Stay of execution

Thanks for the comments everyone. I think BattleLore can stay for now.

Last night I actually got around to playing the game. Les and I fought 3 battles: Agincourt (scenario 1) which I lost 4-2 as the English, and then Wizards & Lore (scenario 5) twice, which I won each way (6-4 and 6-2).

The basic game is good but a little lacking in tactical nuances compared to C&C Ancients. But once we got into the Lore cards it became a much more challenging and fun experience. I'm looking forward to trying it again with creatures and war councils!

One issue remains - I don't want to get onto the expansions treadmill with this one. But with the wealth of scenarios available on the Days of Wonder website, I think there is plenty of replay value in the base set for now.

Shall I get rid of BattleLore?

I need your advice dear reader. A gamer in the UK has offered me a trade on BoardGameGeek - my BattleLore for his Mare Nostrum (plus expansion).

Why was my BattleLore marked for trade in the first place - you may ask? I was excited about it when I bought it (must have been to shell out £45) but have only played it solo so far. To be honest I am wary of getting sucked into another Commands and Colors collecting habit. I already like Memoir 44 (and have most of the expansions) and LOVE Ancients (and already own the first expansion, with the next two pre-ordered). I'm not sure if my budget or my time or my my interest can sustain a third C&C series.

Also - I was excited about the idea of C&C with a fantasy theme, but I have to say I was a bit underwhelmed by the tongue-in-cheek way this was done in Battlelore. Dwarves in kilts forsooth! For me, fantasy has to take itself very very seriously. High art or not at all, thankyou very much.....

Random unjustified grumpyness about a new game

I played Phoenicia at Swiggers last week, and I enjoyed it (even though I got stuffed) but a day later had an uncharacteristically insightful thought - isn't this just Puerto Rico all over again? What's the difference? OK Phoenicia has auctions, but I'm not keen on auctions anyway (unless I'm playing RA!). Auctions seem to me to often be a lazy option for the designer who can't work out how to balance the different paths available to the players. I think to be honest that I haven't played Puerto Rico nearly enough yet - I have only just begun to explore the strategies in the game - so why do I need another tech tree/workers/resources/money/VPs game to worry about. One is probably enough for now (especially as it's still the BGG number 1) So, to the PBEM website!

Looking for a gaming home....

Now that I'm a North Londoner, I'm looking for a suitable gaming group near my new home. 3 options present themselves:

1) Finchley Games Club. About 5 miles away. They meet on Thursdays in a cricket pavilion with a bar. About 20 people turn up, but the majority seem to be playing a long Formula De season (which leaves me cold), so the evening I visited there was only one other multi-player game going on (Phoenicia). (I got stuck playing 2-player Carcassone - yawn!) It's a friendly club, but quite expensive - £10 to join, plus £2.50 a night, but you do get a 10% discount at Leisure Games - not to be sniffed at!

2) Swiggers. About 7 miles away. Meets every Wednesday in the Shipwrights Arms on Tooley Street. (Once I start studying this will be on my way home from lectures.) About 25 people, and all sorts of interesting games get played, including playtest prototypes by published designers. I've been twice now, the second time (last week) was a great evening spent playing Phoenicia and Tempus. It's free, and you get a 10% discount from Pevans games! The atmosphere is a bit like a con - lots of games to choose from if you are prepared to chat people up.

3) London ASL Club. About 6 miles away. To satisfy my wargaming urge I am considering going along to this monthly meeting in Chancery Lane to get some ASL Starter Kit experience. Meets on 2nd Saturday of the month. I haven't managed to get along yet so not sure what it's like. But I know I need more than Euros - I also need something with machine guns....

I enjoyed the readers' game of Tigris and Euphrates over at TNE.meyerbros.org. I just missed a win - it was settled on a tie-break! If anyone fancies a rematch I've set up another game called "Though the Desert", password "nimrods". If you read this, feel free to join in!

The Desert Fox

I finally met Iain Cheyne yesterday evening, and played him at Rommel in the Desert. We have been meaning to do this for about two years, but our diaries only coincided yesterday. We played the Gazala scenario, with Iain as the Axis. We're both relatively new to the game so we were a bit intimidated by the rules and the bewildering choices available at the start. Iain kicked off with a big advance towards Tobruk inflicting heavy losses on my infantry that stood in the way. However stong reinforcements were on their way up the coast road from Egypt, and I was able to do a short left hook and isolate his two attacking groups. Iain failed to break through the cordon and so a significant force was disrupted and later destroyed, including two of his elite armour units. After that my attack lost steam and I failed to capitalize on my victory. With the last of my supplies I did a quick run down the coast road to seize Benghazi, but Iain was able to pull back in the Buildup phase, and supplies were too depleted for either of us to do much with the second month. I finished with a Positional Victory.

This is an amazing wargame, incredibly tense and exciting, and very true to the dynamics of the desert campaign. Richly deserves its classic status.

Ahhhh....

I've finally posted some photos of our wedding on Facebook.

Call me Tyres.....

As part of my "Living in London can be Fun" programme, today I cycled off (in between the showers) in search of the Spaced house. I didn't know its exact location, only the district, so I printed off a cycle route from London Transport and set off, trusting to luck. Sure enough I found the place after 15 minutes quartering the back streets of ********. Cycling is the ideal mode for this sort of search - a car would be too fast, and walking would be far too slow. It felt weird to be there in the flesh, having stood outside that building so many times before, but only through the medium of whatever episode I was watching at the time. It felt a little sad too to find that directly opposite is a huge building site, which will surely change the character of Meteor Street for ever.

On the other hand....

The thing with PocketCiv is - there's a lot of scribbling and rubbing out. Maybe I need to make up the "deluxe edition"? And the lack of opponents makes it feel slightly...flat.

Oh well. Maybe I have to organise a game of Civilization at MidCon this November after all.

The best things in life....

I'm very excited about PocketCiv. One of my all-time favourite games is Civilization, but finding opponents and time to play is very uncommon these days. Trumpeted Civ-lite games have failed to satisfy, but this one is different. It's solo for one thing, so the opponent problem vanishes, and it's not actually that light either. The clever trick is that this can be played on pencil and paper - all you need is the deck of event cards and the rules. This means that this can be played in odd moments on the train or at home, and thinking about your little paper civilization and its problems rapidly becomes a small obsession. My first attempt got wiped out in Era 1 by a sequence of earthquakes, sandstorms and volcanoes. Undeterred I drew a nice coloured map of Egypt and set off again - the gods were kinder this time and I have just finished Era 2 with 4 cities. Harder times ahead I expect though! This is great stuff - if it wasn't free I would call it my best purchase for some while.

Fun in Crondall

Les invited me back to leafy Surrey on Wednesday evening for a game session. Dave and Steve also came over from Salisbury. This was my chance to finally play Nexus Ops with someone - and it did not disappoint! What a fun game - all the best bits of Axis and Allies type games, but packed into a punchy 90 minute burst of violent action! I explained carefully at the start that turtling tactics will lose you the game in this one - but Steve turtled anyway, and duly lost. Dave went for killing as many of your enemy as possible, and Les's gentle nature meant he got off to a slow start. I lost a lot of ground and was always short of money as a result, but by keeping my focus firmly on VPs I was able to win anyway. Peter(10), Dave(6), Les(5), Steve(2).

Next we were looking for a filler to take us to midnight and chose San Juan. I always enjoy this clever little game but am not very good at it. An early chapel build does not constitute a "strategy"! Dave(42), Steve(36), Peter(33), Les(29).

At last! Another readers' game

I've been playing quite a bit of Tigris & Euphrates by email over at TNE.meyerbros.org .

Time to test myself against the general populace - I've created a readers' game called "Better than Titan" with password "nimrods". See you in Mesopotamia!

The end of purchasing?

Would I buy a Titan reprint? I was very lucky to pick up my copy a decade ago at the Manorcon bring-and-buy, for about £12 - a once in a lifetime bargain!If a reprint had significantly nicer graphics and presentation, and if they hadn't altered the rules or foisted plastic bits on the game, then yes, I would seriously consider it. After all, I have two copies of Civilization - another favourite - plus Advanced Civ.

I cycled to Bloomsbury today - to continue my bum-hardening program - and visited "Playin Games" while I was there. That was the little incentive I gave myself for all that exercise. I had three purchases in mind, one must-buy: ASL Starter Kit #3, and two might-buys: Mare Nostrum and Phoenicia. None were in stock, with a 1 month wait predicted for the ASLSK3. I consoled myself by purchasing some Chessex glass beads. I also had a browse, and again I had an experience which is becoming usual in game shops - while browsing through shelves of stuff that left me cold, I occasionally would see a game that I fancy buying - then realize that I already own it! A sign that my game collection is pretty well finished these days?

Next up - a visit to Les back near my ex-home in Farnham, where I am hoping to play Nexus Ops for the first time "in anger".....

Like, wow!

Valley Games are planning to reprint Titan and Republic of Rome, among other things.

Gaming bits

I've been playing Titan against the amazing Colossus program. Titan is one of the all-time greatest wargames, but surprisingly few of my gamer friends see this as clearly as I do. So Colossus fills a real need for me.

I've also been playing a lot of turn-based Tigris & Euphrates at TNE.meyerbros.org against some Mennonite friends. Although it's work in progress and the graphics are a bit clunky, this is a solid implementation of the game. I won my first game, I lost a few, but this time I'm doing better, and feeling hopeful of another win.

Simon came over yesterday, and we played Yinsh a couple of times. I lost both games. The same thing always happens - I get so wrapped up in my own plans that I don't see the killer play coming. I need to play more defensively.

Will cycle for games

Yesterday, as part of my acclimatization process (learning to love Tottenham), I cycled to Leisure Games in Finchley, 5.5 miles away. (This was also part of my training program, preparing for cycling to the Institute of Psychiatry in South London every day (10.5 miles) when I become an indigent MSc student in September.) The ride there seemed mostly uphill - Alexandra Park, then Muswell Hill, so when I arrived I was so hot and bothered that I forgot one of the two main purposes of my trip - to ask about local game groups. I remembered the other one - to buy ASL Starter Kit #3 - but that was out of stock. I consoled myself by buying some dice bags and a Treehouse tube to replace the one I gave to Sue's nephew Tom in Cardiff. The ride back was much easier - largely downhill, with fantastic views from Muswell Hill.

Leisure Games - given its amazing selection online - seemed strangely small and scruffy. Games jammed overtightly into the shelves or stacked willy-nilly. The back half of the store given over to desks for the online operation. But very friendly service, and it's amazing what they have there if you look - I spotted a copy of IceTowers, the out-of-print boxed set with the purple and clear pyramids. Tempting, but rather superfluous given that I have Zendo and Playing with Pyramids.

Tomorrow, maybe I head south and start reconnoitring the route to the Institute. Who knows, I may even get as far as Playin Games in Bloomsbury.....

Rewriting history

We were in Cardiff last week staying with Sue's brother and family, and I had a great time on Friday visiting Nick and playing him at Thirty Years War. One of my very favourite card-driven wargames this is, I love the epic scope and the historical flavour. We played with the 2-star Wallenstein and tournament victory optionals. I won as the Protestants with 1 VP at the end of turn 14. Nick sent Wallenstein to his death on turn 1 subduing the Hungarians. Nick's high-point was using the Cardinal Infante to chase Gustavus back to Pomerania and kill him there. However I bounced back with Torstennson and in the last couple of turns we watched the spectacle of the Swedes capturing Vienna and Munich. 8 hours in all, and a fantastic wargaming experience. Thanks Nick!

Quick turnaround

Just back from a 72 mile pilgrimage - London to Canterbury - raising money for work with homeless in London. Off again in a couple of hours to visit new in-laws in Cardiff for the rest of the week. Quickly washing clothes, repacking bags, and catching up with online games in the meantime......

Chris Farrell is posting about Monopoly - and he's taking the game seriously:

We've been playing Monopoly a bit recently, and enjoying it. We've settled on the 4 player configuration, playing to the second bankruptcy, and then counting assets ..... This configuration works well, and I honestly have enjoyed it more than many new eurogames.

Ticking them off

Here's an excerpt from my task list for this month:

Task 1: Get married
Status: done
Comments: this went amazingly well, considering how many things could have gone wrong that didn't - Sue turned up, the weather was good (very important as we used a marquee), the food was great (thanks to hard work by many of the guests), and no-one got food poisoned! Even my speech went OK, and my best man Phil (my younger son) didn't dish too much dirt. At least he didn't tell the story about when .........

Task 2: Play games at wedding
Status: done
Comments: Vic Thiessen kindly organised an (optional) game session after tea. He set up and explained 2 games (Trans-Europa and Trans-America) to a small crowd of guests. These games went down very well with the non-gamers. In spite of it being my special day, I still lost.

Task 3: Go on honeymoon
Status: done
Comments: we had a lovely time in the Castleton area of Derbyshire. Beautiful self-catering accommodation at Shatton Hall Farm. We played the classic honeymoon game Lost Cities a few times- not sure why this is recommended for honeymoons as it's actually quite a nasty game when you get into it - as Sue clearly has: she showed me no mercy.

Task 4: Move to Tottenham
Status: done
Comments: thanks to marvellous help from friends (Simon, Fiona, Cathy) and family (Phil) my stuff was moved to my new home in Tottenham in a big van over last weekend. It was a big job, and left us sitting in a chaos of boxes and disassembled furniture on Sunday night. But that has (nearly) all been sorted out now - order is restored and, most importantly, my game collection is now happily established in its new quarters in my "den" upstairs.

Task 5: Find a local game group
Status: still outstanding
Comments: I'm wondering whether to try out the Swiggers in central London on Wednesday(?) evenings. But there must be a more local group in North London, but not sure how to find them. And icing on the cake would be a local and genial wargames opponent....

Task 6: Sell off some wargaming geare I never use
Status: still outstanding
Comments: in the quest for space in our shared home, I need to get rid some painted figures (an English Civil War army), some white metal (Teutonic Knights, Napoleonic ships, cowboys etc) and some home-made scenery. Perhaps I will take them to Salute (is that soon?) for the bring-and-buy?

Task 7: Go paragliding again before I get rusty
Status: still outstanding
Comments: Green Dragons and Butser Hill are both a fair old drive away now, though I would like to go to one of Andy's after-work winching sessions at Green Dragons soon. The local club is at Dunstable Downs - must investigate.