Holiday Games

So here I am, back after a two-week holiday road-tripping through the Northern Territory. 

Actually we hired a camper-van in Darwin and just drove down to Uluru, but that's road-tripping in my book.

Anyway, I always try to post a run-down of any games we played whilst we were away, but this time the pool is rather small. With one thing and another we didn't find a lot of time to sit and just play; that's not to say that we didn't have an interesting (and mostly good) holiday; we just didn't manage much in the way of gaming time.

So let's get started. An evening in a pub is always a good place for games. We actually spent a lot of it playing pool and darts, and technically since I counted the latter as one of my 52 Games I should count the former as well. But I didn't take any pictures and I'm not sure it really counts anyway, so I'll be leaving it. However we did break out Fluxx, and that is a new addition to my 52 Games list. We played several games with just the four of us - Catherine, Maya, myself and our travelling companion Rafaela, who used to live with us whilst she was at university in Wollongong and who now lives in Darwin. Raf finds some of the games we play confusing at first; here she is wondering how Fluxx works.

And here's one of my winning positions. I think we all won at least one game.

Afterwards we had a go at A Walk In The Park, which seemed to confuse Raf a lot and baffled Maya and Catherine for a bit as well, but we were all quite tired (we were doing a lot of travelling and driving), so that's understandable. We also played Skull, which is far less confusing. In fact, aside from one more game of A Walk In The Park in Alice Springs, Skull became the go-to game for the rest of the holiday.

Owing to an incident with our camper-van we found ourselves stuck at the pub for the whole of the following day. However it's the Daly Waters Pub on the Stuart Highway, and there are far worse places you could be stuck for a day whilst waiting for a mechanic to turn up. We played more pool, lounged about in the pool and, in the case of Catherine and myself, played some Blood, Sweat & Cheers, mostly to justify my carting a box of 25mm gladiators across the country. I made a small travel arena as well, using the underside of an old table-mat.

The main bar of the Daly Waters Pub at 10am on a Thursday in the off-season.

Rufina the thraex fights a murmillo.

Rufina is one of my unlucky models, and even Catherine couldn't prevent her defeat.

The whip-wielding Rodan fell to Cygnus the hoplomachus almost immediately, after being impaled by a thrown spear.

Catherine finally scored a win in the next game, with Rodan (or his twin brother), taking on the armoured scissor Syphax ...

... and defeating him

One thing we did try was to not only treat the Imperial Favour card as a Glory card, but have it such that if it had been played during a turn it caused the entire discard pile and deck to be reshuffled. 

So, in summary, it was a good holiday (aside from the mechanical difficulties, the ridiculous heat and the radioactive material incident) but we didn't play many games.

 52 Games - Game 63

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