Monthly Archives: January 2018

A short Star Realms movie

star realms

The description for this video over on YouTube says it all really. But I suppose I better repeat what I said there, here because I suppose unless you click through you will never get to read my words of wisdom, and reflections on the human condition.

Over there I said the following:

“I’m just testing the screen recording on the iPad Pro, so thought I’d do a Star Realms game I played recently. Gman usually gets the better of me in our match ups. I’ll put up the other game we had going at the same time where he totally owned me, big time.
Anyway I’ve been in this situation before and the cards have not been kind, and I get killed. This time things went my way…”

UPDATE: I’ve added the promised video of me getting my butt handed to me to the end of this post.

2017 Game Awards

annual awards

Welcome to another attempt at click bait and our second ever Whitespider1066.com awards ceremony.

I  know the first one was held earlier last year. But I wanted to include the December games in the running for any of the awards.


Unlike other award ceremonies here at Whitespider1066.com we have tried to keep them to a minimum and have only 4 categories. Technically there is a 5th but that had it’s own post, and may very well generate a lot of hate this year (ok since writing that, it generated none whats so ever).

Also I’d like to remind folks these awards are made up of games that not only came out last year,but where new to me.So they can include games that came out before 2017.

Like last year the awards are starting off with looking at games that really captured their theme.

The contenders for Most Thematic Game of 2017 are:

My Most Thematic Game of 2017 is…

This is a hard one to decide, Xia with its open world sandbox Elite the boardgame, really capturing the sci-fi genre, captaining your own ship, choosing your own way through the universe. I’d almost say it could be rebranded as a Firefly boardgame. However the award is going to Star Wars: Rebellion. It really is the original trilogy in a box. Capturing the epicness of the movies, and the struggles of the Empire and Rebellion. Plus I love Star Wars!

Next up are the games that just look stunning, from the art, to the graphical design, to the components used. These games really do prove you should judge a book by its cover.

The contenders for Best Looking Game of 2017 are:

My Best Looking Game of 2017 is…

I nearly went with Kanagawa with this one, because I love the oriental art style of the game. However I think this award can only go to Santorini. The game just looks so visually stunning when playing with the 3D buildings. The cartoon like art is attractive, bright and appealing. I love it.

For this next award of Best Kickstarter Project to qualify the game had to be delivered in 2017.

I would like to add I have been a little disappointed with one two of the kickstarters last year, mainly due to the fulfilment of the pledges. Somehow I have managed to be one of the last to have his pledge sent out on quite a few last year. If I wasn’t so paranoid I’d suspect a conspiracy of some sort.

The contenders for Best Kickstarter Project 2017 are:

My Best Kickstarter Project 2017 is…

I think this one will surprise a lot of folks out there. I’m going with Mint Works for this. A great, quick, pocket sized worker placement game that ran fairly smoothly.

Now for the main event…

Like last years inaugural game of the year award I will be picking my game of the year from the winners of this years game of the month awards. Which means that technically my game of the year is a game that may be new to me but not specifically out in 2017.

Here is the complete list of my game of the month winners:

As you can see this is a pretty strong list. However there were two months where I didn’t think any of the new games I played warranted the much coveted title of game of the month.

But a decision has to be made. And I think I know which game it’s going to be.

So my game of 2017 is…

Twilight Imperium: 4th Edition

It was close, very close. Xia, Rebellion and 7th Continent were a hairs width from claiming it themselves.

But what swung it for this space opera, was the politics side of the game. The making alliances, breaking them etc. It’s an important part of the game, that just lifts it above the others in the running. And is such fun.

This game truly defines the word epic. It is such fun to play. A worthy game to take the game of the year award.

So there you have my click bait awards. I hope they were of some interest.

Countdown to doomsday

Fenland Gamers, Game day

Yesterday Justin, Nathanial and I met up at The White Lion to play Scythe with the latest expansion The Wind Gambit.

The Wind Gambit adds two things to the already awesome Scythe game. Did I say that I absolutely love Scythe. It was my game of 2016, came in at the number 1 spot in my Top 100 last year. So yeah I kinda like the game. Anyway, this new expansion brings in these awesome airships, and alternate ways to end the game with resolutions.

Naturally even though Nathanial was playing Scythe for the first time, I didn’t think that adding in both of the new modules made the game harder to learn, so we included them. The only thing I did not use was the two factions from the Invaders from Afar expansion. I thought that the little extra those added were potentially a step too far for a newbie to the game.

A first for playing Scythe for me was allowing players to select their faction. Usually we do it randomly. But I wanted to play my favourite faction Rusviet Union. Ok I have a thing for Olga and Changa!! Who wouldn’t want a pet tiger? Yes I know I love dogs and Gunter has the wolf Nacht. But I’m a fen boy, born and bred and we are known as the fen tigers. Plus I love the power of Rusviet Union of being able to repeat actions. After selecting our faction, we did go random in selecting our player mats. I got the innovative player mat.

Justin randomly selected the two cards we were to use for the airships. You can see in the photo below which two that were pulled. Then Justin randomly selected the resolution for the game. As you can also see in the photo below he pulled the Doomsday Clock.

Wow, what a difference the Doomsday Clock made to the game. 20 turns and that’s it. 20 turns is a quick game, you have to hit the ground running. My game plan for this game was to push up my popularity to the highest scoring area, grab as much land as possible, and maybe get a couple of objectives. First thing first get that river walk going, then get my commander to the factory, use the airship to drop off workers around the map. Hopefully hold onto the factory, and maybe use the airship to tie down some of my opponents forces. I did manage to get 3 objectives, and a factory card. I think I was the only one to get a factory card. Justin did manage to get 3 objectives also. And on his last go grab the factory from me, but in doing so he pushed himself into the lowest scoring bracket. My last turn managed to compensate for losing those 3 lands that the factory would have given me.

In the end I did win, but it was fairly close between Justin and myself, a five point gap I think. Nathanial got 23 points which for a first play and in such a quick game wasn’t bad.

I’m going to have to remember that if I want a game of Scythe but not much time to play it, then this Doomsday Clock is an ideal resolution to use. I think that Rusviet is an ideal faction to play with this resolution, because you can ramp very quickly. The airships were such fun to play with, and look amazing on the game board itself. I can’t wait to get this to the table again and play one of the other resolutions. Yeah this expansion is a great addition to the game, and freshens things up I think for anyone thinking the game was getting a little stale after playing it a lot. Which isn’t me at the moment. But I do like what it brings to the table.

Winner,winner,chicken dinner

Game day, magic, MtG

It’s pre-release weekend in the world of MtG for the next set in the Ixalan block, Rivals of Ixalan. Which means it’s time to milk those addicts for lots of money as they throw money at store owners just so they can have early access (by a week) to the cards in the new set. For store owners this weekend and next weekend is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel, and time to rake in some much needed cash.

Naturally I’ve been waiting for this set to be released because it gives me more dinosaurs to work with, with the dinosaur commander deck I want to build. So having to wait a week less to get my hands on those sweet sweet cards isn’t a chance I’m going to pass up.

So yesterday I was booked into the morning pre-release event at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole. £22 (Early bird booking price instead of £25 on the day) for the pre-release kit, some games of MtG, and 2 participation booster packs, a bargain.

Justin had decided to join me at the pre-release the night before, so we travelled together to The Hobbit Hole. It felt like we were representing Fenland Gamers at the pre-release.

Just after 11am, after giving any late arrivals a chance to show up, everyone got their pre-release kits, and opened them. I’ll go over the pulls later in the post. But as both of us were going through our 6 booster packs in our pre-release kits, from one of the other tables one person was getting really lucky. In the 4 boosters from Rivals of Ixalan that they opened they got 4 elder dinosaurs. Plus the promo card they got was the legendary creature Sphinx. That sure was an awesome box to get. However I was happy with my pulls, I got some of the cards on my hit list that I wanted.

After opening the boosters, it’s time to build a deck to play with. Justin and I built our 30 card decks. I was going red/black pirate, with one or two vampires. Luckily just before we were meant to start playing I checked the deck size. They were meant to be 40 cards!!!! Doh! We had just got in the habit of 30 card decks for our league. I’d forgotten this format was 40. We had seconds to throw in 10 more cards. Something that was easier for me than Justin I think. Mainly because I had pirate cards I thought I could fit in, and now could.

My first round match up I won the first game. I even went to my sideboard and fetched a copy of Aquatic Incursion to cast using Mastermind’s Acquisition. This gave me a couple of chump blocking 1/1 merfolk tokens to use. I lost the second game. I got my opponent down to about 14 health, and my plan was to turn the creature they’d been pumping up to a 9/9 against them. However I was short 1 mountain to do that and was killed first. Our third and final game I won easily and quickly. I’d won round one 2-1. Wow I was chuffed. I believe Justin also had won his match up too 2-1. Would we meet in the next round?

Sadly we wouldn’t. I was paired up against Kar-Fai for the second round. This was our first time playing each other at MtG, but not our first time on opposite sides of the table at a tournament. Previously Kar-Fai and I had faced off against each other playing Netrunner (Which he did attempt to tempt me back into playing). I don’t think I’d beaten Kar-Fai at Netrunner. Would I beat him in MtG?

It soon became obvious during our first game that this was literally a mirror match up of decks. I think the main difference was Kar-Fai was using more artefacts/vehicles than me. While I had a little bit more removal. I was also playing less land. In my deck I had a total of 12 land, plus the Traveler’s Amulet. As long as I had a land and the amulet in my starting hand I was golden! Mainly because I could fetch a second land if my next card drawn wasn’t a land, or I could use it to go fetch a land I needed, like a second swamp or mountain.

It was my removal, and the Mastermind’s Acquisition that gave me the edge I think. I won our first game. The second game was close I was down to 3 health before making my comeback and winning the game. The Mastermind’s Acquisition allowed me to look for a solution at the crucial moment to turn the tide in my favour. I’d won the round 2-0. Revenge for the Netrunner defeats finally, and I’d only had to change games to do it!

We had time to spare so Far-Kai and I played a friendly game. This time it was my deck against a second deck that he had also built from his cards pulled. It was a close game, but in the edge his merfolks were victorious.

I was a bit gobsmacked I’d won 2 rounds now. I was feeling a little pressure, and a little apprehensive about the third and final round match up. Surely this would be pitching me against a much better MtG player than me. I’d been lucky so far.

The third and final round. I had the fast start this deck was capable of (and to be fair the one I played most games, as was Kar-Fai) with Fanatical Firebrand. I played an early Dark Inquiry that allowed me to remove Tetzimoc, Primal Death. I wasn’t going to have that putting out pray counters and clear my battlefield when it came out. The rest of the first game went to plan and I won. Game 2, I was within striking distance of winning when those damn pray counters tagged two of my creatures. Unluckily for my opponent having 1 creature out against 4, wasn’t going to give them enough time to even things up a little by bringing out that Tetzimoc. My next turn I swung in with everything, I had, pumped up one of my creatures so that it made no difference which one was blocked, I’d do a killing blow. I’d won 2-0, and quickly too.

Oh my god I’d won my 3 rounds, and only taken 1 loss. Ok I’m going to finish high. The question now was how high? As John read out the final positions, as we got closer to the top I wasn’t mentioned. Ok, I’m top 3. Cool. Not third, not second. WOW!!! I’d won. Out of a field of 16 players, over 3 rounds I was first. This is the first time I’d won an event. Bloody typical though it was an event with nothing on the line like store champ, or prizes for winning. But hey a win is a win.

Because this was a pre-release event everyone got participation boosters at the end. There was 1 pack for playing the first round, then a second pack for playing all three rounds. Everyone got these at the end. So in reality we were all winners!

Justin and I had a really great time at this pre-release. This is what MtG is all about not that other rubbish that’s been happening online. At the moment WotC have made a move in the right direction over the background checks for judges. The jury for me is still out on the one sided biased handling of bullying/harassment online. But they bought themselves a little grace time with me, with that announcement on Friday.

Here are the stats for the day. I went 3-0 (2-1,2-0,2-0) on the rounds, that’s a 6-1 win/loss record. However I did lose a friendly game between Kar-Fai and myself after I won our round 2 match up. So technically that win loss record with the friendly game is 6-2.

So I’m sure you are curious about the deck I built.

Deck list

Counts : 40 main

Creatures:17
1 Daring Buccaneer
1 Fanatical Firebrand
1 Grasping Scoundrel
1 Vicious Conquistador
1 Desperate Castaways
1 Dinosaur Hunter
1 Dusk Legion Zealot
1 Gleaming Barrier
1 Goblin Trailblazer
1 Storm Fleet Swashbuckler
1 Fathom Fleet Boarder
1 Forerunner of the Coalition
1 Swaggering Corsair
1 Brazen Buccaneers
1 Brazen Freebooter
1 Fathom Fleet Cutthroat
1 Ravenous Chupacabra

Spells:11
1 March of the Drowned
1 Mutiny
1 Prying Blade
1 Traveler’s Amulet
1 Buccaneer’s Bravado
1 Arterial Flow
1 Dark Inquiry
1 Hijack
1 Impale
1 Mastermind’s Acquisition
1 Pirate’s Pillage

Lands:12
5 Mountain
7 Swamp

My sideboard naturally for this type of event was all the other cards I pulled. Which is too many to list here. However here are…

My highlights from cards pulled

These are the foils I pulled. The Ravenous Chupacabra was a really useful card yesterday to be able to play.

Before the pre-release apart from elder dinosaurs I had ear marked some cards I hoped I’d pull. These are the ones below from that list that I pulled.


These following ones are cards that weren’t on my radar, but I’m pretty glad I pulled them.


So that was my Rivals of Ixalan pre-release event at The Hobbit Hole. A great days entertainment playing MtG and getting new cards.

Journey Starts

Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night

STOP BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER THERE MAY BE SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE GAMES GLOOMHAVEN AND CHARTERSTONE. WHILST I WILL TRY AND TALK ABOUT THESE GAMES WITHOUT RUINING TOO MUCH. THERE MAY BE A CHANCE I MAY SOMETHING THAT MAY OR MAY NOT SPOIL THE GAMES FOR YOU IF YOU ARE INTENDING TO PLAY THEM. IF THAT IS THE CASE THEN THIS IS NOT THE POST FOR YOU. GO AWAY ENJOY LIFE, PLAY SOME GAMES, DRINK SOME GREAT COFFEE, EAT CAKE, AND WE’LL SEE YOU IN THE NEXT BLOG POST.

It’s just been one of those weeks. Which is lucky for readers of this blog because it has meant I haven’t been able to write any posts that share my boring life with you.

Last Sunday was the start of what basically is going to be a very very long campaign set in the Gloomhaven universe. Which is a long winded way of saying that Justin, Edmund, Charlie and myself started playing Gloomhaven.

Oh and if you are planning to play the game, please be warned SPOILER ALERT!!! Possibly.

I chose the spellweaver as my character because none of the others went for a character with spell casting abilities. The others went for the brute, tinkerer and I think the last one chosen was the human scoundrel. I named my character Glamdalf. Wait for it…

Naturally Glamdalf has a personal objective, that I’m not going to share on here in case the other party members get so bored that they read this post. When Glamdalf achieves this super secret personal objective I believe I will have to say good bye to her as she retires from the game. Or more likely goes off in search of further adventures down a different path to mine. While I get stuck breaking in a noob while facing who knows what horrors.

We were dumped straight into the action with scenario 1 – Black Barrow. We are in the Corpsewood, just out side of Gloomhaven. I can’t remember why, but we had ended up in a barrow full of thieves, and we were going to clear it out!

With some great team work, we completed the scenario, which also allowed me to complete my battle objective (See above). Playing the spellweaver was great fun. I love casting the spells, using the invisible cloak, being able to pull back spells from the lost pile. A very cool character. I’m looking forward to seeing how Glamdalf grows, and what more powerful spells she learns.

For me Gloomhaven is yes a dungeon crawler, but it’s also like a RPG campaign without the role-playing element. Dare I say best of both worlds? We’re back in Gloomhaven in 2 weeks time. I’m looking forward to it.

Tuesday saw the arrival of the cards I ordered to make three pauper decks that Strictly Better MTG brewed and shared on his YouTube Channel. The decks I built from these cards were UG Elves, and from his 5 Standard Pauper Decks for $5 Each! video UB Control and Mono Black Aggro. The Elves were great fun to play. I quite liked the Black Aggro, but the Control deck I’m not too sure about. But still they were pauper decks so not that expensive to put together, and can be used like the battle decks etc for some casual play. What did annoy me is that I got caught by the post office for the tax on these cards, which I don’t mind paying. The bit I do mind paying is the £8 part of it that is the Royal Mail “handling fee”. Talk about taking the piss for doing sweet fa. We thought that the banks were a bunch of thieving gits with their bank charges. I think there needs to be some investigation into the Royal Mail and other couriers about these rip off handling fees they are charging. It’s down and out robbery.

Last night saw the start of my second legacy style game, but with a shorter campaign of just 12 plays ahead of us, Charterstone.

Oh and just like for Gloomhaven – SPOILER ALERT!!!

The intrepid heroes for this campaign were Diego, Jeff, Jonathan and once again myself (naturally seeing as it’s my game). Like a forgetful person who has forgotten something, I forgot my phone to take photos from the first play. Luckily Jonathan was able to take some and share them with me. Hence the photographic evidence below.

At the moment Charterstone is a legacy worker placement game. Very much with the worker placement mechanics of place a worker, or retrieve all of your workers as your options on a turn. Just like The Manhattan Project , which for the life of us Jonathan and I both couldn’t remember the name of last night when we noticed this similarity. It was siting on the edge of our tongues, we both knew the game. But no matter how hard we tried couldn’t say the name. Luckily at the end of the game it came to me!

There are some nice touches to this as a legacy game. I like how that instead of ripping up cards any discarded cards are placed in an archive box. Which if you buy the recharge pack so you can play the game again using the reverse side of the game board, allows you to know which cards you have to replace. I like how the rules unravel as you work through the initial cards building up the rule book.

Turns were fairly quick in the game. Mind you there were a limited number of options. But this may slow down when there becomes more to do each turn.

We enjoyed our first game of Charterstone. There are other bits I liked about the game. For example the art style. But I’ll look at these in future posts as I cover our game plays.

So there you have it, what you missed by me not posting since Saturday. I hope it was worth the wait.

BTN 2017 Edition

by the numbers

It’s been an incredible year of gaming. But I think 2017 will be remembered as a year of big box and epic games. And big boxes do present a storage issue, let alone getting them to the table. Which to be fair I haven’t done too bad at doing.

I think it’s also been a year where I have been a little “flat” when it has come to getting excited about new games coming out or being announced, especially round or at big gaming conventions. At the UK Games Expo I went along with no shopping list, or I’ve got to see that game. Gencon and Essen nothing was grabbing me and getting me excited. To be honest in the list of games for 2018 I’ve seen on The Dice Tower nothing is really grabbing me for the up and coming year either.

Kickstarter has been busy this year, and I have to admit when it has come to the fulfilment stage of backed projects that my “reward” for the project has been the last one out of the warehouse. Which has been very frustrating. But there have been some great Kickstarter projects delivered. I don’t think any have been duds yet. Although Clans of Caledonia has been close with its production quality, and graphic design.

Right let’s look at the headline numbers for 2017…


I played 124 games!!!! That’s amazing. I can’t believe that. If you’d asked me to guess before hand I might have gone 70 – 80. The number of plays is super high thanks to two games. Mid year it was Star Wars: Destiny and the last quarter Magic the Gathering. Two games that exploit the addict side of me, but also allow me to do something I enjoy a lot, deck construction. The number of new games played is actually 70, because 6 of those games the BG Stats app counted as new were ones I had played before, but before records began with the app. But 70 new games played is incredible. I didn’t actually buy or own 70 new games! 23 of those games were owned by some-one else, and some of those new plays were games I’d already owned and finally got to the table.

Here are in no particular order my top 9 most played games of 2017.

Ok let’s look at the two challenges I set myself for 2017. The first up was a challenge to get my city building themed games to the table. I kind of bent the rules on this one and included plays for the later half of 2016 as well. Still not managed to get Suburbia to the table.

The second challenge was to encourage me to get my bigger games to the table. To be fair this challenge should have been updated to include Twilight Imperium 4th Edition (TI4). There are at least three on the list that I really want to get to the table, and need to try harder to achieve this. But I got Star Wars: Rebellion to the table three times in the year, A Game of Thrones hit the table five times, Xia twice, plus TI4 twice in the month it came out. So it’s not as if I’m not getting the big ones to the table.

I’ll be setting a couple of new challenges for 2018 in the next couple of days and I’ll share what they are on here.

And there you have it, that was my 2017 in gaming.

Friday Night, Saturday

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night

Number 30. That’s the number on the tin for my eager enthusiast copy of Mint Delivery. This is a limited edition (50 copies only) early copy of the follow up to Mint Works. I went for this backer level because I’m impatient and couldn’t wait until March/April time to get the game. I will get a final production copy of the game also. But it’s great to have this early copy. It beats making a print and play copy of the game. I’m hoping the final tin is a little deeper so everything fits in. So why am I talking about this now? Well the game arrived between Christmas and the New Year, and has the honour of being the first game I played in 2018 that isn’t Magic the Gathering.

Last night Diego, Chris, Jonathan and myself played a learning game of Mint Delivery. It was the basic game, in the rules sheet there are rules for more advanced variants of the game. The map set up will be the same each time, which is why they are able to produce a playmat for the game. A playmat does seem to move away from the original ethos of these games. And this is me playmat addict saying this, but I don’t think it’s necessary for this game.


With the way the game is setup the variability, and thus the replay ability for this game comes from the contracts you complete and their random placement on the board, and the ability and obstacles in the advanced variants. Like Mint Works, this excels at giving you a taster of the main mechanic it is based on in a reasonably short time period. This is a fun, quick, pick up and deliver game. I think it took us about 20 – 25 minutes to play. I liked it, Jonathan said he liked it more than Mint Works. So I don’t think we’ll have a problem getting this to the table to play again.

The rest of the evening I spent facing one of my own decks, while testing another one against it. My blue control deck which illustrates an infinite loop was destroying me last night as I put my take on Death and Taxes up against it. I just wasn’t hitting the land drops last night. Sometimes this just happens, not much you can do about it. Just hope the cards are kinder to you next game.

I wasn’t feeling too well, so after 3 or 4 games I left for the evening. I think the heat of the room we were in was making me ill. I don’t do heat. I’m a cold weather person.

I had a lazy start to Saturday. I was going to go to the Magic Open House at my FLGS. But rushing around so I could be back in time to play Civilization:A New Dawn didn’t grab me.


Diego, Jeff and myself pitted our fledgling empires against each other. It was interesting to compare this 3 player game against the 2 player one. There was hardly any combat in the game. Although it was through combat that I grabbed the final objective I needed to trigger the end of the game, and after the final turns of Jeff and Diego were taken, victory. Jeff was close to being able to grab victory in his last turn of the game, but unluckily was short by 2 points in his last combat to being able to achieve that. Jeff had admitted afterwards he’d been too focused on Diego and what Diego was doing, and ignored me. Which allowed me to sneak in under the radar. Mind you at the time I wasn’t aware of that. Yeah I liked this at 3 players. Less aggressive (Or this game was) than the 2 player first play I had with Justin. But still good fun.

Oh my copy of Tao Long arrived this morning. I backed this on Kickstarter, and got the deluxe addition, with the four seasons expansion and 4 player expansion add-ons. I have to say the production quality of the game is really good. Now I have to arrange to get it to the table. I think an abstract game session is in order. An excuse to get other great abstract games to the table also.

My first game played in 2018 was…

Uncategorized

[queue drum roll] and this will surprise everyone (not)…

Yep Magic the Gathering. Despite recent posts and the hypnotic train wreck that is going on, my first game played in 2018 was this game that everyone seems to be fighting for the heart and soul of!

It shouldn’t be much of a surprise really. Although I like the idea of solo games, and have a few that are either solo games or can be played solo, I’m too lazy to actually play them solo. That’s not to say I haven’t played a solo game, it’s just not something I do on a regular basis. Which explains why on New Year’s Day I wasn’t playing something different to Magic the Gathering as my first game of 2018. My first gaming chance was going to be at work with the students. They were back Wednesday, as were the enrichment sessions I run. Returning students had received Magic products over Christmas of one form or another, and had built new decks as a result. Naturally they wanted to play with those new decks. So the enrichment session was a try our new decks session. While my “Death and Taxes” deck did well against most of the decks, it got destroyed by a black zombie deck that played two different Liliana planeswalkers and a Vraska (Sp?) planeswalker, that if allowed to do their ultimates destroyed me. Sadly I had no answer for them, or the deadly destroy all lands card he’d play just before firing off those ultimates.

I did throw together an initial blue/black control deck to play against Justin and some decks he had built last night. The deck is in development. It’s built to show the infinite loop to the students. However it can also be a mill deck if needed as a alternative win condition. So now I have two decks in development.

Tonight will be my first opportunity to play a non-magic related game, plus there are two events planned for the weekend that are non-magic related. So by Monday the gaming stats will be taking off and showing more than just Magic played.

BTN December 2017

by the numbers, stats

Wow that’s Christmas and New Year been and gone, back to work tomorrow. But it’s also the end of another month of gaming. Which sadly for you lot means more boring stats, and very little insight. Let’s just jump right in with the numbers this month.

Again I beat the numbers when it comes to plays, mainly thanks to MtG. But the played games once again falls just short.

The final section as usual presents the data graphically so we can try and see trends. Yes I played lots of MtG more than the previous month.

My Game of the Month…

This month there are a few contenders for the title. I think any other month anyone of them could claim the title. But one with its immense scope, and just the fact it is so epic, and truly lives up to those words, it can only be Twilight Imperium 4. I hadn’t played the third edition (hopefully during the Summer). But this updated reprint by FFG which includes parts of some of the expansions is truly an epic game.

My gaming moment of the month…

This has to be one of my students MtG game in the tournament that we held at the end of term. Two students were playing, one student was playing dinosaurs and had pumped up a single creature to a 19/19 which he promptly sacrificed using fling to do unblockable damage to the other player. Thinking he’d won with that killing blow, he packed his cards away. It was then pointed out to him that his opponent had on the field a creature I think it was that had the text on it saying that he was unable to lose the game, and his opponent couldn’t win, so he hadn’t won. It was impossible to reset the game to its previous game state, so his opponent was declared the winner. The students reaction was so funny, and over the top. It has to be the gaming moment of the month.

Worst Game of the Month…

It is the season of good will to all, and luckily there has been no game to be thrown into the Nantucket Wing of Shame this month.

Hopefully hitting the table in January…

I’m leaving the two classics that I shamefully haven’t played yet on the list for January.

▪Suburbia – I really need to get this to the table. It’s been sitting in my collection for a while now. It’s shameful I haven’t played it yet.

▪Ghost Stories – another classic that has been sitting in my collection. About time this saw the light of day also.
The weekly Friday Evening Gaming at The White Lion (or FEG@WL as I call it) is usually on a Friday, but double check on our Facebook page first.
Every second Wednesday of the month we have our monthly meet up. This month that second Wednesday is the 10th. Some of us are starting a Charterstone campaign that evening.
If you are in the area and want to attend one of the events, please visit the Fenland Gamers Facebook page for further details about the event. Hope to see you there