Games played over Christmas

'Twas the season to be jolly, and we even had the games room decked with holly, happily with no lacerations resulting. Once the Christmas dinner remains were cleared away the wrapping was torn off a variety of games-shaped presents, and we settled down to give them a try.

I had not been able to resist asking Father Christmas for a copy of Kingsburg, and had also taken the precaution of getting Sally the To Forge a Realm: expansion set. We had been playing Paul's copy before on Wednesday evenings at the shop, and as it plays well with two our own copy at home was a tempting proposition. We have now tried three of the expansions, each of which adds variety without significant complication. It is especially useful to have alternative building tracks so that a favoured route to victory has to abandoned in favour of trying something different - it keeps the game fresh and there will be more games played very soon.

The longest game tried was Stronghold (which I had cunningly bought as a present for a friend due to be visiting - do we detect a trend here?) With all the excitement about it at Essen last year we had to see what the fuss was all about; such criticism as there has been of the game has been that it is a resource management game masquerading as a wargame. Of course, all wargames are about resource management anyway, and as I like both types I could not see this being a problem, and it wasn't. I think that what distresses the avid wargamers is that the troops are represented by wooden cubes, and in fact it might be reasonably practical to replace them with 10mm or 15mm figures. But Pete, who owns the game, is quite happy with it as it is.

It should not, in fact, be a long game, and next time it won't be. First time out it inevitably took a long time to set up, and after about three hours we realised that something was wrong and re-read the movement rules again with the benefit of some hindsight. The game is of Polish origins and is written in almost, but not quite, perfect English. Now that we understand the nuances I reckon that it should take about 20 minutes to set up, followed by an hour of cagey manoeuvring and finishing with an hour of all-out assault and desperate defence. Victory goes to the defender if the assault takes too long, so the game has a finite length. It looks as though there are many subtleties in the options available, and I can see why the fans of the game like it increasingly the more they play it. Alas, Pete and I are both very busy men so getting together for regular games just isn't going to happen, but we have promised ourselves a rematch before long.

Firmly booked for a game over Christmas was Tobago. Its only real fault is the price, 40 quid being par for the course for heavyweight games these days but a bit marginal for a one-hour family game. In practice, of course, it is the one-hour games that get brought out at the drop of a hat so that you get your money's worth out of them, but the harsh realities of life post the collapse of the Pound are still taking some getting used to. Given the great current choice of games the more expensive options tend to go to the back of the buying queue, so I thought that I should do the decent thing and let the shop have a library copy.

Before the Stronghold game got under way we had a few hands of Grass, still one of the classics after over 20 years though its theme is rather more frowned upon in these more prescriptive times. There were also three games of Chelsea, which went down very well, though I was playing something else at the time. But what? More revelations in Part Two when I have spoken to some of the teetotallers present.