Close-Fought Battles

 This week Tuesday games began again with our beloved box of toys: Battlelore. This time the scenario had begun to move toward fantasy and the forces on the side I initially played included a number of goblin mercenary troops whose main aim in life seemed to be to panic and run away. At the beginning of the game I advanced the footgoblins of this flank but then ran out of cards for that flank, not to get any more until the penultimate move of the game. Meanwhile Crabro, ever expert on taking advantage of blocked retreats and now of terrified goblins pushed and pushed at this flank eventually wiping out all but one unit. Crabro one this side of the scenario by quite a margin (I think 6:3).

On changing sides for a while things seemed much the same and Crabro quickly collected 3 flags. I managed to pull back a little but this time again he wiped out my right flank. This time I had managed to rescue a couple of the banners and move them into the centre behind other troops nevertheless as things moved on he had five of the six banners needed for victory and there were three almost destroyed units seemingly poised for annihilation in the centre. The cards began to turn against Crabro at this point and allowed me a solid push down the left flank towards his goblins. With both of us on five banners I managed to destroy one of these weedy goblin units which was trapped against the side of the board and secure a face-saving victory. Nevertheless the overall win for the two sides of the scenario was definitely Crabro's.

After lunch we decided to give Stefan Feld's Castles of Burgundy another play. This time we were armed with a useful player aid which detailed the building and knowledge tiles. We also played different maps. As we suspected, although we made heavy weather of our first game, once we were more familiar with it we found it to be another very satisfying part of the Feld canon. The game was very close with me leading the points for much of it. As Crabro added up my score at the end, I realised  from his tone of voice and desire to see my points on the board first that he was confident of victory. I put it to him that I could tell he knew he had the victory and he confessed "By a long way". Totalling up his bonuses, especially that for having sold all the different colours of goods, it proved to be true and his marker motored comfortably past mine. Still it wasn't too huge that it changed the fact that it had felt like a close-fought contest. Very enjoyable and I hope we will play it again now that we are playing fluently.

With some time to spare we played a couple of games of Cribbage. Always nice for us old fogeys to have a handful of proper old-fashioned playing cards. This time I won the first game and Crabro the second for an honourable draw. A nice conclusion to a very enjoyable games day.