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'Modern Naval Battles' - 20/07/00
Spiller is off sunning himself in Turkey, so games night is reduced to two players. That said, bright lights have been seen at night fore-telling the return of Paul and Liz. Paul is the ubiquitous 'fourth player' ; a man possessed of a large amount of French Napoleonic figures, a passion for 6th Edition and a complete collection of Star Trek videos. He is also fanatically committed to his evening classes in psycho-pneumatic old people (or something like that), consequently we don't see him from one summer to the next. Liz is the ubiquitous 'fifth column' , who (in a selfless attempt to help Paul 'get out more often' drives him over giving us a chance to pull out the stock of 5/6 player games).But, they are not with us yet.
Dicken arrives with his carrier bag containing three cans of lager, which are still fastened with those plastic loopy things. Despite living within a Heath Streak stones throw of each other, both Dicken and Kendall always travel with a carrier bag - generally leaving it at each others house in an act of benevolent generosity. Evidence then of an anti-lager lout snobbery - and why not? - and perhaps a slight deference to the neighbours, several of whom are inclined to imbibe in the street. 'Modern Naval Battles' by Dan Verssen is agreed upon for tonight's game. While Kendall struggles to get to grips with the rules, Dicken man-fully sorts out the two packs of cards - there being no other components (except 2 dice) to keep him amused.
A roll of the dice and Kendall is consigned to suffering Dicken's mournful Russian accent for the rest of the evening. And the luck never changed either. Facing some feeble trawlers and three torpedo-less submarines, the US fleet purred into action with a series of chronic dice rolls 2, 2, 2, 1, 5 (whilst retreating), 2 , 2, 3, etc... True, the Americans did manage to draw a high proportion of 'Additional Ship' cards, but this merely provided more turkeys at Christmas. Air strikes delivered stunning blows, missiles never failed to hit their mark, guns fired as never before. The mighty US fleet stuttered amid 'Control damage' and 'Evasive Manoeuvres' ; three American ships vanished for every one Russian. Just when it seemed things could only get better... they did. One minute the Russian surface vessels were there, the next - gone! "Beam us up, Scotty". Kendall reaches gleefully for the rules to find what might happen when a navy has been blown away. But, Ha! - no mention of submarines. Are submarines ships??
Dicken fights on, Kendall scrambles through the Advanced rules. Two subs manage to draw down an inordinate amount of land based air defence and stoutly refuse to buckle under successive ASW attacks - nothing Kendall has above water can touch them. The only tactic left is to run down the deck (that's the deck of cards) as quickly as possible. Dicken wins by a margin of 50 points (about ten 'ships'). After a couple more tried and testeds Dicken declares on won two, lost one.
He's still 'on a roll' . Time for some de-caff coffee.
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