Tag: board-games

June 1, 2013
June 1, 2013
Due to selling off some stuff from the Aladdin’s Cave I call my garage, I’d accumulated quite a large PayPal balance. So I decided to treat myself with some unnecessary, but fun, board game accessories for my Wings of War collection.

I love Wings of War (now republished as Wings of Glory), but it doesn’t reach the table that often. This isn’t due to lack of interest – in fact, recently one of my friends was asking why we haven’t played it for so long – but it is more due to they way I currently have it stored – with each plane individually boxed. This not only makes it a bit of a faff to set up – opening lots of boxes – but also makes it a job to put away, because – of course – each plane must go back in the correct box.

February 25, 2013
Yesterday, I had friends round to play boardgames, and I planned to cook some burgers, as it is fairly effortless with the pellet grill, and doesn’t keep me away from the games table.

Mindful of what I said on Saturday, I visited my butcher, only to be told they had had a big run on their beef burgers, presumably by others defecting from the supermarkets. I could come back later when they had made some more; I could buy some mince and make my own; or they had some pork and apple burgers.

January 11, 2013
April 24, 2012
Played an interesting game last night – Risk Legacy. It is a version of Risk, but one where the board, factions and rules change from game to game, based on what happened in previous games. I haven’t come across anything like it before – a game that requires you to apply stickers to the board, write on it, and even tear components up!

On the first play, the game is fairly vanilla, but almost immediately, you start making your version of the game unique. Players are given a “Starting Power” card with two stickers, each sticker with an power for their faction. They are instructed to stick one of their choice onto their faction card, and then tear up the “Starting Power” card, complete with the other sticker, removing it from the game forever. So people playing this game in future will be using the powers chosen by the first players.

May 28, 2011
Had 4 of my board gaming buddies around today for an all day session of Android. It’s a wonderful but complex game, set in a “Blade Runner” type world. I was providing lunch, but I wanted something that I could prepare in advance, and require a minimum of attention while we were playing.

I read a nice recipe for loin of pork, where it is cooked on a bed of cooking apples, which go to make the sauce. I liked the sound of this, so I looked for a loin yesterday, but they were all quite small. In the end I bought one that might feed a family of 4, so I also bought a tenderloin, which was on offer.

December 30, 2010
Haven’t been online for a few days, so thought I would catch up.

Christmas Day was spent with friends near Spalding. I was due there at 1pm, but arrived half an hour early, having allowed for problems that never occurred. I had been concerned about what the roads would be like, but in the morning, the sun came out, and the roads were completely clear.

August 23, 2010
Having spent a whole weekend filking (and a little board gaming) at Halsway Manor a week ago, I spent the whole of this weekend at my friend Jeremy’s. His family had gone off camping, so 5 of us settled in for a 3 day games fiesta. Food was supplied, so a couple of us took it upon ourselves to supply the beer, and a good time was had by all.

Here are the games we played.

June 26, 2010
I use forum software (phpBB) to run my Board Game group’s website. One of the problems with doing this is spammers trying to sign up to the forum so they can spam it. Although I have safety precautions in place – no-one’s posts are made public until I am sure they are a real person – the sheer numbers of spamming attempts used to make this a chore.

The spammers use automated software to detect the type of forum software a site uses, and act appropriately in signing up. The demonstration of this that I saw was amazingly sophisticated – the spamming software first signs up for a new hotmail/gmail/whatever email account, then goes through a submitted list of likely forums, registering with each one, using that address. It then tests to see if it has posting access – if it does, it posts spam, if not, it then waits for (and responds to) any security/registration emails the forum software sends, all automatically – then having been approved, it posts spam.

May 2, 2010
Had a very pleasant day visiting and . and it was also great seeing everyone else who came along. The weather wasn’t good enough for the planned BBQ, but we all ate well just the same. With boardgames before and after lunch and some impromptu music later in the evening, it was a good day.

Until I discovered that my Eee, which I was planning to use this week, had broken and wouldn’t boot. Handing it over to , he eventually diagnosed a file corruption problem – possibly caused by an unplanned loss of power. The solution was to reload the original OS from ROM, and then download and reinstall my various software updates.

April 17, 2010
Last Saturday, I was due to host my gaming group on an all day + BBQ gaming day. However, I had to postpone it a week, due to my being ill the previous week – I knew if I made it to the Gadget show on the Friday, I would be knackered for the Saturday.

What a decision – today the sky was without cloud. The first gamers arrived at 10am, with more arriving at 11am, and we played through to 1:30, by which time I had the BBQ going. We all ate far to much red meat (except for the vegetarian!), and then went back to play, just in time to hear the ice cream van. We all rushed out to great it, screaming like kids.

December 25, 2009
So as I posted earlier in the month, what might have been a solitary Christmas for me turned out not to be, as two of my board-gaming friends found themselves on their own as well, due to various circumstances.

Originally, I had ordered a stuffed turkey leg joint, which should serve 2-3 typical portions, and would have fed me with plenty of leftovers for Boxing Day. When John said he would join me, I thought it would still suffice, but on hearing Bob could make it too, I decided to get a breast joint instead, serving 4-6 people.