Billabong Boardgamers - 12th December, 2000
Present: Alan, Andrew, Asher, David, Donna, Craig, Julian
Alan Stewart writes:
BATTLE LINE
Players: Alan David
A tightly contested three hands.
In the first David used Deserter in a decisive play to remove my Shield Bearers before I could claim a row at the start of my next turn. This enabled David to gain an early victory with 3 in a row, the first time I've seen this happen in a game of Battlelines (or Schotten-Totten) I've played in.
In the final hand David ended up with an unplayable leader in his hand, and I couldn't play Traitor or Shield Bearers. In this hand my play of Scout proved decisive as amongst the 4 cards I picked up were the 2 David needed to win two rows! Not a tactics card I'd have picked as a critical card, Traitor or Deserter proved more devasting in the earlier hands.
Final scores:
Alan 2 + 5 + 5 = 12
David 5 + 3 + 3 = 11
David Coutts writes:
LORD OF THE RINGS
Playing: Alan, David, Asher.
This was the 3rd game of LOTR for all of us. In both my previous games, Alan was the Ringbearer going into Mordor. In our first game, with 5 players, we were looking pretty good as we started out in Mordor. However, we were soon in trouble and Alan (as Fatty Bolger) was soon all alone as Sauron advanced steadily towards him... In our second game, with 4 players, we were successful with Alan as Frodo the Ringbearer in Mordor. It was actually a very close finish, requiring Gandalf's help (& thus using up shields) so our score wasn't great - but we made it (with one or two sacrifices along the way...).
We decided to start Sauron on 15, this being only our third game. In the draw for our three player game I was dealt Frodo, Alan was Pippin and Asher was Sam. In the initial deal of 6 Hobbit cards, I got all grey cards (which is doubly useless as it meant I couldn't play 2 cards together, and Frodo's ability to white cards as wild cards was nullified). In discussing the rules with Asher, Alan & I discoevered that we may have played this rule slightly wrong with Roger (in our first game) and Doug (in our second game). Frodo can only use his ability for cards with one symbol (I'm pretty sure we'd allowed him to use his ability regardless of the number of symbols). Whilst on the subject of dodgy rules interpretations, Asher pointed out that on the first three scenario boards (all of which have tracks for only 3 symbols) the 4th symbol is unplayable. We had been playing it as a wild. Similarly, if you have completed a track, cards with the same symbol as that track are unplayable. Again, we'd played them as wild. I suspect the confusion had arisen with the rules relating to the event tiles, which state that if you turn over an event with a symbol which has no track on the current board then you CAN treat it as a wild symbol. Basically, our earlier games had been too easy (even the one we'd lost!).
Other games played: Aladdin's Dragons, Elfenland