I am not a number!

Thursday games

Carcassonne meeples, or followers Català: Els meeples o figuretes de fusta popularitzades pel Carcassonne. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Full house this week as all the gang arrived, bearing games, which was nice. Having recently decided that six was not an ideal number for games sometimes, but that it would be reasonably easy to split into two threes or a group of two and one of four, we put this to the test. Crabro and ProfMudlark decided to play Conflict of Heroes together on a smaller table, while the rest of us set up Village on the usual big table.

I hadn't been aware of Village, a 2011 design by Inka and Markus Brand, but it proved to be a very good Euro of the worker-placement type, which is a mechanism I like very much.

mrwendell proved to be a very able teacher: patient and methodical. The rules fell into place quite easily... The strategy was a different matter however.

One of the things about the game which sets it apart from worker-placement games in my own collection is the death of the workers. Each of the meeples has a little number on its chest denoting their generation, with those of generation 1 passing to glory before those with a 2 and so on to 4. This makes things interesting, as the acquisition of some useful items and achievements involve the passage of time. Do you try to keep your meeps alive or kill them as quickly as possible to ensure points for a noble death? A certain number of these ex-meeples will be immortalised and contribute bonus points at the end of the game while others will simply lie worthlessly and ignominiously in the church yard. Thus it becomes of some significance not just when your little peasants snuff it but where. This passage of time and its consequences lift the game for me from being just another worker-placement Euro.

It does have some down-sides though. It seems that it is long, although, like my first game of Princes of Machu Picchu, it did not feel so when I was playing it because I was so engrossed - Indeed when I looked at my watch in the closing stages I was amazed to see the whole evening gone. No doubt this would speed up in future games, a learning game always being significantly longer, however, it didn't feel like a 90 minute game, at least for four players.


The other problem may be illustrated in how far ahead MaOldie was at the end. Ma had opted for an aggressive market strategy and it seems that there isn't really a counter-strategy for the other players, let alone multiple strategies. This would be disappointing if true and I have since heard the game described as "broken" for this very reason. It would seem that all the players have no choice but to compete strongly in the market to avoid these run-away wins. It did later turn out that we had one rule wrong which may have marginally affected this, in that we had laid the future market tiles face up giving Ma a chance to prepare in advance for coming market requirements.

I enjoyed my first play anyway, coming a solid last but with the knowledge that one correct decision on cube colour in the next to last turn would have put me five points further forward and into third. No doubt mrwendell could say something similar though. Petra Pan put up the best challenge to Ma but she was away in the seventies or eighties with a clear gap to Petra and a similar one back to where I languished in the thirties.

I hope we can give this another try sometime and that, if we do, we will be more competition for MaOldie...

Spring Escape

Thursday 22 March - There were two clashing hobby opportunities today: Gaming with one friend or birding with another. The choice wasn't easy, as the venue of the gaming was an invitation-only gathering of friendly game-geeks which only occurs twice a year. My birding guru, however, was going away for a while, I could play games the following day as well, and the deciding factor was that it was a glorious Spring day. Birding won (and as it turned out the friend I would have gone to the game-playing with had made a similar decision that it was too nice to stay indoors).

We set off to Seaford Head in the hope that we would see some seasonal migrants (year-ticks!) but in fact the day was very quiet. It would have been churlish to complain though, after months of chilly winter birding. The weather was mild and signs of Spring everywhere.





We had a nice walk round by the cliffs with slightly misty but beautiful views of the famous Seven Sisters at Hope Gap before turning inland up the side of the Cuckmere valley. Here we came across a poignant reminder of the Canadian boys, so many of whom had been here in the forties and never returned to their homeland, having given their lives both on this spot (as commemorated on the plaque) and just across the water on the coast of Normandy.

Completing our circuit back to the car we passed through a farm where a lot of happy little lambs were gambolling. In the course of our walk we had had some good views of a brace of buzzards and a pair of peregrines - none to happy about each others presence as a brief dogfight between the species ensued.

At one point we clearly heard the "Gronk!" of a nearby raven and struggled to locate the source for a moment before realising that he was passing immediately overhead. This would be the first of the year for me. Elsewhere there were egrets, wigeon, black-headed and common gulls, sparrows, chaffinches and other regular friends.

After this we headed up to Arlington Reservoir where we first sat at a picnic table in the sunshine and had our lunch while surveying the sparkling water with our binoculars.

There wasn't a lot to see apart from a good number of fisherman, one of whom walked past with four tasty-looking trout hanging from his hand.

Out on the water a number of great-crested grebe were pairing off, there were little grebe about and a large number of gulls, some of them common gulls. We could hear not only the "teacher teacher" of a great tit but the more laboured chiff chaff of the...chiff chaff.

We were to see several of these, as well as a coal tit, robin, blue tit, chaffinches and cormorants during our walk round the reservoir.

As at Seaford the currant-carpeted close-nibbled sward was evidence of many rabbits but here the signs were unnecessary as the buns themselves were visible hopping, skipping and barging through the fields and undergrowth with flashes of white from their scuts seen everywhere out of the corner of the eye.

There were a number of nice flowers (and busy wild bees) to be seen too and if any more evidence of Spring was needed several species of butterfly crossed our path during our circuit.

My Goodreads review of Pigeon English

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Another of my 2011 Booker short-list collection. This time it took a while to grow on me, as I am not a huge fan of writers using a narrative voice which cripples their vocabulary at the same time as anyway removing their authorial omniscience by virtue of being in the first person. In this case the first person in question is an 11 year old Ghanaian schoolboy in a somewhat deprived British inner-city which naturally has a huge impact on the language. There have been several books written from the perspective of a child narrator in recent years and it is perhaps in danger of being overdone. The other aspect I had a problem with and never really warmed to was the pigeon. At times we are privy to a pigeon monologue and while the pigeon and its spiritual interaction with the boy and his story can be taken as purely symbolic and perhaps in keeping with the boy's nature (and nurture) this never worked for me.

For the rest though, this is a very confident first novel and one which, despite my initial misgivings, I came to be seduced by. The boy, and the world through his eyes, came to be very real and engrossing and I was surprised to find that I was looking forward to getting back to the novel and sorry when it ended. I did see the ending coming, I have to say, and it is one of those which I felt was probably the right one at the same time as wishing it had been different. How accurate the portrayal of ethnic urban youth culture and the challenges of immigrant life are, is impossible for me to judge as this is not the world I live in or in which I grew up. It does come to feel very real though and effectively underlines the fact that, despite differences of race, language, religion, sex etc., there is a core of common ground for humanity in the way we experience the world through needs, hopes,fears,relationships and desires. The skill of the writer became clear when I realised that I (or the eleven year old me still somewhere in my subconscious) was having no trouble identifying with young Harrison despite all our differences. I am happy to say that despite those initial misgivings I really enjoyed this book. I won't mind if writers stop pretending to be children for a while though.

View all my reviews

Whinging for France

Battlelore - Topless.jpg (Photo credit: HiddenJester)

Tuesday games saw a long-awaited return to a Richard Borg-designed card-driven wargame. We played a few games of Memoir '44 a while ago but longed to return to the total absorption that Crabro and I experienced in our Commands and Colors: Ancients period when we played over seventy games of scenarios in the base and expansions.

Crabro acquired a copy of its successor "Battlelore" and expansions a while ago and we have been playing a few other things in the meantime only because we felt that once we started on Battlelore nothing else would get a look in for some time.

A game of BattleLore in progress. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So, it was with a great deal of excitement that we set up our first Battlelore scenario this morning: Agincourt. There's a name to set English pulses racing anyway. On St Crispin's Day (as Shakespeare's Harry reminds us) 1415, the flower of French chivalry were mowed down by a far smaller bunch of English plebs with state of the art weaponry. There were probably over 35,000 of the French and only about 6,000 English but in those days a stout arm drawing a mighty English yew longbow could do incredible damage in the right circumstances.

The board and miniatures that we were using looked very attractive but you would have to have quite a lot of imagination to see it as thousands of men. Nevertheless the balance of cards and types of unit had been carefully chosen to reflect the nature of the battle.

The first play saw me as Harry's stout English soldiery against Crabro's French nobility. From the outset I tried to use the range of my bowmen to whittle down his medium and heavy foot-soldiers and cavalry but the cards didn't always favour this. In fact, I was sorely in need of a little touch of Harry and the game reached a point where it looked as though it was a foregone conclusion that the French had carried the field. I tried a desperate attack thinking it would be my last throw. It failed but Crabro's luck had run out and he no longer had the cards to inflict heavy damage on my desperately weak right flank. I was eventually surprised to find myself the winner albeit by the smallest possible margin of four banners to three.

GenCon 2008 - Richard Borg (Photo credit: Will Merydith)

After lunch our second Agincourt, with me as the French this time, played out much more like the real thing. It was at least satisfying in that respect but was otherwise a bit frustrating. In the first game the cards favouring the archers had only appeared at the end of the game but this time "Darken the Sky" came out early and just as history foretells the French slowly slogged forward into a rain of arrows and the game was almost over before it started. I did manage to get a couple of units across the killing field and inflict enough damage to gain a consolation banner, an error of judgement in picking targest robbing me of a second. Crabro's gallant English bowman had done their work well though and the scenario came out as French-humiliating four banners to one.

It was marvellous fun to get back into this Borg style of wargame, especially as the board, cards and miniatures look so good. I'm practically jumping up and down in anticipation of a lot more Battlelore...and we haven't even got into the lore and fantasy side of the game yet.

That was a hard act to follow but we finished the afternoon with three games of Cribbage. Both of us have a history of enjoying traditional card games behind us and are always happy to play such games. Crabro won the first, I won the second and the decider went to Crabro by a mere two points making this another satisfying battle.

Hard to imagine two more happy boys with their toys...

It's Alarming How Charming It Is To Be A-Farming...

Agricola (board game) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

...was a lyric from a Who album from long ago which was running through my head on Saturday night as, after a delicious meal, we returned to Uwe Rosenberg's "Agricola", one of the highest rated games on Boardgamegeek.

This time we played my friend "Paultro"'s highly "pimped" copy with all its "animeeples" and "vegimeeples" including three different types of wooden piece representing food which is simply a cardboard disc in the original version.

I commented that I really like the game (I have my own copy in fact) but never seem to score very highly. I then made the mistake of saying that I always get the same score. This was asking for trouble and sure enough I ended up with a score one lower this time, surprisingly equalling Paultro's own, as I had thought he was doing rather better than me. On this occasion his brother had played much better and beat us by a considerable margin with Paultro's partner coming second. I was thus joint last again and continuing my losing streak.

I

The german game designer Uwe Rosenberg at the games fair "Spiel 09" at Essen, Germany. Deutsch: Der Spieleautor Uwe Rosenberg auf der Spiel 09 in Essen. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

very much enjoyed the game though and it was interesting to vary my strategy this time, playing more cards (minor improvements and occupations) than I normally do. The lady of the house scored highly on family members at the end, which is a strategy she's used before while Paultro looked to have a well-fenced livestock ranch. I belatedly got into arable farming and had very little fenced losing me a number of minus points for empty spaces on my board. The winner also picked up a number of good points for having stone rooms, something the rest of us hadn't got as far as building.

Agricola (Photo credit: Will Merydith)

 I once again found it very satisfying to play, with at every turn, multiple options I would have liked to take but having to select just two or three. With hindsight I probably should have played fewer cards, one of which for instance never got used at all.

"'Gric" was followed by a filler new to all of us but one that has actually been around since 1997 and quite highly rated on "The 'Geek": For Sale

This is by Stefan Dorra and, while not very popular with our female gamer, the rest of us found it a nice game to round off with.

It's a game that refines auction games to their essence and does its very basic job simply and well. None of us were very confident at first. The question of whether to bid high or low is not obvious, given that you don't know what the other chap is going to do, and it is a game of bluff and counter bluff. Do you hold back when a desirable card comes up because you know it will attract big, perhaps bigger, bids or will you find everyone thought the same thing and you could have acquired it for next to nothing?

Animal from boardgame Agricola Deutsch: Spielfigur aus dem Brettspiel Agricola (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Agricola winner also ran away with the first "For Sale" but I was unexpectedly lucky with the timing of my opponents bids in the second half of the final game.

Another smashing evening with the "Goldstone Gamers" rounded off with another cup of tea and some delicious home-made cake.

Animal from boardgame Agricola Deutsch: Spielfigur aus dem Brettspiel Agricola (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A Dark Double of Friday Femmes Fatale

POSSIBLE SPOILERS BELOW

The Killers (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

Friday film night arrived with Arthur bearing the now traditional Melton Mowbray pie and beer and a selection of DVDs. His suggested programme was the 1946 version of the classic "noir" "The Killers" and a similarly dark film from the same period, the murder mystery "Laura". I eagerly agreed to this, which sounded (and turned out to be) an excellent double feature.

The beer this week was a change from the usual Shepherd Neame "Spitfire" as Arthur had substituted a Sussex Gold bitter from Arundel Brewery, its sharp hoppy taste a perfect complement to the richness of the pork and pastry.

Robert Siodmak (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Lancaster as "Swede" Andersen. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It proved to be a cinematic feast too as we kicked off with the properly scary duo of assassins, confident in their power of life and death, looking for boxer-gone-wrong Burt Lancaster in Robert Siodmak's version of Hemingway's "The Killers". Although we knew what was coming, having seen this and its remake from 1964 starring Lee Marvin, the beginning of the film still has a powerful impact aided by the driving "Dragnet" score by Miklós Rózsa. Hollywood deservedly recognised Siodmak's definitive noir with an Oscar nomination and it was a bitter, tasty and satisfying start.

Cropped screenshot of Dana Andrews from the trailer for the film Laura. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Pin-up photo of Gene Tierney for the May 25, 1945 issue of Yank, the Army Weekly, a weekly U.S. Army magazine fully staffed by enlisted men. (Photo credit: Wikip

We looked in vain for the "ice-cream lady" in our makeshift 1940's cinema and pressed on with the second feature, another dark offering, this time from 1944. This is no "B" feature, making the evening a solid double-A film night. Preminger's teasing noir has a topline cast including Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb and Vincent Price and is a tale of mighty egos, passion and jealousy from a novel by Vera Caspery adapted by a team of scriptwriters which included (uncredited) the controversial Ring Lardner Jnr.



Lardner's brother had been killed fighting fascism in Spain and Ringgold's own left wing politics made him unpopular with the studio heads and eventually caused him to fall foul of the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee. Here in England we benefited as, during his 1950s exile in Britain he wrote for our television series including the fondly remembered "Adventures of Robin Hood". A recent series on the same subject paid homage to this by including a "mcguffin" called "Lardner's ring" How much influence Lardner had on the script I don't know but Laura's is a good one.

Cropped screenshot of Clifton Webb from the trailer for the film Laura. (Photo credit: Wikipedia

The eponymous Laura is such a femme fatale that she captures the heart of Detective Lieutenant McPherson (Dana Andrews) from "beyond the grave" and he is not alone as her charms have knocked Clifton Webb and Vincent Price senseless too. This is a deliciously arch thriller full of great dialogue, particularly that spoken by writer Waldo "I don't use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom." Lydecker, played by Clifton Webb.

This is going to be a hard act to follow...

One for all and all for nothing

Thursday games 15th March: We have recently been listing some of the unplayed (or underplayed) games in our collections which we would like to get onto the table on a games night.

One of mine is the co-operative and highly thematic game Mousqetaires du Roy which is not normally a type we would play on a Thursday evening. When I bought it I knew this, and also that the old friends I play with on occasional Saturdays will not play co-operative games. I do like these "narrative" games though and I'm happy to own them as long as they allow the possibility of solo play as this one does.

I came across it by accident on Boardgamegeek at a good price and thought I remembered putting it on my wishlist at some time. I had, so sometime last year I acquired it. It was in very good condition (apart from the rules which had been heavily annotated) and some of the components were still sealed. I was well pleased with my bargain at the time but less sure when I tried to set up and play a few turns solo. The rule book proved horrendously difficult to get my brain round and when I felt I had at least got the gist of the way the
 game worked I put it away again.

Last week it was suggested that we might give it a try and I had some work to do to try again to understand the game well-enough to teach. I watched a couple of videos (which agreed with me about the rule book), printed some player aids and, after trying to force myself through a second re-edited copy of the rules, I felt I had grasped it.


When Ma, the Prof and Crabro arrived it quickly became apparent that I wasn't master of the material and we had a lot of re-reading to do. Nevertheless for me, and I think for some if not all of the others, it was a really fun evening as Dumas' theme worked its magic. With the addition of a miniature from another game it would have been possible to play this as a six-player game but it was perhaps fortunate that mrwendell and Petra Pan had cried off on this occasion and our learning game consisted of MaOldie as Porthos, ProfMudlark as Athos and Crabro as Aramis (the eponymous three musketeers). I took on the role of Richeliu's wicked catspaw Milady de Winter, partly because it meant I didn't have another set of rules and set up to explain to the "evil" player.

The game looks as though it was designed to be adaptable to other plots but the one in question is the classic one of obtaining the necklace, without which the Queen's reputation will be undone and the Cardinal's power over the King increased. This unfolds over a series of four sides of quests at the top of the board. Milady's task is to prevent this happening in time by direct intervention or by meddling elsewhere to distract the gallant musketeers from their task.

Other areas on the board, Paris, the siege of La Rochelle, the Louvre contain ongoing action which can end the game in Milady's favour if left unchecked. Milady can interfere by popping up in these areas and others causing the musketeers to fight her henchman Rochefort, by "perfidy" (playing treachery cards) and by placing other adverseries or traps in the path of our heroes.

The game was somewhat chaotic as a result of all the rule referencing and was certainly played wrong in some respects. Nevertheless it reached a very satisfying knife-edge conclusion at which time Milady was looking as though she might succeed in her evil machinations. The game hinged on the success or failure of a final action by Athos I think, although Aramis was by his side at the final quest (Porthos had been tricked into a stay in the Bastille by Milady). The battle was won and the Queen's reputation (perhaps undeservedly, given her dalliance with her English Duke) was unstained.

In theory, the role of Milady de Winter should have been the least pleasant to play, given the downtime while the rest of the group discussed and played their four actions each, but I thoroughly enjoyed my plotting. The game might feel slower for the Richelieu side once it is better known and the downtime not needed for rule reading though.