Battletech Alpha Strike and Tacta

We had a total of five players for our August session, and we decided to play another multi-player game of Battletech Alpha Strike, which was always a crowd favourite since everyone loves to have a chance to field their mechs.

For my part I though it was a chance for me to field my ZOD force. I picked a few units from the Battletech Master Unit List that looked close to the models I have, and we just went head-to-head.

 

Afterwards, we played a game of Tacta, which I enjoyed so much that I think I will get a copy of.

Operation Dumpkirk

Last month I moved from the place I have lived in for 15 years to a new place some 20km away. While I hired a professional mover to shift the furniture and other items, for my miniatures I enlisted the aid of six of my friends in an operation which I dubbed Dumpkirk (chiefly because in the run-up to the actual move I had to return the mats, terrain, books, and minis which some of them have left at my place over the years). The photo above shows what remained to be moved to my new place.

With three cars, we managed to complete the operation from loading to unloading in about an hour and a half, which gave us some time to play a game of Tiny Towns...

before dinner was delivered.

My dining table had not been delivered then, so we ate around the coffee table. 

A week later we had a supplementary session to move some stuff, after which we played a couple of card games at the new dining/gaming table, including Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls,

As a result of the move I am several reports behind - something which I hope to rectify over the next few days.

Battletech: Alpha Strike and Azul

Scheduling difficulties meant only Adrian and I were at this month's session, which was held at his place.

We played a game of Battletech: Alpha Strike, which was simple enough to set up and play to a conclusion within two hours. We hope to bring in more advanced rules in our future games.

We then played three games of Azul, which I have seen played before but had never learned the rules of. I really enjoyed it, and hope to be able to play it again.

Forbidden Psalm, This Town Ain't Big Enough for the 2-4 of Us, and Tiny Towns

For our February session we played a game of Forbidden Psalm. Well technically it was two games: the play area being 2' x 2', I set up terrain to cover a 4' x 2' area and the four of us played two separate games side-by-side.

The game rules were simple enough, although with each character having some sort of special rules, it was difficult to keep track. It plays very much like Mordheim or Frostgrave.

After the game we played two games each of two board games: This Town Ain't Big Enough for the 2-4 of Us, and Tiny Towns. The first is a simple game that is sometimes difficult for new players to grasp, but once they get it it is easy to set up and play.

Tiny Towns is one of my favourite board games, but one which I am not very good at. Still, I managed to win the game for the first time in our first game, but a careless mistake in the second put me at the bottom of the table. I am keen to play that game again soon.

Grid-based Napoleonics and Undaunted: Battle of Britain

For our November session we managed to get five players for another grid-based Napoleonic Game.

We played the action of the Austrian left flank at the Battle of Sacile.

FG, Adrian, and I, playing the Franco-Italian force, slogged through the forests and marshes surrounding the Austrian-held towns of Palse and Porcia instead of approaching them in the open; as a result our attacks went in piecemeal, and the Austrians were able to hold on to Porcia by the time the clock ran down, winning the game.

After the main game Adrian took us through a game of Undaunted: Battle of Britain.

I thought the flow of the game didn't really resemble aerial dogfighting, but it did give me an appreciation of the Undaunted game mechanics, and make me want to give the original Undaunted game a try.

For our December game we are planning a game of the second edition of Conquerors & Kings, so stay tuned.

Hell & Uncivil Disorder and Small World

We continued our monthly session with a Spanish Civil War game using the Hell & Uncivil Disorder rules. The rules are rather loosely written and ambiguous in places, and we had to make decisions when situations came up during the game which were not specifically dealt with in the game.

The scenario we used was from Atacar es Vencer!, which contains 12 scenarios for platoon-plus size forces, with one or two tanks or armoured cars in some of the scenarios. Though not written for the Hell & Uncivil Disorder rules, it worked pretty well, and provided a tense scenario for both sides. The Republicans managed to fight the Nationalists to a draw, despite having lower quality troops and lacking a tank or any anti-tank guns.

My interest in the Spanish Civil War was sparked many years ago, when I watched this episode of Alas! Smith & Jones:

It took me decades to finally find a set of rules that comes close to what I want a game of SCW combat to feel like, and it's doubly satisfying that this is a group project with figures and vehicles painted by four of us.

For our second game we played a game of Small World, one of my all-time favourite boardgame. I came last in a three-player game, despite chalking up a decent 99 points by the end of 10 turns. I have asked for a rematch, and maybe we will play this again during our August session.

Sci-fi Sentry Guns

So after our game of Zombicide: Invaders last month our group decided that we will try to progress beyond the first scenario of the campaign.

My part of the endeavour is to make and paint up a sentry gun model.

As Nowfel had printed me a few twin-link lascannons for the dropship project, I decided I would use the remaining guns I had as a basis for the models.

I rummaged through my bits box and found a pair of legs from a Tehnolog walker I bought a long time ago. It was a simple job attaching the lascannons to the legs, and then gluing the legs onto some 40mm round bases I had.

Unfortunately, I laid on the spray primer too thick, which gave the surface an uneven appearance. Instead of stripping and painting the models again, I decided to make them look weathered instead. I also used some weathering powder for the base to hopefully help them blend into the game tiles.

They look rather basic and boring now, but hopefully once I get my hands on some decals I can liven them up a bit.

Grimdark Future and Zombicide: Invasion

I had to take a break from gaming in the month of May due to family and personal health issues, but the worst is - fingers crossed - over, and we managed to get together for a session for June.

Genestealers rush the unsuspecting Ratling snipers, at what would afterwards be called 'Hamburger Rock'.

As usual we played two games. The first one was a 4-player, free-for-all game of Grimdark Future.

The Grimdark Future rules were suggested by Rick, who unfortunately was unable to attend the session. I had a look at the rules, and thought they were easy to learn and remember: the kind of rules that a group that doesn't play regularly needs.

On the other side of the table, Eldar tangle with Terminators.

I wanted to do a fun scenario instead of a straight two-sided battle and dug up an old copy of Wargames Illustrated from my collection, which had a Dropwing scenario featuring different factions all trying to seize transports so they can bug out of an area. I decided to lean heavily into this and asked everyone to bring a small force of their 40K figures.

Our game ended up with four factions: Eldar, Imperial Guards, Space Marines Terminators, and Genestealers. I made lists of around 500 points for each faction, and gave each faction a choice of two unique objectives; players would choose one as their victory condition, hidden from the other players.

The Eldar turn their attention to the other flank of the table, as the Imperial Guards make their last stand.

I needed a dropship for the scenario, and as none of us had one at hand, I decided to find a cheap plastic toy and paint it up for the scenario - the process and result will be the topic of the next post.

The game ended in four turns, with Adrian's Eldar attaining their objective of killing at least one figure from all the other factions on the table, and Nowfel (playing my genestealers) killing the last of the Imperial Guards faction.

We then enjoyed the tea that Wahj made us while Adrian set up for the next game: Zombicide: Invasion.

We played the first scenario of the game, but realised we got the rules wrong. Fortunately, there was time to reset and play it again.

It was a closer game the second time round, but as the scenario was pretty linear and we planned our moves together, we managed to win the game with no casualties.

Just in time for dinner and beer.

It felt good to get together and share laughs and food with my friends again after a tough month of May.

For our game in July, I am probably going to run a Spanish Civil War game using the Hell and Uncivil Disorder rules. Stay tuned.

Ogre, Tiny Towns, and Blood Bowl Season 2

With our Frostgrave campaign concluded, FG, Adrian, and I decided to play a few boardgames in our last session for the year.

The first game we played was Ogre, which FG, Martin, and I last played two years ago. The last time we played the maths seemed a little off and the Ogres crushed everything in their paths. This time things seemed more balanced, but it seems like the best strategy is to target the Ogres' tracks. Perhaps one of these days we can play a large armour battle instead.

We then played Tiny Towns, which I really enjoy but which I am really bad at.

Finally, we played a few turns of Blood Bowl using the current Season 2 rules. The rules don't seem to have changed enough to make them totally foreign, but I am sure some of the new rules (like allowing players to jump over prone and stunned players) will be significant.

Our next game will probably in four weeks or so, and hopefully we will be able to play a non-league game for warm-up by then.

Big things have small beginnings, sir

Last month I decided to finally get started on an Arab Revolt project, and made a few purchases online. A few of the purchases I made have arrived, and today I took one of them out for a little test drive.

Now while I also own the Strategy & Tactics Arab Revolt game, it is an inelegant game for a more civilised age. I wanted something lighter as a basis for my (eventual) tabletop battles, and I found it in this game from Decision Games.

The game is one in a series of 32 games, with a core rules system (designed by Joseph Miranda, who also wrote the S&T Arab Revolt game), and a set of module-specific rules for the featured conflict. There are modules for conflicts ranging from ancients to sci-fi, and I must say that the Lawrence of Arabia module is based more on the movie of that name than on history. However, this little solo game seems to be just what I am looking for as a basis for my tabletop games.

The game comes with the rules, 40 cardboard counters, an 11" x 17" map, and 18 tiny cards. The game featured hidden opposition strengths - a Turkish garrison counter may contain zero to six units, and the combat strength of each unit is also randomised. Add to this random event cards which are drawn for every stack of your troops every turn, it means luck plays a great part in the game, as we shall soon learn...

The complete campaign comprises four scenarios, the first two of which I tried to play today. Here is the board after the first turn of the first scenario: Lawrence has captured Wehj, and must now take Aqaba.

After traveling to Prince Faisal's camp, Lawrence recruits more Arabs, and travels to Aqaba... which is lightly defended, and taken without a fight!

Lawrence leaves the Arabs in Aqaba, and travels to Cairo to report to British High Command... and find that Allenby has taken command. He requests for aid in the form of intelligence, some demolition charges, and prepares to return to Aqaba to start a new mission: sabotage the Hejaz railway.

Meanwhile, the Turks mount an attack of Aqaba, which the Arabs manage to repel, taking some losses.

Lawrence returns to Aqaba, and find a larger Turkish column on their way to retake Aqaba: this time the Turks come with a full strength battalion, and the German Asien Korp! The Arabs are defeated, and Lawrence is killed.

A failure on my first outing, but the event cards give enough flavour to the whole process and allows some sort of narrative to be formed. As you can see, the battles involve small number of units, which hopefully means they can easily be translated to tabletop battles.

Over the next few weeks I hope to share other components of the project as they arrive. Stay tuned.

Gaming in the time of Lockdown

Since the pandemic has made face-to-face gaming nonviable, I have been forced to look into other ways to play with my friends.

I managed to borrow a laptop from FG and got a zoom session going with the gang yesterday (more of that in the future), but I've also managed a couple of other virtual games since this whole things started.

The first is The Somme Campaign 1916, which my friend Steve and I set up. Since we live in different time zones, a game that required a quick response was not possible. Fortunately, by trawling through Wargames Vault, we found an operational level game that had a theme we enjoyed (as much as anyone can enjoy trench warfare), and which played at a pace that suited the limitations we faced.

I downloaded the game, printed out the board and chart (which you can see below), and instead of using counters I used the coloured pins I had and made counters out of them using a sharpie. I set everything up on a cork board, which made it easier to keep all the pieces in place, and to take photos of the board. I originally planned to play out all the moves and send them to Steve by email, but he was so inspired by my set-up he went ahead and built something similar on his end, so we traded photos each turn, with me playing out the orders and rolling all the dice. 

The second game was a game of Kings of War 3rd Edition with FG. I had spent a bit of time doing the movement trays for the two armies I own, and was really looking forward to some play with them this year... so why not now?

We played the game over a weekend afternoon. I prepared the army lists, set up the board, and sent FG a photo of the battlefield and my deployment via Whatsapp. He relayed his deployment, and once I sent him a photo of that too, he gave his orders by drawing arrows on the photos I sent him and returning them to me.

Granted the game lacked the social element of face-to-face gaming, but it was a good way to try the rules out at a leisurely pace, and give the figures some sunlight.

In the coming weeks my friend Dave will be GMing a Warhammer Fantasy Role-playing Game campaign for us via zoom, which I am really looking forward to.

I hope you are getting some gaming done in this difficult time too. Stay safe.

Battle Ravens

Three months ago Plastic Soldier Company launched the kickstarter for their Dark Ages boardgame by Dan Mersey.

I have been a fan of Dan for several years now, and have playtested a few of his Osprey games, but I was not involved in the development of Battle Ravens.

I downloaded the pdf of the draft rules from the kickstarter site, and realised that I could play the game using the 15mm Dark Ages figures I already own, on the gridded mat by Deep-Cut Studio I had, so I roped Fg in for a game.

We played a game over pizza and 'Outlaw King' in the background, using my Anglo-Danish and Norman armies - the basic game treats all armies as identical, although the full game has special cards that gives each army its own flavour.

In the first few turns we both played in a literally straight-forward manner, placing Ravens rather equally in all our areas, and attacking or blocking with all our dice. After a few turns, I came up with the trick of not using all my Ravens for blocking when attacked, but reserving a few to counter-attack, when the opposing force will not have any Ravens to block - it worked!

As the game went on and the ranks thinned, it became necessary for us to move our forces laterally to shore up weakened sections. I made the first capture of an enemy area, and was feeling cocky, but Fg soon fought back and took two of mine, and it became harder for me from then on, and I eventually lost the game.

The game took longer than we had expected - although simple in concept, there were several levels of decisions to be made each turn and each round. The Ravens placement phase of the game felt like a game of Go, while the movement and attack phases felt more like a game of chess or a wargame. Like a game of chess, the playing pieces became fewer as the game progressed, so visually the game became less appealing as it went to; this is about the only complaint I have about this game, and of course it applies to most wargames.

We enjoyed the game, and will probably play it again when we want to play something quick but engaging.

If you want to read the draft rules, or  pre-order the game, you can still do so at the kickstarter site here.

Ogre and nostalgia weekend

Fg, wahj, Martin and I managed to get together on Sunday for a game. It's been quite a while since we all managed to meet up, so we wanted to play something light - the aim of the session was more to catch up than to play, after all.

Fg dug up the Ogre box set he backed several years back. Wahj and I played the game countless times back in the 80s, so we thought it would be easy to pick the rules up again. We took the conventional forces and tried to stop the two Mk III Ogres commanded by fg and Martin (the 'God of War' and the 'Dog of Raw', respectively). Our brilliantly set-up howitzer defence managed to score all of one hit on the Ogres during the course of the game, before they we crushed by the threads of the behemoths.

The game was archetypally 80s, down to the type of units represented in the game - they all had a very 'Cold War' feel to them (well, except for the Ogres...).

The game was short, and much of the session was spent watching YouTube videos of Singapore from the 80s (there are surprisingly quite a number of videos of street scenes of Singapore taken by both tourists and public transport geeks), listening to 80s music, talking about fitness (if you remember the 80s, then you are at the age when health and fitness should concern you), eating chips and drinking mead and unsweetened decaffeinated iced tea (it's a cheat day for all of us), giving of gifts (of books and mooncake tins), and sharing what's been going on in our lives in the past few months.

Gaming-wise it wasn't a very "productive" afternoon, but it was a lot of fun. I guess the older you get, the more you appreciate friends, games, and music from your youth.

Martin has promised us a naval game at his place in two weeks, which gave me the impetus to continue work on the Brigade Models harbour terrain which I bought many years back but never completed work on. My original plan of recreating the island fortress of Kusadasi proved too ambitious for my modeling skills, and I have settled for a more modest harbour guarded by a fort, modeled loosely on Sigacik, which I had the chance to visit a few years ago.

League of Legends: Mechs vs. Minions

Before yesterday's Shadowrun game, fg and I played League of Legends: Mechs vs. Minions, another one of the chibi boardgame kicksters that he backed.

The sheer size and engineering of the game is insane. For a start, Amazon lists the weight of the box at 12.8 pounds. Inside, the components all seem to be bigger than they need to be, with the individual trays for the components more luxurious than they need to be - I was reminded of sushi takeaway platters. There is a custom sand timer and metal ring markers, all of which functions could have been served by more generic, cheaper components. The scenarios, or missions, are presented in sealed envelops, each of which contain the set-up rules, the mission, as well as special upgrade and damage cards which are added to the game as you tackle each in turn.

The gameplay is, in essence, Robo Rally meets Zombiecide. Players play cartoon characters piloting primitive mechs (I am not familiar with the online game which this game is based on - sorry), whose actions are determined by cards the players assign to a dashboard. The cards represent movement, turning, or attack actions, and are divided into four suits of different colours; cards of the same suit can stack, making the action more potent.

Instead of just making a circuit around the race track, the mechs in this game have more varied missions, from collecting gems to killing minions to defeating the evil boss mech. The game is co-operative, which is something I don't usually enjoy, but in this instance the time pressure (that's what the timer is for, although we didn't use it) makes it hard for players to discuss their moves in detail.

Each turn, the minions will move either randomly or according to the scenario rules, and if a minion ends its turn adjacent to a mech, the mech takes a damage card, which can be once-off (resolve and discard), or it can be semi-permanent and placed over a command card, necessitating sacrificing an action card the next turn to remove, or moving over a healing square. Mechs can't actually die from damage, but presumably beyond a certain point the damage are too numerous to repair and it just moves randomly around the board.

We managed to play about 4 scenarios over the course of the afternoon. The missions are designed to slowly teach the players the rules, like the tutorials in a computer game, so the first one was a boring one about movement, the second one about killing minions, the third one being a more challenging one, and the fourth one a real struggle battling the boss mech (which has its own specially designed cardboard box within the main box!).

Not knowing anything about the computer game, I cannot say how closely the game replicates the original. As a boardgame, I get a sense that too much is going on and players do not have enough control over the action at times. In Robo Rally (which is my point of reference), the only randomness are the hand of action cards drawn, and the actions of the other players, which may sometimes be guessed at and overcome (that in itself being part of the fun); the board behaves in a predictable fashion, damage is applied in a fixed fashion, and there are no other unknowns. In Mechs vs. Minions, the random damage effects, the random movement and spawning of the minions and the random movement and attacks of the boss mech means there is a lot more unpredictability, which while fun from the fluff point of view, actually takes away from the depth of the game. It seems to me that the designers of the game has tried to bundle too many mechanics into a single game, and ended up with something that doesn't do anything too well.

Forbidden Stars again

Adrian, fg, Thomas and I met up for another game of Forbidden Stars on Sunday. We played the 4-player game with custom map set-up.

It was a vicious game which saw the Space Marines' ground troops eliminated, the Eldar cutting a swathe through six boards, and the winner not determined until the last round.

As it turned out we got some of the rules wrong; but we had a lot of fun nonetheless, and are looking forward to playing it again, this time with the rules right.

Forbidden Stars

Adrian, fg and I played a game of FFG's Forbidden Stars on Sunday.

I quite enjoyed the game, even though I came up last. The gameplay itself is a mix of 4X and "capture the flag": to win the game, you must capture a number of objective tokens equal to the number of players in the game - the catch is, each token is in a tile controlled by another player. It is easy to lose sight of the aim of the game and go on a traditional build-invade-conquer-build cycle, but while combat is necessary (and fun), in our game most of the time the objectives were captured because they were lightly-defended as the owning player had shifted his forces to invade another sector.

There are two noteworthy features to the game. One is the placement of the order counters. Players take turns placing order counters on the map sections to indicate the command they wish to execute during the turn; if there is already a tile on the section, you place your tile on top of that tile. The twist here is the orders are resolved from the top of the tile, so if you wish to gather resources from a sector and then build forces, you need to place the build tile *before* the gather tile! Also, as the tiles are resolved essentially in reverse order of placement, it is often better to place your order *after* your opponent has done so. For example, if you foresee an invasion on your sector and you wish to gather resources and then build up your forces, you should let the enemy place his invasion order counter *before* you place your tile - if you place your order before him, then the invasion order will be revealed and resolved, before you have a chance to build your forces.

The other interesting feature of the game is the combat, which utilises a combination of specialist dice and cards. Players draw a random hand of five combat cards and choose three to fight three rounds of combat, with each card played having some effect on the results. This adds strategy to the combat, making it more than just a dice fest.

As usual, the game components are excellent. The map art is especially impressive and captures the mood of 40K.

The game is excellent as it is, but I can easily imagine it being reskinned for a historical naval war, either for the age of sails, or even WW2. Hopefully we can get a 4-player game in in December.

DC Comics Dice Masters

With a couple of hours to while away this afternoon, fg and I decided to play a quick game of DC Comics Dice Masters.

The game is a "deck building" game with a bit of placement mechanics. You start by recruiting heroes/villains, and then deciding how many much resources to assign to each of the characters (in terms of number of dice). There are a few versions of each character, some with different cost to field, and each with different abilities. Each turn, you roll four dice to see how many points or sidekicks you generate - with the points you can put characters into your reserve pool and field them later, and with the sidekicks you can attack your opponent or defend yourself against his attack. Once fielded, the characters bring their powers into the combats.

The game components are very nice, and I am sure there are subtleties to the game we did not appreciate in our three games, the mechanics are too abstract for my idea of a battle between super-heroes and super-villains.

After the game fg and I looked at Cubicle 7's Adventures in Middle Earth which he bought. A quick perusal of the rules got me quite excited, and we are now planning to play the game after the next arc of my Dragon Age campaign (or the one after, depending on when the Loremaster's Guide is released). My character concept is a dwarf from the Iron Hills who is obsessed with the reconquest of Moria, and will spend the next few decades gaining knowledge and allies for this quest; hopefully he eventually goes with Balin to Moria and dies there after a few years, murdered by goblins.

Twilight Struggle

Things have been a bit slow on the gaming/painting front, but fg and I managed to play a game of Twilight Struggle last week.

The game is highly rated, and you can find reviews and tutorial videos of it (that's how I learned the game), but my personal take is that it plays like Go with cards. The world is divided into six regions, and within each region there are countries. The aim of the game is to score victory points through the playing of cards and also by having more influence than the other player in a region so you can dominate it.

As the Soviet player, I initially got off to a strong start in Europe, but lost steam after a while. I shifted my focus to the Middle East, but a good event card which would have let me dominate the region was cancelled by one played by fg. Thereafter I got some bad cards that gave fg central and south America, and I lost on VPs before the game ran to its turn limit.

For us, the fun of the game was mostly topical - the events described in the cards were things we heard about as children and teenagers, even if the true significance were not apparent to us. If you are a child of the Cold War era and cheered when the Berlin Wall went down, you will like the game. If, on the other hand, you don't know how David Hasselhoff single-handedly united East and West Germany (or that there were such things as East and West Germany), then a lot of the game will be lost on you.

Chain of Command: Kampfgruppe von Luck Game 2, The Grizzled, and Three Cheers for Master

Panzergrenadiers making their tentative way through an orchard.

Martin and I played Game 2 of our CoC campaign this afternoon. The scenario required my Germans to cross the table dominated by a cluster of walled buildings on one end, and couple of hedge-enclosed areas. I did pretty well in the patrol phase, managing to secure a Jump-Off Point in the middle of the table.

The scenario called for a lot of vegetation... Those are all the trees I own.

Unlike in his previous game, Martin did not deploy his units early, forcing me to probe along the orchard with one section. This section was quickly engaged by a Vickers hidden in the attic of the building overlooking the road and orchard.

I sent another section up the other fork of the road and pushed into the woods. This section was then engaged by another section Martin deployed in response.

At this point I must state that Martin rolled incredibly well, managing to rack up three chain of command dice to my one, rolling several phases in succession, including four sixes and a random event that forced me to deploy another one of my squads before I intended, causing them to be exposed to enemy fire.

With my squads under fire (and one of them broken) I sent in my secret weapon: a Grille M proxying a Lorraine Schlepper (f). The big gun forced the Vickers in the attic to withdraw, whereupon I decided to push my luck: I sent the section on the left running towards the table edge, while the Grille put pedal to the metal and rolled down the road.

Martin quickly redeployed his Vickers and stopped my squad on the left, and with one of his (many) chain of command dice ambushed by Grille as it raced forward.

With my momentum lost and Force Morale low, I called a retreat.

Fg, wahj, Martin and I then played a couple of boardgames.

The first was The Grizzled, a WW1 themed co-operative card game where players take runs playing cards that represent either group adversity or personal psychological trauma. The aim of the game is to play through the deck and not accumulate too many of one kind of adversity during each round (whereupon the game is lost) - if you survive till the end of the deck, you have survived the war.

I generally do not like co-operative games, and this is no exception. The theme is pretty dark, and we felt that it can probably be re-themed to depict bomber crews during WW2 or infantrymen during Vietnam.

The next game we tried was Three Cheers for Master. This is a competitive tower-building/climbing game where foreminions make minions stack themselves atop each other so they can form the most impressive cheer-leading tower for the master.

I am not quite sure we got all the rules right, but the game looks like it has a lot of potential for strategic play. I would liken it to a game of Robo Rally where the cards you play stay relevant until the game's end. I would certainly like to give this game another try.

Le Fantome de l'Opera and Small World

With lots of time left even after two games of Chain of Command on Sunday, fg and I decided to play Le Fantome de l'Opera, one of the boardgames my brother passed to me. I didn't care for the theme, but I liked the rules enough to want to try them.

The game components are lavish, which added the play experience. The game itself was a bit like Cluedo, where the perpetrator of a crime is identified by a process of elimination.

I found the game to be a little unforgiving, as a poor hand in the first turn can easily eliminate half of the suspects, making things very difficult for the Phantom player. It was a fun game nonetheless, and worth a try if not actually owning the set.

The next game we played was Small World, which is based on the game Vinci, which I loved.

Small Worlds is a fantasy and more thematic iteration of Vinci, and the fluff lends the whole game a less serious but no less challenging feel.

Again, the game components are superb, right down to the counter tray. One major difference between Vinci and Small World is that the latter uses a hidden victory point track instead of an open one. This on the one hand eliminates the problem of boredom for the trailing players when they know they have no hope of winning the game, and on the other hand prevents the ganging up of players against the obvious leader.

We played two games, and enjoyed both enough to want to play the game again. We are now talking about getting some expansion sets and playing the computer version of the game. If you like a strategic game with a fantasy theme, I recommend you check this game out.