Monthly Archives: March 2016

Yes Yes Yes

Last night was the monthly meet up of the Fenland Gamers gaming group in Wisbech (Capital of the Fens, Centre of the Universe).

Our first game of the evening was a five player game of Istanbul. We were playing the base game with the kebab shop promo. Which replaces the water fountain tile, which as popular opinion and I agree on is the better of the two tiles to use. It doesn't just allow you to recall your assistants but gives you an alternative action to do instead of paying two coins to send your criminal relative to another tile on the board to do the action of that tile.

For our game we used the random tile setup, instead of the short or long routes setups. Jonathan has his little game plan for the short route setup that scores him gems very easily using just three tiles that are close together. I wasn't sure if he had a similar plan for the long route setup. But I wasn't going to risk it. Neutralise the plans with randomness. See before the game had even had its first turn, the game had started in the setup!

Luck was on my side in this game, and I took an early lead in collecting three of the five gems that I needed, while the rest struggled to get enough goods together to collect one. I'd hit on a nice little engine, that allowed me to recycle a bonus card to get me the resources I needed to go buy the gems.

Katie did interrupt that flow by buying one of the gems pushing up the cost of my next one. But I'd got four gems this way before it was no longer a viable scoring option for me. I needed one more gem to win. The others had started scoring gems, Jonathan was starting to get close.

But I had a plan.

If I could gather sixteen coins I could buy my final gem from another tile. The others hadn't spotted what I was doing. They had hardly any money each, so none of them was going to be threatening to ruin my scoring opportunity.

I had a bonus card that allowed me to move three or four tiles instead of two. Then a five coin bonus card was left on the tile that allows me to grab a bonus card. No one took it. I got to the tile grabbed the bonus card, checked my math, I had the sixteen coins needed to buy the winning gem.

My next turn would be my winning move, despite the tile I needed to get to being three tiles away. I had that nice bonus card that allowed me to get there in one move and win.

Wow I'd won my first game of Istanbul ever. Ok I've only played it a couple of times previously, but despite loving the game I'd lost them.

Next up after my glorious victory, was a four player game of WWE Superstar Showdown. I sat this one out, although it's a game I want to play (well I do own it). My contribution to the game was ref! And just like the real thing, not an impartial ref.

It was boys against girls. Gavin and Jonthan had drafted Big E and the apex predator Randy Orton. While the Katie and Jo had John Cena and Daniel Bryant.

The figures representing the wrestlers are quite good, and a nice size. Although the game supports upto four players, I think from my observation the game is more suited as a two player game.

The “rock, paper, scissors” mechanic when simultaneously revealing cards, and the pre-programming of your moves by selecting the three cards you want to play, works well I think for this game.

I think thematically loosing cards from the deck mimics a wrestler getting weaker, more tired as the match goes on really well.

As Jonathan pointed out the iconography on the cards takes a little getting used to. Luckily there are some handy reference guides on the board itself.

I'd love them to release an expansion for the game of some classic wrestlers like my favourite Stone Cold Steve Austin, or The Undertaker. Maybe add more event types.

In the meantime this is one I'll play with Nath (he's a wrestling fan, or was). I think it helps if you are a fan of wrestling to get the most out of this game. It does seem to capture the theme well. What I observed hasn't put me off the game. It won't go down as a great game. But it will be one of those fun, light games I think. But proof of this will be when I play it with Nath and see what he thinks.

 

Runners and Wonders

Last night was the weekly Chatteris Warlords meet up.

As usual there was some Bolt Action action going on along with some Early Napoleononic war gaming.

But for me I had some business to do. Firstly I had a Colt Express Time Machine promo to deliver. Followed by picking up some stuff. If you stork me on Instagram you will know what one of the items was, otherwise you'll have to wait until Saturday's post. Oh what a tease I am.

Tuesday's are now my Weekly Netrunner fix. This week I was playing Ben again. Our first game was my Noise against his Corp (I think PE). I took an early four point lead with two agendas hitting an unguarded R&D and Archives, which Ben replied to by scoring an agenda back, and icing up R&D.

The unguarded Archives allowed me to build up Datasucker, and Incubator, while running the odd Retrieval Run. Trying to slow my plans down, Ben would occasionally purge virus counters.

I got Medium out I had five virus counters sitting on Incubator. I had enough credits to install and trash DDOS, and DDOS was sitting in my grip. There were also four virus counters on Datasucker. Sitting between me and hitting R&D for a nice five card draw, was a single unrezed piece of ice. I was crossing my fingers Ben wasn't going to purge virus counters. If he did that was going to ruin my next turn.

Ben's turn happened, I still had my virus counters in place. Time to execute my plan. I trashed Incubator putting the virus counters on Medium. Installed DDOS and trashed it. Then ran on R&D. The Corp was unable to stop me. First card drawn an agenda worth three points and giving me the win.

Our second game my NEH was up against Ben's Noise.

Ben scored an early two point agenda from my HQ, to which I replied scoring my only single point agenda 15 minutes. Which I was hoping he would score so I could pull it back into R&D.

I landed a couple of tags, which with Ben hitting a snare and me hitting him with a traffic accident, reduce Ben to zero cards in his grip.

Sadly I wasn't able to finish the job off and murder him. But it did slow Ben's plans down. Ben quickly removed the tags.

We sparred away, trying to gain momentum for our plans. I drew two scorched earths. I just needed to land a tag. Oh and have enough credits to play them both. I had enough to play one, but it would be two turns before I could land the second. There was a good chance Ben would not have rebuilt his grip enough for me to murder him with the second scorched earth.

Ben ran on R&D gaining a tag. BOOM! First scorched earth landed. Oh wait Ben had only three cards in his grip! I'd killed him. Woot! Two for two tonight.

My final game of the evening was taking part in a seven player game of 7 Wonders.

It was interesting playing the game with this many players. Not sure if I like it more than a four player game.

To cut a potentially long story short, I came second from last.

Another enjoyable evening gaming. Followed by the monthly Fenland Gamer meetup tonight ^__^

 

Man v Demons

While Debbie is off answering the lure of grease paint and treading the boards reprising her off off off Westend Olivier Award winning performance of third tree from the left, the rest of our pandemic fighting group had to find our own entertainment for last night.

Sadly Matt was unable to make it, leaving Jonathan and myself to duke it out over the tabletop field of cardboard.

Our first game of the evening was Discoveries. A game Jonathan had been wanting to try.

During our game I was snapping up the tribes cards, especially after I got one early that allowed me to ignore whether the tribe was a friendly or hostile tribe. What I had forgotten was the points are awarded for the tepees based on who has the most, and not for the actual number you have. Which gave me a six point advantage instead of a twelve point one.

Damn that was a big miscalculation. One that cost me the game. Jonathan did better on the set collection than me, and edged the points scored on completed explorations also. So the six point advantage I got on the tepees was not enough to swing the game in my favour.

I think when the worst thing you can say about a game are comments about how the dice feel too light, or they should have included the score pad, then the game has to be good. And it is an enjoyable game. Is it a great game? No. But definitely one that will see more play. I have to try it with more players, who knows the whole game may change and become great.

Our second game of the evening was Battlelore Second Edition.

I was playing the Uthuk Army, while Jonathan played the Daqan Army.

One of the nice touches over Memoir '44 is the mustering of your army. This is basically building your army from the forces available to you before combat. This was our first play so we went for the other nice touch of using one of the predefined armies provided for the game. The ones we chose are shown below.

I chose mine because I wanted to play with a big monster! While Jonthan chose his because he thought a smaller army would be easier to command while learning the game.

The great thing about Battlelore is having the setup being part of the game. Which means Jonathan and I get to choose a scenario for our half of the board.

These scenarios decide victory point scoring, and extras like getting lore points. They also decide first player!

Scenario with the lowest starting letter goes first. Which meant Jonathan was going first.

Then after setting up the board according to the scenarios chosen, it's time to place your forces on the board. And here is another great little touch. You place cards representing the units face down, along with dummy cards to disguise where your forces are. Then once all placed, both players turn the cards over and place the figures for their forces on the board.

Draw your starting hand of command cards and lore cards, and let battle commence.

Before starting I thought we might struggle to get enough lore to play lore cards, especially the higher cost ones. However that was not to be the case.

I made one tactical mistake right from the start. I thought I'd camp my Chaos Lord on my building to get the two lore tokens each go. However what I hadn't read before positioning near to the building was it can't occupy a building hex. Doh!

Destroying units doesn't earn victory points in Battlelore, as they do in Memoir '44. However occupying banner hexes at the end of your turn do. During the early game Jonathan was scoring two victory points each turn and taking an early lead on that front. The best I could achieve was a single point. But I was getting plenty of lore. So I thought my best avenue was to eradicate Jonathan's forces from the board, the second win condition.

I managed to stop Jonathan's victory point engine, and make good use of my lore cards. Occupying both banner hexes I had started getting two victory points each turn. Jonathan eventually started scoring victory points again. It was going to be a race for a victory point win. A smite the enemy from the face of the board was still on for me. But before that would happen one of us would have reached the required sixteen victory points.

My victory was a close win. If I hadn't won that turn, Jonathan would have won on his. It was that close.

Jonathan had been getting frustrated with his forces. The army was too light for going against mine. With the archers acting like artillery in Memoir, it didn't help that Jonathan was rolling badly! Which isn't helped with only one face on the die being the hit for archers. He wasn't much of a fan of the lore cards. I on the other hand was, I'd been using mine more effectively. I had even called a swarm to block line of sight on my units, stopping an attack.

I like Battlelore, it's your Memoir fix when you want a fantasy setting. There are some great touches to the game. Definitely one to get back to the table, and add to its armies.

 

An Organising Mood

Its criminal that I have this beautiful, amazing game called Imperial Assault in my collection and I don't get to play it!

I've played it once or twice which was about a year ago. I even took with me to play with Nath a couple of times.

Even though Imperial Assault is expensive, you get great value for money inside the box. The components and minis are of a really high standard. But the biggest bonus is that you are getting two games for the price of one! If you can find a regular group to play with, you have a campaign driven game to play, with one person taking on the side of the Empire, and the others in the group taking on the roles of members of the rebel alliance. Or you can play a skirmish match against a friend.

My only time of playing was the skirmish mode. It's where my main interest lies with the game. Squad building, pitting your tactics against those of your opponent.

What got in the way of Nath and myself playing was the setup. Sorting out the required tiles for the skirmish map that we would play. Having the base set, and Twin Shadows tiles all mixed together did not aid in this.

Thinking on this, I decided after finally unwrapping and merging in the Return to Hoth expansion I needed to do,something that would aid, nah, encourage me to get this to the table to play. Plus I missed the store championship at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole yesterday due to other commitments. I want to take part in the next one.

So today I've spent time organising my box of Imperial Assault stuff.

I started off splitting my tiles into bags. The first bag holds pieces numbered one to nine. Pieces numbered ten to nineteen in another, twenty to twenty nine in a third and thirty up in a fourth. Really big tiles were left loose.

Next I found the three current skirmish scenarios that are tournament legal (Kuat Space Station, Training Ground and Mos Eisley Cantina) and put into separate bags the pieces that made up each scenario. Although one had to have a note which tiles were missing because they had already been bagged for one of the other two scenarios.

I also bagged up the tiles for one of the Return to Hoth scenarios. The Hoth skirmish scenarios are aimed not only at two player skirmishes, but also the new rules for four player skirmish play.

So now I have four skirmish scenarios that I can jump right into playing, well with a lot less setup time. I still have to piece all the tiles together to make the map. Although I'm half tempted to download off BGG the files to get the skirmish maps printed out on banners, so I don't have any of this.

Next I might do some interweb searching for some pre-made squads to play with. Which will make it even easier for Nath and I to play together. Dig out the bag of tiles, choose a squad we'd like to play, put it together (and I may even create bags of the various squads so we don't have to do that).

In the meantime I will try to get some games in on a Tuesday, practice my squad building skills, ready for the next tournament.

Finally one thing I must do, and I feel guilty about this, is finishing painting the Stormtroopers, and then try and muster up the motivation to paint the rest also.

 

A Tale of Great Client Support

Finally got a replacement for the broken figure. Sadly not from Funforge but from the online store I ordered it from BoardGameGuru.

I got fed up hearing nothing from Funforge, and my friend Duncan suggested going back to where we got our Tokaido Deluxe Kit from. He had a missing bag sent to him very quickly. So I emailed BoardGameGuru with my tale of woe and explaining the delay in contacting them.

BoardGameGuru were appreciative that I tried Funforge first. And said they would get a replacement out to me.

Where Funforge use automated replies and issue tracking software and then give a wall of silence, BoardGameGuru replied and shipped out a replacement the same day!

That's customer support.

I said it in my previous post AEG have been amazing too, they respond within twenty four hours, which is totally acceptable, and resolve the issue in the response. In my case that has been getting spare parts for the games I have of theirs, such as missing bags, extra tokens, and now replacing a damaged card.

Funforge finally responded yesterday after a shirty update I put on the call log about the none response to my issue. They used the excuse of being away for week at a show. Surely they have more than one person looking after customer support?

I don't know how big Funforge are employee wise. But a job role shouldn't come to a stop because that person is out of the office. If it has too, then the automated emails should reflect that, and manage customers expectations.

I think some of the problem is due to size and people within the company doing more than one role. Which is fine from an economic point of view. But often it means jobs not being done as well as they should be.

I'm going to end this rant with a big thank you to Paul at BoardGameGeek for the great customer support, and also to AEG too.

What has been your experience of customer support when you have had to contact a company.

Splash Down

So what dropped through my letter box this week?

I'm sure you are eager to find out.

And I'm eager to share with you what is piling up in my home.

 

 

 

Taking advantage of another Amazon silly price deal, it was hard to not fall for temptation and get WWE Superstar Showdown for eight pounds and some pence.

How much do I like playing Patchwork on my phone? A lot. Which would explain why this turned up!

A visit to my FLGS The Hobbit Hole landed me the Bantha expansion for Imperial Assault, and a second track to use with Formula D. Plans are a foot to have a league for Formula D at Fenland Gamers. So this will give a little variety for us.

Plus a copy of the card game Haggis arrived. This has gone straight into my bag I take with me when there is a Costa Gaming session.

These two figures for Super Dungeon Explorer were too good a bargain to pass up on Facebook. I just need to get the game to the table.

AEG customer support are amazing. Not only do they respond within twenty four hours, but they sent me the two missing bags for Lost Legacy and some spare tokens for Batman Love Letter for free. I've had to make use of the support again for Lost Legacy because I've discovered a badly marked card in one of the sets. Which I wasn't happy with, because this was not declared by the seller. Luckily AEG have stepped up once more and are sending a replacement.
The alt art player boards for Takenoko look beautiful. Each one is different art. Plus a spare time machine for Colt Express.

Finally the locations cards for Ninja Dice arrived along with Kage Masters and two mini expansions. I got stung by the customs charge (which I don't mind paying) and the daylight robbery handling fee of the post office (which I do mind paying). Everything just about fits into the Ninja Dice storage bag.

Another Facebook bargain District-Z a zombie fighting card game for up to four players also arrived. Ok I like zombie games, sue me.

And that's it for this week.

 

Landing next week 8th March

It's that time once more for me to tell you about stuff coming out next week that has caught my eye. You know what I'm into and what I like by now. So the the stuff I highlight shouldn't be a surprise.

At last the Star Realms expansions are finally hitting our stores. I need to get Colony Wars, having given Nath my copy at Christmas. Mixing it in with the base game gives a massive pile of cards to play with. Which reminds me I need to source more of the official card sleeves for Nath and myself. Esdevium need to get those in along with the playmats.

Next up Pandemic Legacy is being restocked. If you haven't got it yet, you MUST. It's an awesome game. It doesn't matter which one you get, they are the same, except for the box colour.

Finally the new draft set for Netrunner splashes down. I think they have pitched the price of the two draft decks a tad high.

The second D&D Dicemasters set also hits the stores, but I've opted out of the whole Dicemasters thing because of their release schedule. I still like the game, just not the way Wizkids are doing it.

 

Epic smackdown 

  
The only game yesterday that Nath and I played before having to complete some chores and my traveling back home, was Epic the card game.

We started off drafting our decks using the two player open draft rules. 

None of this deal two random thirty card decks from the top of the deck. No we were going to get the full draft experience. 

I split the deck in half and we both took the top two cards from our deck and placed them face up in the middle. We then naturally took turns choosing from those four until there were none left. Can you guess what we did next? Yep we repeated the process of drawing and selecting until we both had a thirty card deck.

The remaining cards were then put away, and we prepared to battle on the awesome playmats I got from the Epic Kickstarter. 

I know some folks out on the interweb think that the cards are too powerful and they come out to quickly. But that is the whole point of the game I thought. The Magic like experience with none of the setup, you go straight to the big feck off monsters, and just stand toe to toe knocking six shades of brown stuff out of each other.

I like Epic. I love that in the box you do get that Magic experience, you can do drafting, you can do constructed, that you can play upto four players out of the box, add more boxes (upto three) to support upto eight players. That there is such variety in how you get to that starting thirty cards in your deck.

The artwork is beautiful on the cards. Nath and I did have to keep referring to the rules to check what words meant. But that will come with more plays. I’m more forgiving I think of this than I am the iconography in Cthulhu Realms. Which is interesting. I think it’s because we were having to do this for every card in Cthulhu Realms, whilst in Epic it was just for some.

Eventually after holding out for a few turns Nath started demolishing me. I did manage to land some damage on him, so it wasn’t a complete whitewash.

I think Nath at the start of the drafting thought that may have been a bit dull. But once we started playing he enjoyed the game.

So far with games like Magic, Netrunner, I have shielded Nath from the “joys” of the drafting or deck building. We have used pre-constructed decks like the dual decks in Magic, or the default decks in the Netrunner core set. So exposing Nath to his first draft to build a deck to play with was his first step down a slippery slope. 

I left Nath a spare copy of Epic to play with. I’m slowly building up his gaming collection. He can have the Kickstarter promos once I get him a deck box for the cards. 

Can’t wait to get the Tyrants expansion…

A mid week father son gaming day

I'm down visiting Natha at the moment. I had to come down to make sure he got to the dentist. Let's just say that his track record of attending has been poor. So yesterday he went to his second appointment to sort out some tooth ache he'd had a couple of weeks back. Which resulted in the pain inducing tooth being extracted! So even more pain for Nath.

We followed the dentist visit up with a trip to the Farnborough cinema to see Deadpool (such a great movie) and London Has Fallen (an average at best sequel). This is something that I haven't done in a long time, back to back movies. Between films we grabbed a quick guilt loaded bite to eat at McDonalds.

But that was our Tuesday. What about today though?

Well once Nath was up, and I had fed him breakfast (American pancakes) we played our first game of the day Eminent Domain. A game I have been wanting to get to the table since getting it second hand off Facebook.

I liked playing Eminent Domain a lot. The game did not disappoint. Setup was fairly easy, and quick. Always good. I like the turn structure a lot. It's simple, but does the job. At the start of your turn, you can play a card from your hand if you wish to perform its action. You then have to select a role from the middle and play that role ability. This builds up your deck, allows you to get resources for the path you are following, explore planets, research new technologies. The other players also have the option of also following that role or dissenting (which is basically draw a card from your draw pile).

Finally the turn is ended with a tidy up phase for the current player where played cards go on the discard pile, a player can discard unwanted cards in their hand, and finally draw back up to five cards.

I ended up taking an explore colonise path, while Nath went down the more aggressive war route and conquered his planets.

Neither of us tried the produce/trade route, and Nath was the only one out of the two of us who did any research to get those more advanced technology cards for the deck.

There is very little interaction between players, but you are still involved between turns, trying to work out whether following the others role phase is useful in advancing your own goals, or is it better to draw that extra card?

I ended up beating Nath 39 victory points to 27.

Next up was what must be Nath's favourite card game or even modern board game, Star Realms.

It felt like we were playing with everything plus the kitchen sink in the cards we were using. Base game, Gambits, Crisis (minus heroes cards), Colony Wars, plus Cosmic Gambits. That's a hell of a lot of cards. We had the draw deck for the trade row split into three piles.

There was

In the end having done superior scrapping to give him the edge he needed, Nath delivered the killing blow of 21 points of damage to remove my 19 points of authority.

Our final game of the afternoon was Discoveries. This game is on my list of ones to try and play this first quarter of the year.

Once again a very quick game to setup. There was a bit more referring to the rules for our play of this compared to Eminent Domain.

However once you get used to the turn structure this is a nice little dice allocation game. The part of American history this is set in is neither here or there for me. The look of the game is nice, and subdued. They have gone with wooden dice for the game, that do feel “light”, but look and fit in with the theming.

Once again there is very little interaction between players. Being limited to the grabbing of your dice back from another player, or grabbing a grey tribe dice from the player with the most of them. Between turns you are mainly planning how best to utilise the dice you have available to achieve your goal.

As I said I liked the game, it will be interesting to see how this plays with three or four players. Will it feel different?

Oh and as the score pad shows I won ^__^

Finally some news!

Coming soon to a Kickstarter near you I believe (can't remember where I saw this Kickstarter reference) from Albino Dragon is The Goonies Adventure Card Game. Once I know more details I'll post them.

When I mentioned to Nath about this, all I got was “what is The Goonies?” He hasn't seen the movie!!! I never thought I'd fall into that group of bad parenting that also includes having not shown their kids Star Wars, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones. How did this happen? I've made a point of making sure Nath has seen the modern classics.

I'm going to have to rectify this ASAP.

 

Pandemic Legacy May

I've got sunshine on a cloudy day.

When it's cold outside I've got the month of May.

My Girl

 

One day I may get bored with writing this intro warning you that the following post may or may not contain spoilers for the game Pandemic Legacy, and just go straight into the post with no warning. But in the meantime if you are trying to avoid spoilers for the game then you may just want to leave and join me in my next post.

1…

2…

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Right if you are still here you really can't complain if I spoil the game for you.

Last night saw the usual suspects of Debbie, Matt, Jonathan and myself meeting up to tackle the month of May in Pandemic Legacy Season 1.

Because of our success in April we were now down to two funded events to shuffle into the players deck. Our staples of one quiet night and the one that allows us to rearrange the top six cards of the infection deck were our choices. How we would cope without these two I don't know. We also still had our unfunded events in the players decks (the dual use city cards) to fall back on if need be.

Our briefing gave us the task of completing three objectives out of the four available. We chose our starting base, and which city to remove a faded figure from. COdA had mutated again, so when we drew a red city card from the players deck this to would cause that city to be infected with one of the faded, but if it would cause an outbreak nothing would happen.

We thought we were doing well, no Cleggmidia had come out, we had cured and eradicated C-Thatcam-Major (one objective complete), working on curing Sithite. Then the Cleggmidia cards started hitting, as did the epidemic cards. Joburge had fallen completely, pandemics were spreading like wildfire.

Our group decided maybe we could build the six garrisons quicker than trying to get the third cure. But before we could implement the plan, we had lost, over run by the pandemics.

We had failed, so quickly it took us by surprise at how fast we had lost this one. The defeat had seemed to come from nowhere.

After a brief team conflab, we chose our four funded events. I still love this mechanic. Do well you get less funded events, do badly you get more. Just like real life!

Our plan was to fore go finding three cures but to instead build the six garrisons, have seven quarantined cities, and eradicate one disease. That seemed do able. We could even build road blocks now to stop the spread of the faded and the curable diseases.

Like the previous game the wrong unfunded events were landing with Matt and Debbie. If one quite night, or the two extra actions had been with Jonathan or myself we could keep re-using them as long as we had the city cards. We've used this ability of ours to great effect in previous games.

Still, we had cured one disease, built five garrisons and the seven quarantines would not be a problem. But once more epidemics snowballing into pandemics cost of us the game. Much to the relief of Matt who wanted to get back to watch the latest episode of the new X-Files. In fact he was willing on the cards when an epidemic broke to cause the pandemics.

That was May. We did much better the second time around, there was definitely light at the end of the tunnel, the finishing line was in sight, and any other cliche saying you can think of.

This was definitely a “wait! What just happened?” Month.

Due to the lure of the stage lights and grease paint calling to Debbie we will not be playing June next week. So a week off from the spoilers for you all.

We get six funded events in June ^___^