RogerBW's Blog

Yesterday was my first visit to this small quarterly boardgames convention in Watford.

And very small it was; I think we got up to around fifteen people, and twenty-five would have been crowding the room. It's really more of an extended club day than a convention as it's usually understood, but none the worse for that.

I started with Castellan, since Lawrence the organiser had expressed an interest. I haven't played this for a while, and apparently I had forgotten how to go about it, since I lost horribly. But Lawrence seemed to enjoy it, so the demonstration did its job.

I moved on to Nicola Zealey's somewhat customised Wings of Glory: same basic rules as the standard game, but altitude was handled in a more realistic way. As it turned out, I misinterpreted the more experienced players' suggestion that we should split the team high and low, started far too high, and spent most of the game trying to get down to where the fight was happening, but it was still a most enjoyable game.

Then it was time for Revolution with the Palace, another favourite I haven't played for a while. Opinions were mixed, but it was still a fairly tight game at least between the two lead players, which certainly did not include me.

After lunch we tried Mousquetaires du Roy, a cooperative game which apparently suffered very badly from mistranslations of rulebook and cards. We seemed to have a pretty workable rules set, and did reasonably well at first. There are multiple ongoing challenges (perils in Paris, problems at the Court, Huguenot rebels at La Rochelle) as well as the four-stage quest (to return the Queen's diamonds) to be completed, and even with five players we were stretched pretty thin. We ended up just barely losing, after a pair of combats that should have been a tough but reliable win for me ended up as losses and, after we'd worked out what should have been a viable backup strategy for the final turn, we lost that turn to a treachery card. Ah well. Fun, and a gorgeous board, though if I owned it I suspect I wouldn't get it out very often; it's a bit of a brain-melter.

We finished with King of Tokyo, where for once I wasn't the first player eliminated (all right, I was joint first). Still not a huge fan, but what the hell, it's quick and reasponably fun.

Not that I'd mind if I'd actually come close to winning in any of these games. But as long as the process of playing the game is enjoyable I don't feel that huge competitive urge that some people experience.