For the record

Let the history books reflect that I in fact won our first play of Saloon Tycoon on Friday at FEG@TA.

Saturday on the Fenland Gamers Facebook page Jonathan pointed out we had misplayed a couple of things. Sadly after a soak in the bath Sunday morning reading the rules ready for the afternoons play, we had miss played a few things! Like the outlaw cards for instance. But the one that gave me the win was the end game turn. I had triggered the end game on my turn, a turn in which I had stole Jonathan’s character from him. On his final turn he stole it back. But according to the rules this action was not allowed. So in fact Jonathan had scored five less points, and I’d scored five extra points. Thus I had scraped a win by one single point. 

So Sunday afternoon saw Jonathan, Matt and myself get together to play some games!

Our first game was Saloon Tycoon. This time we had the expansions mixed in also. I don’t know why you wouldn’t have them in, they add in more of the same. 

I grabbed the gardens tile early, to do so got me the outlaw that gave me minus one gold nugget each income stage. That got cancelled when I completed the gardens tile, which gave me an extra gold nugget. I then moved that outlaw to Jonathan to cripple him. But I’d need to grab that outlaw back near the end to complete my secret objectives.

Jonathan was struggling to do stuff because he ended up with three of the outlaws. I nearly gave him the fourth too, just for the giggles, but I needed to slow Matt down.

My inability to get the outlaw and character I needed to complete my objectives cost me the game? If I hadn’t triggered the end game I might have got one of the needed cards to get one objective completed and the win. 

Instead I lost to Matt by a point. While Jonathan coasted in to last place.

A bit like the law that whenever more than one Python fan gathers together they will perform the parrot sketch. It is fast becoming a law that if ever three to five Fenland Gamers should be in a room together they will play Thiefs Market.

And so it was. There was three of us, and Thiefs Market was played. 

As the photo shows I ended up winning and claiming my first win, and the title King of Thieves. Now I will have to defend my title against all pretenders.

Matt had to go after witnessing my glorious win and coronation. However Jonathan and I carried on gaming with our first play of Spectre Ops.

Spectre Ops had been sitting on my pile of shame for over a year now. It felt good having this opportunity to play the game at last.

Jonathan played the infiltrator while I played the hunters. My team for this game were The Beast and The Prophet. I chose these because they would work well together I thought in locating the infiltrator. 

What I like about Spectre Ops over Letters for Whitechapel is that the hunters do have unique powers, they aren’t just the same. Ok Jonathan didn’t “enjoy” being on the receiving end of those powers. But I felt they were balanced out. For example the Prophet had a post cog ability that if he didn’t move allowed him to see where the infiltrator had been two moves previously. The balancing bit was that the Prophet had to be stationary to use that ability and couldn’t act upon it straight away, but had to wait until their next turn before they could move. 

I felt this was the same for the Beasts abilities, and the motion sensor of the car.

This as a two player game worked well as a game of cat and mouse. Which along with a simpler turn order than Letters from Whitechapel for me was a more enjoyable experience.

In our game there were moments where I thought I knew where Jonathan was. But turned out I was completely wrong.

The hunters won in the end but it was close. Jonathan had completed all three objectives.

So with two hidden movement games down our next one to play surely must be the infamous Fury of Dracula.

This was such a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. 

Monday night saw another Jonathan hosted that days arranged gaming session.

I wasn’t sure what we were going to play so I took a selection with me to play just in case. However it did turn out a game had been selected. That game being Letters from Whitechapel. 

In this game one player plays Jack the Ripper while the others play the rozzers trying to stop him. The downside for the coppers is they can’t see Jacks movements because they are hidden from them!

In our game I played the part of the hero of the game Jack the Ripper. While Debbie and Jonathan played the part of those killjoy coppers.

On my first kill I made what I realised later was a tactical error. I killed my first victim close to my hiding place, and made a quick dash back to safety. The persuing law enforcement were able to deduce easily the general area I was hiding. 

I like the phase where Jack and the police place victims and officers around London and the bluffing that goes on. Plus the little push your luck going on when Jack can delay his murder to try and gain a bit more information on police locations is nice.

Towards the end I started taunting my pursuers on social media with photos of them perplexed, and struggling to find me.

I thought that was very thematic and in keeping with the character I was playing.

I found playing Jack the Ripper enjoyable. Although Jonathan did find playing the rozzers frustrating because they basically had no clues to work with. However many a time Jonathan had guessed correctly my escape route away from the scene of the crime.

I’d certainly play this again, and would like to try being the fuzz.

The nice thing about being Mr No Life, with no commitments is that when an impromptu gaming session is arranged you are free to partake. 

This was the case Sunday morning when Jonathan put a request up on the Fenland Gamers Facebook page asking who was free to play games that afternoon.

Our afternoons gaming started off with the fantasy themed worker placement game Simurgh. Or as I call it Dragonriders of Pern the boardgame. Which as an interesting (depends on your perspective) side note I’m listening to as my current audible book on my way to work and back.

I like worker placement games, and Simurgh is a really good example of the genre.

There’s a bit of setup, and the game takes up a lot of room.

Being able to decide the duration of the game is a nice touch. For our first play we naturally chose the short game option. Which was triggering the end game with either four objective tiles out or eight tiles in our chronicles.

Oh the choices you have to make while playing. Some really delicious ones. When and how many workers, and which ones to recall. Managing workers on the tiles in the wildes. Too many workers on a tile it gets moved to the chronicles and the game. No workers on it, yep goes to the chronicles.

You have resource management to look after. We had only fifteen slots to store our resources. Over flow and having to return the excess was an issue.

You have hand management to consider of your tiles. When do you play a tile to the wildes? Which one do you trash to make you? 

There is so much going on, it’s mind blowing fun.

When the main complaint about the game is the size of the player board needs to be bigger. Then you know that the game itself is a pretty solid game. The rule book is ok, although wording could be more consistent in places. 

Yeah I like this game a lot. Looking forward to playing it on its advanced Dragonlord setting, and getting its expansion.

For the record books, history and whoever Jonathan won by one point. It was a very close game.

Our next game was new arrival Hit Z Road.

The first thing that strikes you about Hit Z Road is it’s beautiful. The graphic style of a kind of fifties post apocalyptic fallout scavenged world just looks amazing. It looks and feels like they really did scavenge the bits together to make the game. 

The bidding phase of a round is a trap waiting for seasoned gamers to fall into. Waiting for them to over spend to get first player advantage and first choice of route to take. Eating up valuable and scarce resources.

The combat is light, simple and relies on resources to fuel it. Like spending bullet tokens to get dice to attack zombies from a distance before having to engage them in melee combat. Which you can escape by spending fuel tokens. The dice you roll in melee is decided by how many survivors you have. But extra damage can be done by spending adrenaline tokens when the appropriate dice faces appear.

This is a really nice light zombie game that plays quickly. Love it. And thanks to Jonathan and his survivors getting eaten by zombies I won,

We finished off the afternoons gaming with Grifters.

Set in the same Dsystopian universe as Resistance and Coup this new card game just sent out to backers is a nice card game with a cool mechanic.

That mechanic being a cool down period after playing cards. So you play a powerful card for its effect or combo of cards to complete one of the available criminal contracts they then are lost to you as the go through your HQ (the cool down).

This isn’t up to The Manhattan Project Chain Reaction level of card games. But it’s still pretty good.

It was a game I wasn’t sure how it’d work or play when reading the rules, but once you start playing it did click into place, and made sense.

And future history books will record that I beat Jonathan.

A great afternoon gaming. Thanks Jonathan for organising.