Last night was the first and only session of the Christmas gaming program for Fenland Gamers that I could attend this year.

Traditionally there are three gaming sessions organised. However work rotas meant I had shifts during two of them. It was just luck that I was on an early yesterday and thus able to attend.

It was really great to be seeing friends again and playing games with them.

After some catching up, Katie, Jeff, and myself played Dune Imperium ALL IN!

By that I mean not only was it the core game and the first expansion Rise of Ix. But also the second and latest expansion Immortality.

Wow is this a table hog now.

For me Dune Imperium is like Istanbul. A great core game, that gets better with the expansions.

Granted when teaching to new players things might look daunting. But after a couple of turns, or just the first round, everything clicks into place.

I love what Immortality brings to the game. More decisions to make, more options.

In our game it was looking like Jeff might trigger the end of the game on the ninth round. I had decided not to go for one of my intrigue cards end game scoring conditions as I just didn’t think I would get a chance to complete it.

I had decided instead to try and get as close as I could to ten points and hope that my end game intrigue cards would be enough to snatch victory away from Jeff.

In the end after some beautiful minding it, I managed to grab three victory points to trigger the end of the game, and get two more from end game intrigue cards.

But that moment was all down to stealing an alliance token from Katie, and grabbing a couple of others by winning the combat, and doing research that enabled me to progress up faction alliance tracks.

It was not an outcome I had planned on that turn. But as I got closer to triggering the end of the game, one false move and we’d have gone to another round. Which would have given Jeff a window of opportunity to grab the victory instead. Everything had to be done in the correct order. Luckily I didn’t slip up.

There is still plenty to explore with the Immortality expansion before I talk more about it. But so far after this initial game I love it.

It was great to be gaming again. Tomorrow I’ve spending New Years Eve with Nathan so there will be a game or two there (even though it’s a whistle stop visit).

Now to start putting dates up for the next regular Friday evening gaming sessions.