Final games of the year at the club

A quick post on November and Decembers games.  

Another game of Blood Rage: Ragnarok which was great fun. I would say that because I won, but I think I was really lucky to get the Valkyrie card and another card to immediately resurrect a character that was killed. This enabled me to play fast and loose with the Valkyrie. 

A new boardgame called Fief.  It's a euro-game with very nice components and is a kind of medieval land-grab for 6 players.  A good game for our club, but it did seem a bit too complex in places, almost like it was trying too hard to layer on stuff for players to think about and do.  The marriages / alliances bit was hilarious. 

Then ADG. We've started a little competition in the club, and eight of us have started.  There are initially 2 leagues of 4, and the top two from each table will go through to semi-finals and finals.  It's all with Dark Ages and medieval armies. My table has two Wars of Roses armies, one Arab and one Hungarian.  It's been good to start a club competition again without the overblown millimetrics and arguments which characterise the BHGS lot in their FoG competitions.

In December I planned a battle of the bulge boardgame with another chap who's a big bulge fan.  Kind of an anniversary game.  This time we played Fast Action Battles: Bulge.  It's an area game with both blocks and counters.  The blocks add the element of fog of war as the opponent sees only the blank face of the wooden block so is never quite sure about the exact strength of the unit.  It was my first time playing this game and as the Allies I made a few mistakes which cost me the game.  I also failed to blow several bridges. The German movement seemed to be very easy, so we may have missed something in the rules. 

At the club meetings before Christmas we usually play several boardgames.  This time 6 of us played Robo-Rally, Metro, Stephen's Game and Family Business in the one evening.  If you have the chance to play games like this with a group of people, please do - it's great fun.

Robo-Rally has everyone controlling a robot on a factory floor that has turntables, pits, conveyer belts and walls. Navigation is via a 'program' of 5 movement cards towards 3 different targets.  All manner of things can go wrong and players can accidentally (or deliberately) interrupt and other robot.  Great fun.  

Metro is a multi-player game of laying train-tracks under Paris.  You have to provide a safe route for your own trains while laying track that will guide opponents trains off the board.  A simple game but so much fun. 

Stephen's game is a card game about arranging famous Stephen's dates of birth in the correct order.  Players see a description of the person on their side of the cards while the date of birth is on the side visible to opponents.  Simple fast and fun. 

And then there is Family Business. A card game of gangsters in the prohibition era where you try to wipe out the other families while saving your own cast of 9 characters.  All great fun and long-time favourite in our club.