I recently received Red November and yesterday finally got around to playing a solo game to learn the rules.

It took me an age to get the game set up. First I had to read the rules until I got to the Setting up section, that was fine but for some reason I felt like it was taking ages to get the bits set up. The main problem was sorting out the Captains grog which meant I was sorting through the most numerous components. Maybe I was tired, but it just seemed like ages.

The basics of the game were straight forward and within a few minutes I was getting the hang of it. The three Gnomes I was running, were zooming up and down the sub and managing to control the oncoming disasters.

It seems that the game basic are easily grasped, however... there are a lot of fiddely bits. A lot of what if's. A lot of Can I do's. The rules lack an FAQ which in my opinion it is sorely in need of. When you read the text in the rulebook you can find most of the answers but they are buried in places you wouldn't look. For instance you might have a question about fire but the answer is buried in the section about water. The rules aren't long but they are as I said, fiddely.

I think a couple more plays and I'll be breezing through the game without the constant references and look-ups, but its a shame. The game looks so sweet and cute that you also want it to be easy to get into it, but alas it is not so. I bought the game hoping to play with the family, but this level of complexity means that I'm going to have to REALLY LEARN the rules. The "family" does not have patients for rules look-ups.

When I get my head around the rules and a couple of family games done I'll post a review.

Catching up

Yesterday I got a big box of games delivered. It's the first time I've ever had more than one game delivered at a time and yes, it was just like Christmas in May!

What did I get? Is it all of the latest faddy games, the latest hot numbers from the continent? Nope.

It's kind of a catching up delivery, where I get to catch up with the game world for a while. Nothing new here ( well, except maybe one ). I ordered some cool stuff.

Bohnanza : A card game about bean farming. A classic by all accounts and the bean graphics appealed to me.

Lost Cities : Another classic, I'm hoping to get this to the table for me and my wife.

Red November : The newest of the bunch, it's such a silly theme that I'm hoping that the family will enjoy playing. Fingers crossed.

Ticket to Ride : What can I say, I've played this online and loved it. I've been desperately wanting this for years!

Around the World in 80 Days : I loved the book and the simplicity of play looked rather like Ticket to Ride, so I'm hoping it will rub the same itch.

Zooloretto : It has a cute panda on the box, how can it not be great. A flippin PANDA!

Memoir '44 : I already own M44, but this is a second copy. I'm hoping to try the Overlord scenarios now. Additionally I often play the game at work so having one copy there and one at home should make my life easier. The game gets heavy after cycling to work 10 miles!

M44 Air Pack : I need to have more M44!

M44 Eastern Front : I need to have more M44.

So now I've a good few weeks of gaming to wallow in, and I'm soooo looking forward to it. ;)

I ordered the games from Green Knight Games here in the UK and had very prompt delivery, I'm yet again very happy with their service.

DUNE express

Two things have come together in my latest free print and play game release.

The first thing is that I've played Monopoly Express from Hasbro.

The second thing is that I'm having trouble getting people together to play DUNE.

So I came round to creating "DUNE express". This takes the Dune premise of taking control of a majority of the habital regions of Arrakis and devolves it down to a simple dice game.

It's not just dice however, these are special dice, and its not just rolling, you have to make decisions with every roll. It's for 2 - 5 players but probably best with 3 or 4.

You have 4 faction dice. These have one face per faction and forgive my spelling these being , Spacing Guide, Atredies, Corrino, Harkonnen, Bene Gesseret and Fremen.

You also have a traitor die, that has six side but only three count, these being, Hunter Seeker, Poison and Crysknife.

There is also a location die that names Arakeen, Carthag and the Sietches.

Finally there is tha Spice die giving numbers 1 to 5 and of course Shia Hulud.

There is also a map which has the Polar Sink at its centre and the 5 other regions surrounding it.

On your turn you roll the dice and then have to accept the result on at least one. The dice you didn't accept you can reroll, but each time you reroll you must accept at least one die from the result.

When you roll your faction that counts as a set of troops. The Spice allows you to move troops onto the map and from the Polar Sink. The traitor die allows you to remove an opponents troop for the board. THe location dictate which of the locations you can move troops to. So each die has a meaning when you roll and you have to decide to accept or reroll.

This gets you into situations when you just cant get the location or the amount of spice that you need so you reroll in but each reroll give you less options.

You need to move troops into three of the locations and be in sole possesion of those three locations to win. Fighting is simple elimination of equal numbers of troops.

So it's very simple but , and I'm being quite imodest here, does have an attractive depth of play, that I think might get you to come back and play again.

If your interested, the game is available for free from my BookRanger site.

New game brewing, and battling the bulge

My game designer hairs are twitching again. An idea has yet again kept me awake at night. I hate it when that happens.

This time I tried a "coping technique". that is to say, I stopped trying to sleep and instead sat up, and wrote down everything that was whizzing through my brain.

Didn't help.

Next time, I think I'll just try eating some doughnuts. I don't think it'll help me sleep, but at least it will be tasty!

I thought I'd also let you know how my attempt at Axis & Allies Battle of the Bulge went. It went very well. About two turns in I realised That I had been playng it wrong , DOH! I didn't reset the game, but instead just carried on, and I don't think it help the Axis forces too much.

The German forces zoomed across the board, powering up the centre and simply zooming over the town of Bastogne and forming the bulge.

The Allies get a lot of reinforcements that can come in from the edges of the board. This is quite clever because it recreates the "bulge". It accentuates the bulginess of "the bulge".

The Allies struggled. A mistake of using the trucks coming in from each flank to drop supplies in the centre of the board where the Axis forces were striding forwards left the flanks without the fuel they need to pinch the bulge.

Indeed on one flank the American forces were stacked into just a couple of powerful hexes but I managed to cut the roads behind them stopping supplies from anywhere else reaching them. This kept them immobile for two turns but sadly it was not to last. Just then the Allied air power started to take effect.

The Allied aircraft made a point of attacking unprotected fuel dumps on the first turn and managed to do terrible damage to the Axis plans. From that point on, as the designers of the game intended the Axis was pushed slowly back until the end game was reached.

I really enjoyed the game. Took a couple of hours with interruptions of casual play. It's a one scenario game so I don't intend to try playing again for at least a few months, but I am looking forward to it.