Another YouTube video - Hour of Glory

This time a look at a boardgame I put together last year and what materials I used while putting the game together.

Stratego ( again )

From Felbrigg's Gaming Blog

This lunchtime I got into a rematch at Stratego, this follows on from the previous session report where I totally won!

I placed my pieces with some planning. A couple of bombs near the flag along with my top man and the spy. The rest of the bombs were scattered around fairly randomly. I tried to get a mix of the middle men in the front rank.

Things were starting well. My opponent came in on the attack across a broad front. Once again I tried down the right flank. I used a scout or two to identify some targets on the right before following up with the middle men to kill off those I could.

The mix of middle men meant I was able to fend off or at least deal with the intruders as they advanced.

A good few turns later I had cleared a section on the right flank and there was in fact a couple of his base line spaces clear. I sent a scout down there into that gap and attacked right and lost. One of middle men went down the same gap to deal with the enemy that had been revealed and took it out with a mutual death attack.

Now it got interesting. The right flank was fairly clear so I shot a Scout down to his base line right next to a block that hadn't moved and I deliberately watched my opponents face looking for a tell-tale. There was nothing, so I assumed that I wasn't threatening his flag.

Then I got mixed up in a dance around the middle of my base line. The enemy had noticed that I wasn't moving my back row in the middle of the board and started down. I won an attack but this revealed my top guy. He started moving a piece quickly towards it, so I dodged it around and brought him into a position from where my spy could attack and it did, taking out his top guy. Around the same time A scout of his shot over to my base line threatening my flag, but I had a bomb on that side so didn't worry, until his scout took it out leaving it open.

The attacks around here kept coming and he wore me down and took the flag from the undefended flank. Then the real kicker. He revealed his flag HAD been adjacent to the scout I'd sent across the board turns ago! I had been sitting next to it for minutes!

I'm not quite sure if using your "Poker Face" in Stratego is cheating :) I'm warming to this game.

My First Video

No this isn't a post about a game called "My First Video" it's a post about the first game related video I've made. No glorious moving pictures I'm afraid, I've thrown a bunch of stills together added some titles and a narration.

It's a companion video to the latest episode of my podcast "Print and Play". Take a look if you have nothing better to do.

Stratego - Session Report

I was gifted a copy Stratego just after Christmas by a work buddy. He picked it up from a charity shop and it's in pretty good condition.

Today I had my first game, I dont think I've played it for twenty years or so.

We were both "new" to the game and so our placement of the pieces was very rough. I threw my flag on the back row and dropped a couple of bombs around it.

The game started fairly slowly we were both reluctant to make the first combat. This soon wore off and we started whittleing down each others pieces. The strength of the pieces was all over the place as neither of us had really planned any moves. I tried to make a strong move up my right flank basically because I didn't know what else to do.

I managed to thin the herd a bit on this side and by the time we had done this we were both starting to pay attention and started playing clever.

We had both realised that moving your scout more than one space was just like commiting suicide as it gave them away. My worthy opponent also boxed clever and sent a sapper up against a unit he had seen me moving around. He had correctly guessed that it was a bomb.

About this time he made a serious gaff and used a spy thinking it was a rank 5 unit, and I blew it away. At this point I was in a good position to defend my flag as the only unit left that could beat my top guy was his own top guy who I had knocked out earlier.

The speed of the game increased rapidly as we were both moving units up from the back of the board, turns were literally half a second or less.

I was lucky enough to have scout left, so I was able to shoot it right across the board to reveal a unit, the scout died but I then spent about ten turns moving up a unit to kill the unit he had revealed.

My opponent now knew that my flag was one of two or three pieces and tried to make a two-unit run at the group. I had my top piece (general?) in front of these units for defence and knew he could not beat it. I moved a useless piece in front of one of these to slow the pair down and this allowed me to take out both of his pieces. At this point he had nothing left and we just played out the remaining turns in a few rapid ten's of seconds. In the end I ran a sapper over to his side took out a bomb and got the flag.

I dont often beat this guy so was quite happy with myself. We both agreed that the game does have a lot of stratergy in the middle and end game and that all of the pieces do really have specific uses that you should save them for, The clever way the pieces interact has peaked our interest and we will be playing again, this time being extra careful with the initial placement.

Who designed this house!

From Felbrigg's Gaming Blog

Okay so I’m sitting at work twiddeling my thumbs waiting for some files to copy to a remote computer. I am unable to do anything while this is going on as the “Cisco” software prevents me from accessing anything else, so what do I do? I start looking through my draws for anything to occupy the time.

In my left bottom draw is a copy of Carcassonne, recently returned after lending out for Christmas, but I can’t play that, too big, too obvious, and no one to play with. Same goes for Stratego which is sitting in the bottom right draw (gifted to me from a co-worker just after Christmas and it hasn’t made it home yet.)

Then I spot a little “Black Magic” chocolate box in my top right draw, Ahha! No, I’m not going to eat, inside there is my copy of Zombie in My Pocket!

I pull the draw out as far as possible, pile all the rubbish in there at the back and I have a play-space, HUZZAR!

On the sly I shuffle the cards and tiles, place the first tile, place a plastic Shaggy ( from the Scooby Gang ) on the starting tile and begin.

From the Foyer I move North into the Kitchen, a good start. North again into the Bedroom. West into the Family Room, West into the Storage Room. A stinking dead end! Back through the Family Room, back through the Bedroom and into the kitchen. Now West from there into the Dining room. By now time is ticking by, Zombies have been swamping me, I’m real tired. Out of the Dining Room into... the Bathroom and another dead end. Zombies smash through the west wall I beat them down with a Golf Club and crawl through the hole to find the Evil Temple. Grabbing the Evil totem I go back through the hole into the Bathroom into the Dinning Room and out onto the Patio.

Storming southwards I trip over the Graveyard where I have to dispose of the Totem... but it’s too late. The witching hour has caught up with me. Muh!

So now I’ve entertained myself heartily in the office , when I take a look at this house. What a freak! The kitchen is next to the Dining room, that’s good. The front door enters into the Kitchen, that’s odd. Then to get to the family room you have to go through (thru) a double bedroom! Of course, having an Evil Temple behind the Bathroom wall and a Graveyard in the Garden are just normal practice in this game but surely the architect needs to be fired.

The World is lost due to a badly designed house

Defence of Calais, scenario for Memoir '44

I'm reading a book at the moment about what you can think of as the Dunkirk campaign from 1940. Before reading this book all I knew of the war in 1940, was that the British retreated to Dunkirk, fought a furious holding actions and evacuated.

There is so much more to it than that. I'm finding it especially interesting in regards to how political motives drove military action. For instance the defence of Calais is something I'd never even heard of, and yet it was a heroic action where the British were told to fight to the last man and the last bullet, there would be no evacuation.

Why were they told to do this, because the British govt were being accused of running away by the French, and the British did not want the French to capitulate before the BEF got away as they seemed to have no will to fight in defence.

And where is all this history going you might ask. Well, it's simply that the reading inspired me to create a scenario for Memoir '44 based on the Calais action.

Use the following link to download the PDF. At the time of writing this scenario is untested and I suspect that the British may be a little too strong, if you try it then please post a comment here to let me know what you think of the balance.

Memoir in the Desert - session report

From Felbrigg's Gaming Blog

This week at work (lunchtimes) I got to play a couple of games of memoir. I had taken in the base game and the Terrain pack. Because we were playing in the far too short period known as lunch I opted for the first scenario in the book which is very quick to set up.

The scenario sets up on the desert board and contains hardly any terrain. A few hills on one edge, a three hex wadi and a couple of oasis is about it and all of these are around the edge of the board. Now add in the fact that this scenario is made up of only tanks and guns and you've got a smashing fun game lined up.

I played the scenario twice against two opponents and I played the allies both times.

In the first game I started with a couple of good cards, I had an "All" and "3" card for the centre. Unfortunately I didn't start with many tanks in this region. So I planned to use up my rubbish cards to try and move units from both wings towards the center. Then I'd use the "3" then the all cards to make a smashing attack. Sadly it didn't work like that. My opponent moved forwards, and as I moved pieces in, he was smashing them, thus I was not able to build the massive smash I wanted in the central region. In the end I just ended up playing a poor game, because I was trying to move rather than attack. Although I comfort myself with the knowledge that I did still manage to get 4 medals.

After the reset we started the game in the usual manner. Both sides closed towards the center, I took a lot of hits and thought I was onto a real loser from early on. However I managed to turn it round mid game. I bypassed my opponents tanks on my left and sent my tanks straight towards the guns. Of course we traded shots tank-on-tank as I went that way but then in a couple of lucky shots I took out the guns. Then the action switched to the right wing where once again I was closing on the guns. I was taking a beating and many units were severly depleated. However I was close on an opponents single tank unit and on 5 medals, as was my opponent. I open fire and guess what. MISS! My opponent took his turn and his single tank fired at my single tank and guess what. HIT!

So I ended the day happy to have played two good games but just a little sad becuase of two losses.

Hey! That's my fish, 2 player

From Felbrigg's Gaming Blog

Today at work ( during lunch ) I played a couple of games of "Hey! That's my fish!". My compadre made a comment that he actually preferred the game with 3 players than with 2. I hadn't given it any thought prior to this and it got me thinking.

When you look at the initial set up for just two players I did feel that the four Penguins each made it look rather crowded. Then with two players who know the game is all about cutting-out expeditions you very quickly start running out of options so the game seems to whizz by.

We found that both games were very close ( one win each by the way ) and that some of the WOW-factor was removed from the game play. When you play with two you can pretty much predict what your opponent is going to do most of the time. When you play with three it just seems that you aren't able to predict whats going to happen between your turns. It's like the third player add a chaos element to the game.

It was this chaos that my friend was missing. I guess its difference between playing chess with perfect knowledge and the usual euro game that includes some unknown element.

After our short discussion on the issue I tend to agree with him, the three player game is more fun. I enjoy the feel of the game with two just as much, but with three there is more interaction that makes it a different experience.

ACW Solitaire - Review

I got this game from WargameDownloads.com and it promised to be the entire American Civil War in less than an hour, solitaire!

The file downloaded as a single compressed zip file that contained two PDF files.

The first PDF contains the Rules and the Counters, The other PDF simply contains the MAP.

The rules are 10 pages long, well written and not overly complex. That said, you will no doubt get something wrong but like me, but probably get it all right second time around.

The counters that appear in the first PDF are simple outline type images on a solid colour background, either gray or blue. These represent ships, gunboats, indians, forts and infantry units. A few also represent the Generals. You can make all these up as single or double sided. The rules suggest that you might have to print a second set of these counters out, and I did in fact have to do this.

The second PDF file contains the map. This can be printed out on a single A4 sheet but I would rec' that you upscale it a little when printing. It shows as you might expect the United States, it's a point to point map with the various important cities linked by lines of communication. Each city is represented by a box in which you will be placing chits.

The map also contains a random placement chart, turn track, and the combat results table.

Overall I was quite happy with the components.

The play goes as follows each turn. Union Build phase, Union Move/Combat. Confederate build phase. Confederate Move/Combat. Finally, indian phase.

The union gets to build 5 things each turn. Movement overland is up to two locations, or 1 location into enemy territory, and can only be lead by General counters Movement by sea can go any distance.

Whenever the opposing forces come into contact a combat takes place. This is done with the roll of a single die with the odds and various other factors giving modifiers. the results of combat vary as you might expect from the attacker being defeated through to the opposite.

The Confederates get to build a limited number of things based on various rules. For instance loss of certain features on the map reduce their number of points. There are detailed rules controling how and where these reinforcements get placed.

Moving the gray forces also follows some specific rules.

The indian phase is for a few indian counters who basically wonder aimlessly through out the game.

The two sides have separate winning conditions, with the Confederates having a number of instant win conditions, which works very well, it keeps you on the defensive as you cant ever tell when and where the Gray forces will move.

With the Union forces getting more reinforcements each turn they will win provided the Confederates dont score one of their winning conditions. As you are playing the union forces the quality of your win will vary based on the number of turns it takes you to win, If you win within 11 turns, thats a Major Victory, 18 turns or more gets you a Poor Victory.

In summary : I found this to be good solitaire game that does what it says on the tin, I made it with cardboard counters and thin card (printable) board but I can easily see this doing well with upgraded components. A more detailed map and wooden blocks for generals would be a very nice first step and I might well get round to doing that.

Zombie in my Pocket - Session

I dug out my copy of ZIMP for a quick game and for my player token, used to indicate what tile my character is on, for this adventure Velma ( or is it Thelma ) from the Scooby Gang.

Velma was very brave and to be honest not entirely feminine during this bout. She started off by wondering from the Foyer into the Kitchen where she picked up some cooking oil. Then she scouted around the Storage room where she discovered 4 Zombies. This is the unfeminine bit, because she emerged from that room back into the kitchen covered in both her own blood and someone elses! Her fists dripped the blood of her enemies! She once again searched the cupboards and found some Gas ( odd place to keep it! )

From the kitchen into the Family Room where she picked up a Chainsaw! After that she had a bit of a rest.

Into the Dinning room and more Zombies! Keeping her hands clean this time thanks to the chainsaw.

Thence into the next room AKA Evil Temple. She found the evil totem but then had to chop the head off of some more zombies, they just keep coming. She empties the Gas can into the Chainsaw and then she's off back to the Dinning room.

Through the french style patio doors and onto the Patio, all quiet.

She stalks over to the Garage and slaughters the couple from next door ( who are zombies by this time ). She nips around the Garage and into the graveyard ( it's not a real graveyard, you just dont have them in surburban gardens, it's a private pet cemetry in reality ). Scaping a hole in the loose dirt she drops in the totem and kicks dirt over the totem while dispatching another couple of neighbours!

Success, and not a Scoooby Snack in sight!

Memoir '44 Landing at GUAM - Session

I got my copy of the Pacific Threater expansion at the beginning of December but hadn't played until today (27th). I had been planning on working my way through all of the scenarios in the basic game first, but I finally broke down and picked a scenario that appealed, "52 - GUAM Landings Jult 21 1944".

This map is very busy and I was suprised how long it took me to lay out the map. It wasn't a problem but it was longer than most of the other scenarios I've layed out.

Looking at the forces on the board it looks like the Allies are going to steam roll over the thinly spread out Japanese forces. It didn't turn out that way.

On the allied right the tanks start out on the beach, so I shot these forward up onto the hills, planning to shoot long range against the troops in the sandbags.

On the allied left, I again moved the tanks forwards.

My opponent immediately nudged his troops forwards but not into contact.

In the center I moved forwards, just trying to get out of the water.

Then the Japanese player attacked. His troops that had moved out of sandbagged positions previously were able to move up into contact this turn across the front and using the special Pacific Thearter rules they gain a bonus combat die when at full strength. This really tore a hole in my troops, the tanks were decimated and the supporting infantry took damage along with them.

My come back was quite muted by comparison. I did wittle down a couple of units but nothing like the same scale.

On the left I managed to surround the enemy in Asan by running the remaining tanks behind the village and then assaulted from the front with infantry. This proved successful and I managed to eliminate the unit that had been hanging in there.

The counter to this eliminated all but 1 single tank on the left flank.

In the center I was able push back the infantry and claim the high ground but had no valid targets, Around here the ground was very bad for tanks.

A long range shot from the forward sand bagged Japanese infantry eliminated a tank unit, and a similar shot against infantry on the left won the game for my opponent.

Final score 4-6 to the Japanese player.

Lessons learned : The Japanese ability to leap forward and make attacks with bonus dice, is very powerful and can devastate even a strong position. The Gung-Ho rule is fun but didn't seem as powerful as I was expecting.

Crimbo!

Merry Christmas everyone! Santa brought me a couple of nice gamey pressies today. I'm a huge Memoir '44 fan ( hence the reason I started the Memoir '44 Podcast ) and I got two great M44 expansions.

Firstly I got the Winter/Desert board. This doesn't look much on it's own, but the reality is something other. With this second map not only can I now play battles in the Desert but the Snowy side of the board allows me to also nicely play any winter scenarios. The Battle of the Bulge took place in the snow!

Now add to this goey goodness my second M44 pressie, the "Terrain Pack". This little box contains a whole bunch of new counters and terrain hexes. These aren't just more of the same but they are new and different. All kinds of new terrain types each with their own effects in play. The counters include mine fields, and unit and nationality designators for troops from round the world. I now have an incredible variety of options when playing Memoir '44. I'm really looking forward to getting over this stinking flu thing so that I'll be able to play with these new toys.

A look at "Bindle Rails"

A week or so ago the designer of Bindle Rails contacted me and asked that I take a look at this new game. I downloaded the files and printed them out somewhat unsuccessfully. The card tops or bottoms were chopped off and the fact that I used a black and white only printer just didn't make it look too incouraging.

Since then I've realised that the reason the cards edges got cut off was because I goofed on the printing! I've since reprinted it and even used coloured card for the printing which make the otherwise plain cards spring to life.

What is Bindle Rails, you ask? Well it's the first Rail game I've ever got to grips with! I've taken a look at the free 18XX games that are out there and they really looked very dry and just did not appeal. This game however was different. The designer has said that the mechanics for the game were inspired by Zombie in my Pocket, Ticket to Ride , Pocket Civ and of course the 18XX games. That just sounded like a hit to me so my interest in a Rail game was peaked, especially as it's a solitaire game.

I found there were a few problems in the rules, well, at least for people like me who dont know the three letter codes for stateside towns. I posted a few questions on the games page at Board Game Geek and the designer was quick to reply and even updated the components to meet my thick-in-the-head requirements.

So after he'd gone to so much trouble I embarked on a second printing, this time using the colour options and the coloured card. What I have now is a pretty cool looking game. I've played through one game and scored a measly 17 points, would have been 27 but one of the competing companies got to St Louis before me, damn them!

I'll be doing a proper review fairly soon, but if you want to check it out yourself before I get round to that I think you'll find it quite good.

Solitaire, easy to pick up and a real challenge

More game designer woe

So I'm happy with the design for my new game and have to start work on the art. In the past I've been burnt by creating art on the screen that when printed looks poor. Sort of stretched and pixelated ( is that even a word? ).

I spoke to the graphic artist at work and he's told me that my DPI is too small. After I got over the offence of being told my DPI is too small I asked him what on earth he was on about.

DPI is Dots Per Inch, and computer images are made up of dots. Further images on computer screens are about 75 PDI but when you print stuff, it's usually at 300 DPI and that's why my images all look so poor when printed.

Armed with this knowledge I tried(!) to create a 300DPI image. I started up Paint Shop Pro and created an A4 size blank image at 300DPI. KAPOW! The computer ground to a halt. I couldn't get it to react to anything I clicked on. Then after a minute or so it suddenly did one of the things I had clicked on. A short pause for thought and I realised that it was doing what I was telling it, only very,very,very slowly. A look at the front of the computer showed the disk light going ten to the dozen.

I realised that the new image I had just created was too much, too big for the computer and that it was paging a lot of its RAM onto the disk.

So much for 300DPI images, they must suck up a lot of RAM. I think that until I get a new computer I'm just going to have to put up with poor art work, and be creative with low DPI. Maybe I'll try 100 DPI and see how that works...maybe I'll get a Christmas bonus and be able to upgrade my computer, if only!

On being a Game Designer...

I'm a hobbiest Game Designer and this week has been filled with game designing. I'm game-design-involved with Jim from One Monk Miniatures and we've been working on a card game together and thats been going through a few evolutions in the last few weeks.

Also I've been hard at work on a Hamster-Martial-Art game, trying to get the mechanics right. It's been a real hard slog. When I set out on this game I had a strong idea for how the mechanics were going to work so went ahead and mocked up all of the cards and other components so I could play test the game. Alas, alas it was a pile of poo!

I found myself really surprised that what seemed so great a mechanic in my head, turned out so poor in actual play. I've always thought that I can read game rules and see how things will pan out when played, but now I'm not so sure.

After the failure I had to do a rethink, and this is where I boxed a little clever. I repurposed the components I had already put together. I changed the way the values and tracks I'd drawn out were used. Here's the good news, it seems to be working. There's still some extra work to be done but the basic mechanics are solid now. Look out for the release of this free Print and Play game in the next month or so.

Elves Under Hoof - Session Report

I printed this game the day before yesterday but only just finished cutting the counters out tonight ( while enjoying a DVD of "Prince Caspian" actually ). A quick read through the rules and I'm off.

I decided to opt for the first scenario for my first play, this is called "An Igloo Too Far". In this scenario three brave reindeer parachute into the igloo area and have to hold out until reinforcements arrive. What this actually means is that at the end of turn 4 you start rolling a die, and the game ends when you score 6.

I was very casual, that is to say not thoughtful about set up. Thinking vaguely and as it turned out incorrectly I thought to drop the reindeer behnd the igloos out of line of sight of the Elves, who 10 strong, set up around the Workshop.

I had Dasher and Blitzen pop round the ends of the igloo line and open fire with their M1's. Dasher was lucky and took out a fiendish Elf, Blitzen let the side down simply knocking a bell of an elf's hat!

Then the Elves got their act together and in a mad rush charged the reindeer from both ends. A Bomb elf took out Dasher on the first attempt. Blitzen had a sledding elf and two elves throwing things at him and didn't really stand a chance. He was gone too.

Two more elves popped out of the workshop.

Now it was all down to Comet. Comet was armed with the Thompson and a handful grenades. Opting for some grenade fun he tossed one at the Bombing elf that had done for Dasher. That damned elf dodged the shrapnel but two of his elvish buddies didnt. Huzzar!

The Elves swarmed forwards but in the end it came down to that same Bombing elf. He stepped forwards and BOOM, bits of Comet all over the place.

So the game was over, and very quickly at that. It's an interesting scenario. The three reindeer have to stay next to the igloos and that very much restricts your options and the constant elf reinforcements would make a longer game very difficult.

I have learnt some things from this first play. Namely that I need to start with a line of site to the elves from turn 1 so that I can pick my targets from the beginning. Also I should have very carefully placed the elves so that I could target them first. Additionally as the game starts with 10 elves fairly close together I should also have opened fire with grenades as the area effect would have cut down the numbers quickly.

So... onto my second game :)

And now in Russian!

I was recently contacted by a chap ( or chapess, it was never discussed ) who runs a Russian web site related to gaming. Lex ( that is this persons name ) wanted to translate two of my games and host them on their site.

I was overjoyed that someone would care enough, would like the game enough to translate the game.

I had a moment for pause however. I made a decision a while back that I didn't want my games being posted anywhere else on the web as I want people to visit my sites, so I had this moment for pause. But after weighing up the fact that the alternative version is in Russian I decided I wouldn't lose that much traffic and gave permission.

I really am very proud that I've made it into Russian, I know it's not quite on the scale of the FDO's world conquering, but I'm still very happy.

Oh, and the games are Free trader and Solo Dungeon Bash, you can find links to the russian versions on the games pages at Board Game Geek.

Memoir '44 - Session, Omaha Beach

From

Today I finished the second of two runs through the Omaha Beach scenario in the base game. Yesterday I played the Allies struggling up the beach, and lost terribly. I also found out later that we were playing wrong. In that first game where I was toughing it out, we were playing first that the sandbags only game you defence against 1 flag ( getting mixed up with the hedgehogs ) and later that the hill + bunker gained you two dice reduction. Doh!

Today we had both of these straight and as I said I was the Axis forces. My hand of cards was poor. I has the Airpower card which is good and all of the rest were centre area nothing for either wing.

So I led off with the Airpower as all of the Allies start off bunched up and got a few distributed hits. The the allies started advancing up both flanks targeting the artillery on either flank. Their tanks rolled forwards crushing the barbed wire and doing little bits of damage here and there.

I kept only getting centre cards or the odd card that allowed me to activate 1 unit. I did also get the close Assault card and this was the only time I got to fire one of the guns!

I managed to get some medals by focusing on the tanks, with only three pieces to a unit I guessed I could get medals quicker that way.

The Allied middle moved and drove up to and through the troops in the middle and gained a town. The Allied left did like wise. In the centre, I had no lack of centre cards, I pushed three infantry units up to occupied town and took out the Allies in there. On the right I lost some troops but also managed to take out the lead element. On the left a fantastic single roll took out three tanks in one hit, I'm guessing the bunker must have been filled with Panzerfausts!

That ended the game 6-4 to the Axis.

Hey! Thats my Fish! - Session Report

Today was THE big day when I got to play Hey! Thats my Fish! with my family. I got it a few days ago as a birthday present and everyone in the the fam' liked the look and cries of "Hey! Thats my Tea" or "Hey! Thats my Cake" etc have been shouted at various times every day since it arrived.

The box art excited them, the funny penguins on the front made them think it would be a funny laugh a minute game... They don't read the geek... They dont read the reviews, the session reports... They dont know how mean a game it is.

I read the geek, I've read the reviews, I've read the session reports , I know how nasty it is, I've played before.

So we sat down at the table they were all chatting and laughing, usual sort of thing. I was thinking hard, mentally preparing myself for the puzzling, the out-thinking, the mind bending evil that is Hey! Thats my Fish!

I explained the basics. No jumping penguins, no jumping gaps, pick up tiles you move off, more fish are worth more points at the end.

My wife, daughter number one, my son and I playing so only two penguins each. We started laying them out, my worthy victims... opponents opted to take edge hexes, I went into the middle and stuck my 'guins together.

Then it started, my son leapt right across the board, my daughter stepped one space. My wife moved deliberately a few spaces to land on a tripple fish tile. Pretty much the simple moves that beginers do. Me, I simply moved my 'guin up next to one of my daugters penguins, giving here only a single exit, and this onto a tripple fish which I suspected would keep here attention.

The turns moved on, my daughter went for the triple as I suspected, In comes my second peguin KAPOW, one trapped penguin. My game was on!

Turns went on, they hadn't got it. Next I pinned one of my sons 'guins, then both of my wifes, then my daughters last and finally I trapped my son on a three hex peninsular. Then I wrapped up the remaining hexs for a fantastic excellent huge score far beyond my share. :)

Then it was onto game two, but I need not go into that as daughter number one kicked my ass and my wife trapped my 'guins. Just forget I even mentioned the second game. :(

Deadly Harmony - Review

From Print and Play

Deadly Harmony is an attempt to bring the realm of Video Game punch em ups to the boardgame forum, and I happen to think that its been done rather well in the Print and Play game. Sadly the game suffers from a lack of cool artwork and I know the game designer would just love for a volunteer artist to step forwards.

The components of the game are a deck of cards, a play mat per player and the rules. I had all of these in a single PDF which aided printing. The whole set was simple black and white printing so didn't strain my ink supply.

The play mat that each player uses is very interesting, Its a circle with a number of spaces along its circumference where various resources are going to placed.

In the center of the circle are spaces for you to record your fighters stats which are speed, power, technique and guard.

The cards come in two main types. The first are all exactly the same and simply say "miss" these will be used when an attack is made. The other cards provide a large number of variable combat technique cards. Each of these comes in one of three main categories of attack, these being Strike, Throw and Parry. There is no art of these cards but each has a section of text that describes the various ways in which the card can be modified in use.

The rules are laid out in full width A4 paragraphs and interspersed with a number of explanatory diagrams. Eveything is clearly explained and my only problem, if you can call it that ) was I didn't like the order in which things were laid out.

Lets return to the Play mat and explain it a bit further. On the right of the mat are three spaces. One, vitality, is your fighters health. Another is "Edge" and the last is Rhythm!

If during play your characters vitality is reduced to none then you have lost, also if you gain four edge tokens you will win. The Rhythm supply will allow you to maintain the "rhythm" of your attack when you would otherwise be exhausted.

The circle on the mat as I stated earlier contans a track of spaces around its edge. Two spaces on opposite edges of this circle are your resources, Yin and Yang. You'll start the game with a pool of counters on each of these, then as you play cards you will spend these resources. This is a really neat mechanic, when you spend Yin or Yang the spent counters move onto the track that leads around the circle. Then on each turn they move on one space along the track until they reach the resource pile opposite where they become available resource of that type. So spent Yin is unavailable for use for a few turns until it comes back as Yang and vice versa.

Setting up the game. You can spend some time creating characters if you want or just use pre generated ones. Then each player places counters ( or poker chips ) on his Yin and Yang resource piles. Also two chips onto the Edge pile and a number of chips equal to the characters vitality onto the vitality stack.

Then each player sorts through the combat cards and selects a number of cards equal to the characterstechnique stat. These become the players hand of cards.

Combat is straight forward but has a few steps.

Both players select a card from their hand and place if face down, and reveal them together. Cards have cost that you have to pay before anything else. For instance a strike may cost you 2 Yin, which means you place two counter from your Yin supply onto that track and will be unavailable until it comes back as Yang. If you want to, you can use any accumalated "Rhythm" chips to pay this cost.

Once the costs are paid you can read the text on the card. These often allow you spend extra various resources ( yin, yang ) to alter the effects of the card. So a strike that is not block by an opponents Parry card is may hit your opponent. What you do in this case is take a number of the "miss" cards equal to your speed stat add your strike card and shuffle these. Then you take a peek at the cards and lay them face down on the table. Your opponent then gets to turn over a number of these cards equal to his Guard stat. If he turns over the strike card your attack has missed. If he doesn't get your card, you get to turn over one card and it should be your strike card, if it is you hit. You should know which card is the strike card as you peeked before laying them down.

Normally a strike card does damage to your opponents vitality but it may also do other things such as give them a Rhythm chips. Remember as well as the cards basic effects you may have spend additional resources to increase the effect of the card.

If you happened to carry out a succesful Throw type attack then would also be able to an "Edge" counter from your opponents supply.

As well as damaging your opponents vitality and stealing "Edge" you can also cause stun damage. When stunned you have to give up a number of cards from your hand, you then get them back at the rate of 1 per turn.

Thats how it works but let me just point out some of the things that are very cool but may not be clear yet make this game very interesting.

The resource management of Yin and Yang and they way they come round as the other resource is nicely linked to the different types of attacks that use different resources. The whole Rhythm mechanism is very thematic, because having used up your Yin and Yang you can maintain the "Rhythm" of your attack by using Rhythm chips. Also the fact that while stunned you have less combat options is both clever and a real challenge.

All in all this game is well thought out, plays extremly well and is very thematic. If only it had more ART! It's free and low ink, and if you have some poker chips you really should give this a try, it's dang good!