Last night at the Chatteris Warlords weekly meet up Bob bought along his recently acquired copy of Starcraft the boardgame. A copy that was in amazing condition, and purchased at an unbelievably cheap price. Go google the game, and see how much this game goes for normally. I can tell you Bob didn't pay anything near to those prices.
My water damaged box, and the odd damaged card (due to a previous owner storing the cards by holding them together with elastic bands, the elastic had attached itself to the odd card), copy of Starcraft the boardgame has been sitting on my pile of shame ever since I got it. And yes I paid more for this copy than Bob did his, and I thought I was getting a bargain at the time!
I did have the odd game with me, such as Thiefs Market, The Manhattan Project: Chain Reaction. But they had been left in the car because earlier in the day on the Chatteris Warlords club page on Facebook, Bob had posted he was bringing along the game, and wanted to know who was up for playing it.
Five players were soon gathered together to play Starcraft. None of us had played the game before. So this was a learn as we play game.
Ben had already pushed two tables together for gaming when he arrived. But as we went through the setup process of the game, it soon became clear this was not big enough. We needed a third table. So pulling apart the two tables and slotting a third in the middle, we just about had enough space to play. Wow this is a big game!
No sooner had we finished setting up, than the last member of the clubs committee turned up, so the regular committee meeting was held. This meant we had to pause so Ben and Bob (who hold positions of power on the committee) could take part in the meeting. Usually these meetings are a wham, bam, thank you mam, type affair. But this time it decided to drag itself out. I have to admit it's interruption to game play as the meeting dragged on was starting to get to me. If the meeting had dragged on for ten minutes longer than it had I would have dropped out of the game.
We started playing again. Working our way through the stages of a turn. The player on my right was getting on my tits. He wasn't giving the game it's full attention, instead more bothered about his feckin Pokemon Go stuff. For fecks sake play the game or feck off I thought. He was slowing the game down.
This was a learning game. I thought I had only one resource, compared to the others. Which meant I wasn't going to be able to build anything on my turn until I conquered another planet to get them. So this meant I issued a move order to attack Ben's forces. Something I wouldn't have done when it turned out minutes later that we had a default pool of resources we could call upon. So with altered plans I built a new transport ship or whatever they are called, and moved to another unoccupied planet.
It was handy that Ben and I had a fight over a planet, because it meant we learnt the rules for battles. Which aren't really that complicated. Well that's how they seemed last night.
It was obvious that we were not going to finish the game. This is another one of those games that will take hours to play, not something for a club night. This game needs a Saturday session like the one I organised recently for A Game of Thrones the boardgame to do it justice.
We completed a second round of the game. I think on the banked victory points I had won with eight. The others were in the three,four point region. But I'm sure that if we had played longer I wouldn't have held onto that lead. I have to admit I was getting very frustrated with the player on my right during this second round. Him and his bloody phone and Pokemon Go. then his friend came over and chatted to him, distracting him further. He saw my Instagram likes popping up on my screen. Oh I was getting more likes than him for my picture, what's my ID on Instagram? Oh feck off I wanted to say, but begrudgedly through gritted teeth I gave my ID.
From the play through we had. And it was a learning game. So I can forgive Jamie on my left for needing to ask multiple times the same question. That doesn't slow the game down too much, and is great for banter at his expense. Although I don't think Bob will forgive Jamie for breaking one of the miniatures off its stand. I won't forgive the ignorant player on my right. However I disgress. From this limited play, I can tell I like this game, and definitely want to get a session going to play the game all the way to the end. Now all I need to do is try and find a time and place to get that game in.
Posted by me using my iPad and the Blogsy app