RogerBW's Blog

On Boxing Day because we felt like it, one long game and two shorter ones. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.

We opened with Firefly with all the expansions. (Plus bonus card holders.)

Setup was The Browncoat Way, with the Jail Break story card. We ended up with Nandi on Bonanza at Osiris, Murphy on Esmeralda at Space Bazaar, Marco on Jetwash at Regina (me) and Malcolm on Artful Dodger at Persephone. Clearly we were going to go for some pretty divergent approaches.

Both Nandi and I started out trying for interesting crew, and not getting much initial luck, while the other two moved straight into getting solid with Harken and Badger.

I made a triple-job run for Patience from Georgia into Kalidasa to build up a cash reserve first, then dropped back in via Persephone and the Cruiser to pick up some easy jobs. My crew were all Wanted and not Moral; I had a couple of Mudders to throw to the Operative, to distract him from the ones who were actually important to me.

Murphy tried the attack on the Cruiser first, and came off badly. I went in with Tech 4 vs 6 and Fight 6 vs 10 (plus a double roll from the Mare's Leg), and made it. Malcolm was just one action behind me, but fortunately remained so until the end of the game. With better planning I could have done it in one turn fewer with the ramjets, but I needed one last action to refuel. In fact I ended up not using the special abilities from Jetwash at all, and should have gone for one of the standard Fireflies.

Then a couple of lighter games, at least in theory, to finish off with. Rivers, Roads and Rails is a domino-style game with occasional branching (at which we all tied). It's not so much thematic as pleasing in the matter of art.

Finally Cats' Mansion in which you want to get your cat to its preferred toy, without letting anyone know which of each is "yours"; on your turn you can move any cat, or indeed any object.

It's actually remarkably deep considering it's a mass-market boardgame from 1984.