Monday is the new Tuesday

This week's games day was Monday for a change, and for another we didn't play Memoir '44. We initially decided to play both it and Runebound, a game which has been sitting on the shelves unplayed for too long. However, I wanted to play it first for various reasons including being able to set it up beforehand and not take up Crabro's gametime with that, and a chance to get to know it before he arrived.

In the end it wasn't just the first, but the only, game of the day as, even allowing for the gossip, banter, tea, lunch and 'phone calls, it took something like five hours to resolve. Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable and immersive experience with plenty of tongue in cheek "role-playing" narration and dramatic readings of the flavour text.

The game is of the quest adventure fantasy type, which involves travel (using the mechanism of matching dice faces to types of terrain) and encounters which involve combat with an assortment of monsters or tests against your character's or allies' skills. There is a very large number of items available to buy to enhance your character's chances against the really evil foes you will meet later in the game, and the opportunity to trade experience for improved skills.

In the first edition base game, the object is to collect three runes or kill the big baddy (Magrath) and in the final phase Crabro and myself took one each of these approaches.

Crabro came out the winner as he managed to dispatch three of Magrath's minions to obtain the necessary runes while I raced down the board to attack the evil Lord himself. After a bruising first encounter I retreated to a nearby town to lick my wounds and I never got another chance to assassinate him as, in an epic combat against one of the Runelords, Crabro became the posessor of his third rune.

Unfortunately, owing to the length of time it took to complete the win, we decided that it probably wasn't suitable for the whole group on a Thursday night. I'm rather sorry for that as I would be happy to play it again and am intrigued to see how it changes with a lot more players.

Drive

Back to my home town again for another member's preview at the wonderful Duke of York's cinema, this time "Drive" starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn.

At the beginning of the film, while we see the driver as a skilled effector of get aways, we also find out that he is good at his two legitimate jobs: mechanic and Hollywood stunt-driver, and that he looks as though he is going to be able to capitalise on his prodigous talent as a racing driver of stock cars (American NASCAR type that is, rather different from the UK variety) and "go straight". He evens meets a very nice woman.

...but...then it all goes horribly wrong, as of course it must or there would be no story.

Image via Wikipedia

Nicolas Winding Refn

It is a stylish and gripping and starkly violent thriller, with some interesting characters amongst the lesser roles. It certainly has a mythic quality and echoes of classic Westerns such as Clint Eastwood's spaghetti variety (the laconic driver is not referred to by name) and for me a strong whiff of Shane.

Image via Wikipedia

Ryan Gosling

A very good cinema experience if you ignore the boorish late arrival who pushed his way down the row several minutes after the film had started, while shining an intense light from a small torch in my eyes as he attempted to find the seat (next to mine) where he could then fidget for ten minutes and cough loudly throughout the rest of the film. There's always one.

Fink and chips

Image via WikipediaAfter the birding expedition, and a cup of tea with my birding friend and his wife, I returned home to find my film night friend had called. I rang back and learned that he was on his way over and was going to pick up supper on the way.

He arrived bearing fish and chips AND strawberries and cream. I took the top off a bottle of "Skull-splitter" and we settled with our supper in front of the chosen film.

Unfortunately we had technical problems with our first choice, the wonderful Jaoui-Bacri film "Let's Talk about the Rain", and settled for another Coen's film "Barton Fink". We seem to have got into a pattern of Coen and Allen.

Not too much of a problem as Barton Fink is a fascinating film and well worth another look. When Joel and Ethan were finding it impossible to finish their script for Miller's Crossing they simply put it to one side and wrote another film about a writer unable to write a script...

The eponymous "hero" of the film played by John Turturro has just written a successful "social realist" play in New York when he is offered $1000 a week to write for the movies in Los Angeles. After some debate with his agent and his conscience he heads West where he ends up in a hotel which is to all intents and purposes some kind of hell on earth. He also meets another two of the Coen's rep company: Steve Buscemi and John Goodman.

It soon becomes clear that the darling of the arty set in New York is just a cog in the machine as far as Hollywood is concerned and he is expected to set his literary pretentions aside and quickly turn out scripts to order. He is at once, praised and put in his place by the monsterous studio head Lipnick, a parody of the famous moguls like Louis B. Mayer or Sam Goldwyn.

The miserable Fink is supposed to knock out a screenplay for a "Wallace Beery wrestling picture" and his problems are just beginning as the feeling of impending doom increases and the rotten Earle hotel becomes more hellish.

Along the way there are all manner of references and symbols for a film student to get his teeth into and the final scene contains several mysteries. 

Goodman is a scene stealer every time he appears. He seems to be a big-hearted big drinking insurance salesman but is he? Chet, the bellboy, Paul the lift operator William Preston "Bill" Mayhew, a writer (based on Faulkner) on his way down into his own drunken hell, his wife Audrey and a cynical detective duo are all memorable additional characters.

Despite the black humour and brilliant performances this is not a light-hearted watch and the oppressive doom-laden atmosphere of the Earle, coupled with the almost complete lack of likeable characters make it a challenge which would have been better as part of a contrasting double bill. Nevertheless it is vintage Coens and was generously rewarded at Cannes although it took very little money at the box office (about a third of its budget of approximately $9m

Image via WikipediaNext time perhaps we can get the Jaoui film, which was I think a "film of the year" for me, to play and I will try and think of an appropriate second feature for that one.

Blackrock Birding

After a visit to a French market, where I bought a couple of very fresh baguettes and discovered that, yes, I had heard right and been warned in French that I was going to be burned.

I took the red-hot bread home for lunch and my birding friend and I realised that we couldn't sit at home on such a sunny day.

He looked up recent sightings and we decided to head for the area which in my youth was known as Black Rock and was mainly for rock-pooling expeditions. It is now home to a large Marina, although my visits are usually for shopping or cinema trips when I rarely see a single one of the boats moored the other side of all the shops and restaurants etc.

The small beach inside the west arm of the outer harbour proved to have a number of Ringed Plover and Turnstones on it and in the further distance along the sea defences were Great Black-backed Gulls and Cormorants.

With binoculars it was just possible to see it

No sign of the bird we had come to see so we made our way along the arm as far as we could and became aware of someone shouting at us. A man we later discovered to have a bicycle and be riding backwards and forwards along the harbour arms had spotted us as binocular-carrying birders and was frantically trying to attract our attention to a small dot on the water below and behind him. Our quarry was in the water along the outside of the harbour arm.

The other arm.


So we set off on the long march back along the East arm, through one detour because of work in progress, back through the commercial then the residential areas of the Marina, round another detour because of more work and finally all along the East arm where, inevitably, our cycling friend informed us that the bird had flown over to the West arm, where we had been before...



Not an unpleasant walk in the sun though, having seen fisherman actually landing fish and Common and Sandwich Terns undertaking similar activities further out. We also met a Kittiwake sitting on the wall.

Another long walk later, we arrived among a small group of birders at the place we started from and were informed that the bird had gone back the other way again...

Shortly afterwards though, my friend spotted him flying across the end of the arm and down to the water on the Eastern seaward side of the arm. At first he was quite difficult to spot as he appeared and disappeared behind the caissons on the waves. He was quite recognisable in the binoculars though if one leaned out over the sea. Happily, it soon became obvious that he was slowly moving in our direction, until he was more or less directly below us for a while, before slowly heading back seawards again.

I had my Grey Phalarope tick.

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.

Way out West, Way out East

Two days of gaming.

After returning from the "Dunge" trip I had about three-quarters of an hour to eat, tidy up, change and set up the games table for the arrival of the Thursday gamers on another trip out East. This week there were only four of us however, owing to work commitments and, hopefully minor, illness.

The cups of tea made, the gamers spent some time in this "office" perusing my games shelves before finally deciding on a rather neglected "Wallace". Crabro is a big fan of the designs of Martin Wallace and I share his enthusiasm for several of them, however, I had bought Way Out West more for the theme than the game as I love anything in the Western genre.

As it had turned out it had only ever had one play, with the Goldstone Gamers (Saturday) group, not because it was terrible but probably just that there were so many games we were equally, or more, taken with. I think the conclusion this time was that, it wasn't one of Martin's finest but nevertheless enjoyable enough to warrant a return some time.

First glance at the board and components lead one to the conclusion that it is rather dry and not evocative of the theme. It does however come to life once the inevitable gunfights begin. I'm afraid I did say at one point that I couldn't see why you would play it if you had Lawless (similar theme in a faster, card, game) but it has grown on me and if it played a lot faster (as it should once everyone was familiar with the rules) I would be happy to play it more often.

As the only Wallace in my collection I will certainly be hanging on to it. The other Wallace designs I particularly like are London, Tinners' Trail, Brass, Steel Driver, Age of Industry and Last Train to Wenslydale not to mention the big one: Age of Steam.

We then needed a "filler" game and while I made some more drinks the rest of the group returned to plundering the office from which they returned with Diamant. There have been various versions of this brilliantly simple "push-your-luck" game and the one I had imported from Germany was without the small board of some of the earlier versions and some of the extra rules of Incan Gold, a later revamp. Mine now sports a laminated print of the board for completeness' sake but it really isn't necessary for play.

The "mechanic" is simply that before each new section of the mine is revealed to contain riches or disaster one displays either an empty hand (staying in ) or a hand containing one's "Indiana Jones" meeple (running out and keeping the loot).

Always fun but rarely much of a success for me and true to form I lost (as I did Way Out West) but not by an embarassing amount. The Professor had had a bad time in the mines and was determined to break his "away game" duck so we played again and he went away happy.

On the following day I received an unexpected call from Crabro asking if I had any free time in the afternoon. Since our regular Tuesday sessions have had to cease for some time, I was only too pleased at the prospect of some games and gossip over lunch and tea.

Neither of us felt much like anything requiring a lot of setting up or huge mental dexterity and in the end we settled on an old favourite: Cribbage.

I was very rusty, despite having played it almost daily for a period many years ago. Both of us grew up with cards at school and with family and it was a comfortable pleasure to fan a hand of ordinary playing cards once more. Crabro ran away with the first game and I made a lot of elementary mistakes forgetting such things as "One for his knob" for example. I fared little better in the second game actually but I did manage to score eighteen points for one hand which felt rather good.

After that, Crabro having discovered he had another hour to play with, we picked up a neat little abstract that we had played in the days when we broke our games days for a cafe or pub lunch: Calypso.

It is extremely portable and so lends itself to a cafe table. Unfortunately it is also a game at which I have never beaten Crabro and it seems likely I never will. I'm not entirely sure why.

At one time I might have said that it is simply that my opponent's mind is much better at grasping abstract strategy than mine but since then I have been very successful against him in a couple of two-player pure abstract games.

It is certainly not true that I don't like abstract games although I do love the big, heavily thematic "narrative" type of board game. I started out with normal cards, Draughts (Checkers), Chinese Checkers, Halma, Othello etc and if I hadn't loved them probably would not be playing board games now. It is true that the little metal tokens and plastic houses of Monopoly and the wooden rum barrels and shiny gems of Buccaneer played a big part too of course.

It being rather dull to have no worthwhile opposition Crabro went to the shelves once more in search of another quick light game to finish on. He came back with Coloretto, a simple card game by Michael Schacht which spawned the successful Zooloretto: A less abstract, board game, reworking of the same mechanism. The game is played over several hands and although Crabro had a commanding lead early on I won an intermediate hand pulling back a lot of the advantage and making a win possible. Another hand was played but I couldn't raise enough points to overtake and Crabro had another win.

A very pleasant, not too complex or mentally taxing way to spend an afternoon anyway. Hopefully our two-player sessions will begin to pick up again as I am looking forward to trying some of his new acquisitions including a new Martin Wallace game: A Few Acres of Snow.