Monday, July 05, 2010

A weekend of the hard stuff


Yes, a weekend of complicated deep games.

Wonderful.

1825 Unit 2 on Friday evening with Sam the Connecticut Yankee, a smart young Mennonite who is in London for 3 years volunteering. I tentatively suggested an 18xx game but warned him they are a bit complicated. "I like complicated games" was his response, and sure enough, he cottoned on really quickly. I got off to a good start but by the end game his Midland was a real powerhouse, churning out £380 a round. He did a great job using the GCR (which was owned 50/50 but run by Sam) as a source of cheap locomotives for his other companies. In the end he nearly caught me, but not quite.

Then on Sunday son Phil came over for Barbarossa to Berlin. As the Germans I kicked off with the Barbarossa card and managed to make a real hash of things. I got nowhere near Moscow or Leningrad, and by the time winter and the Siberians arrived I was having a terrible time - a real fight for survival. But then in 42 Phil eased off the pressure and allowed me to rebuild - but at the expense of losing more ground in Russia. We didn't finish - hoping to do that on Sunday. My biggest worry is I won't get the Totaler Krieg played - I'm already down to 9 VPs. It's a great game - enjoying it a lot in spite of my tribulations. I must update my BGG entry - I was feeling a bit grumpy about errata at the time. Most of my experiences of BtB have been with a certain opponent (yes Dave I mean you) who likes to play the Germans, has his two years of fun, doesn't do as well as he hoped, and concedes - denying me the fun of planning invasions and driving into Germany etc. An antisocial habit, and one I will eschew - I 've promised Phil I will go down fighting....

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