War is hell

The outcome of wars can often be traced back to a decisive battle which swung the balance of power one way or another. This Wednesday surely will now see the battle of the Crystal Spires added to the list of D-Day, Thermopylae, Hastings and Waterloo. For in the dissection at the end of our game of Nexus Ops, James and I discerned that the outcome hinged on an epic battle staged in the opening act.

We had elected to set up the board in a configuration called "Close Neighbours" (I think) which places the opponents home bases next to each other. Bounding after far flung resources I turned back to see a rather weighty attack amassing at my border. I noticed that battlefield was a Crystal Spires hex and James had used troops which were hindered in such an environment. Sensing a chance at a devastating victory I amassed my own troops which carried an advantage in those hexes. As I advanced I placed down three special attack cards from my hand which allowed me to roll twice for each piece and add two to the roll of four of them. With such fire power I felt sure that James' pieces would be wiped of the map before he could fire a shot.

Shits about to go down

Unfortunately what happened next will go down in Nexus Ops lore for maybe weeks to come. James then laid his special ability cards down. First up was a card reversing the order! Argh! This meant he got to roll double the amount of dice first! Then a regeneration card which allowed his troops to survive and respawn in his home territory and finally he played a +2 to the roll card. His first roll was two 6's and two 5's. Blammo. A devastating attack - against me.... My remaining guys managed to hit some of his but due to the regeneration it was no hinderance.

I never recovered and James steam rollered me to an easy win 12 to 3.

Then onto 7 Wonders. James and I now have very definite playing styles in this game which is as follows. I collect brown card resources, James has a few and all the yellow card markets. I advance my military, James does enough to beat Dirk. James majors in blue building cards, I cover off a few. In the 3rd age I go for guilds and James lands the big blue cards.... We both totally disregard sciences!

In this particular game the guilds I picked were some doozies allowing me to get something like 18 points. The final tallies were the largest we've seen.
Chris - 70
James - 59

59 would have won in all of our previous games. (Checked against the old sheets)
For the record James had the Palace.