Category Archives: game night

game night

So so tired

After having three days off where I got to game with Jonathan. Which was the first time in a longtime. Plus attend a Fenland Gamers club night (something that is a rarity these days). At which I got to game with more friends I hadn’t played with in a while (hello Ben).

Games that saw the table in these two sessions were Dandelions, Can’t Stop, Senso: Battle for Japan, Macao, Ship Captain Crew, and Sea Salt & Pepper. Plus two games that Ben owned No Mercy, and Come Sail Away!

It was back to work and a pretty full on four days that were quite frankly draining. Especially after one shift I didn’t have any real recovery time because of union meetings I had to attend. I actually ended up having a snooze in the car between the last union meeting and the start of my shift.

The knock on effect was I was too tired to write anything about the gaming I mentioned above. Or get to mention that it came to light Jonathan has been playing trick taking games wrongly for a very long time. Basically the mistake was playing a trump card when you could follow suit. You have to follow suit. If you can’t then you can play a trump card (if you have any) or “dump” a card from another suit.

As I write this life update I have two much needed days off. Followed by a day back at work. Followed by four days off. What am I going to do in those days off? It’s not long enough to visit Nathan and give mum time to recover! Yes mum needs recovery time after I go away. I’ve factored it for UKGE for example. Apparently looking after Nico and Loki the two attack chihuahuas can be very taxing.

I’m in the process of buying a small dice masters collection. Which will help with the cube building. More on this once it happens.

Until the next big expansion for Marvel Champions Age of Apocalypse comes out (tomorrow/next week?) I now have a complete set of cards. I ordered the final three hero packs that I needed (Venom, Gamora, and Drax) that arrived at the start of the week. The nice thing about getting these older hero packs is the fact you don’t have to pay full price for them. They get nice reductions.

I just need to get the game to the table, get a storage solution, and sleeve the thousands of cards!

Having Tuesday as a dead game night at the moment is killing me. It was really cool that on a Tuesday those of us that liked ccg/tcg/lcg type games had a regular evening where we could play these style of games. I need to be more proactive in my efforts to find somewhere.

Oh I did get a quick chance yesterday to play around with my fire starting kit! I need to start playing around with this more. Get more confident in using it, and develop my fire starting skills.

So yesterday using a piece of fat wood (resin rich pine wood) I created some tinder to start a fire with. Then using a fero rod and striker to create sparks managed to get the tinder to light. This little exercise did not involve me building this into a roaring fire. Its aim was to get the tinder going. I followed this up with using the fero rod and striker to start a tinder wick. Which started first strike! Wow that was impressive.

My final little play with fire for the afternoon was to start a trangia burner with the fero rod and striker. Which worked really well. Why hadn’t I done this back when I was doing all the meth stove reviews?

My Kelly Kettle Trekker also arrived. Looks a lovely bit of kit. Although the pot and lid look too small to be of any practical use. I can’t see them being used at all, and replaced by one of my titanium pots.

Hopefully I’ll get to try out the Kelly Kettle on one of my days off. Who knows I might even film my initial efforts with it!

Spicy Gaming Session!

Last night three very good friends joined me in playing some games at our usual location of the Wisbech St Mary Sports and Social Club.

Earlier in the day I had started a six bean chili of my own creation. My chilli paste I used was a combination of ancho, pasilla, guajillo, and kashmiri chillis. All mild chillis. I’m going for taste over heat. So I want that chilli warmth that you get after having a mouthful but not so much that it hides any flavour.

The night before the beans (a combination of haricot, butter, pinto, black turtle, cannellini, and kidney beans) were soaked in a water that had salt and baking powder dissolved in it.

The peppers I used in my “Mexican” mirapoix were Tesco Finest sweet ramiro peppers. Plus I added a can of La Costena Chipotles Peppers In Adobo Sauce, some chopped up Tesco vine ripened tomatoes I had that needed using up, and finally some whole chestnut mushrooms.

This concoction was then put in a low oven for four hours or more. I took it out just before I left. I finished it off with the juice of one lime.

I took a little of the chili with me to get a second opinion or two.

That’s how much I was happy with the results of this “experiment”. Folks don’t get to try my cooking unless I’m happy with it. I’m not a confident cook and rarely share my efforts with others.

I’m very much a seat of pants cook. No two times I cook something will be the same. I vary some element or two.

Chili and soup are great for riffing!

I think for me and maybe to the horror of Texans and a lot of folks I like bean chili over a meat based one. My six bean chili is vegan!

Gavin and Diego liked the chili. Although Diego did say it was sweet. Marcin “liked” it, however he said it was spicy! He doesn’t do spicy. There was a big clue that it’s a chili!

Our first game of the evening was Wyrmspan. Like Apiary, and Expeditions, or any new game, this was just another play in the new game tour of players trying it.

I’m not complaining as I get to play a game I enjoy playing.

For the first time ever in a game we had a three way draw for first place. Diego, Marcin, and myself all got exactly the same number of points! Sadly the tie breaker of number of dragons on display gave Diego the victory.

After Gavin left we had time to play Can’t Stop.

This has become a favourite “filler” game. It’s light, very quick to teach, and fun.

Unlike Wyrmspan where Diego won on a technicality this was a clear win for him. Due mainly to Marcin and myself being unable to stop!

This was a great evening. Much banter and laughs. So great to see Gavin again. This sort of evening just sums up what gaming for me is.

Wait I played some games!

So last night I got to play some games with Diego. Ben wasn’t able to make it, so no Dune Imperium Uprising. But I have started a cunning plan to get the game to the table. Which is basically creating an event to play the game on the clubs discord server at the start of March. Why then? Part 2 of the Denis Villeneuve take on the Dune books comes out at the cinema that weekend. We’ll see if there are any takers.

Our first game of the evening saw the return of the push your luck dice game Zombie Dice. Which we played with Diego’s daughter. It’s been a long long time since I last got the game to the table. According to the bgstat app 6 years and 11 months.

We followed up with one of his daughter’s favourite games about dragons and jewels. I didn’t record this game in the bgstat app. But I won. Making up for Diego’s two Zombie Dice victories.

Once Diego’s daughter had gone to bed we played Parks with the first expansion Nightfall.

Nightfall adds “…new Park Cards featuring new rewards and all new artwork from the Fifty-Nine Parks Print Series, including the 17 parks not represented in the base game. … new Year Cards and Bonus Scoring opportunities, and … new Camping mechanic.

What I like about the expansion is more parks (more cards is always cool) and new mechanics that don’t add to the overhead of playing the game. But do add to the choices you have to make.

In this game the camera was a much more fought over item, swapping possession several times.

The new year cards with the end game scoring were a big improvement. My initial card gave me 2 points for every 3 resources I had at the end of the game. These worked so much better than the core games year cards.

Loved the camp sites. Some great abilities that I really wanted to activate. Particularly the ones that gave me lots of resources.

In the end after our year of hiking I managed to get the victory by a point.

Our final game of the evening was Sea Salt and Paper.

When this game first arrived I was taken aback by the diminutive size of the box. It is so tiny. It is pocket size. No chance of sleeving these cards unless you rehome them.

The cards in this game look beautiful.

Plus once you get used to the iconography you can start to really enjoy the simplicity of the game play. It really is an enjoyable card game.

As the photo below shows Diego won this game. I do like it when a game has a social media winners card.

Two new games and a second play

After a week of no gaming and adjusting to the work routine again (it’s amazing how having a week off throws you out) Diego and myself met up on Friday to play some games.

There were others invited but they had life going on to prevent them from joining us.

We started off with a learning game of Parks.

Parks had not even been on my radar of games to buy. But over Christmas an opportunity came up to buy a copy so I did.

I have to say production value wise Parks knocks it out of the park! This is Stonemaier level of production quality. A great insert, trays you take out to hold the resources. Wooden pieces. And the cutest animal tokens ever. Each a different animal.

I love the art on the cards. The game looks beautiful on the table.

During setup and our dramatic reading of the rules I was thinking how are we ever going to buy park cards or do anything in the four rounds, or seasons as they are called in the game? The action track or whatever it was called seemed too short. But it does grow by one space at the start of the subsequent rounds.

One of my tactical mistakes of the game was letting Diego keep the camera for a large part of the game. It was basically giving him free points.

We both got a lot more done in the game than I thought we would. It was very quick to learn, and play. We both really liked the game. And yes sooner than later the expansions will be popping through my letter box.

Oh Diego won.

Our second game was a new push your luck dice game called Can’t Stop that I got.

What a fun dice game. It worked at our player count. And I can’t wait to play at the higher player counts. I’ll write a bit more in my research post for my cyberpunk game project, because this game was bought for that.

But the history books will reflect that I won the game.

Our final game of the evening was Terraforming Mars the dice game.

I thought this worked well as a two player game.

It did initially feel like a learning game as I’d only played the game once before.

We soon picked up the iconography on the cards.

It felt like an awful long time in the game from the initial production that I did a production run. I’m not sure if that was a good or bad thing. I’m also undecided if it’s a good thing to do frequent/regular production runs in the game. More plays will help with this tactical decision.

Like Can’t Stop I’ll be talking about Terraforming Mars the dice game in the research post.

Sadly it’s no longer John Carter of Mars, but Diego of Mars as he won.

It was great to be sharing these games with Diego. I had a fun evening.

Myths and trains

Friday morning was the last morning of my visit with Nathan.

Usually I get a whole morning with him before setting off after lunch. But this time I had to leave before lunch so I was back in time for a Teams call.

Leaving earlier meant I was back in time to attend the Fenland Gamers club night. But more importantly able to try Cyclades.

It’s been on my wish list for yonks. I even backed the Kickstarter for the second edition (granted at the $1 level to get me access to the backerkit) last year.

So what did I think of Cyclades?

I enjoyed it.

I liked the bidding mechanic for the gods and your place in turn order for taking your turn. Which then determined where you were next round in the bidding order.

But did I like it enough to buy the second edition?

Now that is a tough question.

I have Kemet (first edition plus expansions), Cry Havoc, and Scythe. Those three were good enough to fight off Inis taking one of their spots. And I did like Inis just not as much as the others.

And I think Cyclades is falling into that same situation. I like it but enough to get rid of one of the three already mentioned? If you asked me to play one of them right now, I think I’d still go with one of the three over Cyclades.

So it looks like I’ll leave it to Ben to buy the new edition of Cyclades and play that when it arrives (Q4 of this year?)

Saturday saw Jeff and myself meet up to try the 18xx roll and write Arabella. Which had arrived that morning.

I’d only heard about Arabella days earlier via a tweet on X/Twitter. It intrigued me. However nowhere seemed to be selling it. Unless I wanted to import it. Luckily there was a copy in the UK going on the bgg marketplace. Which I snapped up.

When it arrived it was still in shrink.

When I read the rulebook I thought wow this is going to be on the heavier side of roll and writes.

There was one hiccup to playing Arabella. When I told Jeff it was an 18xx inspired game he was apprehensive about it. He is not a fan of 18xx games.

I’d never played an 18xx game before. So this was going to be a way for me to dip my toe in to the 18xx water.

For this first game I went against the advice of the rulebook and didn’t use the AI to add a third player. I want to be able to just focus on the game and not have the overhead and distraction of running the AI.

It is interesting that there are no setup adjustments for player count. Well not if you discount the placement of cubes during setup.

Arabella didn’t disappoint.

It is on the heavier side of the roll and writes.

I really enjoyed it and surprisingly so did Jeff.

It had the feel of an 18xx but not the drawback(s) according to him. Particularly the share side.

We both agreed the wooden dice are ok, but would it have hurt to use plastic ones?

The rulebook is ok. Slight grammar errors. Plus it was not clear that the white dice are your starting dice. But I’m giving a little leeway as the designers are east European I believe, and it could just be a translation issue.

The game does start slow as you start to build your railway, but boy does it ramp towards the end.

Arabella is also a very mathy game! Especially when running your trains or calculating the share dividends.

I definitely need to play this with more players. I think it’s going to be a very different experience.

We followed up with a game of one of Jeff’s Christmas presents Star Trek Away Missions.

This is a fun two player Star Trek game. I played the Federation with a ST:TNG crew, whilst Jeff played the Borg.

It was the intro scenario we played.

So basically I needed to complete at least five mission cards over the three rounds to get my objective points at the end.

This is a skirmish like game or shares some of the mechanics. Players take turns activating a character in their squad/team. The game that comes to kind with that activating mechanic is Star Wars Imperial Assault or Last Days.

There is hand management as well to consider not only for your mission cards, but also for m

Because the game is played over three rounds it is very quick.

I liked it and would play again.

A blast from my past

Despite reports of artic conditions, and that ever mythical snow down South. I made it safely to Nathan’s. Mum needn’t have worried. But she wouldn’t be a mum if she didn’t worry. Even when their eldest is so advanced in years.

We played a couple of games during the evening.

The first an all in game of 7 Wonders Dual.

It was rather cramped on the table. But that didn’t stop us from playing.

We were pretty rusty on the rules, particularly for the two expansions. So we were frequently referring to the two rule books.

I had decided to go all in on a science win. Whilst mid game Nathan had found out that a senate victory was possible and was going for that, along with a possible military victory as a back up.

In fact Nathan could have won with the senate victory if he hadn’t moved one of his cubes. Instead I got a science win after Nathan miss remembered the win condition. He thought it was seven symbols, when it was in fact six.

Later after some sleeving of the cards in the LoTR LCG Fellowship of the Ring saga I taught Nathan a card game from my early years called Trumps. It’s also known as Knock Out Whist I believe.

I spent a lot of time playing this game as a teenager.

Whilst at secondary school we used to play it during tutorials. Officially we weren’t meant to be playing it. But our tutor group was a bit on the rebellious side. Led by our tutor!

I also played it a lot with my dad’s aunt, Aunt Joan. It was most likely her that taught me the game. Which I then took to the classroom.

As a two player game it’s ok. It’s quick. I even used the dogs life rule for Nathan after he failed to take a trick on one of the early rounds. I shouldn’t have done that as he then got the win. On the penultimate round we both got a trick each. So we cut the deck to see who won. Sadly for me that went Nathan’s way. So he chose trumps for the final round of one card.

Afterwards I continued sleeving cards and getting the recommended player decks constructed ready for us to play the game.

Oh our evening meal was spaghetti bolognaise.

New Year, New Games

My first gaming of the new year took place Friday. It was meant to be Wednesday but a monkey wrench was thrown into that plan. Such as the community centre not being open when Dave and I got there!

But five of us met up last night to play some games. Between us we had enough games to choose from that would outnumber an average persons game collection.

After some catching up it was time to choose a game to play.

Jonathan wanted to try Cascadia and it was a game I was interested in trying to.

There was such a great gaming moment when Charlene cost herself 24 points by joining her two groups of bears together to make a single one. It was a classic moment of “oh shit, why did I do that?”

I have to admit this was a nice drafting game. Not the heaviest of games. I like the variety of scoring cards that influence what you draft during the game on the animal side. Plus you have other means of getting points based on the terrain tiles. It gives some variety in the tactics and the way to get points.

Ben took the honours.

After Jonathan left we had a game of Stich fur Stich.

It’s a weird combo of mechanics. Think deduction with trick taking!

A player randomly chooses a character and a weapon who did the crime (?) from their set of tiles. This pairing secretly decides trumps for that round.

The players then play a card from their hand. The person that chose the tiles then declares who won the trick, but not why. The other players then try and work out what the two trump tiles are.

The other players then secretly select the tiles they think are trumps, show them to the person who knows and they say yes or no if the guess was right.

The trick taking repeats until all cards are played.

I scoring for the player who chose the trumps is based on how long it takes the others to all guess the trumps plus the tricks taken. Whilst the other players score on the number of cards in hand when they guess correctly and tricks won.

It took a round or two to warm to the game. Especially when Charlene “broke” the game on the first couple of tries by guessing right first time!

I’d be interesting to see what Jonathan thinks of the game. He does like deduction games.

Charterstone Saturday

Saturday saw games three and four of the Charterstone campaign finally happen.

There had been a long pause since starting it due to diary conflict!

Somehow I won a game! I think it’s my first win even taking into account the aborted campaign I played a couple years back.

It really is interesting to see stuff we never saw in the aborted campaign. So there is still moments of mystery for us who took part in that previous campaign.

At the end of the second game we did set a date for the next session.

We finished off with FTW!

Another new card game from Ben’s collection. He does have a knack for finding interesting and fun filler card games.

It was enjoyable. An interesting combo of keeping your highest value card and trying to get rid of the rest of your hand. At the end of the round you score your highest value card in hand minus the total of your remaining cards in hand.

Two great days of gaming. And a great way to start off the new year.

Punishing Draft

Friday evening Dave and I played some Dice Masters at the usual haunt.

As I’m still building a local Dice Masters community, and those I’ve introduced the game to haven’t invested in buying product yet (ie not building teams to play). We dark drafted (you can read about the format here) my Marvel cube.

Below are the teams and basic actions that we drafted.

My Draft 1 Team

  • Black Widow: Natural
  • Ant-Man: Biophysicist
  • Green Goblin: Goblin-Lord
  • Punisher: McRook
  • Hawkeye: Longbow
  • Wolverine: Wildboy
  • Deadpool: Assassin
  • Psylocke: Betsy Braddock

My Basic Actions

  • Invulnerability
  • Rally!

Dave’s Draft 1 Team

  • Mystique: Ageless
  • Mr. Fantastic: Brilliant Scientist
  • Gambit: Ace in the Hole
  • Vision: Density Control
  • Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme
  • Professor X: Recruiting Young Mutants
  • Nova: Quasar
  • Magik: Illyana Rasputina

Dave’s Basic Actions

  • Teleport
  • Gearing Up

Our first game was the perfect game for my team. I got both Green Goblins out along with five sidekicks very early. It was a quick game.

Game two was longer but not by much. Green Goblin still played a part in the victory.

The next two games saw Green Goblin reduced to a bit part at best. The games were longer and requiring a better use of my roster to find solutions to problems Dave was presenting.

These last two games saw a much greater reliance on The Punisher as the killer die to get victory. He does present an interesting choice for your opponent when he attacks. The chipping away of life to keep a character fielded to block bigger amounts of damage almost seems over powered.

I did feel I drafted well. Especially in the last two games. I felt I had solutions to buy for the problems Dave presented. Deadpool was a good solution in one game allowing me to swing through with some big unblocked attacks.

Dave was adamant he had something in his team and wanted to keep trying when I offered to redraft. It almost felt like that scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail with the Black Knight, “it’s a mere flesh wound”.

After our fourth game Dave finally admitted defeat for his team and agreed to a new draft.

Score: 4-0 to me

Below are the new teams we drafted. We both agreed we were happy keeping the Basic Actions as they were.

My Draft 2 Team

  • Falcon: Samuel Wilson
  • Nick Fury: Mr. Anger
  • Gambit: Ace in the Hole
  • Punisher: McRook
  • Wolverine: Wildboy
  • Professor X: Recruiting Young Mutants
  • Captain America: Special Ops
  • She-Hulk: Jennifer Walters

Dave’s Draft 2 Team

  • Mr. Fantastic: Brilliant Scientist
  • Green Goblin: Goblin-Lord
  • Mystique: Ageless
  • Magik: Illyana Rasputina
  • Spider-Man: Hero for Hire
  • Nova: Quasar
  • Doctor Octopus: Megalomaniac
  • Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme

It was my turn to be on the receiving end of a fast Green Goblin attack and his Side Kick horde. I made the call to take all the damage. Which reduced my life to 3. Yeah a brave call. But my inner magic player whispered to me “life is a resource”. Taking the damage got the threat removed for a turn or two. Give me time to stabilise and make a heroic come back.

And the plan seemed to be working. I did indeed get Dave’s life down to a level where if I could swing in unblocked I’d win. But Dave was able to use his Spider-Man to stop me blocking enough damage to get the win.

Our second and final game was another long game with dice being drafted as solutions to what Dave had drafted. Particularly his Doc Oct and its ability to stop a character from blocking. That was so annoying.

Score: 1-1

I had been thinking about refreshing the cube. Particularly in relation to Green Goblin. But Dave felt Punisher was too powerful, and I agree. So those two cards are definitely on the replace list. Now I just need to look at the card pool (the commons) and look for replacements. I need to do this before I go visit Nathan.

I love the case I got to use with Dice Masters. It’s targeted at D&D players. But works brilliantly for storing my Dice Masters stuff. I could easily fit a team in here for a tournament. But at mo I use it for the basics for two players.

Bottom Action!

Friday evening saw me get my favourite game of all time Scythe to the table with two good friends. What more could you want of an evening?

Whilst I was setting up Colin arrived. So I gave him the tough decision of which of the three Triumph tracks to use. Yes I had forgotten the fourth option of the random set up. But it was probably for the best. The other three are a lot easier to explain. You can see which way Colin went in the setup section below.

Once Marcin arrived we went straight into randomly choosing a player mat, followed by choosing our faction.

Whilst making our choices we enforced the banned combo rule for player and faction mats.

So this is how after randomly selecting a player board and then choosing a faction things ended up:

  • Saxony/Patriotic (Colin)
  • Rusviet/Innovative (Marcin)
  • Fenris/Industrial (Me)

I’m sure Marcin hate drafted my beloved Rusviets to spite me. There was a cheeky grin from him when I bought the subject up. It looked like I had no choice but go to my other favourite faction, Fenris.

One day I should branch out and play some of the others. But haven’t I already by choosing Fenris?

The rest of our set up…

We used the Modular board that once the home base tiles had been randomly placed had two tiles removed. Giving us a much more enclosed map encouraging interaction. No turtling here.

Obviously we used Airships. Plus any additional tiles or cards that the expansions added, along with all the promo cards.

Triumph Track: War

Resolution Tile: Factory Explosion

Airship Tiles: Hero/Bounty

Structure Bonus: Number of structures not adjacent to other buildings (your buildings or opponents’ buildings).

Poorly written summary of the game

I got off to a blinding start. Which was helped greatly by having an encounter token so close to my home base. Turn two I had my first mech out giving me leap. A handy ability to have as I was able to avoid the first conflict and blockade by Marcin.

I had all my mechs out so early. I was moping up encounter tokens to fuel my engine.

Sadly Marcin beat me to the factory and held it for a good time. I wasn’t in a position to challenge him.

I was using my factions tokens to pen Marcin in. I didn’t think it was fair to pick on Colin so early on in the game.

Eventually my engine just ran out of juice and I wasn’t able to stop Marcin stealing what little resources I had or amassing forces on and around the factory tile.

Without the resources I wasn’t able to use my factory card that I’d finally got. Even my plan to get the final encounter token and also use a resource on that tile controlled by Colin. Failed. Colin spent the resource before I got there, and also nabbed the token.

I did trigger the end of the game. But the first of my final two turns was a none turn as I couldn’t do anything. But I did end up with a couple of battles to try and cut down on the territory Marcin controlled. I was fifty percent successful on that front.

Final scores

It was a fantastic evening of gaming.

Oh why the blog post title? Well as Marcin was explaining/helping Colin throughout the game he kept saying “bottom action”. Which had my childish, mind in the gutter side in stitches.

Brief club night report

I made a second club night last night.

It looked like there was going to be seven of us for the evening. However two turned up who hadn’t indicated they were coming. It also didn’t help that they came in and went out without saying a word! Turns out they went to get something to eat first. Would have been nice to know.

Whilst that was going on Marcin, Diego, and myself played Apiary.

The following is how the faction and hive mats went.

  • Sime & The Warre (Me)
  • Jemit & The Poppleton (Diego)
  • Iber & The Skep (Marcin)

I had a blinder of a game. I wasn’t sure if I’d done enough to overcome the early lead on the score track that Diego had taken.

But once again getting a lot of seed cards, playing combos, getting three planted, plus three honey comb tiles meant I had enough end game scoring going on. Plus I barely explored once again.

As the final scores show I did really well. Even improving on my previous 100+ score.

Diego’s score was better than my first time playing.

Our next and final game Vaalbara was played with now two well fed members. Diego rocked this one and easily won the game.

Whilst we got two games in, the other table managed to play one four player game of Amun-Ra.

It was a great evening.