Felbrigg's Gaming Blog

Zooloretto

2009-11-08T11:21:00.000-08:00

We played out first game of Zooloretto tonight as a family. I've played a couple of games at work with "the guys", but today was the first at home.

I really only gave the family the briefest outline of what the game was about. Pointed at the enclosures, and said you can only have one animal type in each. Pointed at the coins, and then pointed to the coin-action aid mentioning what could be done in the very briefest of ways.

Then we started, I just told then to draw out of the bag and then put the tile on one of the trucks, which we all did for the first round. Then as my wife started the second round I told her that instead of adding to the trucks she could take a truck, but would have to sit out a turn. She added to the truck. Same info to my son who also added to the truck.

A coin tile came out and I explained that the coin tile would be swapped for a wooden coin.

We all took a full truck at the end of the first round.

During the next round a Male camel came out, so I explained the breeding rules. My son bailed early this round, realising I wanted the male camel he took that truck half full. Grr!

I soon filled my first enclosure and took the coins, explaining why I got them. During my next turn I swapped my full enclosure with a partially full one, once again explaining what I was doing.

My son queried buying a tile. I think he was eyeing up one of the animals in my enclosure so I had to disapoint him and say he could only by from the barn. He was still happy though, and took a Panda off of me. It was an attack, it was a Male in my Barn which would have matched nicely with the Female I had out in an enclosure. Grr!

So here we go. My son and I were bashing each others animal selection and meanwhile my wife was just taking trucks and filling enclosures like mad. We got into the final sections of tiles and she started spending ALL of the coins she had aquired to empty her well stocked barn.

So we ended and my wife wins followed by me and my son came in just behind. It was a close game, and the introduction of the rules as we went along obviously didn't hurt their play.

This is a fun game, and deserves it's Spiel de Jahres award.

Inns and Cathedrals

2009-10-28T15:08:00.000-07:00

This week I've a couple of games of Carcassonne using the "Inns and Cathedrals" expansion, and it's been a good experience.

Basically it includes a number of new tiles.

A couple of "Cathedral" tiles, which are entirely city with no green edges. This adds a really fun effect. When added to a city that city becomes totally valueless unless the city is completed. If completed the city is worth extra points.

Likewise the other tiles include road tiles but they roads have inns next to the road. Like the Cathedral if completed the road is worth extra, but if not complete the road is worthless at the end of the game.

Both of these features cause a few things to happen, especially in the end game. If you draw a Cathedral tile or an Inn tile and an opponent has a big feature going you can take a gamble and play this poisoned chalice into their feature spoiling it for the end game score.

Of course you can likewise take the tile and try to make the most of it earlier in the game by scoring extra points.

As well as these great score effecting tiles, it also includes a number of extra tiles that are new, and will cause the tile-counters to have to recalculate. These are not repeats of existing tile types but whole new shapes that give you new great options.

This expansion is a worth while purchase for a Carcassonne fan. It adds new scoring options without either unbalancing the game or breaking the existing stratergies.

The DOOMaster

2009-09-11T10:15:00.000-07:00

Well we had a rather disasterous few sessions of DOOM:The Boardgame over the last few weeks. We played through the first couple of levels and in fact into the third level without ever once making it to the end.

We cheated a little I'll admit we went into the third level with three armour each, and a host of weapons all carried forwards from the last mission ( despite losing ). Our only excuse was we wanted a chance to win.

This third level is a doozey. You have to fight your way within 7 turns to one location and immediately another objective starts with only 7 turns to reach it, and then again once more. It has a lot of long corridors so speed is of the essence.

I had some speedy abiilities so I sped off to grab some armour, only to find that the next bit of corridor was now blocked by spiders at a choke point where the corridor narrowed. The other guys then came up after but with the spiders there the path was blocked. So when it came to my turn I was blocked by friends and foes from advancing or attacking. So let me cut this sorry episode short. We never made it along that corridor, a few big-nasty spawns and it was blocked beyond hope, and we died before opening the first door.

So after this miserable defeat we decided to reset it and try again. It the first time we've ever bothered with a reset, normally we just go only the next mission to keep the variety nice and spicey!

So we reset, I sped off and gained the choke point before the enemy did and ignored the armour, which made me rather sad. I promptly broke all of my weapons and resorted to the mighty fists of fury and started battling up this corridor. My fellow marines did likewise and this time we actually made progress. Through the first door and into the room with a lot of big nasties... we got no further. A second crushing defeat.

So we reset, determined to beat this darned thing. Once again I raced to the choke point to secure our path forwards. My marines fists once again leading the way. The other marines followed my lead, we dodged around the bad guys in the corridor, battered the zombies guarding the first door and burst into the room. Some handy grenades from my fellow marines helped to clear the decks. My marine burst through the next door and came to a halt. Two Demons blocked the next corridor next to each other in a mutual Swipe position, remember my Marine only had fists so I dared not advance.

The other guys were battling the big beaties in the previous room and as it turned out the Invaders couldn't stand still and advanced on my poor guy. Sure he got severely hurt but did manage to Punch both of those doggies to death in the process.

We made the second objective and headed for the third. Unfortunately this was being stood on by a Cyber demon and my bloodied fists weren't ever able to husrt him. The next marine into the room promptly ran out of ammo, where was the third guy?

Well he was low on health and he also was without ammo. We were on 4 frags and about 4 turns until the deck was drawn out. He was our only hope (Obi Wan) as he was standing next to grenades with an imp on the bazooka. He splatted the imp grabbed the goodies and advanced towards the line of invaders blocking his way. He needed the invaders to kill him so that he could spawn forwards into the last room. They didn't attack him, just stood there blocking the way. So with a gulp he took the only option he had and shot at an invader while standing in the blast area.

Sure, he got his wish, a frag and a spawn forwards. Unfortunately it also used up the only ammo for the bazooka. Game over. The cyber demon couldn't be hurt by us, we needed the bazooka to blow him off of the objective with the bazookas Knock back.

So we sat back and considered just how darned HARD this game is. We cheated with extra armour and weapons and had still been wasted.

An idle flick through the rules a little later spotted a goof we had made. We had thought that Invader minis blocked line of sight for Spawning, thus the Invader player had been able place lines of invaders along the corridors forming road blocks, and had been spawning in the same room when he shouldn't have been able to.

So there we were, wrecked, dispointed and now dispairing at the rules error. Did it last? Did we actually cry? No and No. We did put DOOM away for a while, and broke out Memoir '44:Hedgerow Hell, you can't keep gamers down!

Speeding up Doom : The Boardgame

2009-09-04T04:08:00.001-07:00

Here are my suggestions for speeding up the base game of Doom.

Marine players all play at once or as near simualtaneous as possible.

However before they all start making their moves, the Invader player is given the chance to examine any interrupting cards in his hand and advise the players wether he may or will not be playing any of them. The Invader player must be given some lenience by the Marine players to play these cards to thier best and even have the Marines take back a part of their turn as required.

Next, when it comes time to lay out a room the Invader player should read out the items to be placed and the Marine players do all of the searching through the boxes ( and baggies ). This speeds up the building up of the rooms.

The next point is possibly going to cause the most arguement. Limit the invader to activating no more than 8 alien-monsters per turn.

Of course, this makes the game just a little easier for the marines, but it does make the game more enjoyable, and keeps everyone busy, more of the time.

Flying the Storch

2009-08-23T13:59:00.000-07:00

I played my first game today using the Air Pack expansion for Memoir 44. Well that's not strictly true I had played the Pegasus bridge scenario but that doesn't use any planes!

So today I played scenario 12 in which the Air Rules are in effect and the Axis side starts with an aircraft on the runway.

My son always like to play the side that starts first so he played the allies. I was surprised as I expected him to want to play with the plane. However after our game he did say that he wanted to play the same scenario again but as axis next time.

I set out the game including putting the plane that turned out to be a "storch" onto the board. I was looking forward to playing with my first aircraft...then I read the capabilities and was a little crestfallen. The Storch doesn't strafe or bomb it just looks around!? The rule is that the aircraft can not attack, but spys on the enemy, which in games rules is simply this, if the plane ends it's turn next to an enemy it acts like a Recon card meaning that at the end of the turn I get to draw two cards and keep the one of my choice.

When I started playing I thought this was pretty lame but two turns later I was changing my mind. The choice of card is a serious advantage, it not only allows you to keep your aircraft in the air but you can quickly build a good hand of cards.

My little Storch lasted a few turns but in the end I couldn't keep it in the air and it disapeared. Immediately after that my worthy opponent gained a P40 which showed my how aircraft can attack the foot sloggers. As his right flank moved up to assault my entrenched troops his P40 sweapt repeatadly across them blasting them and their sandbags to bits. It wasn't enough for him though. In the end I'd advanced my right flank and used the river to pin his troops and whittle them down.

I won 4-3 in the end but it was a close run thing, and I'm looking foward the return match

Writing Rules

2009-08-19T14:14:00.001-07:00

I'm proof reading the rules for my latest board game design "Galaxy Conquest". It's actually hard work. I've heard around the web that writing board game rules IS hard work. I wasn't convinced.

I am now starting to believe it. When I started I just rushed down all of what I thought were the pertinent points and walked away for a ,well, a couple of weeks and now I've come back to it.

I'm amazed at how poor that first draft was. I included a reference to something called "fortification" which doesn't actually exist within the game! I was inconsistent with the terms that were there. I'd left out the entire Combat Results Table!!!

Add to that the number of typos and bad syntax. It was frankly, dross. So I've just spent another hour going over the rules searching fore these mistakes, things left out, incorrect references etc and I'm bushed, it's given me a headache.

I know it's not over yet, I'm going to recheck the rules again later in the week then see about giving them to some alpha testers and thats going to bring back another whole swath of rules questions and problems that I've missed or just haven't even thought about. I'm really not looking forward to that, and I'm supposed to be doing this fun!

Danger Patrol

2009-08-15T02:32:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I was on RPG-Geek and spotted that a game designer had uploaded his beta/apha version of his RPG. I snagged it and had a read through.

I was immediately intrigued. It's not your usual or rather, it's not a traditional Role Playing Game, and neither is it a pure story telling game. It's a hybrid of sorts.

The background is really thin, just a few paragraphs really. The idea if the game is that all of the players as well as the games master will build the background through play.

The game is called "Danger Patrol" and that name nicely links in with the Rocket Cars and Evil Scientist theme. It's posted for free on it's own page at RPGGeek.

The game mechanics are very interesting, there is no board as such, but rather a series of 3x5 cards where each important location is noted. Each character also has a card and these are placed on the table in one of the locations. As the Games Master and the players mention things as part of the narrative they can be added to a card and then placed on the table.

The narrative is also pretty imaginative. As a Player Character is carrying out an action each other player is able to add to the story provided it increases the danger level.

So in summary I've been very impressed with this game. It keeps all of the players involved even when the story does not effect their character and it's tongue in cheek sci fi background is very appealing. The rules PDF is quite short so definitely worth a quick read.

A few thoughts of Batman

2009-08-11T11:04:00.000-07:00

I recent bought a game called Batman Begins Shadow Assault. I bought it off ebay despite it getting very poor reviews.

Why would a sane game collector buy a game he knows is poor?

Well simply put, it's the bits! The game comes with 4 Batman figurines and 20 plastic ninjas. It was the thought of those pieces that drew me in. I was thinking that I could make or use those in a game of my own devising.

So the game arrives I crack it open and take a look. I was still disapointed even though I knew it was going to be a bad game. The problem for me is that of the four Batman's ( Batmen? ) one of then has such a terrible pose that the best thing to do with it is to feed it to the nearest hungry child. Hang on there's more. The twenty ninja figures are clear plastic. They are shown on the box as being made of grey plastic, and when I compare the figure to the box, I would have preferred the grey.

So with my disapointment hanging over me I looked at the rules to the game. Oh dear, just as the reviews said on BGG.

So is it all gloom? No, I do still have three Batman's ( that just doesn't sound right) and twenty ninjas is still twenty ninjas after all, but there is a bonus as well. The game comes with four plastic dice made for stickers. These dice have flat recessed sides where stickers can be stuck, so I'll be able to use them when I come to make a Print and Play game that needs bespoke dice. :)

A great idea Lost!

2009-08-05T11:36:00.001-07:00

So I was cycling home and had what I thought was a great idea for a board game.

When I got home, all I could remember was that I'd had a great idea. Darn!

Anyway good news in the end, after eating my evening meal the idea came back to me, phew! It'll be a tile laying game and I'm thinking of giving it a hamster theme.

To be honoest it was the idea of hamsters that was the inspiration so there wasn't any idea for possible retheme. Now now while blogging this another possible theme has cropped up. Thank goodness for bloggs! It could be a game set in the asteroid belt...

I'll say no more, this game I'm going to keep to myself until I've firmed it up some more it has a potential of being a mass market game, simple, cute theme, playable by the whole family. If I can register Hamsteropoly I'll be made!!!!!

Another loss at Space Crusade

2009-07-26T11:09:00.000-07:00

Well... Huh... I, erm...

Ok....

So he... KICKED MY BUTT AGAIN AT SPACE CRUSADE.

Number 1 son is basically a genius at games, or lucky to an inappropriate level. We've played three scenarios from the base game and every time he's won by over 20 points.

I will admit to being fairly close to winning this time, which makes a rare change. I'd taken out all of the standard marines on his team.

He had decided to split his marines up in order to reveal the blips on all of the boards that's something he just loves doing, I don't know why, it's a kid thing.

His Commander sprinted off on his own and his marine with the standard bolter went the other way with the reminder clearing the nearest rooms.

Having read a recent article on BoardGameGeek about tactics in Space Crusade I had decided to adopt the suggest from there that HandToHand combat is the best option for the weaker aliens. So with that in mind I placed the blips in groups just out of sight, the intention being to swamp the standard marines and once they were removed focus entirely on the Sergeant.

Of course it didn't quite go the way I wanted. His missile launcher placed a shot that removed 3 minis in one shot. Then he made a very clever move with the plasma gun guy that lined up a few Gretchins and removed them from the game. In two shots my horde on the first board was all but eliminated.

The Bolter marine who'd gone investigating on his own was my next target. he entered a new board and I placed the blips in just two rooms, in his case I had no fear of the heavy weapons damage I'd just suffered from on the first board. He advanced and then I swarmed him and took him out with a force of Gretchin melee.

His Sergeant stormed across the third board heading for the fourth. I kept the aliens out of reach as much as possible as he whizzed by. Then the missile and plasma guys followed the Sergeant. I took the chance to run all of the guys who had been hiding to jump out and say boo. A Chaos marine heavy weapon poured it on and took out another marine.

The plasma guy replied in kind taking out a couple of aliens with a single shot.

The Sergeant entered the new board and I blipped behind all of the far corners. By now his commander was Bionic and Shielded turning him into a death machine. he turned around to take on the swarm attacking his buddies behind but was jumped himself by a Gene Stealer for three points of damage.

So the sergeant was hurt and alone. I took the opportunity to wave the baggie of reinforcement counters at my worthy opponent. There may even have been an incident of the "I'm going to win dance".

The next turn he made a break for the exit and I began to panic. He had all but killed all of the aliens and that meant I was low on points. I ran the two aliens within range to block the exit including an android but it was not enough. He played a card that reduced my dice and promptly roll 7 to which I had no reply. next turn he was out.

Final result was him in the lead by 20 points. Time for sulking :(

Using my new Memoir 44 Card-Replacement dice

2009-07-23T02:43:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I played a game of Memoir 44 using the M44 Card-Replacement Dice. I was playing against another experienced player of the game and it was the first time I'd played using the dice against another experienced player.

Obviously I went through the dice explanations and we set up the Sword Beach scenario from the base game, I was to play Axis.

When using these dice you don't use the cards at all, but rather roll the dice to see what orders you get to issue.

So we started with the allies going first and the dice started rolling. Each die roll usually allows you to order 1,2 or 3 units and about 1 in 6 times, double that. The allies actually used the the airpower die option for the first two turns attempting to take out the guns in the central region.

I choose to move my tanks forward.

Next the Allies opted to run forwards with their own tanks. One took on the guns and the other took a shot at the infantry on my right flank and then followed through, by again trying to take out the guns, which they never managed.

The dice kept giving me the option to use the guns, so at every oportunity I used them. My attack dice were practically on fire throughout the game leading me to beat back the attacks on the right, decimate the tanks in the middle and hold off the Allies on the left.

The game ended with 5-2 to the Axis.

So how did the Card-replacement dice work out? They certainly speeded up the game which was one objective. No one ended up doing nothing on their turn ( which often happens with the cards ) evey turn both players were able to do something, so that side of the new dice worked very well.

I felt the dice were an interesting variation that worked but my worthy opponent brought up an interesting point. In the Sword Beach scenario the US forces have many more units than the Axis and this is a balancing mechanism in the scenario. As an example of this, if the Axis player had a 3-on-the-left card he would not be able to order three units because he doesn't have that many, but the Allied player would be able to, thus the balance. With the new dice the Allied player was never able to take advantage of the mass of troops.

I would also like to say that all three areas of the board were fully active throughout the game, no one area stayed quiet as can sometimes happen with the cards.

In summary : The dice worked, speeded up the game, both players were always busy, but there may be scenario balance issues when using them.

First game of Lost cities

2009-07-22T06:22:00.000-07:00

I've just had my first proper game of Lost Cities. I've previously played the game with myself just to get a feel for it but that was a couple of months ago ( I think it was that long ).

Well it was actually very good, better that I feared it might be.

The outsize cards were a joy to handle and the numbers/symbols in the top left corner worked well to let me keep an eye on what cards I had.

The game was against a complete newbie who hadn't even played by himself but you know what(?), we both had a good feel for the game and felt the brain burn ( such as it is ) when deciding what cards to play.

For example, my noble opponent played a Green handshake and I was holding Green 2,3 . I was planning on waiting a couple of turns to see if I could get a green handshake, but didn't get one. With only 2,3 in my hand I didn't want to risk starting the expedition and the fact that he had played a handshake suggested that he was holding some good green cards himself. I also didn't want to discard the 2,3 because he would have picked them right up and played them down.

In the end I had to use two spaces in my hand to keep these two cards until much later when he played a Green 5, at which point I was able discard the 2,3.

There were a few situations like this as the game went on. Another pressure I felt was the deck running out, as the game ends as soon as the last card is drawn and I'd managed to collect a bunch of cards that HAD to be played and so had to rush play them all during the last few rounds.

In the end we both had 3 expeditions on the table and I had managed to have two successful expeditions and one minor failure, my opponent had two mildly successful and one disaster, so I got a win, HUZZAR(!) for me.

Memoir 44 card-replacement dice

2009-07-19T06:04:00.001-07:00

Last week I played a few games of Memoir 44 and watched a few more games. In more than one game both I and others got into a situation where we had no cards at all that we could use and ended up discarding cards until we got a single card we could use. Then once the card was used started discarding again.

I know and accept that this is a meaningful situation in the game and part of the playing is trying to avoid this situation.

However I posed myself a question, how could this be avoided. How can I improve the chances of getting to Order units but still keep some tactical choices.

It came down to producing some special dice to replace the cards.

I'm using two dice. One die is a region die that lets you order units as normal. Each die face indicates what units can be ordered. For instance a result of 100 means 1 unit on the left, 101 means on on each flank and so on. One face shows 1* meaning one unit in any region.

My original idea was to just use this die, but experimenting showed you still has the same problem and in fact you had the same problem, even worse!

I then tried just adding in a second of these dice and giving the player the choice of which die to use. This worked and if you make a set of these dice this is a viable option. However it felt very un-Memoir-44-like. So I worked on a second type of die to work with the first die.

On this new die are 6 new faces each with it's own effect each of which feels more Memoir-like.

One face allows you to restore one injured infantryman.

One face allows you to order one Artillery unit.

One face allows you to order 1 Armour unit.

One face allows you to Dig in one unit.

The final face doubles the number of units on the other die.

So on your turn you now roll one of each die type, and then choose one of the two results. This increased the chance of a good or at least usable result and included the Memoir like feel. I'm happy now with these results and invite you to give them a try. They won't ever replace the cards but it is an option.

Download the dice from BoardGameGeek

Space Crusade - again

2009-07-12T07:43:00.000-07:00

Back in misty days of my youth (1990) I purchased a copy of Space Crusade from MB/GamesWorshop. It was a simple to play WH40K game in board game format. As these games go it was pretty darned good. I played quite a few games of it back then, oh those glorius days.

Then life moved on and the game was played less and was stuck in the loft for a few years.

Then life moved on again and a time came when I was home and living on the road. I saw this coming and started giving away my stuff, including all of the games I'd collected over the years, and yes Space Crusade was one of them.

Then life moved on and now I'm back inside a brick and mortar swelling and able to trawl the local charity shops looking for cheap games.

And what did I just find? Well you've guessed it, Space Crusade, for a mere £2.50 I've bought a copy of the game I used to love. I was astounded to find the game in the shop, further astounded to find it in excellent condition and EVEN more astounded to find it complete!

So I brought home this game treating it with awe, and set down to reading the rules. then yesterday i set it up and invited my son in to play.

Wow we had a good time, Bolters, Plasma Guns, Orks, Androids, Chaos Marines and the Ed-209 lookalike. Good stuff.

The game was fun, my son was all excited about it and gee, what memories it brought back. We plan to retry the game again today.

Skirmish Wars Advance Tactics - First impressions

2009-07-03T13:40:00.000-07:00

If you've ever seen any of the "Advance Wars" games on the Nintendo game systems then you know what Skirmish Wars Advance Tactics is all about.

Some fans of the Advance Wars games have put together a free Print and Play version of the computer game. The artwork on the board, cards and counters is exceptional, it features characters and artwork from the computer game, but not in the usual poor quality, enlarged sprite kind of way. No , instead all of it is print quality and a real delight to look at.

After one game I can tell you that the game play mimics the computer play almost exactly which is great. The combat is a real dream, I know the designers put a lot of effort into calculating the combat results to match the computer games combat. Like the computer version there is practically no luck in combat. You can work out the results before launching an attack and luck only comes into rolling 1 die to see if you do an additional point of damage. That doesn't sound like a lot, but every point matters so the die rolls are critical.

The computer game is turn based, you verses the AI but here your opponent is more intelligent as it's another player, in fact up to three other players and the game handles 2-4 players.

The rules are very simple and easy to grip on and joyfully also very short with some good examples.

There is not a lot of downtime, at least in the two player game, as when battles take place you get to battle back if you survived the hammering.

I'm really impressed with the game and plan on having another game fairly soon, I think I'll even run this out to my gaming group at work. Thumbsup!

Red November - Discussion

2009-06-30T11:31:00.000-07:00

I started today on my first four player game of Red November, which is neat little game from Fantasy Flight games.

The session went surprisingly well. We've had to leave the game set up and will hopefully finish it off tomorrow lunchtime.

So I started off by telling the guys about the games time track. Glazed eyes as a response. I explained when things can go wrong, pressure, heat, flooding timed events. It took a little longer but they glazed over again. So at that point I just got everyone playing and everything very quickly came into focus for everyone.

An interesting discussion came about as I was trying to unjam the door to the captains cabin while fires burned at the other end of the sub. Was I wasting my time? Some thought so. I explained that every jammed door, flood and fire is as important, though perhaps not as urgent as every other.

For instance if theres a fire and no equipment for putting them out, then Grog is important as without it you wont be able to attack the fire!. I'm not sure I made my point very well, or at least I don't think I convinced anyone.

We're all hovering around the 30 minute mark at the moment so tomorrows continuation will hopefully prove me right. :)

Support the Services!

2009-06-26T05:02:00.001-07:00

New Game in development and getting old

2009-06-25T11:59:00.001-07:00

I'm working on a new space conquest game. It'll be a card driven war game of sorts. It's basically red vs blue across the galaxy.

I've been working on the board for a few days and it's really sweet. The boards background is a huge space shot showing galaxies and star systems, with play areas and tracks overlayed on top. It's the background however that makes it pop out.

The mechanics are not too original, they are a variation of some well know mechanisms but are enough different to make the game play differently.

I'm putting the most effort into the rules. I'm only doing a few minutes per night on it and thats really frustrating as I want to get this done and pushed out into the world. I'm taking it easy because I don't want to burn myself out on it. The rules will include examples of play and diagrams and each of those will take time to produce, so I'm going slowly and hopefully surely.

Once the rules are complete I have still more to do. there are 50+ cards and each has to have some unique flavour text and I know thats going to drain my creative juices so I must rush. I guess that's just part of getting older. :)

Dune Express Dice

2009-06-19T14:52:00.000-07:00

A while back I put together a game called Dune Express which I blogged about at the time. It's a dice game but does not use standard dice. Each of the dice was a special die with strange and mysterious values on each side.

I was delighted to find very clever and arty peole volunteer to create artwork for both the games board and for all of those special dice faces.

Furthermore I then had the good fortune to fall in with a chap who has a laser engraver which he uses to produce wooden Piecepacks. One small fee later and I had the dice engraved and dispatched you can see pictures of them here.

So I printed one of the boards produced by the "Crafty" chaps and kapow! A professional looking game of my own design.

I'm really happy with the dice and the board, and so thankful to all ofthe people who've applied their craft and imagination to produce such excellent dice, boards and even rules variants. I'm proud to be a member of the BoardGameGeek community [sniff].

Memoir ''44 Eastern Front - session report

2009-06-14T08:40:00.000-07:00

The Suomussalmi battle is a very interesting scenario, there aren't the usual two sides of the board. Both sides have forces in the opposite side of the board as well as their own. Additionally the AirPower card is played as a Barrage in this scenario.

The oddities do not end there! The battle is between the Finns and the Russians, and half of the Finnish forces are ski troops this means they can move three and battle but do suffer from a maximum range of two.

Of course the Russians are also playing with their own special rules that mean they have to select a card to play a turn ahead.

A lot of variables there. It's also a very bloody battle with victory being reached at 6 medals or by the Finnish troops occupying the central multi hex town. The immediate win is obviously an attractive goal, However in this case it does feel near impossible. For the Finns to win that type of victory they have to take over three of the town hexes, fair enough, however the town in garrisoned by 6 infantry units and an artillery unit all of them in town with sandbags or in a bunker!

I played this with my son the other day and he choose to go for the immediate victory but he lost because that central block of russians is very tough and well entrenched.

The session I'm going to talk about is where I played the Finnish against his Russians.

I decided to bypass that central knot of Russians for as long a possible and to rather nibble around the edges.

On my right flank there was an infantry and a tank unit well in advance so I decided to take them on first. I moved my right most finish troops into the woods and that just put them in range of the Russians. The opening salvo just pushed the tanks back.

My son new his strengths and used his guns to return fire and I took damage from that.

On my left flank I advanced my guns, as they start on the back line and out of range. I also used the infanty on that side to take some long range shots at the russians on their own baseline.

My son's brown horde came out for blood. His right flank moved forwards opening a gap for the tanks to shoot through, he put some damage into the sandbagged troops on that side.

On the centre I advanced my left ski troops forwards into the woods to support the left flank and moved the ski troops on the right up onto the hill where they could start attacking the russians who were most advanced. Again I pushed them back rather than eliminating them.

My son now embarked on using his guns almost every turn and when every possible sniping long range at my Ski troops who could not reply due to their shorter range. I was now being wittled down.

In my next turn I barraged his guns but only got a single hit. I wasn't able to hit them again during the rest of the game.

On the russian right they pounded my sanbagged troops and forced one of them to retreat thereby losing the entrenchment.

On my right I once again pounded on the lonely tanks and infantry knocking them both for troops and getting another retreat.

The Russian guns pounded my right flank seriously reducing the ski troops in the woods.

On my left I moved my ski troops on the enemies base line north to close the gap in the line and took some shots at the russian infantry over there and started scoring some serious hits.

I lost some ski troop from the center and yet again took damage from the guns on my right.

In a last gasp type situation I moved my ski troops all with only a single troop each, forwards out of the woods and close assaulted the remaing tanks and infantry. I killed the last tank and forced the infantry to retreat onto the frozen river where they fell through the ice.

The russians took full advantage of my advancing into the opening and took out one of the units on my right and killed off another on the left for a close 6-5 win.

Over all I really enjoyed this scenario. At first it looks like an easy Russian victory but in truth the scenario is really very well balanced and a great deal of fun.

Around the World in 80 Days, review

2009-06-07T10:33:00.000-07:00

I've just played my way through a solo, virtual 3 player, game of Around the World in 80 Days.

Background

The game is inspired by the Jules Verne novel of the same name. Each player takes the part of a person racing around the world, attempting to complete the journey in 80 days or less.

Objective

Be the person who gets around the world in the least number of days. It's not actually required to do it in less than 80.

The Board

Around the edge runs the score track from 0 to 80 which scores the number of days taken to travel the journey.

Across the middle of the board are 10 spaces scattered across the world, your piece will travel along these 10 spaces. Between each space it indicates the mode of transport that has to be used to move from space to space. Each location also has two bonus chip spaces.

The Bits

There is a heavy start player counter showing a stopwatch. Each player has a wooden meeple and a matching score token. They also get a coloured chit that the player keeps in front of them until they get around the world.

There are some bery thick card coins that you'll earn.

A standard wooden die.

Two decks of cards. The first bigger deck shows trains and ships in various denominations.

The second deck is the event deck, each card is either an event or a bonus to the player that draws it.

There are also small but thick cardboard bonus counters that get put on the board next to the locations.

Finally there is a detective meeple.

Set Up

Shuffle the decks. Deal three travel cards to each player, put the detective on his start space, pick a start player and your good to go.

Playing

The start player draws and lays out 1 more travel card than players against the boards action track.

Then players take turns. On your turn you take one of the cards layed out by the start player. You also get to carry out the action associated with the card you took. one lets you get a coin, another lets you use a balloon on your turn, another makes you draw an event card, another lets you move the detective, another lets you be the start player next turn and the last lets you discard and replace cards from your hand.

Then you can play cards from your hand to travel to the next location.

Is that it?

No, not really. There are a lot of things to consider when you step through your turn.

The trave cards come in various denomination. A train card of value 4 costs you four days to play it, so picking lower value cards is better than picking higher value cards. But that's not your only decision when picking a card. The action you get to choose when you pick a card is very important.

For instance when you take the Detective action you get to place it anywhere. Any player who ends their turn in the same space as the detective loses two days so zapping the other players with this is very important.

The Balloon action is an important selection. When you take this action you can ignore one of the cards you play to move and instead roll the die to see how many days the trip takes. Additionally if roll high you can spend a coin to reroll that die, so picking the coin action is also important.

The event option is generally a good option as events usually give you a good thing.

Also choosing to be the start player this turn means you get to choose from all of the cards next turn.

Now choosing when to move from one space to the next is also important. Not only do you have the choice to not move and collect cards, but the first and last player to each location get to reveal one of the bonus chips in that location. These give you bonus and often your opponents penalties.

Being the first to get round the world has it's own appeal even if it takes you longer because after someone gets to the goal every other player who hasn't made it yet loses a day every turn.

There are a lot of decisions here. Everything matters. Being first has bonus', being last has bonus' waiting for good cards is important, but not waiting too lonmg is also important!

Opinion

I really liked what I found here, the components are very nice, the game play keeps you interested, the ability to stuff your opponents is fun and the theme is very friendly. of course anyone who remembers the novel is going to get a kick out of the events and game theme.

I like it!

I'm an Ass!

2009-06-05T01:02:00.001-07:00

Ticket to Ride is a game I've been wanting to get my hands on for the longest time and I finally had it delivered a couple of weeks ago. I played it with the family and it went down okay.

I took it to work this week to play with the guys at lunchtime.

I ran through the explanation and then after a few turns I remembered the longest route rule and told the guys that I'd forgotten it and told them about it. I don't know why that worked them up, but for some reason that seemed to turn the three of them against me and for the rest of the game they were working together to block me at every turn. I got peeved.

Then yesterday we played again. I found them blocking me again. I got really peeved. Were they really blocking me or just completing their routes? They say they weren't blocking me. It didn't feel like it to me at the time. So, you're thinking, what did I do. Let me tell you. I got angry AND peeved, acted like a jack ass and gave it attitude, became sullen and sarcastic.

Now was that any way to behave when you're playing a game? No! I'm such an ass. I'm ashamed. I have to ask myself why I'm playing when I'm going to act like that. They didn't deserve that kind of treatment, I had NO REASON and NO EXCUSE to behave like that.

Sorry Mark. Sorry Gareth.

DUNE express, upgrade

2009-05-31T05:46:00.000-07:00

I've just upgraded the download file for my game design "DUNE express". This has been my gaming project for the weekend.

The game has turned out to be huge success with hundereds of people visiting tha games home page every day since it was released. Fans of the game have created alternate boards and dice and even come up with new rules and alternate rules set.

This fan work inspired me to take another look at the game and start tinkering. I tried a few things then happened on the idea to add some tokens to the game.

In the original game three faces of the Traitor die had no effect. In this new versin those three faces come into effect.

I've added three tokens , one per face of the die that previously did nothing. These new tokens are kept by the player and last from turn to turn. Each one may be discarded to ignore the effects of the Traitor die rolled by another player.

This new feature gives the players something else to consider when rolling dice and may appeal to the players if they are the defensive sort. These also give the aggresive player somthing to consider when choosing a target.

First play of Bohnanza

2009-05-24T11:52:00.001-07:00

I've just finished playing my first game of Bohnanza, a 1997 card game for 2 to 7 players.

There were three of us playing and it was the first time for all of us. Considering that, it was a smooth transition into play. I started the session by explaining the rules. It was quite interesting to watch the family's eyes glazing over.

I don't think I was explaining badly it was just a little too much for them. I gave up explaining and instead played through one turn as the starting player. Of course even that didn't really explain everything as the trading aspect doesn't make sense to a player until they've got some beans on the table. So my first turn was planting a bean and then keeping the two cards that come up for auction.

My son took the second turn and when he drew the two cards I offered to trade cards that would add to his fields even though the cards I was trading for did me no good. That was the main hurdle and everyone could see the benefits at that point.

So play went round the table for a few turns and I made a comment about trading cards just to clear them out of my hand so I could play the cards I wanted to on my turn. This seemed to ring a bell and the trading stepped up a notch.

During one trade on my wifes turn she was asking for a Red Bean which was going to give her a score. I looked at the cards in my hand and offered her a Red Bean, but only if she also took two duff cards I didn't want that she didn't want either. She took them. I was well happy with the trade.

My son was collecting the bigger sets of cards. He was collecting Coffee Beans for the longest time and was trying to maximise the number of coins he collected. On the oter hand I was taking coins at every opportunity except on two occasions where I spent some time collecting Chillie Beans and Garden Beans, ut these were the exceptions.

My wife was doing a mixture of collecting big runs such as Coffee Beans and Blue Beans and doing some give away trades to complete the sets.

The game played on... and on... the game box says the game runs 45 minutes, for us it went on a good deal longer, but I can put that down to it being the first play. the rules say, you play through the deck three times, which we did, but it seemed a bit long for them. I think that in our next play we'll try going through the deck just twice.

I was very pleased to find that the down time in the game is minimal as you can get involved in trades during other players turns.

The final score left us with some very close scores, My son hit 22 while my wife and I both scored 23. This is a game we will be playing again.

Red November

2009-05-21T12:12:00.001-07:00

I recently received Red November and yesterday finally got around to playing a solo game to learn the rules.

It took me an age to get the game set up. First I had to read the rules until I got to the Setting up section, that was fine but for some reason I felt like it was taking ages to get the bits set up. The main problem was sorting out the Captains grog which meant I was sorting through the most numerous components. Maybe I was tired, but it just seemed like ages.

The basics of the game were straight forward and within a few minutes I was getting the hang of it. The three Gnomes I was running, were zooming up and down the sub and managing to control the oncoming disasters.

It seems that the game basic are easily grasped, however... there are a lot of fiddely bits. A lot of what if's. A lot of Can I do's. The rules lack an FAQ which in my opinion it is sorely in need of. When you read the text in the rulebook you can find most of the answers but they are buried in places you wouldn't look. For instance you might have a question about fire but the answer is buried in the section about water. The rules aren't long but they are as I said, fiddely.

I think a couple more plays and I'll be breezing through the game without the constant references and look-ups, but its a shame. The game looks so sweet and cute that you also want it to be easy to get into it, but alas it is not so. I bought the game hoping to play with the family, but this level of complexity means that I'm going to have to REALLY LEARN the rules. The "family" does not have patients for rules look-ups.

When I get my head around the rules and a couple of family games done I'll post a review.