Pub Games

I met up with Les again last night for our regular pub game session. Not darts or dominoes, but Battle Line and Blue Moon. I love both these games hugely, although at the moment Battle Line really makes my head spin with the intensity of the decision making. Won the Battle Line, but lost the Blue Moon. The Blue Moon loss was especially humbling, as after losing with the Mimix to Les's Pillar,we swapped decks, and I managed to lose again just as convincingly with the Pillar. Ah well, it's not the decks then......

Les is an amiable and challenging opponent, the real ale was good - what more could I ask for?

Tag: boardgames

Near Miss

I popped into the Aldershot game shop on Saturday for a self-indulgent browse. I do enjoy living so close to this place - when I lived in Salisbury I used to make a very infrequent pilgrimage to Aldershot, 50 miles each way just to see the long shelves loaded with game boxes.

Anyway, as soon as I walked in last Saturday, there was the War of the Ring Expansion, glowing with glorious artwork, pristine in its shrinkwrap. This game is on my BGG wishlist, it should have been an immediate purchase, but .....I just couldn't do it. Another 78 plastic figures to paint? Right now, I just don't have the heart for it.....

Tag: boardgames

The Methuselah of Gameblogging?

It's a big day for nimrods - our 5th birthday! Hard to believe I've been doing this since April 2001. I reckon that makes this the world's oldest gameblog (note, I didn't say the world's oldest gameblogger - at least I hope not). Mikko started about a year after me, and I can't think of any others of similar vintage. But my memory is not what it was (too much blogging), so please correct me if you know otherwise......

Any regular readers out there? What was your favourite nimrods posting? Drop me a comment and let us know.

Easter Monday at Green Dragons

The weather was doing stuff - Andy explained it all. There was wind and it had a direction and speed, and there were clouds doing things, and sunshine and stuff.....anyway.

Highlights of the day:

1) Andy's scary haircut. Looks like he's going back to his roots in the paras.

2) The Green Dragons mud-surfing competition. See who can get dragged furthest and fastest. Bonus points for weight of mud attached to clothes at end of day. Lots of entrants, no clear winner.

3) Steve's party trick - the "look no legstraps" take-off.

4) Ash smashes my previous tree-extraction time, recovering his wing from the bushes in a mere 2 hours.

Tag: paragliding

This is Holy Week

Looking at Stars

The God of curved space, the dry
God, is not going to help us, but the son
whose blood splattered
the hem of his mother's robe.

-- Jane Kenyon

I think it is high time that there was a legal obligation on companies to consider the environment and their communities, not just shareholder returns, when they are making decisions. So I am signing up as a supporter of CoRe. I've spent most of my working life in big corporations. But if this campaign was to succeed I would sleep at night with a clearer conscience.

Timewasting

Dave came over for a weekend of boardgaming. Unfortunately we squandered the Saturday - wasted precious hours wandering in the countryside and the sunshine, followed by a good meal and an evening of camaraderie in the pub. Such a a waste of irreplaceable gaming time!

However by Sunday lunchtime we had at last got organised with our first (and I suspect not our last for many a long year) game of C&C Ancients. As hoary grognards we despised the very concept of a beginners scenario and went straight into Lake Trasimene. What great fun! And what a nicely judged feel of ancient linear tactics from such a modest rulebook! Dave's Romans had a real chance of victory on a final dice roll, but just failed to save the day.

In many ways I have the feeling that C&C Ancients is the game I have been looking for ever since I first painted a DBA army 15 years ago, and decided that my eyesight and patience really wasn't up to much more of this. Great Battles of History was appealing, but after hours grappling with the ruleset and stacking piles of fiddly markers, SPQR got passed on to another home. But this ..... could it be The One?

After lunch Simon turned up - a pleasant surprise which allowed us to play Euphrat & Tigris, reliving the glory days of 2003. Dave played very aggressively, and I put in a truly mediocre performance for a final scoreboard of 13,11,8. Still, even a bad game of Euphrat & Tigris beats a good game of pretty much anything else. Excepting perhaps C&C Ancients.....

Tag: boardgames

Simply gorgeous

As requested, here are some photos of my painted War of the Ring figures. This project has lasted a few months, but to say that I am pleased with the end results would be an understatement.

I went for a very simple approach, aiming to treat the figures as functional playing pieces more than full-blown wargaming miniatures. In summary the technique goes like this:

Carefully remove flash with Stanley knife.

Wash in warm detergent, rinse and dry.

Bent figures get dunked in near boiling water, reshaped, then dunked in water/ice cubes.

Spray with Games Workshop "Chaos Black", 24 hrs drying, then a second coat.

Paint with Miniature Paints (acrylic) base colour. 24 hrs drying, then second coat. Another 24 hrs to dry.

Dry brush, usually but not always with base colour mixed with white.

Paint the base, grey or blue for Free Peoples, black for shadow.

24 hrs drying, then spray with Games Workshop "Purity Seal" varnish.

24 hrs drying, then bundle back into the box tray - don't bag them.

I'm pretty pleased with the results, but my technique did get better as I went on, so that the Elves for example look significantly better than the Rohirrim. Two mistakes I made with early figures:

Too much paint on brush for base colour, obliterating the black underpainting entirely.

Spraying too close/too long with the varnish, giving a glossy finish.

Here are the Companions and Minions. I gave these a more detailed paint job, still using dry-brushing of lighter colour on top. I think they will look great on the board next time I play!

Tag: boardgames

Breathe - less stuff, more life

Breathe is a Christian network for simpler living. A space to think about how we handle money, time and possessions in a Christian way. Non-judgemental, realistic and simple to be part of (no one-commune-fits-all solutions).

(thanks Annie!)

I put a couple more games up on eBay last night. Have a look, and maybe even make a bid!

Quick splurge

I got the opportunity to visit the Aldershot Game Shop after work yesterday, with money from recent eBay sales burning a hole in my pocket. I had my carefully worked out WishList on the Geek, and that said I "must have" Through the Desert, so I duly put that on the counter. But for my second purchase I found myself passing up my other "Must Have" Age of Steam and even "Love to Haves" like Power Grid, in favour of Settlers of the Stone Age, which just appealed to me on the day. I like the idea of the epic scope combined with Settlers-type simplicity. I think my choice made sense too in terms of balancing my collection, which is weighted in favour of wargames (Europe Engulfed, ASL Starter Kits)and gamer's games (Age of Empires, 1825) and doesn't have enough simple, short, newbie-friendly Euro games. I think yesterday's splurge choices started to redress that.

Tag: boardgames

Just a quiet Sunday in the arena with the battling monsters....

I introduced Colossal Arena to Gavin, Phil and Katie on Sunday. First time I've played it, though I've been carrying it hopefully to game sessions for a while now. Tricky game to explain - once you've got across the idea of the rounds and the betting and eliminations, you also by rights should go on to explain backers and special powers, but by now your audience is looking pie-eyed and just want to get on with it. However, a couple of card plays dispels the confusion, and it plays smoothly and swiftly with lots of fun along the way. Lived up to my expectations.

Tag: boardgames

Blue Moon on the web

The Fantasy Flight website is pretty sketchy, hardly worth a visit.

But the Kosmos website is excellent, with lots of stuff (in English too): images of every card in the game, complete ruleset, material about the designer and the artists, and a forum (German language sadly).

There is a busy fansite, mostly in German, though it does include an English-language forum. It's worth checking out this thread for fan-designed cardsets.

At Blue Moon Liga you can play online using software called CardTable.

Chris Dearlove looks after an extensive FAQ.

On BoardGameGeek Brad Durandetta is promising us a deck-by-deck strategy guide. The first one, on the Hoax, is invaluable.

The Blue Moon deck database, a deck-building aid, is clunky - don't bother.

Some of the best reviews:

A long time ago Richard Huzzey reviewed the basic set very thoroughly on Games Journal.

Last month Joe Gola's magisterial review did what all the best reviews do - made me want to go and play it again immediately!

And a week later Shannon Appelcline did an insightful article analyzing Blue Moon in turn as an Auction game, a Resource Managament game, and a Card game.

And then there's Dave...

My old gaming buddy Dave took the trouble to drive over all the way from Salisbury on Tuesday night. He's one of the few remaining members of the Salisbury gaming group that flourished for about a decade from 1992. He's a lovely guy, one of life's evergreen enthusiasts, always excited about the next game. I cooked him a meal and introduced him to Memoir 44 (not at the same time, obviously, that would be messy). We played Operation Cobra and I got overwhelmed by his waves of Yankee tanks and infantry. Great fun...

Tag: boardgames

Call me shallow, but...

I never looked into Power Grid because I was put off by the graphics. The rusty bolts and sewage pipe imagery was an instant turnoff for me. How wrong I was! We played the game last night at Trevor's and I loved it. I like the straightforward mechanics with subtle implications, like the commodity market, which models supply and demand surprisingly well. Half way through the game I pulled off a satisfying coup, stockpiling coal and driving up the price. Les and Trevor panicked and switched to oil-fired power-stations, leaving me with plentiful cheap coal for the rest of the game! I like business games, especially business games with network building - I have spent many happy hours playing 1830 - and Power Grid presses the same buttons for me.

Tag: boardgames

Napoleon at Waterloo

Wow, I cut my teeth on this game - we used to play it at school in dinner breaks. Now I can download it. (Thanks Iain!)

Tag: boardgames

Torn

I finally picked up my copy of Commands and Colors: Ancients from the Post Office yesterday. It looks absolutely marvellous! I've already ordered some blank dice from The Education Shop to make it just perfect. Trouble is - I have a gaming session tonight, and I'm feeling torn - I would almost rather stay at home fiddling with my lovely new game, sticking stickers on blocks, reading the rules etc. It's a sorry state of things isn't it, when a game threatens to keeps me from gaming....

Tag: boardgames

Back in the air

Last week I finally got my glider back from Gin, with its brand-new lineset all ready to fly again after December's tangle with a tree. And almost straight away, the opportunity to take to the air came around. Saturday, after a positive weather check at 7am, I drove over to Green Dragons with Martin for lunchtime. Unfortunately when we arrived I was so excited about flying again I didn't fully think through the implications of driving my Polo across the farm, and duly got stuck in the mud! We completed the journey on foot with our heavy gear, only to be turned back almost immediately for lunch break, stopping only to get some help dragging my car out of the mire.

After lunch the winch was set up in the big field at Woldingham, and over the course of the afternoon I got 3 flights to about 400 feet. It felt so good to be up there again looking down on the incredible vista of London spread out to the North glowing in the afternoon sun. I love this sport....

Tag: paragliding

And the beer was good too...

I met up with Les at the pub last night for our regular Blue Moon confrontation. I just love this game! Les played the Mimix as usual - I sometimes wonder if less for their fighting skills, more to look at the pictures - and I took the Pillar. Never played them before. Lots of boosters, very few support cards. So it's strike early with big numbers rather than gradually building up a power base in your support area. We were using emissaries as well. It was a to-and-fro struggle ending in a draw - a first for us I think.

Next we revisited Fjords - which I like,maybe because I keep winning. Then Roma, which I usually lose. Maybe because of this, I wonder about this game - so much seems to depend on the Forum. But it's fun, tactical play, with involving card combinations, and only takes 20 minutes, so it's hard to dislike it.

Tag: boardgames

War of the Ring - in colour!

On Sunday Les and I got together for War of the Ring. If you look closely you can see that I have finished painting the figures (except the Companions and Minions). They looked spectacular on the map, well worth the effort, and being able to instantly distinguish the different races made it significantly easier to play as well. However, my sense of pride in my paint job didn't save me from defeat - after a tough struggle with many setbacks the hobbits succumbed to corruption on step 4 of the Mordor track.

Tag: boardgames