Rike Stuff

A couple of games of Svea Rike as the club, still low in numbers due to the holidays, found itself exiled down below as the main hall was laid out for 'Out of Africa' kids activities.

First game was fairly standard, with a new player learning the ropes, and a number of successful battles against the foreigners. I manged to pick up a few points on the way by using event cards to help out these battles, but couldn't buy up enough land or resources. Low scoring in terms of points with Martin winning.

Second game was played at speed due to the limited time left, but was actually finished with no problem for time. This was strongly merchant based game, as a number of disastrous wars saw the lands depleted. Colin took victory with his pile of mercantile cash. I came second with my lands and resources after a quick early bout of merchanting before a war with Russia took them out.
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Swede Three Kings

Back at the Hall this week and a good turnout despite of the 'summer' weather i.e. Throwing it down.

A good mixture of games going on. 40K Planetstrike, Zombies!!! (with expansions), Uncharted Seas, AK-47 and a game of Svea Rike which I took part in.

A three player game, with two experienced players and a newbie, so of course the newbie won with a massive land-grab, normally a bad idea given the number of cards and events that can do over regions. I came second with a large pile of gold thanks to some excessive merchant activity in the final stage of the game. My only chance was if 'War with Russia' happened so as to remove his Finnish provinces, but it never did. Martin trailed in last.
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Swedes Again

More disorganisation at the club so once again Svea Rike came out. This time with five players, the max the game can take.

This time it was brutal with revolt and plague cards flying around right from the start and wars galore, including a Russian wipe out of the Finnish territories, effectively taking Colin out of the game, and two consecutive tax cards wiping out Martins horde of gold.

I managed a minor comeback after being forced to become middle-class halfway through the game after losing the last of my fiefs due to a disastrous battle. My existing resources\mines managed to generate enough coinage to allow me to eventually get some land back.

That battle was certainly a shock defeat as both Dave S and I had armies that could hit on 5 or less due to a arms race between us as we both bought any military resource cards that appeared.

Matt ended up winning the game with 7 points after basically not attracting any attention to himself.

There was a minor cock up during the game when the 3rd Era cards were put in play instead of the proper 2nd Era cards, this wasn't noticed for a couple of turns and some retro card accounting needed to take affect.
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Also at the club Phil was trying out the Warmachine rules by Privateer Press. Also a couple of games of Warhammer Fantasy were played. And the Great Pendragon campaign heads slowly towards its conclusion.
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Swedes rule the World

Another game of Svea Rike. Started off as a five player but then got reduced to four halfway through, this didn't really affect the game much though. In contrast with the last game that we played a couple of weeks ago this was very high scoring. Matt won on 17 status, Me next on 15, Martin 3rd with 12 and Alan trailing behind with 5.

All wars Sweden fought were comprehensively won, leading to lots of booty being dished out (and three status point from war based event wars). All fiefs ended up in play leading to a scramble for sets of Culture Cards towards the end. Taxation was the most common event on the History cards but none of the killer 50% tax event cards came out.



Also playing on another table was a game of Great War, once again based in Mesopotamia, with some Turks defending some trenches and a village from a British\Colonial assault. Some turncoat Arabs apparently didn't do the Turks much good, and neither did some accurately placed allied artillery.



The club was a bit short of members with not many of the 40Kers turning up this time, Holiday season once again kicking in.

Finally, At the end of the night, we got round to doing the map moves for the LotR campaign, leaving us with three battles pending for the next round.
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Displacement

Due to the hall being booked for other things we were all forced to share the room upstairs. Pros: Comfy Chairs, Cons: Too crowded. Given the restricted space, boardgames was the order of the day. The roleplayers were happy to lounge and one group of 40Kers found some room on the landing.

Svea Rike, a game that Martin managed to buy while in Sweden years ago, has become a bit of a club favourite often being wheeled out when nothing else has been arranged.

A well balanced game of the often over looked Swedish Empire. It always seem to go down to the wire, and although a bit of luck is needed the malicious playing of event cards tend to even out. Once you get your head round the English translation of the rules it's a very simple game to pick up.

The game ended up as a low scoring three way tie between Martin, Colin and I, on 3 points each, probably a record low score. The other 2 lads finished with 2 and 1 points each. Martin failing to earn the bonus point off a resource card that could of snatched him the game.

Martin had concentrated on resources, gaining 2 points from his collection of 4. Colin was busy building a coin mountain via trade with Russia, safe in the knowledge that the taxation cards had been played earlier, but at risk from a war with Russia. I was trying to get back into the game via resources after seeing almost all my large collection of fiefs disappear due to war (and there was a lot of war in this game, more than normal, and we lost a number of them and so most of out fiefs. I did manage to get a point for helping defeat the Polish.)

One fun example of the use of event cards was when Someone acquired a 'Queen' resource card, which was promptly stolen using an event card and then immediately stolen back with another. I then intervened and played the Plague event, which killed poor Queeny despite of her heroic rescue.

To finish the night off we then played a couple of rounds of Car Wars, the Card Game. This plays quickly to start with but does bog down when you get down to two cars left. I was wiped out quickly in the first, but managed to hold out and win the second.