I met Juho on the Scottish fields of battle yesterday. Hammer of the Scots is one of my more successful games this year: I’ve played it four times now and I’ve won every single game. This time it was a marginal victory, I think the nobles split 8-6. I got a good start, mostly because of Juho got bad card draws in the early game (three event cards two years in a row — that’s bad!) and he made some tactical blunders, clearly caused by a lack of understanding of the rules.
His game got better later and I did some pretty bad die rolling, causing the game to balance a bit. Wallace was quite ineffective and it took me a lot of time to convert Comyn on my side. I did manage to grow a pretty good army quite early on, but then again, Juho used his archers surprisingly effectively.
I don’t know — Chris Farrell (who I respect a lot, when it comes to wargames) has commented Hammer of the Scots in a negative way, mostly because the battlefield is so limited. Our game was further proof of that — most fighting after the very early game happened in or around Mentieth. I can see how it can get boring. I’m not yet concerned and I’ve certainly enjoyed every game so far, but it might be a problem one day, the game might not last forever.
Fortunately I can always play Liberty to get some variation.
Oh, and for the first time ever, I had Wallace winter at Selkirk Forest as he ended the year somewhere with not quite enough food. I’ve never done it, because usually it would spell trouble, but this time it was quite easy to sneak out of there and connect to my main force (in Mentieth, no surprises there).