RogerBW's Blog

Back to this this small quarterly boardgames convention in Watford, and I kept up my pattern of not winning any game I play.

I started with Nicola Zealey's customised Wings of Glory, with a new scenario: photograph the enemy position, then get the spotter off the board, while shooting down the enemy. Our forces were fairly even, with identical spotter planes and Fokker Triplanes versus Sopwith Camels.

The photographers immediately charged across No Man's Land to get into position for the picture run.

One of the hated British peeled off from escorting their observer and moved in on us.

Their own observer strayed somewhat out of position.

The battle soon dissolved into the traditional ball of chaos and disorder.

I got in the first damaging hit, when my observer was able to land a few rounds on one of the Sopwiths. I'd already finished my observations, and was on my way home: staying alive was considered more important than hanging around to help with the battle.

The enemy had also been at work, and our fighters turned in to chase him down before he could get his photographs back to base.

Unfortunately without a great deal of success. (I love those fire markers.)

I was well off the board by this point. The two triplanes carried on trying to catch up with the British observer.

One British fighter (left) sneaked in some strafing on our ground positions.

We hit the "four more turns" real-time limit. Damage was starting to build up on our planes.

This didn't deter them, of course.

It was somewhere around this stage that the two remaining German fighters had only one damage point each remaining.

The British observer was on fire, but still made it home.

Unlike one of the Triplanes.

In the end, a British victory: we'd done a better and quicker job of the photography, but the loss of a plane towards the end doomed us.

After lunch we moved on to Firefly, using a quick scenario to show off the game to the two novices at the table: get solid with two contacts, make $6,000, get to Ezra. All the expansions were in use. I decided to take the Interceptor in the hope of picking up some lucrative crime jobs (which never happened).

On the other hand, by the third turn I'd already got my two initial jobs done, and two solid contacts. Now I just needed the $6,000.

A run out to Meridian was somewhat impaired by evil-minded players siccing the Reavers on me. (But as a single-crew ship, I just built up lots of Disgruntled tokens.)

Once I got out, I had the mother of all shore leave, and hired some crew at Regina.

Serenity went out to rim space, and similarly attracted Reaver attention, but only got caught once.

The rest of us were working on money: one player had three crew who'd give bonus cash when selling cargo, while another had excellent luck with a couple of Misbehave cards.

I had bad cards but good dice luck, and managed to get the cash too. So it was a three-way race.

Unfortunately I was one turn behind. One of my rivals got Cruisered and had to pay off a warrant.

If the Artful Dodger had had bad nav card luck, I'd have got in before it, but it didn't.

I was surprised at just how close the three-way race at the end turned out to be. Pity it wasn't four-way; this game can sometimes leave people a bit screwed over, especially if you risk an early Misbehave.

In this short version, there's not much building up of crews or taking on tough jobs, but I think it still did a decent job of showing what the game was about.

Other people were playing a game I didn't catch the title of, Terra Mystica, and Lords of Waterdeep.

We felt like a light game to finish, and I had Guillotine to hand.

Thanks to Nicola for continued work on a very impressive game, and to Lawrence for organising things again. The next one will probably be on 23 May, but details will in any case be on Boardgamegeek.