A couple more games played lately

So just a brief post to mention a couple of recent games.  La Granja is a mid-complexity Euro style board game about the lazy farming of rural Spain.  Players attempt to develop the most profitable estate with the least effort, there is an in game reward for having siestas!

Not as complex as it appears!

 One of the clever features of the game is the farm board (at bottom of the photo), which allows you to play cards from your hand in one of four different ways - as resources, special abilities or trade goods.  Therefore you find yourself weighing up the options of every card in you hand, and regardless of your strategy there is always a used for most of the cards in your hand.

It wasn't the clearest game after explanation, but we were pressed for time, and despite this it did make itself fairly clear once played.  Pretty much entirely devoid of conflict, La Granja is nevertheless worth the time - 90-120 minutes - to play.

But if it's conflict you want, and lets face it this is a Wargames blog so you probably do, Perhaps Star Wars Imperial Assault will be more up your street.

Having tried the introductory scenario with Jim a few weeks ago we were both keen to give it more play, and so have set to recruiting more players steadily as we begin the campaign mode.  For our first session proper we recruited Jim's cousin, John, and each took a legendary hero to try and destroy an imperial outpost.

Things didn't go well for the rebels

The guys found that even with lots of wounds and extra activations they were stretched from the start.  The mission objective was to destroy the four terminals in the outpost, but they only managed to get the first one.  having two ranged weapon specialists probably caused them issues, particularly when the E-Web gunner and another squad of Stormtroopers appeared.  Ultimately it was a mission failure for the boys, and they went back to their base to lick their wounds and try to recruit more heroes for the next time.

You may notice some of the models are painted.  No effort on my part, John had a collection of the old Wizards of the Coast Star Wars miniatures, we used these instead where possible.  They are only prepaints however and I am sure I can do better with my own.

In fact that may well motivate me...