Trajan Victory at Last

Twosday games this week featured the same great double bill of Borg and Feld, beginning with both sides of another Battlelore scenario and finishing with another game of Trajan.

What can I say about these two games that I haven't already? They are currently two of our favourite games by two of our favourite designers and enormously fun and satisfying to play.

The main difference this week was that I, at last, won a game of Trajan. It wasn't by much, I have to admit (eight points in it I think), and actually both of us did much better this time, but it is nice to know that I can be competitive in a game I really enjoy playing. I'm not sure what I did right this time and I can still point to a rather chaotic strategy with missed opportunities but I think that I made more effective use of the mancala device at the game's heart, this time as well as exploiting the building and military areas quite well. Crabro meanwhile did better the senate area and in maximising bonuses than I did.

The Battlelore scenario didn't include any of those wretched cowardly goblins or the stalwart dwarves. In fact there were no monsters either so apart from the lore element it was a straight toe-to-toe scrap between infantry and cavalry with a couple of archer units each for a bit of "twanging" or "pinging" as ranged fire is known, and the odd "darken the sky" making them a tiny bit more useful.

BattleLore (Photo credit: Will Merydith)

The scenario didn't on the face of it look massively unbalanced and having lost the first battle 6-3, I initially feared that we would break the sequence of one-alls as Crabro had some lucky rolls and looked very threatening from the outset. With a sequence of decent cards giving me some solid advances though, the tide turned and ended on a surprising 7-1 victory for me, leaving the record of each of us winning every scenario, intact.

This game continues to be great fun for us and exactly my type of game as I let my inner fifteen year old self back out to play with miniatures and dice as on Saturday evenings so many years ago.

What a great day's gaming! Enormous thanks to Crabro for all the fun (and the lunch) as usual.