Category Archives: game night

game night

Trying the cube

dice masters, Dice Masters Cube, Dicemasters, Fenland Gamers, game night, lcg/ccg/tcg game night

Last night was the weekly Fenland Gamers lcg/ccg/tcg club night.

Our game for the evening was Dice Masters.

Earlier in the day I prepared two “welcome to Dice Masters” packs for Diego and Marcin who were playing for the first time.

The welcome packs are basically a set of sidekick dice, a set of basic action dice, set of basic action cards, and a wax dice bag.

I’d done similar for Dave last time we played the game.

The only thing missing are play mats. Need to find a solution.

Welcome to Dice Masters packs for the new players

After a learning game for Marcin and Diego using the Secret Wars Origin packs (I keep these in a deck box precisely for this reason) I have we went on to draft from the make shift cube.

Franklin’s Galactus was in my starting hand of the draft. I had to draft the card even if I wasn’t going to put it in the final team. I just couldn’t run the risk of having to face it across the table.

After building our teams and selecting our basic actions we paired up to play.

It was myself vs Dave, and Marcin vs Diego.

Here are the teams for my match with Dave.

My Drafted Team

  • Franklin’s Galactus: No Mercy
  • Iceman: Mr Ice Guy
  • Psylocke: Telepath
  • Namor: Leading the Cabal
  • Jean Grey: Xavier’s Dream
  • Cyclops: First Class
  • Mr. Fantastic: Brilliant Scientist
  • Angel: Jean Grey’s School

Basic Actions

  • Making the Team
  • Escape!

Dave’s Drafted Team

  • Apocalypse: Wicked Supremacist
  • Forge: More Than Firepower
  • Invisible Woman: Regents of the Uhari Throne
  • Mister Sinister: Bar Sinister
  • Bishop: Time Traveller
  • Namor: Warring with the Surface
  • Beast: Olympic Athleticism
  • Falcon: Take Flight

Basic Actions

  • Power Bolt
  • The Siege Perilous

Whilst Marcin and Diego were battling away I managed to smash Dave convincingly with a combo of Psylocke, Namor, Iceman, and my big threat Franklin’s Galactus.

Unintentionally I had drafted a pretty lethal four cards. Namor punished Dave for blocking, so once out he just sat there. Psylocke was my early buy and didn’t come into her own until I got Franklin’s Galactus out. Up until that point I kept her fielded as a blocker. Once the big guy was out I wanted her to do that get knocked out, and refielded thing so I could give the level 3 10A 10D Franklin’s Galactus overcrush. Which with the Iceman energise was lethal and got me a very emphatic victory.

So after obliterating Dave in game one, we went onto game two because Marcin and Diego were still battling it out.

This time Dave tried to disrupt my plan and take me out before I got a chance to get those lethal four cards working together.

And his plan was working he had me down to four life before I got Franklin’s Galactus out, and pulled off one of the nastiest bits of shenanigans going. Earlier in the game I had bought basic action die for Making the Team. With the thought of getting Namor out quickly.

However this particular bit of shenanigans had me rolling that basic action die, along with enough dice to give me the energy to buy Franklin’s Galactus. The basic action die came up with the side to activate the basic action ability. So I bought the big one. Then did the basic action, rolled Franklin’s Galactus and got its level 2 face.

Dave was impressed and disgusted at the same time.

I survived Dave’s next go, and was rolling a lot of dice once more that included the basic action die.

Not only did I have enough energy to get the second Franklin’s Galactus, which rolled into its level 3 face. I had the energise side of Iceman and fielded a Psylocke. That level 3 was now 20A 10D with overcrush and I swung in with everything.

Good night Dave.

Onto game three.

Dave came a lot closer to defeating me, getting my life down to 2. But a last ditch turn of mine that saw two basic action dice for Making the Team allow me to get both of my Namor dice fielded, another Iceman energise, fielding a Psylocke, and an already fielded Iceman and a couple of sidekicks sitting as 2A 1D swing in to get exactly twelve points of damage that I needed to grab the win after Dave had allocated blockers.

That was a much closer game. Dave’s plan of using Mr Fantastic’s global against me to force my fielded Namor to attack really worked.

Near the end of the third game the epic battle between Marcin and Diego ended. Sadly I didn’t get who the victor was. Hopefully Diego will add a comment with the result.

So a clean sweep for me against Dave.

Diego and Marcin really enjoyed playing Dice Masters. Which was good to hear. Maybe next time we will try the new cube I created using just commons from Uncanny X-men and Avengers vs X-Men. Which I need to do a post about the cards selected.

I thought this cube was fun. It does need some tweaking. But I need one or more draft packs to be able to do that. One or two of the cards are pointless because they have things trigger if there is a Wolverine fielded. So I either need a Wolverine card or replace these with others.

I know I’m sounding like a broken record but this was another really fun evening.

Finally…

Over on my favourite Dice Masters podcast A Double Double ‘n Dice Podcast they have once again read my comments out on the show. This time they also link to the blog and my posts to do with Dice Masters. Which was kind of them to do. I appreciate this blog is very niche at best, and certainly not to everyone’s taste.

So at some point I might see people who know Dice Masters much better than myself calling me out for my errors.

But in the meantime you can listen to the latest show (at time of writing) here on YouTube.

A casual MtG Night

game night, magic, MtG

Last night our weekly lcg/ccg/tcg happened.

This week saw MtG get to the table.

Diego, Marcin, and myself did multiplayer combat using the mono colour decks from the MtG Game Night kit. This was going to be an evening of casual kitchen table MtG with a group of friends. Exactly what this product was designed for.

Marcin played the mono white deck for both games. Diego played mono black in game one, and mono green in game two. I went true to form starting with mono blue, followed by mono red.

In the first game as the blue player I just had to try and weather the storm of the other two until I was able to get to a win condition of some sort.

Part of that delaying tactic was equipping a creature of Marcin’s that was getting very scary with the cards it had been equipped with. Luckily my contribution goaded that creature. So it had to attack Diego.

But once Diego was out of the picture it was coming for me, and I wasn’t able to draw into a solution. So the inevitable happened with Marcin getting the win.

Game two as mono red I needed to hang around long enough to get the decks dragons out. Sadly I didn’t draw any of the cards that allowed me to reduce the cost of playing a dragon.

Marcin had some annoying life gain going on. My only hope was to once again get the other two fighting it out between themselves.

At one point I came to a deal with Diego that he wouldn’t attack me for three turns to try and buy me enough time to get something going on the dragon front.

But in the end politicing only gets you so far. This time not far enough, and I was soon taken out by Diego and his green horde.

It was a fun evening.

Tuesday night is fastly becoming my fav game night at the moment. And that’s not because it’s my only game night at the moment.

The evening of gaming usually ends between 9pm and 9:30pm. Mainly because there is no other business at the social club. And we are not drinking enough to justify being open any later. Which is fine. After a long day at work that’s about the right time to call it a night for me anyway.

Plus the evening although competitive also has a friendly, relaxed atmosphere to it.

Looking forward to next week.

Martians for a night

first look, game night, new arrivals

It’s hard to remember when I backed something on Kickstarter without logging in and checking.

But I think it was the later half of last year that I backed the Kickstarter for Terraforming Mars the Dice Game.

I’d been tempted by the lure of a lighter version of the game that used dice. Who doesn’t love a game with dice? The Rahdo thoughts on it sold the game to me. My previous experiences with dice versions of board games (such as Roll for the Galaxy, Biblios the Dice Game, and Nations the Dice Game to name a handful in my collection) had also been good. Even when I hadn’t played the original version.

But that’s not the case when it comes to Terraforming Mars the Dice Game. I had at least played the original once before when it first came out.

If my memory isn’t playing tricks on me Chris, Jonathan, and myself played Chris’s copy during the initial hype that surrounded the game. And boy was it one of the hot games when it was released along side Great Western Trails. Everyone was talking about it. Supply was not able to keep up with demand for sure.

I did enjoy it. But not enough to add it to my collection. It was a fun engine builder that rewarded multiple plays, and knowing what the cards were. A noob playing for the first time against a more experienced player would definitely be thrashed.

I definitely hadn’t played any of the numerous expansions for the game. And despite owning the iOS app version of the game I’ve never actually got round to playing that either.

So why did I back the dice version again?

I wanted that lighter more accessible Terraforming Mars experience. Something that I was more likely to get to the table.

I should be better at keeping my pulse on what each of the Kickstarter projects I’ve backed are doing. I knew that Terraforming Mars the Dice Game was shipping in certain areas. But hadn’t twigged that it had started being sent out in the UK and EU. I was a week late to the party on that fact.

So at the start of the week I was hoping there might be a chance the game might be in my grubby mitts by Friday. But as the days passed it was looking more and more unlikely. Until I got the notice DPD were picking up from the shipping company yesterday. Even with that news I wasn’t convinced it’d be with me in time. I was thinking more realistically I’d get the game Saturday.

However I was very pleasantly surprised to get the DPD message to say the game would be delivered this morning. Phew the game session plan had been saved.

As the comment on the Instagram post shows I was very pleasantly surprised when I opened the packaging. Inside was not only the Kickstarter edition of the game (it has the promo cards) but also card sleeves and the playmat.

I really don’t remember adding them in the pledge manager. But I must have.

Naturally before leaving home to play the game I did sleeve all the cards. I had them.

This evening Ben, Harrison, Dave, and myself travelled across space to transform the red planet.

Before the others arrived I did set things up ready to teach and play. So I shuffled the decks, drew the randomly chosen awards and milestones from a dice bag, drew eight bonus cards, and obviously chose a side of the playmat to use.

Despite none of us having played the game before we had the corporate era expansion added in plus the promo cards. Or all in as it’s known.

I had the Interplanetary Cinematics as my corporation.

Watch as I live blog this post as WordPress lost everything I wrote below this point, and I now get the joy of rewriting it.

The bgstat chose me as the first player which meant Dave got an extra resource at my expense.

Although my corporation gave me lots of wild resources to start with, and an on going cost reduction (helps if you remember that part). When it came to doing a production action it was a lot weaker than the other corporations.

My actual production engine to get me dice and the necessary resources to play cards was pretty weak compared to the others. It only ever got me three dice.

My main incentive for doing the production action was to reset my cards with actions on, and refilling my hand. Almost the opposite to the others who were getting many more dice than me when doing production.

I was kinda forced into exploring other ways of getting more dice such as action cards or even instants.

Over three fifths of my points came from having focused on end game scoring. I won two of the three awards, got two of the three milestones. Plus the majority of the instants I played also gave me points. I really did out perform the others in these areas.

One reason for this I think was because they were resource aka dice rich and focused less on these areas.

It might also have helped that one milestone fitted in with the way I was building an end game points engine! And the second milestone was one of opportunity that I could grab it before the others got close.

I loved the bonus cards. Like Scythe and it’s factory cards the choice which to go with is hard because they are all good and it’s hard to decide.

Being able to cycle cards quickly looking for ones you want is a great mechanic.

This is a very easy game to teach. Which is what you want for this weight of game. The iconography is also quick to pick up. Not overly overwhelming like say Guilds of London.

I think there is a fair bit of variety in set up, corporations, bonuses etc that replay ability will be pretty good.

For me the evening was a double win. A victory at the table and time with my friends.

Oh and really happy I backed this. This is TM for me.

Learning Games and Draft

dice masters, Dicemasters, game night

“OMG Darren! Just stop. You need to write about something else for a while. Give us a break from all this Dice Masters ramblings.”

But, but, I actually got to play it last night.

Dave and I met up and played some games of Dice Masters.

We started off playing the learning teams from the TMNT set. So two characters each, and three basic action cards in the middle.

Starting off with poor dice rolls and being forced to basically buy basic action dice is not a great start to a game of Dice Masters. But thems the way the dice roll sometimes.

With that sort of head start it wasn’t a surprise that Dave got to claim the first victory.

I have to say I was a bit disappointed with the cards selected for the teams in this learning game. The two characters in my team didn’t have any synergy at all. Their abilities were pretty pointless.

Our second learning game was the Secret Wars Origin packs. Now these were more fun. I had the Groot led team, whilst Dave had team Spidey.

I thought this worked better as a learning game. Groot’s ability to stop a character from blocking for the turn when fielded was very useful in putting a stop to the Spider-Man blocking ability. Much to Dave’s annoyance.

For this second game I was able to go on and get the win.

Game three saw us jump right in and do a two player draft with the two Secret Wars draft packs I had.

Wow the difference in card quality and design is significant. The cards felt so much better. Although I do have one complaint. The trigger abilities by an asterisk need to be more clearly marked on the cards. So it is clear which is an on going ability and which is the triggered one by rolling a side with an asterisk.

They do foil cards now! Wow I like that.

During our draft I thought that I had drafted a Reed Richards when in fact I had accidentally taken a second Beast! How that happened I don’t know. It was not my intention. I had wanted a second Fantastic Four team member to benefit from a buff that Invisible Girl gave other Fantastic Four members. It’s why I specifically drafted a Namor with the Fantastic Four icon on.

What a blunder!

Despite losing. I just couldn’t handle Galactus. I kept throwing bodies in front of him, sometimes enough to KO him. But when he also had Thanos with him. It eventually wore me down. Although Beast was annoying as a blocker with his reroll when KO’d. We had a lot of fun.

I don’t think in this game either of us bought a basic action die.

Draft works really well like this. Much simpler than opening multiple booster packs.

Glad I ordered two Dark Phoenix draft packs now (might after drafting them, use them with the Secret Wars draft packs create a Modern cube for drafting).

It was so much fun playing the game again. Boy have I missed playing it. And now once I create some cubes, or teams I can play with my friends whenever we want.

I got some gaming in

game night

The pills I have to pop to mask the arm pain are still working. Which means I was able to get some gaming in.

This meant I was able to carry out the Three Sisters plan on Tuesday.

What hadn’t been taken into account was we were clashing with the open mike night at the social club.

Unlike the open mike night at my local back in Guildford when I lived there, which was poetry and comedy. This one was all people that had the impression they can carry a tune.

One particular crime against humanity and music was a cover of Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive. Apparently the singer is a really nice guy. But I’d argue otherwise just based on this one song alone that he is a cruel sadistic git.

The other acts were not much of an improvement with their covers either.

With this audible assault going on we were still able to concentrate on our game of Three Sisters. Barely.

This game was an all in game using both the weather mini expansion plus the third mini rock garden pad.

I rarely use the apiary when I play Three Sisters. But this time I set my self the goal of focusing on progressing along its tracks.

It’s one of the things I love about this roll and write. There are so many ways to approach the game and focus on things.

I also managed to grow all the pumpkins! Plus complete a couple of perennials.

Considering Dave had been thrown in the deep end (literally) with this game his score was quite respectable.

Three Sisters Scores

We followed Three Sisters with a game of the roll and write I picked up second hand from this years UKGE, Roll Through the Ages Bronze Age.

This is a step down in complexity from Three Sisters. But still an enjoyable game especially when you roll three skulls and cause a plague giving your opponents minus three points.

I was pleasantly surprised when I won this one. Everyone else was building more than me whether it was cities, monuments, or making discoveries.

Roll Through the Ages Bronze Age scores

After the two roll and writes the “music” got too much for Dave forcing him to leave before he was driven mad and forced to get revenge. We had a three player game of Village Rail.

This was a new to me game. Which was very enjoyable.

You know in Small World if you want a faction not at the start of the market row you have to place a coin on each faction until you get to the one you want? This game uses the same mechanic to draft cards whether they are scoring cards or track cards.

Money is quite tight in this game, with your main source of income coming when you complete a line and earn money for the number of items matching the bonus card or whatever it’s called you decide to use for that track.

Otherwise you are drafting cards to place in your play area to try and maximise the points you score when you complete the a track or for the long game of end game scoring.

Somehow I managed to get a convincing win. Beginners luck.

Village Rail scores

After this victory we too made a dash for the door with our auditory pain tolerance levels having been reached.

Last night saw me play AuZstralia for the first time.

This is a Martin Wallace game. I have one or two of his games in my collection (London second edition, Wildlands, Hit Z Road, come to mind straight away).

Having played this now I can see what all the fuss was when it came out.

These days I find Cthulhu themed games boring or at best a lazy theme for a game. However it works here but then again it could easily be replaced with dragons for example with Cthulhu being replaced by Tiamat.

But it’s the mechanics I like about this game. I like how each action you can take has a time cost, and repeating an action already with a cube on means it costs you gold plus the time cost.

Like Tokaido, Glen More, Trekking Through History, Patchwork, etc the person at the back of the time track takes the next turn until they are no longer last. It then becomes the new last placed person to take a turn or turns.

A rather cool thing is the ancient ones don’t actually start doing their thing until all players pass them on the time track. Then they start waking up and causing havoc.

Our game ended when Cthulhu destroyed Marcin’s port. After the points were totted up Diego and I would have shared the victory if Cthulhu hadn’t scored one more point than us to grab the victory.

AuZstralia final scores, the ancient ones won with a score of 24

I blame Marcin for building too many farms for Cthulhu to reduce to desolate waste lands and thus giving the ancient one the points for victory.

But it is a fun competitive co-op. I like it a lot.

I’m glad the meds masked the pain enough for me to play some games this week with my friends. I needed these after missing last weeks gaming.

Well, how could you have waited so long?

Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night

Friday was once again a Fenland Gamers club night.

I got a chance to play Outlive with its expansion for the first time in about five long years.

When I last played Outlive in 2018 the expansion was a mere twinkle in the games designers eyes.

Marcin got me picking the expansion up for him at UKGE this year for him. So I most definitely hadn’t played the game with the expansion.

I was keen to play the game again.

It was great playing this post apocalyptic worker placement game after such a long time.

I came last, so not even first loser. But I did some cool stuff. I had fun.

After a morning taking Mum to get her new glasses adjusted, and installing a new Wi-Fi router (could have done without that small expense) I picked up a handy game or two to play with Dave as I left the house to meet him.

Which is why we ended up continuing the trend started by Outlive the evening before by playing Eminent Domain.

Eminent Domain is another game that last got played in 2018.

I do like Eminent Domain. But this deckbuilder does not get nearly as much play as it deserves, as the gap between plays proves.

We did waste a bit of time setting up. Working out what cards were what. And for me refreshing my failing memory with the rules, as Dave playing the game for the first time learnt them. But that’s the drawback of picking up a game that I hadn’t played in a long long time.

After narrowly losing to Dave I introduced him to the roll and write genre with Trek 12: Himalaya.

This is a fun introductory roll and write I think with just enough challenge to keep more experienced players engaged.

I did managed to summit our first mountain, narrowly failed the second mountain by 2 points, and was not close on the third and final mountain.

With me getting points for the first two mountains, and Dave claiming points for the third. We ended the expedition a draw.

However I had other reasons for introducing Dave to roll and writes. The next ones I want to play with him are Three Sisters and Motor City. Yep we will be going from the safe paddling pool where Dave has just dipped his toes in the water to dropping him in the deep end!

Splish, splash!

If you go down to the woods today…

game night, LCG, Lord of the Rings, LoTR

You’re sure of a big surprise.

“The nastiest things they saw were the cobwebs: dark dense cobwebs with threads extraordinarily thick, often stretched from tree to tree, or tangled in the lower branches on either side of them. There were none stretched across the path, but whether because some magic kept it clear, or for what other reason they could not guess.” The Hobbit

Well maybe the spiders weren’t that big a surprise. Given the abundance of cobwebs. However the other monsters we came across were.

It had seemed such a simple task that we’d been asked to do.

“You are traveling through Mirkwood forest, carrying an urgent message from King Thanduil to the Lady Galadriel of Lorien…” Passage Through Mirkwood scenario LoTR LCG

Our party delivering this urgent message would have been an unusual sight, nay even a surprise to anyone coming across them on the road.

It’s not often you see dwarves and elves traveling together. Old animosities put aside for this most urgent of tasks.

Yes Dave (elves0 and myself (dwarves) were playing the two starter decks that I bought alongside the revised edition of the core set.

As this was a learning game we were only doing the recommended introductory scenario Passage Through Mirkwood.

Considering that the elves starter deck has Galadriel as one of its heroes I’m not sure what mental gymnastics to perform that explains her presence.

But blanking out this anomaly worked for me.

As our party of odd comrades made their way through Mirkwood by following the Old Forest Path, passing through the odd Forest Gate, and ascending the mountains of Mirkwood. We encountered the odd spider and party of orcs. But these were easily dispatched.

I don’t know if the encounter deck was being kind to us. But until the last quest card it did seem quite easy. We had single appearances of creatures. Which we fought successfully. At one point there were two scary looking threats in the staging area. But we were able to put facing them off as we had not amassed enough threat for them to engage us.

We’re these starter decks too powerful for this introductory scenario?

Our final hurdle was to find and defeat Ungoliant’s Spawn.

Luckily we found Ungoliant’s Spawn very quickly.

That when revealed ability of Don’t Leave The Path was a great aid in doing so.

However it was joined by forest Spiders and a King Spider.

Things had suddenly got much tougher.

But luck was on our side Gandalf final appeared and did some damage to Ungoliant’s Spawn. Our dwarven and elven allies were falling like flies as we battled to take out these spiders.

But eventually axe and bow managed to dispatch the eight legged freaks attacking them.

I really enjoyed Lord of the Rings LCG. It struck me as a less complicated Marvel Champions. But just as fun.

Resources are a big thing in this game and often you find you don’t have enough to play the cards you want to.

I think 2 players is a nice number to play this type of co-op lcg with. We know I’m not a solo player.

It was quick to pick up the flow of the game. Which I liked.

Obviously I love the theme of the game. And I’ve discussed my history with Tolkien and Middle Earth in a previous post or two.

Dave also enjoyed it. And after a discussion and showing Dave the campaign rules he’s happy to start a campaign. But he had one proviso. That we play on the expert setting where the hero health carries over between games and does not reset. I’m up for that.

So after I have exposed Dave to Marvel Champions we will start the core set campaign.

Wait I told you that!

Expeditions, game night

Last night saw Expeditions hit the table for the third time since it arrived.

I’m really enjoying the game. It’s fastly becoming a favourite of mine.

The game last night saw Julie, Dave, and myself exploring the frozen tundra.

The bgstat app randomly chose Dave as the first player. Which meant I got to choose first based on seating order.

This is how our chosen champions and mechs matched up after our choices:

  • Olga & Changa with Highlander – me
  • Anna & Wojtek with Odin’s Wrath – Julie
  • Vesna & Voltan with Tatanka – Dave

I really need to try another champion next time I play. But it’s hard. Olga is the champion of the Rusviet faction in Scythe. And we all know how I feel about that faction.

Whilst setting up the tiles, I particularly thought how cool that the two tiles that gave workers were on opposite sides of the board, with all the card draw clustered in the middle. This was going to force a splitting of the mechs depending on the plans of the players. No grouping, congestion here.

It was another game where I only refreshed once and that was early on in the game. And if my memory isn’t failing me Julie and Dave refreshed about three times each. The rest of the time it was the tile or card ability that was used.

We also saw less use of the sweep action to reset the face up cards. Which meant we saw less of the deck. That meant less of the cards I like to get came out.

Supplies for exploring

One thing I noticed at the end as I was boasting about my fourth and final glory star was how few cards I had left in hand. Not counting the two starting cards of the champion and their companion. I had two! The rest were either quests that I solved or items that had been to upgrade my mech.

The glory that I was able to boast about!
My end mech state

My victory was pretty comprehensive. I was particularly happy with the ruthless way I triggered the end of the game. My last turn saw me block off the second boast tile stopping Dave and Julie from getting a third glory token out.

Now I did help/advise both work out their best last turn to maximise points gained.

Final scores

It was at the end whilst packing up that Julie and Dave said that next time they knew to look for combos/synergies more.

Wait I told you that at the start. I pointed out during my early turns what I was looking for in a card! That I liked cards that gave me one of the main actions, such as move when I played it. It was particularly galling that Julie had said it as I told her, nah pointed to the cards that were out that fed into her mech ability of being able to use/get maps. Sadly I wasn’t able to do the same for Dave.

I ended up taking one of the cards seeing as Julie refused to act on my advice and go her own path.

I’ve played at different player counts now for each game, and I think it scales pretty well. Except when you have players inflicted with ap.

Turns are normally pretty quick, so little down time.

Although I think I’d max out the player count at four. I like that at the higher player count there is more blocking. Whether it’s intentional or not.

It was a fun evening and I loved that I got to share one of my favourite games to new players.

Wait did I just say it’s a favourite game?

Friday Night Encounters

Fenland Gamers, game night, Stonemaier Games

Last night was once again a Fenland Gamers club night.

Last night numbers were slightly down. But we had enough for a couple of tables. One table played The Warriors board game. Which if you are under a certain age have no idea it’s based on a 1970s movie. Mind you Jonathan had no idea it was a movie either. I think the only person playing it familiar with the source material was Dave. I’d be interested in giving it a try. I do like the movie.

Our table got to play the latest hotness, the sequel to Stonemaier Games second biggest selling game (it was the top until Wingspan came out) Scythe, Expeditions.

Every copy of Expeditions has an achievements sheet included. One side are the achievements to record names against. The other side is an extract from a captains journal (see below).

It turns out thanks to a really observant individual on the games Facebook group that there are different versions of this journal page. In less than 24 hours the group has managed to identify at least 17 different ones (it may be all of them now).

It’s suspected there are 20 different journal pages. Jamey did say there was a hint to the number in the photo. Which I have zoomed in on below. Which seems to confirm the number 20.

What’s even cooler is that Jamey signed 20 of these sheets and they were randomly placed in copies of the game!

My copy of Expeditions was the iron clad edition, with the add-on metal coins. The difference between the iron clad edition and the standard are the amazing metal mechs instead of plastic ones.

The production of the game is up to the usual gold standard set by Stonemaier Games. The setup of the game is made super easy by the games insert. With a great storage tray that holds the coins, worker meeples, and map tokens. Thus can be taken straight out of the box and used on the table.

The art is just out of this world. Jakub Rozalski is just amazing. I love the whole world he has built with it. That 1920’s alternative history with the mechs. Love it.

Story wise Expeditions takes place after the events in Scythe and the Rise of Fenris expansion. We shift from Europa to “…Siberia, where a massive meteorite crashed near the Tunguska River, awakening ancient corruption.” It’s our job to venture North to investigate this meteorite crash.

There is a darker tone to the plot line and art. I’m trying to think of a way to best describe the theme/tone. I think Scythe meets Cthulhu might best describe it.

There are some Easter eggs within the game. It wouldn’t be a Stonemaier game without them. There are two cards named after other titles in the Stonemaier catalogue (Charterstone and Scythe). Plus Jamey’s two cats feature on a card (see below).

We started off as a five player game, however three quarters of the way through our fifth player had to leave.

This first game took three and a half hours. But at full player count (for the majority of the game), and two players that suffer from analysis paralysis is it any surprise?

Once setup Expeditions is a table hog, and was a very tight fit with five of us round the table.

However the game has a table presence that is made with the large metal mechs.

The base snaps didn’t fit perfectly on one or two of the metal mechs. But I think that might improve over time.

For those thinking this is going to be like Scythe, it is not. There are a couple of similar mechanics, such as not being able to repeat an action twice, the victory track and glory tokens, and there are mechs! This plays completely differently. There is no confrontation/interaction between players apart from blocking another player getting to a space by occupying it yourself.

I love how the card titles help tell the story of the game. But having multi use cards that you have to decide when to stop using them for their ability and turn them into say an upgrade for the mech, a solved mission or meld a piece of meteorite is a cool.

There is also having to know when to do a refresh action to move cards from your activated area back to your hand. It’s a tough decision. It’s all you do on a turn. But the payoff is getting a powerful next turn. Although I did find it more useful doing the refresh action on a tile instead once one was revealed.

Being able to utilise not only your Commander and their animal companions abilities, but also your mechs is really important. I played Olga with Changa, naturally. I also had the highlander mech which meant I could put gained cards straight into my hand.

If Marcin hadn’t triggered the end of the game I would have on my next turn. Marcin also went on to win as well. But the point difference between us was from him having vanquished more corruption than me.

I had a blast playing Expeditions and can’t wait to play it again. I think this will be finding a place in my top 10 games.

Longer than a John Bonham drum solo

Game day, game night, Twilight Imperium 4

As planned our four player game of Twilight Imperium 4 (TI4) with the Prophecy of Kings (PoK) expansion took place yesterday.

Which meant Dave, Diego, Jeff, and myself gathered indoors round two tables pushed together on a hot July afternoon.

The previous evening I had confirmed that there was no booking of the community centre. It was important to know before hand if we had any time constraints (other than the place closing up for the night) before starting so we could make adjustments.

As per usual I arrived early to start setting up and merge the PoK expansion with the core game. I punctuated this with a triple quarter pounder cheese burger. Hey a galactic empire marches on its stomach.

When the others arrived there was still a little setup left to do, plus choose our factions.

Dave and Diego went with factions from the core game, whilst Jeff and I went with one of the new factions from the expansion.

The factions chosen were as follows:

  • The Nomad – me
  • The Universities of Jol-Nar – Dave
  • The Argent Flight – Jeff
  • The Mentak Coalition – Diego

By the time we finished setup (including choosing factions) nearly an hour had passed! So a 1:15pm start was really 2:15pm before our first expansionist actions were being taken.

For me TI4 (or earlier editions) is the board gaming version of epic stories like Lord of the Rings, or the Foundation series.

To be fair it might be quicker to read either than play TI4.

TI4 is an epic game. Not just because of the scale of it (it’s a massive table hog) but the inter-galactic warring factions fighting for supremacy has this epic grandeur feel.

The first few rounds were void of any conflict, and were mainly factions racing to grab planets to get the resources needed to build up their fleets for defensive and aggressive purposes.

Our first space battle was between Jeff and Diego over Mecatol Rex. Even after that skirmish combat was a rarity until the later stages.

I did quiet well developing my technology. It helped my Commander (part of PoK) enabled me to produce my command ship for free. This enabled me to develop War Sun technology and take Jeff on and rebuild very quickly after any losses.

We had two epic battles in the middle of the galaxy.

I liked what PoK bought to the core game. The leaders, mechs, factions. And it didn’t bring any real extra overhead to the game.

As a four player game we got to choose two strategy tiles each. Which was nice having two to activate. Although the second tile may not have always been one you had wanted.

We actually finished playing around 9:40pm. Yes I can see you doing the math. That’s about seven and a half hours of playtime.

A little longer than I had calculated. I’d estimated about five hours. But now you know why earlier I had checked about any bookings.

The thing is whilst you are playing you are so engrossed in the game that you have no idea what the time is. Before you know it seven hours plus have passed.

Ok you do get a hint during play when you miss phone calls asking where you are. But hey is it my fault I forgot to warn mum the game was likely to run a long time? Heck she got a McDonalds delivered out of it.

Anyway after the space dust had settled Dave’s turtling empire ended up victorious.

This was truly an epic afternoon and evening with great friends. The way a Summer Saturday truly should be spent.