Civilised

Played a game of Civilisation (the old AH classic) on Saturday. Five players and about six hours to get through to the end of the late bronze age. It was all very civilised, with only a bit of narkiness between North Africa and Italy late in the bronze age as the Italian began to feel put upon. Which, considering the african owned all the desert from Carthage to the Great Western Desert as well as Southern Italy, Sicily and Minorca, they might have been justified in feeling.

I played Crete, and had a nice comfortable little space on my own islands and well as the greek mainland city sites, where I managed to avoid any conflict except to keep the poor Balkans as my buffer against the Thracians and their western Illyrian neighbors as they spread south from the breadbasket of Europa.

Thrace grabbed prime agricultural land early and was beginning to take the pelopynese islands, as well as balancing trade, income, urbanisation, and cultural development nicely for a rush towards the iron age when the player had to depart for other activities (a zombie walk, of all things). Lucky for the rest of us, as Thrace might otherwise have become a cultural powerhouse.

Poor Illyria had a player who hadn't played for ten years (though he had previously won as North Africa, no mean achievement) and so got left behind in the development stakes, despite all the prime agricultural land he held. He does however wish to play again sometime within the next ten years (haha), so this will be a space to watch.

North Africa won on points, with Crete a fairly close second. All in all, played under the verandah with kids playing around our feet on a beautiful spring day, a great way to have some fun.

Sorry to be away for so long. I've been reading my usual blog roll when I can, but not much else. Will fill you in soon (it's gaming related) ...

My Precsiousssss - (Risk LOTR)

Following the recent rediscovery of Risk: Lord of the Rings, it predictably didn't take long before one day someone said we should play it again.

So, after a few phone calls and a quick scan through the simple, clear and concise rules (it is a game of Risk, afterall), it was time to get into it. A great way to use a mild and sunny late winter afternoon (hence the streaming sunlight and long shadows in the pic).

The game varies from the traditional risk in a few ways, besides obviously the map. Principally, there is a 'timer' on the game, with the Company of the Ring (represented by a gold ring on a stand) moving one territory per turn along its pre-determined path until it leaves the map via the dead marshes (that's when the game ends). In the photo here, the ring is in Gladden Fields, with two more territories to pass through. The ring might be delayed in certain locations (it's progress is delayed unless the player rolls a '3' on 1D6 in Moria, Lorien and the Dead Marshes). Additionally, there are certain 'adventure' cards which can make it tougher to advance the company also.

The addition of 'Adventure' cards is another significant change, with 'event', 'power' and 'mission' subcategories. Players draw one of these cards at the end of their turn if their leader has passed through a territory that has a 'site of power' in it. If an 'event' card (eg. wolves, snowstorm) it is played immediately. If it is a 'power card' (eg. 'knife in the back', 'wormtongue') a player keeps it for later use. If it is a 'mission' card a player will try and hold it until their leader reaches the territory named on the card, when they will be able to draw certain reinforcements.

Changes to the game that affect tactics are, most noticeably, the addition of 'leaders' (combat bonuses in attack and defence, can generate 'adventure' cards (see above)), rivers (can only be crossed at bridges), mountains (cannot be crossed), Fortresses (eg. Helms Deep, aids in defensive bonus for combat, worth victory points at the end of the game) and Ports (there are three coastal ports, connected by sea lanes, which effectively make them contiguous to each other despite the actual distance).

There are a few 'minor' changes to some of the classic Risk rules (eg. each turn a player can 'maneuver' one 'stack' or a leader from any one of one's territoritories to any other provided they are connected by other friendly controlled territories - unlike the original form of mass movement, allowable only into an adjacent territory).

In my opinion, the net result of these changes is a game which keeps the bloodthirsty cutthroat nature of Risk, but limits it in time and rewards good play a little better.

Today's game lasted about three hours. Shaun (red) won with 44 points, Adelaide Gamer (green) and Nancy (yellow) tied for second on 15 points, poor Paul got stuck in the badlands of Rhun, coming in on 3 points. I think that everyone enjoyed it. I know I did.

More piracy

Had another quick game of Buccaneer tonight with Nancy, Jess and Brodie. Jess went out to an early looking lead, till newbie Brodie jumped her ship and took the treasure so labouriously traded for crew in Brodie's port. Me, I got caught at Treasure Island and lost most of my crew overboard so had to hang around far too long in order to replace them. Meanwhile, Nancy roamed the seas, followed her treasure map, raided my harbour and won quite comfortably. Good fun.

I've added Garage Gamer to the Blog Roll. A pretty well fully documented large scale Napoleonics Campaign, plus other things. A lot of material to work through and some great looking battles. Have a look at the earliest posts to get an idea of the garage.

Finally, John over at Roll Dice and Kick Ass is back in the land of blog. Welcome back, John!

Buccaneer - Treasure Ahoy!

Waddington's "Buccaneer" was published in 1971 and is as much fun now as it was then. My old box is getting a bit crusty, and there's a substituted button for a missing pearl amongst the treasures, but it is otherwise holding up well after nearly forty years. Not bad for a family game.

The basic idea is to collect at your home port 20 points worth of 'treasure' - barrels of rum, pearls, gold ingots, diamonds and rubies before anyone else. You do this by hanging around Treasure Island, trading at any of the ports, or piracy (of course).

The rules are well written, and printed on the inside of the colourful box cover. Although simple, they leave players with different strategies, modified always by the vagaries of Treasure and Pirate Islands, as well as the tropical storms, yellow fever, lost charts and piratical hero's like (Long John Silver). A player needs to be flexible to catch the tides of fate in this free flowing game.

The structure of a player's turn forces them to consider their plans for future turns (as one would expect with a good sailing game), especially when maneuvering in the waters off Treasure Island (left).

We played a couple of three player games this evening. Each game took less than an hour and, surprisingly for us, involved no vigorous debate. There was one act of piracy in the second game (shaun plundering nancy's galleon), but combat did not feature heavily. For the record, I won the first game on a conservative sail and trade strategy, and Shaun came home with the goods in the second - from my port! I suspect there'll be a few more piratical adventures over the next week or two.

All in all a grand ol' game, accessible to new gamers young and old, and with enough intricacies in its play to satisfy the old seadogs amongst us.

"Haaaahr me hearties!"

PS I have added Storm and Conquest to the blog scroll. Part of another aussie group, interested atm in ECW and Dark Ages. His blog scroll is interesting also. In his most recent post, he has some nice pictures of a magnificent motte and bailey at the Goulburn Gamers, with a bunch of his viking and saxon rebels attacking it. The defender's perspective is here at the Unlucky General. All of it worth a read.

Settlers Game

In the first week of January (just shows how long I can wait before posting if I'm busy elsewhere) Nancy, Shaun, Paul and I played our first game of Settlers of Catan. We all agreed it was good fun, took us a bit over two hours. We played the recommended starting set up for a first game rather than use the randomisation of geography etc which gives the game its newness on each play. Using the standard set up, I presume, gives each player a roughly equal chance to win while displaying some of the different 'styles' required to master the game. In this trial, Shaun (White) won with an expansionist approach, Nancy (blue) came close with her trading approach, I (orange) kept myself happy with a coastal network and Paul (red) got frustrated by playing an expansionist style when he should have concentrated on internal development. All good fun and hope to play again in not too distant future.

Civ Game

The above picture shows the situation at the end of our game of Civilisation from the Dog Days (sorry about the blurry picture, forgot to use the flash). It was a rollicking good six player game that went for 13 hours. Babylon (Jess) won in a close tussle down to the last turn, with Illyria (Nancy) coming second and North Africa (Jarrad) a close third. Minor places were taken by Egypt (Paul) , Assyria (yours truly) and Thrace (Wayne). A great time was had by all. Most noteably, at different stages in the game everyone was under a fair bit of pressure to the point of being upset, but no one said anything they regretted and we all shook hands at the end. In the pressure cooker of a thirteen hour game, that's pretty good.

Below is a link to a slideshow showing the rise and decline and rise of the Assyrian Empire in the game of Civilisation we played at the end of last year.



In the slide show you'll see how Assyria expanded into Asia (Anatolia), dealt with a warlike Babylon pushing from the East and various minor coastal invasions in the South (North is to the bottom of the picture). Although I tried to keep the centre of the asian peninsula free of cities (allowing me internal lines of communication to deal with my war like neighbor and exposed coast ) I eventually had to build cities there to secure the position. In the latter part of the game you'll also see a barbarian (pink) influx into Babylon territory. I included it here because it was a nice thorn in the side of an aggressive opponent playing what is usually a passive people.

Victorious Babylonian

The Dog Days

Happy xmas (to those of you who celebrate it)! Believe it or not, amongst other gifts I received was a game - Settlers of Catan. I know it's been around awhile and that many of the regular readers of this blog will have played it, but I haven't and am sure looking forward to it. Though the boardgame we are planning to play sometime in the next week and a half (when the world here stops for summer dogdays* holiday) is a six or seven player game of the old Avalon Hill classic, "Civilisation". That'll take about 12 hours to play. Is pretty cool how can usually get folk together to play it once or twice a year.

A few days before xmas i got myself a 'little something,' one of those computer game magazines which has a game disk with it, "Age of Conan". It sounds like a megagame, and suffers from a lot of the commercialisations that come with these things, but I was grew up reading the original Conan stories and can't resist having a look at the world of Hyboria for thirty days before the free period of this online game expires. With holidays in front of me, hopefully I'll be able to advance enough to travel a bit and have a look around. Who knows, I might even like it?!

* The dog days is a term from the roman era referring to the sliding number of days after the solistice to correct the calander each year (I think). I use it to describe the null days between xmas and new year.

5 player LOTR

Had a five player game, with Jess and Jarrad being the two first timers. We got further than in any other game (though still didn't reach Mount Doom before Sam the Ring Bearer (me) was corrupted by Sauron - along with all the other hobbits except for Merry). The dynamic was a bit different as one would expect with five players, with 'advantages' to the group and 'disadvantages' to the players, as I put it. Again, took about two hours (including a snack break).

The ring has now been taken from our home for a week to be used elsewhere. Little doubt that the young ones will soon have optimised their playing strategies and will be keen to show us 'oldies' how it is done when the ring one day returns.

Session 5: Sauron starts on 15. Shaun, Nancy, Jessica, Jarrad, Mark. Scored 57.

More LOTR

Went and played two three player games of LOTR. The first of them took around three hours, had several children watching for some of the time with their various hobbit and gollum imitations. Very funny, and they seem to understand the principles of the fellowship of the ring easier than us adults, judging by the results...

Session 3: Nancy, Wayne, Mark. Sauron starts 15. Score 46, eaten by Shelob.
Session 4: Wayne, Mark, Nancy. Sauron starts 15. Score 54, overtaken by events and Sauron grabs the ring. Pippin was alone for most of his fateful journey in Mordor in this game, but the eliminated players were still 'involved' in what was happening.

LOTR Sessions

Board from 25 Nov 2009 (Postgame)

Game 1: Paul, Mark, Nancy - 53 points - Sauron starts at 15 on Corruption Chart
Game 2: Mark, Shaun, Paul, Nancy - 46 points - Sauron starts at 15

Both games took about two hours, though wouldn't be much more than an hour once people are familiar with the game. Highly challenging with a sense of impending and inevitable doom. The game hangs together neatly, encouraging the company to support each other. Utilises on board tracks to keep the forward momentum, cards to generate actions, nice components, clear rules. As the company passes through Shelob's Lair (we didn't get past through it to Mordor in the second game) the tension rises, as Sauron reaches out for the company the fear rises, as the hobbits have to risk themselves to save their friends the group coheres.

A good game, am even taking it to someone else's place tonight to induct them. Maybe I'll give it a rest then...

Real Game! Tigris & Euphrates!

Had a cool game of Tigris and Euphrates last weekend. It's been over a year since Nancy and I had last played it, Wayne had never played it. We were spending Easter in a big farmhouse up in the riverland and were at loose ends for something to do once wee Blake was in bed. I'd brought T&I (along with Caesar's Legions, while Nancy had brought along Pass the Pigs, Rook and Farque, and we had acquired Where's Wally Wordhunt from a Jumble Sale on Easter Saturday, so we were well equipped). So we fitted in a quick game.

The rules were easy enough to grab the second time around, and easy enough to explain to Wayne as we played. Considering neither myself or Nancy are fluent with this game, I don't think the noob suffered a disadvantage.

In any event, 'twas me came last, then Wayne, and Nancy won easily.

Paul was around this evening and noticed the game amongst the other things I haven't unpacked since our holiday weekend. Although we couldn't fit in a game straight away I'm sure that means we'll get one in over the next week or so.

games wot I played and the online leap

Looking at the list of things that I've loaded into the computer recently, it's all online mediated stuff now. There are certain desktop standalone games I keep in a drawer because I'm sure I'll enjoy them again one day, but I seem to have made the leap from silicon to electron based gaming.

Thinking such meta-gaming thoughts recently I went for a browse on the topic and came across Open Bracket, a blog themed around online game development. Very interesting to me, with my anthropological bent. What endears me even more to the author is the fact that their current favorite online game is Renaissance Kingdoms!

For the record, in the past few months I've played Rook, The Great Dalmutti, Ticket to Ride.

Tigris and Euphrates - Jarrad wins!

I introduced Jarrod and Jess to T & E the other night. They both picked it up frighteningly quickly. Took us about two hours to play a game from scratch.

There were four monuments on the board by the end of the game, with control of different spheres of the two major kingdoms see-sawing in the later game. Jarrod ran a strategy of continually balancing his tallies for the various colours, which served him well. He won with a score of 18 points (black?), myself second on 6 points (black, including three treasure) and Jess on 4 points (red).

Both seemed to enjoy it, and it took them away from their seemingly endless reruns of the Avalon Hill classic - 'Civilization'.

Axis & Allies - Trial Game Review

As I said at the time, for my birthday this year I was given the game of Axis and Allies. Haven't got it together enough to play it until earlier tonight, when Shaun, Paul, Wayne and Myself gave it a go.

None of us had played it before. We didn't finish our tiral game due to the late hour- I suspect it would have reached the agreed 'minor' victory condition within the hour if we hadn't stopped.

The mapboard and associated playing aids are utilitarian, sturdily enough built for the purpose. Rules aren't totally clear at several points, due to their being a little loose in their definitions by my professional opinion. The numerous plastic pieces representing armour, aircraft, infantry, battleships etc look good on the board but they all get a bit fiddly when you have large congregations of forces, besides looking cluttered. They do, however, serve their purpose quite well.

The game is, to a wargamer, easy to understand. A grognard would call this a 'light' wargame. A gamer, not familiar with classic wargames, might look at it as 'medium', and a non 'serious' gamer might call it 'difficult'. That would be my observation from watching tonight's trial game. I think it pretty well took us the four hours we were playing to settle the rules.

I suspect the fixed historical starting positions will lead to a finite number of replays for all but the most keen fans. I can imagine a limited number of ways any particular game could go from the beginning, with no doubt several 'best' strategies which would further constrict the game's iterative facility. Of course, the same could be said about such classics as Diplomacy and they certainly haven't suffered from the experience.

In tonight's game I was Germany and Wayne was Japan. I attacked through the caucasus to take Calcutta on my fourth turn, while my central european force swung ultimately over Leningrad. Paul (Russia and America) used his huge yank navies to tie up Wayne, and to transport an army from the East Coast of the US to invade German held france. In his Russian guise, Paul weathered the fascist hammer blows, developing missile technologies early in the game and subsequently setting missile batteries in Moscow with which he could hit german production facilities.

Shaun (Britain) spent his game making small and strategically insignificant raids with his fleets and airforces, while being rolled up by german forces through North Africa and into the Near East. Japan attacked pearl harbour, and successfully conquered Oahu to add to his conquests from Shanghai to New Guinea. At game end, he was threatening San Francisco.

There were mixed reactions to the game, with three of four of us likely to play it again. That's not to bad for a game that fits firmly within the dicefest subcategory of the 'classic wargame' genre.

It's nice to see the game is published under the trademark of Avalon Hill, the company that has produced so many of the wargames that I have played over the years. I went to look at their website and was very disappointed to see that with the company being bought and sold a fair bit over the last ten years, it has ended up in the hands of those that make Magic the Gathering cards and D&D, and has had its catalogue gutted to include not one classic wargame beyond 'Diplomacy'. Such a loss!

Tigris & Euphrates - Trial Game

Nancy, Paul and I played our first game of Tigris & Euphrates tonight. It took about 3 and a half hours (but I would expect that to drop to around 2 hours if we three played again).

The game was good fun, with Nancy romping home as a decisive winner. Her lowest scoring colour group were green markets, scoring her 22 points. Paul and I tied for second/last place, he with 6 blue farms and I with 6 red temples for our respectively lowest scoring colours. Nancy's dynasty settled into a well balanced and isolated mid sized kingdom whilst Paul (with a large kingdom) and Mark (with a smaller ephemeral set of kingdoms) got involved in minor dogfighting over influence in their regions. A total of three monumental ziguratts were built.

Paul stirred the pot once he realised his blue leader was going to have a hard time generating victory points, allegedly to drag me down low enough so that he wouldn't come last. I guess you could say he achieved his aim, by way of converting Nancy's likely victory into a steamroller as he handed her my head on a platter after formenting major external conflicts between her kingdom and my lesser principality.

At least, that's what it felt like.

It was great fun! For most of the game we were concentrating mainly on learning the game mechanism. The game drew to its sudden end when Nancy closed it out by trading in her unused tiles to drain the bag of those few that were left.

The game certainly has great replay value. I suspect it is likely to be more conflictual in future, especially when we play with four dynasties!

We are all looking forward to playing Axis and Allies tomorrow. I expect it will be quite a different experience!

PS - I have added the new category, 'Eurogames' to the blog index on the left sidebar.

Puerto Rico - my first win!

I just got back from a weekend at Burra when I had the lovely surprise of my teenage daughter offering to play any game I chose with her and her friend. This was after I said I wasn't upto playing Monopoly, which would have been her first choice (she went out and got a copy of the Austalian version of Monopoly a couple days ago and has already played three games of it - I find it not the most exciting of games but will occasionally play a game of it to be polite. Not today though).

So we played a three player game of Puerto Rico, myself and two teenagers. It was their first try of the game, but we didn't need to play any 'test turns' 'cause they were comfortable with the system very quickly. It was a close game, with Jarrod leading in the middle game, myself swinging into production/export mode and stacking on victory points in the later game, and Jess blindsiding us by getting enough doubloons to purchase city hall and colonise it in the last turn of the game. The game ended when we ran out of colonists.

I held them off, and won with 44 points. Jess came narrow second on 43, and Jarrod a respectful third with 34 points. Whole game was over within two hours.

They enjoyed the game, and were picking up on how the mechanics interact quite comfortably by the end of it. So we now have eight people who can play the game, should make it relatively easy to organise a session which includes it in future (perhaps as a prelude to Diplomacy, which seems to be a perrenial favorite).

Puerto Rico and Billionaire

Tonight we had a bit of a gaming session. Started with eight player Billionaire. Then five player Puerto Rico.

Billionaire, as always, was a noisy and fun game, with lots of minor subplots as people traded pairs back and forth and tried to keep track of the taxman. Wayne was pretty chuffed to have an eight player game.

Nancy won, followed by Paul, Wayne and Jess (tied for third), Me, Jarrod, Shaun and Marko.

Paul, Marko, Wayne, Shaun and myself then played a game of Puerto Rico. This was the first time we've played this five players, and the first time Wayne and Shaun had played it. They both picked up the mechanics pretty quick. The Game took a bit over two hours, ending when victory point counters and colonisists both ran out on the same turn.

Shaun won with 64 points, having chased the money early and had the coffee market to himself for awhile. I came a narrow second (62), having used a customs house to magnify the VP bonus I'd derived from moderate but constant volumes of produce going through my harbour for almost the entire game. Paul and Marko came next (50 and 49 respectively), with Wayne (36) bringing up the rear in an honourable late recovery following about three turns where nothing went his way.

Good clean fun game, but might have to try something else next time to let the lessons settle in.

Puerto Rico - Robbo wins!

We played another game of Puerto Rico tonight. Same four of us who played it last time, but the game progressed quite differently to the first time. This time around, the game went for a shade over two hours (including a break in the middle), ending when Mark Robbo completed his building program with a second major building. He won, with a score of 38 pts, then came Paul (35), myself (31) and Nancy (26). Fun time by all. Rules continue to deal with contingencies as they arise without giving rise to argument.

The fact that the scores are much closer, and that the winner is only in the thirties this time, arose from the fact that no-one who had a major building (where large bonuses of victory points arise at game end) had colonists on them (required to activate their special bonuses). Mark won because he integrated his economy a bit better than anyone, and because no-one chose the role of 'Mayor' in the final turn (allowing all players the chance of placing colonists on their major buildings). Paul had his chance to, but didn't. He seemed to keep chosing the role of 'builder' during the game - a bit inflexible as a strategy once others realise it, I think. Nancy never seemed to get off the ground in adding value to her produce. Similarly with me, except I managed to produce a lot more stuff for overseas consumption generally than she did and scored slightly higher accordingly in the end.

I think we all played the game better than the first time, and probably got a bit more anticipatory joy out of the playing. It didn't seem so intuitive, but that's to be expected as we play with the possibilities within the rules over our next few contests.

We played a game of Farkel afterwards, to wind down a bit.