Gaming at a distance

Image via WikipediaOh dear Crabro and I have finally dipped a successful toe into the wide waters of board gaming via the internet while chatting on Skype. It's not quite the experience that sitting around a table pushing cardboard is, but it's an interesting substitute.

We were due to be at a small, rather exclusive Con locally but for one reason or another couldn't get away until almost lunchtime at which point Crabro suggested that, rather than driving there (quite a few miles for him especially as he would be coming here in the evening too) we make another attempt at linking up on-line for a game or two.

Image via WikipediaWe rang off for lunch and some software set up and when we spoke again it was via Skype and for the first time via a sensible headset in my case rather than the speakers.  For the rest of the afternoon we were chatting almost as though we were playing face to face.

The Vassal set-up took a little longer but eventually it fell into place even though I was on my Windows games machine rather than the main Linux machine while he was using Linux as always. We first attempted Memoir '44 as we had played my real copy several times recently and thought we knew the rules. It worked and looked quite nice but we had a few problems understanding the interface especially as some expansions had been included which we had never encountered before. Decks of combat cards?

It having been a reasonably successful start, we had a look through the extensive list of modules but eventually decided to have a game of something we both know and own (one shouldn't of course play anything on Vassal that one doesn't own a physical copy of and in some cases this is ensured by missing card decks etc.). We therefore, had a couple of games of Carcassonne which I messed up as much on line as I do with the cardboard version. I can never get the hand of where and when to place farmers.

Grabbed from the Vassal session

Some things about the interface where nice (the ability to "lay down" a meeple for instance) but it felt rather glitchy and several times we accidently picked up all the tiles instead of just one and had placed tiles go missing. We got used to synchronising on the person with the undamaged copy to correct these things though and overall it was a successful start for on-line peer-to-peer board gaming.

Later on the group arrived for the usual Thursday evening session and I played Strozzi with ProfMudlark, MaOldie and Crabro and then a second game with the full group after Petra Pan and mrwendell arrived.

As soon as I opened and started punching it I realised that I had in fact played it before and quite liked it. A simple game of grabbing a ship or three and placing it at a port to gain points and bonuses by having the best ship in the port (highest number) and the highest position on the trade goods track of that port. There is a little more to it than that but not much. I won the first game convincingly but found a six-player version a little more difficult, coming second.

After that and another round of hot drinks we decided to play Fast Flowing Forest Fellers again as it is quick to learn and should be fast playing. Of course the Professor can suffer attacks of Analysis Paralysis in any game but he quickly accepted that this game needs to "flow" in keeping with the theme and on the whole it moved fairly fast.

I spent several minutes trying to be heard of assorted conversations as I pointed out the the boards were the wrong way round, it being no fun to push someone into a current that is going in the direction they want to go. In the end I gave up and relied on it dawning on the others eventually... Which it did after the initial few moves. Unfortunately mrwendell had negotiated his way through a sea of logs into a clear lead by that point so he was not overly pleased to have the game restarted.

Justice was served though as his lumbermeeple raced over the finish line in a clear lead from my second place chap (which he had unkindly bumped into a stream heading backwards when I was in the lead). The usual mayhem ensued at the mid-point as people repeatedly sent their opponents (and the odd log) back up-river. I'm not sure the others were as enthusiastic about the game as Crabro and me but then for me it loses something with too many players. I like the opportunity to choose between more than one meeple for example.

A good day's gaming anyway, despite shunning the Con and its free cakes.

Well, well, in the cradle of civilisation

...But not a "Civ" game. Assyria was quite different in play to the impression I got from reading through the rules. I thoroughly enjoyed our two games of it today, although I narrowly lost both (and equally narrowly lost the game of Notre Dame too).







Both today's games were new to us but were a pleasant surprise and we had a very satisfying day's gaming. Where did I go wrong? Hard to say. We were new to both and inevitably discovered that we missed a rule or two in both. I was certainly labouring under some misconceptions as far as scoring wells, carrying-over cards and one or two other scoring and placement nuances were concerned.

In the end it didn't matter too much. Honour was served by the closeness of the finishes (in one case a single point I think and never more than five) and more importantly we both had a very satisfying day's games with both of us talking in terms of 8s out of 10 as far as ratings were concerned.

The two games were quite different: Notre Dame being action card driven, whereas the cards in Assyria provide food types to support placement of huts. The placement of the huts then provides points or "camels", effectively this game's currency. With camels you can buy actions like placing parts of ziggurats which ultimately add to your score.

Both games  seemed nicely balanced and well thought-out and despite their differences I couldn't really choose between them as far as the pleasure of playing them was concerned. Of our recent purchases we still have La Citta and Strozzi to go but the recent games have more than justified their bargain prices so I look forward to the remainder.

Stop calling me Derrick

Saturday games are rarer these days but all the more welcome when they do occur. This week the featured games were Fast Flowing Forest Fellers and Black Gold.


The day began with an enormous breakfast and several teas and coffees with the LOML and another ex-colleague (ex-boss actually) newly returned from an adventurous visit to the our late colonies. I was transported to New England for an hour or two over some excellent bacon.

I then managed to watch a little of the F1 qualifying but very soon had to head off to the station as we had decided to try and cram in a two-player game or two before eating.

I introduced Paultro to Fast Flowing Forest Fellers and he took to it like a lumberjack to water beating me, with my own last "feller" a single move behind. As it had been played in the proper flowing spirit we had time for a rematch and this time it was my turn to win. Paultro was quite taken with the fun of forcing your opponent into streams flowing in the wrong direction and with the speed and simplicity of the game.

After an excellent and huge meal (Mrs Paultro is a terrific cook) we were now four and settled down to Black Gold. I immediately liked the little oil wells with their plumes of oil and the general look of the boards and bits. I proved not to be a great success at the game though as it ended with a win for Paultro but with everyone but me having amounts of money in the 80 thousand area while I ended up with 66 thousand. I had very much enjoyed the game and its mechanisms though and will probably add it to my huge wishlist.

We wanted a quick filler to finish on and it seemed a good idea, with it fresh in the minds of myself and Paultor at least, to play Forest Fellers again. It didn't take a lot of explaining (so we thought) and we were quickly up and running. Paultro's missus (who had come a close second in Black Gold) had somehow failed to grasp that there was a difference between the male and female logger's cards though. She quickly put on a big lead with her lady logger but her gentleman lumberjack was far behind. This began to look increasingly odd to me and I watched her next move carefully which confirmed that she was using male cards to move the female logger.

Unfortunately, when this was pointed out she held it against poor Friedman's game, insisting that the pictures and wooden piece did not look feminine. I tried in vain to make the point that as long as the symbol matched the wooden piece it was irrelevant whether Mr Friese had put a frock on his log-riding lady. All ended amicably but I fear that FF's FFFF will not be too welcome on this table again. A pity because the others liked its quick simplicity and chances to sabotage other players. I think it deserves to be in the ranks of available fillers. Perhaps our lumberjack hater can be persuaded.

Dormant Dominant

Work hours having taken their toll this week, the Thursday gamers were whittled down to three and Crabro saw a golden opportunity to put ProfMudlark through his paces on the Dominant Species board.






When we played it as a two player game recently, we had speculated that it would be a game that the Professor would like and be good at. We anticipated that he would probably trounce us and that prediction turned out to be accurate.

The early stages of the game saw us all close together and then the gaps began to appear. For quite a while I was clear of Crabro in second place but then he started scoring heavily in the survival stage by camping on all of the tundra areas.

As the game wore on, and midnight came and went, both Crabro and I began to tire and lose focus. For myself I began to make sloppy decisions and worse not to care about anything but getting it over with. Crabro had accelerated past me but the Professor, still fully caught up in the game was making huge strides, passing 100 points and continuing serenely on.

In the end, past caring, we wound the game up and did the final scoring rather than face another whole turn at least. This was a shame for the Professor who had his sights (probably realistically) on his double century. Another round would not have made the slightest difference to the placings though as the gaps were only widening.

Image by Sharon Drummond via Flickr

It's a shame that it went on so long (starting at eight, it was nearly one am when we called a halt) because I think we all agree that it is a fascinating and enjoyable game up until the point where bed seems a preferable option and you never want to see another species cube or dominance marker.

I doubt we will play it again because it would be far too long with the whole group, but it is a satisfying blend of worker placement and area control in small doses.

There's no bunting like Snow Bunting... No bunting at all

"How do you feel about Climping?" "I don't know, I've never climped". This exchange took place yesterday morning as my birding teacher and his wife came to pick me up for a birdwatching jaunt. Apparently both a Hoopoe and a Snow Bunting had been reported in Climping. These are both birds that I would be very interested in seeing, however that wasn't to be the case on this occasion.
Image via Wikipedia


I was quite excited about the Hoopoe, an exotic-looking bird which should have been in Africa rather than a bleak and wind-swept stretch of wild English coast in Autumn.

I also noted from my little bird book that despite its looks it has a very bad reputation for hygiene and its nests are "notoriously smelly". Far from being ashamed of this, it apparently goes around asking "who poo?"

By comparison the Snow Bunting is a neater more refined little chap altogether. All of this was academic though as there was little life apparent there and certainly neither of the two target birds. Aside from the usual Magpies, crows and gulls we did spot Oystercatchers, Turnstones and Sanderlings however. As no-one else we met had encountered our prey that morning we decided to move on to where there was guaranteed to be a variety of birdlife: Pagham Harbour.

On arrival we discovered that the Pagham Spit car park was closed, apparently because of road damage though how this differed from the normal state of the road here which is pretty much a cart track is anyone's guess. This rather put paid to our lunch plans but we moved on to the "North Wall" and had our lunch on a bench overlooking the tidal water. It was a mild day with the sun gleaming on the water at what was still close to high tide and it was very pleasant indeed to eat drink and chat while an ever-changing panorama kept us entertained.

There were a pair of Red-breasted Mergansers in front of us and a number of other ducks and waders further into the distance. We also noticed the fins and tail of a large fish (mullet?) breaking the surface every now and then. Apparently he was of a size that need not fear the many beaks nearby and nothing short of an Osprey would have been able to ruin his day.

After lunch we moved on up the wall and saw Teal, Wigeon, Mallard, Snipe, Oystercatchers, Brent Geese, Curlew, Knot, Shoveler, Pintail, Redshank,Moorhen, Black-headed Gulls and Cormorants. We also had splendid close views of a hovering male  Kestrel.

A check on the sighting reports showed that someone had seen the elusive Hoopoe again since we were there and we decided to try again. This time we were confident that we were exactly where the sighting had been made but once again failed to spot him. Occasionally a movement in one of the trees would cause some excitement but it always turned out to be blackbird or robin.

Nevertheless it had been a very enjoyable day and I returned home to prepare for the arrival of the gamers well pleased with my day's birding.

Games update

Image via Wikipedia

Power Grid

I seem to have let this slip a bit. The Thursday games group met here, as usual these days, and we played my second game of Power Grid: The First Sparks. This did nothing to make me like it more, unfortunately.
I enjoyed the first game and like the nice wooden pieces. This game made me look a bit deeper though and I was less star-struck.

I did far far worse than in my first game (although about keeping pace with most of the others) despite not modifying my strategy. I can only account for the disparity by assuming that luck plays a much bigger part than I first thought.

In the end it was a deserved and run-away win for MaOldie with the rest of us far behind. I would be happy enough to play it again but I'm far less tending towards the desire to own it. I think that Power Grid itself (and its other less radical variants) is a much better game.

Power Grid: The First Sparks

We followed Sparks with some more of Mrwendell and Petra Pan's German buys: Kuhhandel Master and R-Eco. Both were enjoyable light card games...which I lost as usual these days. I never really got to grips with the rules of Kuh especially as far as the trading was concerned. Lots of hilarity though and a game that could well hit the table again with this group I think. Some of the atmosphere of a Bohnanza game I felt. R-Eco is a colourful recycling-based game, really completely abstract. I think I could get to like this one too as it has elements of the traditional card games I've always loved and play flows fast.

This week's Tuesday games day started with another session of Macao, a game both Crabro and myself admire. There is something satisfying about the way the mechanisms fit together and the game moves fast with progress easy to see as the cards are removed from round the board. I think we will have another game of this before long and I wouldn't mind owning it as I think that the Goldstone Gamers might enjoy it too.



Things went downhill a little from there as we tried out one of Crabro's new bargains: Royal Palace. I am at a loss to understand why Renaissance Europe and currying favour with kings and nobles is such an irresistible theme to modern game designers.

In this case it really made very little sense to me but anyway our servants dutifully queued up at the garden gate to woo nobles. We both agreed that it was essentially a good game with an interesting "mechanic" but for some reason it failed to fill either of us with the desire to play it again. In view of this lack of enthusiasm I expect Crabro will sell or trade it. I'm not sure why we didn't like it exactly. It seems popular, the partly modular board and the wooden servant pieces are attractive. You can't love them all I suppose and I'm sure the theme didn't help.


I have been trying to learn Assyria and fear that I may have similar feelings but we will see. One thing's for sure the ancient middle east is another popular theme and seems to appear, as here I suspect, as a thin veneer coating an obvious abstract. I mustn't pre-judge though - I certainly admire Knizia's Euphrat and Tigris.

To take the taste of a less than happy game away, we finished with a filler that is an old favourite that we would be happy to play anytime: Coloretto. I think this resulted in a narrow victory to me but if it did it was the only one of the day as Macao had been a narrow loss and Royal Palace a very clear victory for Crabro.

APPENDIX - Games session of (I think) 3/11/2011

There was a draft report of another games evening about this time floating around and I thought I might as well tidy up by dumping it in here: 

I was given a gift this evening as host of the Thursday games night. MaOldie had brought me back a game from Essen. I was very pleased. It is a Reiner Knizia design formerly known as Botswana but this edition is called, Thor and appropriate name for Thursday.

There were six of us this week and we played some of the Essen plunder brought back by Ma, PetraPan and MrWendell, starting with another crack at Power Grid: The First Sparks.

Once again I managed to get the Fire card and avoiding my food rotting. Unfortunately the way the cards, or my strategy, played out I never had much of it anyway. I had a couple of fields and a plow but failed to get a fishing rod, basket, spear or bow  to get my income to the levels necessary for a winning expansion. As it turned out it was quite a short game and MaOldie won very convincingly with 14 men out when I was only on five.

We then moved on to R-Eco, playing a couple of games of the recycling card game. It flowed quite nicely but the timing seemed to see me missing out repeatedly on decently scoring cards. None of the scores were particularly high I think but mine was one of the lower, if not the lowest ones. An attractive fast moving card game though and one I would be happy to play again.

The same could be said of the last game of the evening, although it didn't always flow as smoothly. I would definitely like another game of Kuhhandler Master as I didn't really get off the ground in this one. It wasn't taken to conclusion after someone noticed that it was well after midnight but I only had two animals so would have been way behind most of the others. It is a strange little card game revolving round collecting sets of animal cards. The auctions and trading make for quite a chaotic game at times but it is a lot of fun and I would like another stab at it now I know it a bit.

Added 23/5/2012 just to be tidy...

Fast Flowing Friese Fun

I forgot to take photographs of the first of our Tuesday games this week, which was Macao. This is a very nice game with an unusual mechanic entailing the use of a number of coloured dice, a lot of coloured blocks and a compass rose.

The blocks are used as action points in buying goods, moving ships and purchasing cards representing offices and buildings.

It is a game I recognised immediately as one I had played at a Con a couple of years ago, really enjoyed and tried unsuccessfully to recall the name of in the intervening time.

It took me a while to get used to it again. In particular the need for advanced planning. Crabro won I think, but the scores were very close after I did manage to put together some useful moves towards the end of the game. This is definitely one I would like in my own collection.

After lunch we turned to another recent bargain purchase: Maori. This proved to be more of a filler. A very light but attractive little game of tile placement. We played a couple of games and tried one of the varients, using the rather tighter placement rules and the reverse of the player boards.

We finished the day with another new purchase but one we had also played at the same con that introduced us to Macao: Fast Flowing Forest Fellers. I remembered it as not going down very well (except with me) so I was delighted that Crabro was not one of those who had given it the thumbs down.

This is another game by the man with green hair and obsession with the letter "F": Friedmann Friese. This is not a Power Grid (Funkenschlag for the F conscious) variant but a light-hearted race game with plenty of opportunity to confound the plans of your fellow lumberjacks.

The course is strewn with logs (nice chunky wooden pieces) and a variety of map boards can be put together into courses of varying complexity. The wooden pieces come in various colours, and more unusually two sexes. Using individual sets of cards for each piece shuffled into a personal deck the players attempt to get their lumberjacks (in our case three, in two colours - a male and female in one colour and a further male) down the river to exit off the bottom of the boards. Once a piece is off the board its cards become "wildcards" useable for the remaining lumberjacks.

Where this game takes off is in the opportunity to shove other pieces (including the logs) into currents (depicted by arrows on the board) which eddy in different directions including back up-river.

I won the first of our games and appeared to have the second one sewn up when I had a run of less-than-useful low cards and was overtaken at the last to make it one all.

This is very light but if played in the right spirit and with a "fast-flowing" pace it is a great deal of fun. I think our group will enjoy it and I'm pretty sure that the Goldstone Gamers would enjoy it too.