52 Games - Update 5

It's nearly the end of October, so it's time for another update on my 52 Games project.

In the last update I announced that I'd finished the project, having just played my 52nd distinct game of the year. So anything from then on was a bonus. And there's been plenty of bonus content.

In September and October I have added ten new games, bringing my total to 62. Three of those were miniatures games; I played Black Seas, a Portable ACW Wargame and some WWII naval. The rest have been board- and card-games, thanks to MOAB, an unexpected Father's Day gift and the arrival of my kickstarter-backed games about the Sydney Royal Botanic Garden.

With our holiday coming up there's the possibility of maybe one or two more new games squeaking into the end of October as well. I don't think I'll make the magical 100 by the end of the year (and neither had I planned to) but I will certainly have a higher total than I expected back when I started this whole thing.

The Gardens

I finally got to play The Gardens yesterday. This is a boardgame set within the Sydney Royal Botanic Garden, so has a fun (relatively) local angle for me.

The aim is to take cards from a pool in the centre, and lay them on your board to build up a garden. Each time you lay a card, the meeple on that row moves from the position it's currently at to the new card. You then collect a score for the walk, which is based on what's on the card you laid and what cards the meeple passed over during its walk.

Here's the setup, before any cards have been played.

And meeples on the attractive scoreboard.

A turn in, and our gardens are starting to take shape. The cards feature items such as paths, streams, fountains, benches, trees and statues, and each item scores differently. Some, such as benches, score during the turn only, some, such as statues, only score at the end of the game and some things - trees and streams - score both during and at the end of the game.

After three turns I have a stream to the right of my board and a nice network of paths to the left.

The game ends when the players fill up their board. Here's our completed gardens; I won this game due to some strong statue placement and an extensive network of paths.

My one niggle with the game. One of the stretch goals was this wooden ibis which is given to the person who goes first in each turn. But try as we might we couldn't get it to stand up. It makes no difference to the game, but we were slightly disappointed.

Catherine and I played a second game after Maya dropped out. There's a small change to the way cards are placed in teh centre for two players, which makes for some interesting choices, but otherwise it's identical. Catherine's tree-based strategy gave her a big win over my streams in this game.

I don't know if The Gardens will set the world on fire in terms of gameplay or mechanisms, but it is nice to have an Australian-designed game with an Australian theme in the collection, and it was certainly fun to play and attractive to look at. There are advanced options for different scoring, as well as one featuring landmarks that are visible from the Botanic Gardens, such as the Bridge, Opera House, State Library, Art Gallery and so forth. These can be collected by players and it gives them additional scoring opportunities. The rules-book has information on the various plants, locations and birds featured in the game.

All in all, I'm glad I backed this.

(Note - my copy of the game has a few bits that were only available for backers of the kickstarter, so the off-the -shelf version might look a little different.)

52 Games - Game 62

Frocktober 2022 - Part 2

I am continuing to raise money for the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation here in Australia, through their Frocktober campaign and our team IT HAS POCKETS.

I felt that my opening efforts were a little muted, so for Frock Five I went for something bolder, teaming this dress with a bright yellow cardigan I got from one of the Frocktober sponsors, Little Party Dress. 

The dress itself is unusual, in that the print is a pattern of courgettes. I can't for the life of me think of why someone thought that a courgette-print was what people would want, but to my mind it works surprisingly well.

Frock Six was a lovely Hell Bunny dress I picked up from a local retro-style store last year and which hasn't had enough exposure since then. So it took it down to the beach when we all dressed up to go to ...

... a local hotel for ...

... the the traditional Frocktober High Tea. This year's was to celebrate our friend's birthday.

Frock Seven was bright and cheery and maybe a bit much for just a day at work.

But it dressed up nicely in the evening for a trip to the theatre to see comedian and musician Bill Bailey in concert.

And so I bring things up to date with Frock Eight - more yellow I'm afraid (and there's more yellow to come after this, possibly).

So I'm eight frock in and only need to do two more to reach my goal.

Here's that donations link again: IT HAS POCKETS

A Walk In The Park

This blog does seem to have turned into more of a boardgames blog than a wargames one, but I make no apology for that. I enjoy playing games and currently I'm finding more opportunities to play boardgames with family and friends than I am to get out any miniatures. Any game is better than no game, after all.

Anyway, you may remember that last year I backed a kickstarter for a boardgames called The Gardens, which I liked not just because it looked like a straightforward game, but was also designed locally and which has a local theme (I'm counting Sydney as 'local' here which, relatively speaking for most of you, it is).

Anyway, it arrived today, and whilst I've had a look through what's in the box I haven't had chance to play it yet. However as one of the stretch goals I got a copy of A Walk In The Park, which is a small roll and write game with a similar theme; taking a walk through the Sydney Royal Botanic Garden.

The game comes with a couple of hundred color playsheets, some pencils and a special dice.

 

The aim is to draw paths on the map linking up as many key landmarks as possible and accumulate the highest score you can.

It's designed for several players, but there is a solo mode, and I gave that a go this lunchtime in order to see how it played.  In the solo game you get to make 18 rolls and score as high as you can. If you score 18 or more points then you win.

The dice has five pathway symbols on it and one with an ibis on it (or bin-chicken, as we like to call them here). With each roll you have to fill in one of the 25 squares. Either you draw in a path hoping to get them to connect up, or you put a bin-chicken in the a square, which then blocks it from having paths, but gives you possible scoring options later.

Here's my opening moves. I've started a few paths, but also placed two ibis (the circles with a beak; I wasn't planning on being that artistic today. The aim is to hit the squares with a landmark in. Each time a path connects to one from the centre you get to select a scoring or bonus option from the column on the right.

Creating a closed circuit of paths allows you to place a statue (the 'S' in a circle). These also score at the end of the game.

And here's a my finished game. I failed to win by one point, despite six bin-chickens.

I had more success in my next game, and put more effort into my ibis. 

In a multiplayer game you score points for being the first to reach a particular landmark, and statues are scored based on who has the most, so there are a few differences. Also the game is played to a different end condition; it can have more, or fewer, than 18 moves.

It's an entertaining and mildly frustrating game, and is one we'll add to our holiday pile because it's pretty portable.

To finish up, here's the magnificent bin-chicken.

Here's a group of bin-chickens in action in our local area. They're a creature that has adapted well to the urban environment that has taken over the coasts.

And one in its natural habitat.

52 Games - Game 61

The New Dimachaerus

Over the past week or two I have been trying out my small tweak to the Dimachaerus in Blood, Sweat & Cheers, where I altered a couple of stats in order to improve its play-balance. 

It seems to have worked OK; the dimachaerus is still winning bouts, but at a lower rate. Indeed at the roughly 50/50 rate you'd expect.

Anyway, it was becoming a chore to adjust the number son the card in my head during actual play, so I did some quick and dirty Photoshop and made a modified version. And here it is, so you can try it out as well.

Simply download the image and print. It should be scaled to the right size. If not, I'll leave it to you to work out how to solve the problem.

HOTT At The Gong Garage Gamers

It's been a while since we played HOTT at the club*, but Geoff suggested it and I was happy to oblige. He brought his generic Medievals. In the first game I opposed them with some Elves I have in my collection. They're actually Cei's (he won them many, many years ago when he was still a wee lad), but now he's left home anything that's left in my cupboard of figures is mine by right of conquest.

So here we are, all set up with Geoff defending. He had lots of knights, shooters and spears, backed up with a paladin and a behemoth. I had a mix of knights and shooters supported by a hero and a magician.

Armies advancing.

Preparing to charge. Geoff's spears are based for ADLG, so are on double-depth bases with loads of figures. Each of those blocks was run as a single spear element, in the same way that my Swiss blocks are with six figures are run as a single warband or blade element when I use them for HOTT.

The armies meet. Geoff decided to match his behemoth with my magician general, and the paladin with my hero. They're probably not choices I would have made, but he felt they were viable.

The paladin died (to be fair he was a point up in the combat, so the odds were in his favour), and the behemoth fled. But my knights were falling back

Knights fighting on the flank.

The elven archers cleared their opposing numbers from the other flank.

The behemoth returned to the battle, and faced the magician again. This time it was destroyed and this was enough to push Geoff's army past its breakpoint, so I picked up a win. I'd lost a few elements, so it was a decent game and not a walkover.

I defended in the next game, using the same army. Geoff ditched the paladin, and added a cleric (as the general) and an airboat.

The airboat was swiftly dealt with, when my magician, casting a spell outside of the zone of influence of teh cleric, forced it to flee off the table edge

On the other flank Geoff's bowmen swiftly dealt with everything before them. My army was already racking up some losses.

The fight in the centre involved knights pushing back and forth and the hero and magician supporting my efforts. On the flank my archers were in hand-to-hand combat with Geoff's spears and holding their own.

Whilst I was losing heavily on my right flank I had a good position on the other flank, but after taking out one spear couldn't get the kills.

My magician general got attacked by a phalanx, and recoiled into Geoff's marauding archers. So I lost this game.

In the final game Geoff defended again. I switched to my Redwall army.

Geoff's army faced some shrew lurkers in the first bound, but drove them off.

Geoff had ditched the airboat and replaced it with some artillery. I had an army which relies on two heroes being pushed to the fore. Needless to say one of the heroes died pretty quickly.

My cunning plan was to close quickly to avoid being shot at by the artillery more than necessary.

To be honest the advance was a bit piecemeal. Still, I soon had elements stuck in to the fight.

Redwall's abbot himself led an attack on the gun. He's a horde general, so a little vulnerable, but with the army's sparrow allies providing support the attack wasn't a total disaster. The gun was soon dealt with,

Surprisingly the plucky animals of Redwall held their own and soon Geoff's army was starting to break up. Spears fell to persistent warband attacks, whilst the archers were outshot by their Redwall opposite numbers.

As the animals regrouped for a final push, Geoff decided to bring some knights across from his left to his right.

Unfortunately they blocked the recoil of the cleric general and Matthias the hero was quick to exploit the opportunity.

So a win for Redwall in what I think was their club debut.

I really enjoyed playing HOTT again.

*Eighteen months, apparently!

Frocktober 2022 - Part 1

 And here it is! The first Frocktober post of 2022.

As regular readers know, every October I go wild with the wearing ow dresses in order to raise money for the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation as part of their Frocktober campaign. Each year my wife, daughter and I set up a fundraising team called IT HAS POCKETS and demand money with attractive menaces from people of social media.

Oh look! There's a link in that previous bit.

The hardcore Frocktober participants will wear a different outfit on each of the 31 days of October. Some even do themed challenges. If you're on Instagram or Twitter you can follow the hashtags #Frocktober2022 or simply #Frocktober and see what they're up to. My goals are more modest. Wearing a frock every day for 31 days isn't really viable for me (I simply don't have the energy, even if I do have the frocks), so once again I have set myself the challenge of at least ten frocks during the course of the month. In my previous four years of direct fund-raising I have managed over $2000 and worn over 40 different frocks. This year I will be attempting to wear frocks that I haven't worn in the previous four years. As I said; I have a lot of them.

Frock One - a bold print dress from Dangerfield was the perfect way to start this  year's fundraiser. I wore it to MOAB in Sydney.

For Frock Two I went cuter but more subdued. 

On to Frock Three, which was a retro-style cherry-print I wore for a trip up to Sydney to see a wildlife photography exhibition.

And the last one for this post - Frock Four was something nice for the office which, oddly enough, is where I wore it.

And here's that donation link again: IT HAS POCKETS