Laser Quest

Due to a cock up on my part where I bought the expansion for Thurn & Taxis, and the inability of the Yodel delivery man knock on a door even remotely loudly, my promised new games were not in evidence. Paul took the news manfully and considered that we might give A Few Acres Of Snow another try. Even though we played it maybe 8 weeks ago half of the rules were missing from our collective memory. It's not a game that is taken out of the box and played within 5 minutes of recap as it has special rules for a lot of things and, as last time, we found that we played a few rules incorrectly before it was too late.

Fate dictated that I was to play the well positioned but impoverished French and Paul took on the British dandies. Both sides began filling up their respective decks with all kinds of great sounding cards without really fixing on a strategy. Indeed this game seems to the inexperienced player one where you sort of make it up as you go along and hope for the best. Paul decided that he was going to be a pain in the French underbelly with multiple raids all along the rapidly expanding front line. I, however, tried to muster as much military as my puny funds would allow. It was around this point that I realised I'd only been taking one money for trading furs, something I'd done a lot. Then just as Paul and I had traded a couple of speculative sieges the clock chimed 10.30. (It didn't. My clock doesn't even have chimes. It does tick though. It's something Jacquie had before we met. It doesn't go at all with our kitchen décor…)

Where does all the time go? Having a couple more goes each we totted up the scores.

Paul 43

Chris 46

A narrow mid-game win for the French but really it was nicely balanced at that point.

On Monday I also resumed games with James. We had a game of Stone Age which I won but afterwards he brought out a new game that he had received for Christmas, Khet. For those that don't know it is Egyptian Themed laser chess. Your board is made up of a grid of squares and in two corners opposite each other is a piece which fires a real laser. (Tesco style not James Bond). You then have a two types of 45 degree mirrored pieces, one which has a single mirror and a solid back and the other has two mirrors back to back, these can swap places with an opponents piece. There are three non mirrored pieces and one of these is the Pharaoh (King) and this is what you are trying to hit by clever placement of mirrors. You can knock out your own pieces so it is a real head spinner.

I sucked at it and lost both my games pretty quickly. I would like to play it again though.