Fenland Gamers Last Hooraa of 2015

Last night saw the last of the Fenland Gamers Christmas program of meet ups, and the last one for 2015.

For this end of year game fest, Jo, Debbie, their Dad and brother to Jonathan, Katie, Jonathan and myself met up at the usual location.

After a couple of false starts on games, we played Bang the Dice Game. This warm up game with the whole group playing saw the outlaws sneak the win. Sadly I wasn't on the winning side, I had been cast as the deputy.

For our next games we split up into two groups of three. Jo, her Dad and myself made one group and played one of Jo's favourite games Machi Koro.

Once again I rocked this game, and romped home with the win. My tactic of buying the expensive land marks early once more paid off. Next time I think we will play with the Harbour expansion, that should shake up the game a little.

While waiting for the other group to finish their game we played Love Letter The Hobbit. I like this version for the couple of new bits it introduces. I like the zero value One Ring card, that if you have it at the end of the game becomes a seven in value. Plus the two different three value cards. One being Legolas and if you have the lower value card in the hand comparison you are out (nothing new there), and the other being Tauriel which switches that comparison totally around, so the person with the highest value card is out.

Coming from behind I managed to get the win. By the time I had achieved my victory, the other group were coming to the end of their game and using advanced calculus working out the scores and who had won.

We split into different groups this time, Debbie, her Dad and myself played Kingdom Builder, whilst the others went off to play at bomb disposal.

A victory for me at Kingdom Builder gave me a hat trick of wins for the evening.

While we were waiting for the other group to finish their game, I quickly set up and read the rules for Codenames.

Codenames is a game Jonathan had been wanting to try for a while. Well it has been getting a lot of buzz earlier in the year when it came out. It also has made a few top ten lists of games of 2015 since.

We split up into two teams, blue and red. Blue was Jonathan, Debbie and Jo. While Red was myself, Katie and the girls Dad. Jonathan and I were the clue givers for our respective teams.

The history books will record that Blue won two games to one. But the history books won't show that we had a great time playing this. It's always a good sign when folks ask to play another game when the first play finishes.

I liked Codenames (which is cool because I bought it!). But boy giving the clues is hard. Trying to find clues that relate to more than one word is hard. You may think the clue is obvious and it just doesn't click with the guessers on your team. Keeping that poker face amid frustration seeing the guessers go down the wrong path is hard.

Then there is the doh! moment when you the second after you give a clue you suddenly realise it applies to more than one word, and you had missed that!

The game has a lot of replayability, and is a steal at the price. A great party game (which I'm not usually a fan of).

The other group played the new Pennsylvania map for Ticket to Ride (which I want to give a try), and also the rather good Bomb Squad Academy.

Don't forget if you are local and into gaming, or would like to try something more than mainstream fair, why not come along to one of the Fenland Gamer sessions.

Costa and Gaming… Reprise

Once again I had an errand to run in town, so plans had been made to again meet up at Costa for coffee and games. This mornings casual gaming session was attended by Debbie and her visiting Dad. Jo had decided the warmth and comfort of staying in bed asleep was more preferable than enjoying a hot beverage, got d company and games. That or she didn't fancy hanging out with two old fuddy duddys like her dad and myself. Which is totally understandable.

The coffee shop gaming experience started off with a game of the push your luck dice game Age of War. After Debbie beat the two old dudes, we played Oink Games little push your luck game Deep Sea Adventure. Whilst playing a lady from another table enquired about the game we were playing, because she hadn't seen anything like it before. In the meantime Debbie's Dad and I struggled to get any treasure to the surface, whilst Debbie once more racked up the points. After the third and final dive, Debbie was the only one to score anything, a win by default!

Our final game of the mini meetup was a game of my favourite version of Love Letter, Batman. Look I'm a Batman fan, so why wouldn't this be my favourite version? Anyway I managed to get a convincing victory and stop Debbie walking away with a clean sweep of wins.

Another great caffeine meetup, thanks Debbie and Debbie's Dad for a great time.