First club night of 2023

An interesting mix of games down the club last night. I wound up playing “Terraforming Mars“, AndyM being one of the two club members who acquired it over Christmas (in addition, DanR has merely borrowed my copy for a week to see if his family like it). It’s all Adie’s fault, who has had it and several expansions for a while and encouraged people to play it  

We also had Bolt Action, Star Wars Legion, some 20mm ww2, Pikeman’s Lament, Warlords of Erewhon and Battlegames In Middle-Earth. Not a bad mix for a relatively under attended (by 2022 standards anyway) evening. 

In other news, my hobby spending for the year currently runs to 4 assorted books off eBay (more of those when they arrive), and an agreement to meet up and buy a not insignificant collection of painted stuff on Thursday lunchtime. Some of the latter will wind up in a club show game probably not until 2024, but it was an opportunity not to be passed by (honest, dear). 

Moving boxes, and a shelfie...

Since I now have a large studio space that isn't being used by PE2Collectables, and Reuben left me four bookcases, I've done a bit of moving:

• Because I'm running out of shelf space in the music room (and anyway, I'd rather that shelf space had musical and 3D printer kit on it);
• Because I need shelf space for some scenery bits;
• Because I'm fed up of clearing the kitchen table or half the dining room to play board games;
• Because my military history books are currently upstairs (about 3 shelves worth still to move), and
• I've committed to doing some IABSM and Dux videos (if TFL don't beat me to it), for which a decent uncluttered table area with space around it for camera tripods, with a suitably nice backdrop, wouldn't hurt.

Like... this...

"The King Is Dead"- Osprey

Well - this looks interesting.

And I quote:

The King is Dead is a board game of politics and power struggles set in Britain in the chaotic period following the death of King Arthur. For the good of the country, a leader must unite the Scots, Welsh, and Romano-British; not by conquest but by diplomacy. Players are members of King Arthur’s court. Whether a loyal knight, a scheming lord, or an ambitious noblewoman, you all have one thing in common: power. As prospective leaders, each player will use their power to benefit the factions, gaining influence among their ranks. The player with the greatest influence over the most powerful faction will be crowned the new ruler of Britain.

Definitely sounds like mike cup of tea.

Thanks to Neil Shuck for the spot (I think he landed a review copy).

Partizan

Just a heads up to say I'll be at the show on Sunday from lunchtime, if anyone wants to say hi. Apart from anything else, I'll be buying Mr Shuck's copy of "Duel in the Dark" off him :D

Game Report - 12 May 2015 - Duel in the Dark

My good friend Chris is a co-founder of the local board games club, Posh Games. While I'm not a regular attender, Chris does drop around occasionally for a game, and in conversation during a game of Lords of Waterdeep the other Sunday, we got to discussing the insane price of out-of-print games. I happened to mention "Duel in the Dark" as an example, and to my surprise, Chris owns a copy. So, while James was at ceicket (about 5 mins up the road from Chris') I finally got to play it. I've wanted to play this excellent game of the Bomber Command raids on Germany since one of the first Meeples episodes I ever listened to reviewed it, and I have to say it didn't disappoint.

For a really detailed review, I'd strongly recommend that episode of Meeples. In short, each mission pits a British bomber raid, plotted ahead of time on a hex board using movement cards, with prior knowledge of weather etc but not defences, against German fighters and flak.

For my first time, I didn't do too badly as the British: I feinted towards the Ruhr with the Mosquito Pathfinders, and curved north of the Ruhr and Kassel, past Hamburg (a bit of a poor routing choice with hindsight, given the dense concentrations of flak and searchlights along the Rhine: I should have gone outbound over the much more lightly defended Kassel) before bombing a well-marked Lubeck,

On the good side the wind was blowing from the NE, which meant that once the German fighters had bitten on the the feint they had no choice to land and refuel, so my actual bombing run was cloud-free (thanks to a fortuitous change of wind blowing the clouds clear of Lubeck), uncontested (barring the aforementioned flak and searchlights) and worth 20VP. I took advantage of the rule that allows me to replot my homeward route, and elected for a fast run straight out across the North Sea with the Mosquito providing escort. Again, I think with hindsight I could have eked out a few VPs by better use of the Mossie, but in the end Chris won by 6, largely due to the amount of flak I flew through.

As far as the theme of the game goes: as I think I may have observed in the past, whatever one's views on the rightness or otherwise of the WW2 bomber offensive, I salute as among the bravest of the brave, the young men that willingly got into our aircraft night after night, knowing all too clearly the odds on their return from the count of empty chairs at their mess, to carry the war to the enemy in aircraft protected by a couple of mm of aluminium.