Boardgame catchup

I managed a couple of boardgames over the last week or 2.   My son and I had a game of Labyrinth (from GMT Games).  There is more info on it here but essentially it's a challenging, and a little bleak , game pitting the US against Jihadists, trying to bring peace and stability to the world or to destabilise countries and gain influence (you decide which one's which!).  It's a great game but not always necessarily 'fun'.  It was a pretty close game until my son managed to set off the nukes (that he'd acquired while destabilising Pakistan)  in the US giving him an automatic win!

There was an interesting article in the last issue of Tabletop Gaming about boardgames that the CIA use for training purposes...someone had cleverly spotted that government produced material lies in the public domain if it hasn't been classified and quickly sent in a FOI request.  The CIA released a stack of everything to do with the projects (including practically every memo and rough notes) and there are several interesting games including one designed by Volko Ruhnke who designed Labyrinth and who happens to work with the CIA.

There are some interesting articles on the CIA games here and here

Last week I popped over to my friend Andrew's and we played out one of the scenarios from the GMT Games (I'm increasingly a fan of this company).  This was the battle of Eutaw Springs in which the British were unsportingly attacked by the nefarious colonials while out picking vegetables for breakfast!

A fun game with a lot of material in the box.  By the end of the evening (we didn't quite complete all the turns) the British were just about holding off the Swamp Fox and his mates but it was all beginning to fall apart.  If we'd had an extra half hour to play out the last couple of turns I reckon I would have caved in.  Great fun!