Raiders of the Games Cupboard - Part 2

So, here is the second part of my 'review' of this weekends mammoth board gaming session at Raiders of the Games Cupboard! If you haven't read Part 1 (then go back and read it! I'll wait...) then Raiders is a quarterly board gaming event held in Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire. I went along last Saturday with some friends, and many board games were played. I've already talked about Agricola, Princes of Florence and Tsuro, and there are three more games waiting to be discussed. So with no more ado...

Game 4: Village

Those of you who have been paying attention (if that's you then well done! Have a biscuit! :) ) will know that I consider Village to be the Game of the Year. It is, quite frankly, an awesome game. Similar in some ways to Agricola in that you have limited resources that you are managing, but in this game you are not trying to ensure all of your meeples survive - indeed, death is inevitable in this game! It is how useful your meeples have been before they snuff it that counts, as if they have had a craft, been traveling, joined the church or been elected to the Council then their lives are recorded in the Village Chronicle. Everything your meeples do wins you points, and at the end of the game whoever has the most points is declared the winner.

The Village - now with added beer!

We were playing with the new expansion for the game, which I hadn't used before. This adds a new area to the Village, the Inn, and also allows you to play with 5 players. I'll get to my thoughts on the expansion later, but as is my normal strategy with Village I concentrated on getting my meeples into the Council room. this gives bonuses throughout the game, and is a very useful place to be. I also managed to send someone traveling and had a wagon-wright trained, but they both died very early on ensuring I had at least two places in the Chronicle (you need at least 3 meeples in the Chronicle to score any points for it, but there are limited numbers for each area of the board.)

As the game progressed, I saw what the expansion added. The Inn allows access to new Character cards, and these can change a great many things about the game. Generally, they either give bonuses to something you can already do - the Miller card for example means you get more coins when you use the windmill - but can only be used once before they are discarded. The other sort of card though is saved to the end of the game and has new ways of scoring points. The one that I got was the Healer, and he meant that I scored a point for every meeple still alive at the end of the game. I had already killed 3 meeples at this point, securing me some points from the Chronicle, so I was determined to keep all 8 remaining meeples alive. Another card really helped with this, as the Herbwoman let me reset the Time clock on my board, giving me more things I could do before someone else died.

These 8 points for my surviving meeples proved the difference in the end, and I won by about 3 points. This was the first time I had won at Village, so I was rather excited! Overall I feel that the expansion is well worth getting. It adds a new dimension to the game, but doesn't insist upon itself - the game still stands as a great game without this addition. I feel that I will be picking this expansion up at some point, merely for the ability to play with 5 people. I don't think that we will use the Inn every time, but having it available will be a plus.

Game 5: Oregon

The final game that we played at Raiders was a quick little game called Oregon. This is set in the American West (rather obviously!) and revolves around creating settlements for your people. The rather clever way this is done is through grid referencing. Each square on the board is referenced by two pictures, one from the horizontal axis and one from the vertical. These pictures are repeated on the cards that you draw, so to place a person you have to play two cards. If, for example, I played an Eagle card and a Wagon card, I could place my meeple in any square where the Eagle and Wagon grid references join.

The board, with the grid references along the sides.

Points are scored by placing your meeples next to building tiles, or by placing building tiles next to your meeples. A very simple concept, I thought that this game would be easy. However, it obviously takes some skill to score points as I was quickly lagging behind. I could very easily blame the cards I was drawing, but I think that I wasn't thinking far enough ahead with my strategy. This is certainly a game I would like another go at now I have got the hang of what is needed to do.

Once this game was finished, it was time to pack up and go home. However, there was still another chance to play a game!

Game 6: Spectral Rails

Once we were back at Adam's house, he suggested one final game before I went home for the night and brought out a game that he and Phil hadn't tried before. Spectral Rails is, as it may sound, a railway game but with a twist. You are playing the driver of a Ghost Train and you have to ferry souls to their resting place. There are a lot of interesting mechanics involved in this game, but the one that it took the longest for us to understand was the cards that you use. Once you play a card, for whatever reason in the game, you lay it down in front of you in a line from left to right and turn it face down at the end of that pahse. At the end of your turn, you pick up half of the cards that are in front of you, again counting from left to right. This ensures that you don't have your full hand to call on all the time, and that you can't be sure what cards are coming back to you each turn.

I don't have a picture of this game, but I do like it. I have to say that the rules are poorly written though, as it took the three of us a fair while to understand the rather simple mechanics of the game. I feel that an example turn in the manual would help a lot in this regard. Don't let this put you off though, as I think that it is a game that seems quite quick once you get the hang of it and should be different each time.

Overview

As always, I really enjoyed my day at Raiders. The next one is in March, and if you are in the area and fancy coming along I can really recommend it. The people are accommodating and are welcoming to new people, so even if you don't have any games to bring they will always try and find you something to play. As for me, I am already looking forward to New Year, where I will get to play some more board games!

Raiders of the Games Cupboard - Part 1

On Saturday, I went to an event called Raiders of the Games Cupboard. This is a quarterly gathering of people with one thing in common - they love playing board games. I'll add a link to their website at the end of this, but in essence the day is just an excuse to hang out with friends and play lots and lots of games! I went along to this with my mate Adam, and played a grand total of 6 different games. The point of this post is to give a brief run down on those games, and to try and illustrate what sort of games are available for anyone wishing to try something a bit different!

Game 1: Agricola

Agricola is quite possibly the best game ever to be based on farming. Your objective in this game is to create and run the very best farm that you can, growing various crops and keeping herds of animals whilst at the same time fending off hunger by feeding your family. There are so many different things that you can do in this game that I'm not even going to attempt to explain it, as there are a great many parts to it that I don't even understand myself! However, I will say that there is an excellent adaption available on iOS, so if you have an iPad and want to see what all the fuss is about then I would check it out there.

So many pieces!

Adam, his wife Phillipa and their friend John are all experienced farmers, and are big fans of this game. They play it a lot, and have pretty much all the expansions that have been released. They know what to do, they know what the best moves are and can maximise the potential of the various cards they have been given. In short, they are good. I am not. This is my second attempt at Agricola (excepting playing against the computer on the iPad, as we all know that doesn't count!) and whilst I know the basic rules, I am always struggling to see more than one or two turns ahead. I was up against it from the off, but even in this illustrious company I didn't disgrace myself!

Scoring in Agricola happens at the end of the final turn, and you get points for all sorts of different areas. It is very difficult to see who has won until all scores have been added up, as most people pursue different strategies and are focusing on different things. The most important thing to note is that you lose points for having empty areas on your farm board, and you also lose points if you don't have any of a certain thing in your farm. Phil turned out to be the eventual winner, with a great score of 59 and a 5 point gap to John in 2nd place. My score was in the mid 30's (I can't remember exactly!) and as expected I was last by some distance. However, to my credit I filled my farm completely and only lost points in one of the many criteria, so I was quite pleased with how I played!

Overall, Agricola is a great game - however if you are interested in giving it a go I would direct you to the iPad version or to someone that you know who has it and can teach you, as there are a lot of intricacies that are difficult to understand  in the first few times you play. It is a much better experience if you are taught how it plays first.

Game 2: Princes of Florence

After lunch, and a little wander over to Spirit Games (the excellent board game shop in Burton upon Trent. If you're ever over that way I suggest you stop in!) we came back to the hall and set up the next game - Princes of Florence.

The rather more sparse set up for Princes of Florence.

This games sees you put in charge of one of the first families of Renaissance Florence. It is your job to raise the standing of your family by building a palace and hiring professions to work there. Each profession is attracted by a different combination of building, landscape and freedom - for example an Astronomer would dearly love a Tower in the Palace, whilst a Mathematician may be looking for Religious freedom instead. The more of the things a profession is looking for that you have in your palace, the more points you score for that profession.

You may think then that it is easy - just build a load of stuff and score big points for all the professions! No. There are limits to how many things you can do in a turn, and perhaps more crucially, some of the things you need can only be obtained at auction, so you will be competing with your fellow Princes to get hold of them. There is also a limited supply of each, so you can't be assured of getting what you need!

I have now played this game a few times, and I'm starting to get a decent grasp of the strategy needed to do well. In this particular game I think I pulled off a pretty convincing late run at the top, scoring 29 points with my final profession which gained my 14 extra Victory Points (each point a profession scores translates to 100 Florins, and every 200 Florins can be exchanged for 1 VP), seeing me end the game on 54VPs. However, my run to the top was foiled by Adam, who with final turn he picked up a Prestige card that gave him just enough VPs to get to 56. Missed out by 2 points!!!

Whereas Agricola would appeal to more hardcore boardgamers, I feel that Princes of Florence is one that anyone can enjoy. The rules are not that hard, it doesn't take long to play, and above all it looks pretty with all the pieces you get. A game I would happily play again.

Game 3: Tsuro

A rather beautiful game this one!

After two rather thought provoking games, something quicker was called for so I brought out Tsuro. As seen on the excellent TableTop YouTube channel  hosted by Wil Wheaton, this is a tile laying game where you try and navigate your way around the board without hitting either the edge or another player. There isn't an awful lot to explain with this game, except that there are 35 unique tiles and 36 spaces and that the last player standing is the winner!

I love this game. I only got it for my birthday in October, and this is the first time I've played it with more than just my wife and I, but already I think it is just fantastic. You have 3 tiles in your hand, so you have a little control over where your piece goes, but once the other players get near to you it is simply a case of survival rather than strategy. In this particular game Adam and Phil were joint winners, with Adam eliminating both of them on the 33rd tile to be played. I had ran into the board edge 1 tile previously, so it was pretty close again!


In the next post, which will hopefully be up tomorrow, I'll finish the rundown on this particular Raiders, with 3 more games to talk about. As always though, if you have any thoughts or would like any more info on these games, please let me know. I can be reached in the comments here, or on Twitter throught @Sandals_ajw

I'll leave you with some links:
Raiders of the Games Cupdoard site - http://www.raidersofthegamecupboard.co.uk/
Spirit Games (For all your board gaming needs!) - http://www.spiritgames.co.uk/
TableTop YouTube channel (The Tsuro episode especially) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMtlQxJeWvc
BoardGameGeek (Best place on the web for info on board games!) - http://boardgamegeek.com/

Bad Dice End of Year Awards

Given that it is nearly Christmas, a standard practice is to look back on the year and decide on the Best and Worst of things. It's a format that is probably going to make up the majority of the TV schedules next week after all! This year though, the excellent Bad Dice Podcast have decided to do a Warhammer related awards show. They were looking for open nominations, and given that this is exactly the sort of thing that a Blog can be used for I've decided to share my nominations.

There were three sections to the nominations, the first focusing on the people in the tournament scene. I'm going to add a disclaimer here that these are all just opinions, and that there were several categories that were very difficult to decide between - for these I've given some Honourable Mentions.


Warhammer Personality of the Year - Rafael Harbinson. His blog has been one of the most refreshing things to read about this hobby in a long time (and is one of the main reasons that I'm writing this!), he's always happy to talk lists and he's always in contention in most of the main events. Top bloke.

Warhammer Villain of the Year - Craig Johnson, for not getting the result at the right time to live up to his own hype! For those not in the know, Craig had a bet with Tom Mawdsley that if he could finish higher than Tom in the UK Rankings when the Masters invites were sent out, then Tom would have to quit Warhammer for a year. Craig missed out on the result in the last eligible tournament meaning that 12 months of banter and jibes were in effect wasted. Making it worse was the fact the Craig then won Downfall a week later, but alas this missed the cut off for the Masters and therefore doesn't count!

Player of the Year - Jack Armstrong for hitting the big 400 Rankings points! Again, for those that don't know, the Rankings system gives 100 points if you win a 60+ player event and takes your 4 best scores to give your overall ranking. In May, Jack became the first person ever to have 4 active 100 scores on his profile, therefore reaching the magical 400 point cap.

Chump of the Year - Tony Hayle. Two events this year he has been leading the pack on Table 1 for the start of day 2, my own Raze and Ruin event and the aforementioned Downfall. At Raze and Ruin, he recorded a spectacular 0 points on day 2, and at Downfall he managed a slightly better 4 points on day 2! Despite leading overnight, he finished out of the running in both events. Having had the pleasure of meeting him at Raze and Ruin though, I have to say that he is a fantastic sport about this, and I hope he won't mind me bringing up all of this again!

Best Painted Army of the Year - Byron Orde's Daemons of Chaos. The best army I have seen in the flesh this year, Byron is part of the team that runs the excellent Element Games webstore. He deservedly won Best Army at Brothers in Arms 2 in August, and you can see from the tutorials that he posts on his site that he is a top notch painter.

Warhammer Event of the Year - I think it has to be Blood and Glory. This was the most fun I've had at an event in a long time, mainly down to the other events outside of the tournament itself. I managed to stay at the venue for the evening for this one, and playing board games all night was a great way to spend the Saturday Evening of a tournament! However, Brothers in Arms 2 and the Maelstrom Team Event were both excellent events too, and deserve Honourable Mentions.

Warhammer Podcast of the Year (other than Bad Dice of course!) - The return of Heelanhammer! I don't listen to many Podcasts any more, and certianly none with any regularity. However, Heelanhammer's return actually got me to download and listen to a few of their offerings this year and are still producing top quality stuff.




The second section focused on Games Workshop's releases of the past year.

Army Book of the Year - For all the complaining towards the end of the year, the Daemons of Chaos book was brilliant. So many options in the game, a complete re-invention of the way Magic Items are done and a fantastic range of figures.
Unit (rules) of the Year - Lizardmen Bastiladon. Went straight into all of my Lizardmen lists, really cheap for what it does. Just a shame that the Ark of Sotek isn't all that good an option.
Models of the Year
-Single Model - Shadowblade, obviously! Beautiful figure.
-Unit - Terradons/Ripperdactyls. Fantastic kit, really nice and easy to assemble too.
-Monster - Troglodon. Just wish it had rules to match.



The final section was a more Off Topic selection, focusing on many different things.

Table Top game of the Year - Assuming we can't nominate Warhammer itself, I'd go with Malifaux. Refreshingly different, and the models are pretty cool too.
Non GW Model of the Year - The Mierce Miniatures Dragon from their Kickstarter. Technically not released til January, but it's amazing. Some photos on my Twitter account, and hopefully more to follow here!
Boardgame of the Year - I'm hoping the new Firefly game will make this list for next year, but the best new game I've played this year has to be Village. Won the Spiele Preis (Best Family/Adult Game) at Essen last year, it's a brilliantly simple game that I've yet to win!!!
Videogame of the Year - Pass on this one, I don't really play video games. Though if the iPad adaption of Warhammer Quest counts, I'd go for that.
Movie of the Year - Thor: The Dark World. Not only the best superhero film of the year, but one of the best films I've seen in a long time.
TV Show of the Year - The Newsroom. Best thing on TV at the moment, despite only having 9 episodes. Honourable mentions to Agents of Shield and Game of Thrones.
Bad Dice Daily Episode of the Year - So many to choose from! I've enjoyed the recent MSU series, running the same topic over a few episodes was a nice idea.


That's it for my own nominations, though if you have different ideas then please leave a comment telling me why I'm wrong! Also, if you have the time, Bad Dice are still looking for nominations. You can send them in by email to bencurry@baddice.co.uk 

Introduction

Hi there, and welcome!

I have decided to create this blog as a melting pot for my thoughts on various aspects of my hobbies. I find it quite interesting to keep track of things, and this will hopefully offer a place where I can do that. To start with though, a short introduction to what you can expect to find on this blog!

There are a fair few hobbies that I am involved with, the first and major one being wargaming. Mostly this takes the form of Warhammer Fantasy, but I occasionally dabble in other games too, Malifaux and Blood Bowl being ones I have played this year. This will be the main focus of by blog, with posts tracking my painting as well as thoughts on army lists, games played and events I go to.

The second thing I expect to write about is board gaming. Not the boring, play with your family at Christmas, Monopoly and Cluedo type board gaming, but more in the style of Euro Strategy games, such as Ticket to Ride, Settlers of Catan or Dominion. These types of games usually rely less on luck and more on planning, strategy and forethought to do well in.

Finally, and the inspiration for the title of the blog, the sport of choice that I follow is baseball. I doubt you will see many posts relating to this, but every now and again something may crop up and warrant a post or two. Especially if it involves the San Francisco Giants, my team!

I hope that there will be something interesting here for people to read. If there is, please let me know!