My Advanced Squad Leader games have recently been put on pause as Michael and I have had slightly differing schedules during the last couple of weeks. In the meantime, I finally managed to play Glen, who had rather liked the look of the game when he saw Michael and me playing it. So, ever the sucker for introducing newcomers to the game, I set up … Continue reading Advanced Squad Leader: S1 Retaking Vierville
I managed to play another game of Talisman last weekend, occasionally with four players, but beginning with three and ending with three. Not the same three! The game used only the base set and the Dragon expansion. We used one of the Dragon Realm Inner Regions, but it ended up being irrelevant to the game’s end. Unlike the Firelands, the Dragon expansion doesn’t get particularly … Continue reading Talisman: The Dragon expansion play report
One of the effects of mostly experiencing the playtest rules only through my weekly D&D Encounters sessions is that I’m now very familiar with low-level play in the game. And, likewise, I have no idea what happens at the higher levels. This Saturday, I’ll get a chance to see something new: play at the dizzying height of sixth level! Fifth and sixth level have generally … Continue reading D&D Next: The Dizzying Heights of Sixth Level
Well, here we are. The second of Hoplite’s scenarios and it’s the most famous battle of Antiquity. Of course, the reason that it is so famous is because we still run a race named after the battle place, thanks to the inventions of the Greeks and Robert Browning. Ask anyone what actually happened at Marathon and you probably will get the answer “the Greeks won”, … Continue reading Hoplite: Marathon – Attica, Greece – September 490 BCE
Due to our scheduling, this was the final session of Scourge of the Sword Coast before the Dead in Thay launch weekend on the 10th of May. It also turned out to be the second-most well-attended session, with three brand new players turning up; I handed them some of the pregenerated characters I’ve created for this season. They’ll make new characters for next week’s event. … Continue reading D&D Encounters: Scourge of the Sword Coast finale
The latest game in Richard Berg’s and Mark Herman’s Great Battles of History series – the fifteenth title, in fact – is Hoplite, which takes a look at battles in the era of the Greek city-states before the rise of Alexander the Great. As the title says, it was the era of the Hoplites – spear and shield-carrying soldiers, often arranged into great phalanxes, bristling … Continue reading Hoplite: Ephesus (Ionia, Asia Minor – 498 BC)
My AD&D campaign split last week, as I was a bit uncomfortable with running yet another session of 8 players (and with the potential of another two players turning up!) In fact, the level range of the characters – from third to tenth – is somewhat of a problem. Yes, the low-level characters can participate, but they’re often outmatched by the experienced hands. The other … Continue reading AD&D: Enter the City
All of my regular table were able to make it for the eleventh session of Scourge of the Sword Coast. We only had one other table this week, but it had seven players and one DM. Personally, I would have preferred to split it into two tables, but we were missing both our regular third DM and our back-up DM, so Ben did a good … Continue reading D&D Encounters: Scourge of the Sword Coast session 11
Between a Magic prerelease event and D&D, I only managed to play one board game yesterday – and that game was Suburbia, a relatively light game that Dave and Rich played with me. After quite a number of heavier games during the week, it was nice to relax with this game. It’s a game I would categorise at about the same level as Carcassonne and … Continue reading Suburbia
My ANZAC Day passed with a lot of board-gaming going on. Unusually, I didn’t play any pure wargames, but I did play some very good games spanning a few decades of gaming. Magic Realm is an astonishing game. The first time I noticed it was when, as a teenager, I opened up the Military Simulations catalogue and discovered that their example of “most complex” game … Continue reading Magic Realm, Twilight Struggle, Talisman and Lords of Waterdeep
