Airlines Europe part two

I was acting host of the Thursday games group one more and Crabro and myself having enjoyed Airlines Europe on Tuesday we decided to get the whole group playing it.

Initially there were four of us, as Petra Pan and MrWendell were delayed by work. The Professor, MaOldie, Crabro and I were a good way into the first game when the other two arrived (with a big bag of chocolate eclairs) so we finished, and had another round of teas, after the first scoring card appeared.

The Professor won this third of a victory but then the game began in earnest. As I had been successful in my last game with Crabro despite not getting involved in exchanging stock for shares in the aeroplaneless Abacus airline, I stayed clear of the scramble for those shares again and I was quietly confident, as the final scoring card appeared, that I had a respectable score. One by one my opponents declared their scores: sixty something, a couple of fifty-ishes and then Crabro with seventy-three.

I silently exulted, having tallied my score. Someone finally asked my total and I confessed to eighty-three. It was all looking good...and then MaOldie owned up to eighty-eight. Rats! That's three weeks running she has been victorious. Oh well. Hats off to a very good gamer. It had been a very pleasant evening in good company anyway. I'm really beginning to enjoy being the host. After all the fun, I'm already home. Grand!

Tuesday is Games Day once more

A welcome return to Tuesday gaming with Crabro today after terrible family problems had turned his life upside down for several weeks. After making tea, we resumed where we had left off some weeks ago, with a Memoir '44 scenario.








This time it was the battle at Pointe du Hoc and the setup, with a line of hills representing cliffs spreading the whole width of the board, looked very one-sided.

Since each of us won in our turn as the Allies this is perhaps the case but not the way round I was expecting. The Axis forces were all dug in behind sandbags or in bunkers and the American Rangers had a cliff to scale before confronting them...but in the end the Rangers won both times without huge difficulty.

There were certainly differences in strategy as with a hand full of right flank cards and no forces at all on that flank I felt the need to move a couple of units into that sector even though it was guarded by an infantry unit in a bunker on a spur of cliff and an artillery battery. Crabro took the seemingly more sensible route which I had originally decided on and avoided that flank completely while trying to keep the artillery out of range or at its extreme extent.

There was some method in my madness though as there were two "flags" to be had by entering woods at the top of the board on that flank, two more units were all that was needed for the win. In Crabro's case he ignored the territory flags and made up all four of his points by destroying infantry units. Both strategies worked in the end although I believe my Germans achieved one more flag than his by some seemingly suicidal attacks out of the cover of the defensive obstacles.

After lunch we turned to a new game of Crabro's: Airlines: Europe, which like its predecessors Airlines and Union Pacific are shareholding "train" games by Alan Moon. Unfortunately (because I own Airlines) this proved to be a much nicer and more satisfying game.

Having learned how to play it in the first game (a clear win for Crabro) we decided to have a second game, predicting correctly that it would flow much faster now we were confident of the rules. I had obviously learned some valuable lessons as this time it was a clear win for me.

Add to this a pleasant lunch, lots of tea and gossip and it was a very enjoyable return to Tuesday games and ended happily with two wins apiece.