Monthly Archives: January 2019

Baby Kraken Have Surfaced

D&D, RPG


Finally the Table Breaker dice that I backed on Kickstarter arrived. I say finally, but that’s me being impatient once I knew that they were coming.

In reality the dice are two months early. I shouldn’t be getting these dice until sometime in February. However thanks to a bit of good luck and filling in my backer details early, I was, along with 140 other lucky regular backers getting our dice early along with the early bird backers.

I went with the black and red colour combo. It looks cool, but more importantly it’s very readable. I’ve seen some dice that the numbers are not that clear.


The dice are beautiful, and have a nice weight to them. The whole presentation is really good. The metal storage case can have the foam for the dice in the lower half removed and be used as a mini dice tray. My only complaint is that the hinge seems a bit too wobbly.

But how did I ended up with these amazing dice?

It started as a joke! Longtime sufferers will recall that last year The Usual Suspect broke my folding gaming table. Which meant that one or two of my supportive friends in my hour of suffering, used that opportunity to make jokes at my expense. Some would consider this cruel, but it was good natured banter in reality.

The day after, my friend Bouncy posted a screen grab of a kickstarter page for these dice on the club Facebook page. I missed the intended joke totally, and went off looking for the dice, cursing my friend for not including the link. Naturally I liked what I saw and backed the project.

It wasn’t until much later in the day when Jonathan commented on Bouncy’s post that he had only just got the joke, that it dawned on me also. Wow how slow was I? But it was funny, and had also cost me money. Well it would do (the Kickstarter hadn’t finished at that point), I could have backed out of backing the dice. But they looked really cool, and the name was cool also. So I let it ride.

I suppose you would like to hear what Dram got up to in the first session of the New Year. So read on for more in the adventures of …

Dram Tactical Genius


Our party of adventurers awoke the next morning, sore, beaten, but more importantly not stinking of poison.

While the others in the group pottered around, Dram did what was second nature for him. He made and ate breakfast.

Breakfast was followed by a boring discussion about what to do next. Ace and some others in the group wanted to go to Cragmaw Castle. No one seemed on board with Dram’s idea about seeing the dragon again. Which seemed the more exciting option. Where was the fun going to some castle? Apparently there was some guy they had to search for there. Who might have a map to a lost mine. This really didn’t sound as much fun as Dram’s idea of seeing the dragon again.

Out voted, the group broke count and headed off towards Cragmaw Castle.

They were travelling light and fast. Which for a halfling was more like jogging along to keep up with these big folk. How that gnome and his heavy armour was keeping up he didn’t know. In the distance Dram could here the wings of the dragon flapping as it flew above it’s domain. Which for Dram was a constant reminder of the excitement they were missing out on.

Early evening the group pitch camp near the edge of a woods. After the evening meal, before settling down for the night. There was another debate about the path to take. Sarmyar made an incredulous remark during it that Dram had to pick her up on. She had remarked at one point that she wanted excitement, to which Dram responded “but you turned down seeing the dragon again”. That put her in her place he thought.

Sarmyar and Ace took first watch. Dram snuggled up under his blanket and fur skin blanket, and drifted off into a slumber.

The next thing Dram knows he is being woken by a commotion, Ace and Sarmyar had awakened the camp, they were under attack.

Dram could make out shapes and flapping. He cast darkness to hide and give him time to prepare his defences.

Unable to see, Dram felt around for his staff. With battle noises filtering through to him. Dram used the staff to give himself mage’s armour.

Fully protected and now ready for action, Dram made his way out of the darkness. The rest of the group were still fighting these creatures. Magic missiles flew from Dram’s hand as he guided them to hit the creatures attacking Nick, Sarmyar and the gnome. They dropped to the floor dead.

Dram had once again saved the day.

As they waited for the darkness to disappear. Dram looked at the creatures corpses. He recognised the small, leather winged blood sucking stirge.

The final watch after all that excitement was carried out by Dram, Grull and Nick. Which was rather boring, and uneventful.

As the sun rose in the sky, slowly warming up everything it touched, Grull and Sarmyar disappeared off to do a spot of hunting. Dram naturally made breakfast.

After breakfast had been eaten, and Dram’s thoughts had started to turn towards second breakfast. The hunting couple returned with a boar over Grull’s shoulders. Second breakfast was going to be awesome.

After breakfast Ace had the bright idea of taking a short cut through the woods to Cragmaw Castle.

Light was dappling through the overhead canopy. The walk was rather pleasant. The party hit a path that they decided to follow.

Suddenly Sarmyar disappeared into a hole in the ground. Dram reacted instinctively casting feather fall to save Sarmyar.

As the party gathered round the hole in the ground, hobgoblins appeared out from behind trees and bushes. Arrows flew through the air. One struck Dram.

There was only one response Dram had to this. Misty Step. Dram disappeared and then reappeared the other side of the hole Sarmyar had fallen into. Before anyone reacted or could do anything, for the second time in two days Dram was engulfed in a wall of darkness.

Once again whilst hidden, Dram used his staff to give him mage’s armour. He was ready now for this battle. The noises of which were making their way through the darkness. It sounded exciting.

Dram slowly made his way to the edge of the darkness. Poking his head out he saw the pit directly in front of him, now half full with hobgoblin corpses.

There were two hobgoblins attacking a dire wolf. Nick had transformed again and as usual getting himself into a sticky situation. Dram casts magic missile and directs them at the two hobgoblins, then fades back into the darkness. Well you need to see something first to hit it.

Dram repeats the manoeuvre. This time there is a single hobgoblin left attacking the dire wolf, and a cleaved hobgoblin corpse between the dire wolf and Grull. That lone hobgoblin took the full force of the magic missile. It’s body slumped to the ground, expired.

Gnomes are such carrion-scavengers. Our “paladin” was true to his race, and rushed over to go through the pockets of the hobgoblin that Dram had just killed.

Dram was concerned about Sarmyar. He didn’t think she had bumped her head from her fall, after all he had saved her. Which she could have been grateful about and at least said thank you. Maybe she got hit on the head during the excitement of battle. That’s what is had to be. Why else would she keep going on about a dust cloud, and waiting for it to disappear? There was no dust cloud.

The gnome went over to Grull and showed him a bit of paper that he had found on the hobgoblin corpse.

Feeling brave Ace went looting the remaining bodies. Who then starts handing out pieces of paper to the rest of the group.

Dram looked at the piece of paper handed to him. It was a wanted poster with his likeness crudely drawn on it. “I’m going going to send that back to mother, she’ll like this”, spoke Dram to no-one in particular.


If Dram thought gnomes were carrion-scavengers, Ace was going to make what the paladin had done look like the height of good taste.

Ace started hacking off one of the hobgoblins heads, and then tied it to his belt using the remains of the hobgoblins hair.

With that image firmly in your mind we leave our adventurers for another week.

Monthly Meetup January 2019

Fenland Gamers, game night


The afternoon saw a hors d’oeuvre gaming session with my friend Nathan. Nathan is very knowledgable about video games and movies. But I might question that after recent new information came to light. Such as until Pokemon Let’s Go X (can’t remember which one he got), he hadn’t played a Pokemon game before (Go does not count). Then if you saw his films of 2018 he enjoyed Superman 4 The Quest for Peace. I think ’nuff said on that. Just knowing that is enough to make my case.

We started off with a couple of games of Keyforge. We both played new unopened decks. So we had no idea about the decks, except the houses they contained. Which meant we got the full discovery experience as we played.

We only played two games, using new decks both games. If time allowed I’m sure we would have played best of three with each deck. But this was uber casual, playing for enjoyment. Which is why the honours being shared, a game a piece seemed right.

During the second game Nathan’s partner arrived. So after I had finally won the game, I taught them Kingdomino. Nathan owns the game, but hadn’t played it, and wanted to be taught how to play.

This really was a fun way to spend a Wednesday afternoon.

The first monthly meet up for 2019. And what a meet up. Some of those that attended got to play possibly the first big game of 2019, it’s definitely the hottest game of the year so far, Wingspan, approximately 3 months early!

But first we played a five player game of Sheriff of Nottingham. I’ve not played this game for a while, but like all things gaming it has a lot of stiff competition for getting to the table.

Sheriff of Nottingham is one of those games that really is reliant on the people you are playing it with. Get the wrong bunch playing it, and the game is not a fun experience. On the other hand, get people that ham it up, buy in to the roles they are playing, and the experience is really fun.

Last night we had a great bunch playing. There was banter, well two postman at the table there was going to be. Especially at their profession. Throw in some school boy humour based around male chickens. It was a blast playing the game. I think possibly the funniest game I’ve taken part in to date. Because of that I didn’t care I was nowhere close to winning.

Afterwards we split into two groups of three to play games. Naturally this is when Jonathan, myself and James played Wingspan.

Officially Wingspan isn’t due to hit the shelves of your FLGS until March. However thanks to me being impatient and jumping on the pre-order bandwagon of getting it direct from Stonemaier Games, it hit the table last night.

This is a really really nice engine builder, that looks amazing. Any faults found with the game is really nit picking.

We played using the competitive end of round scoring. So ideally you are building your engine with one eye on the end of round scoring rule for that round. Whilst also taking into account the end of game bonus you chose.

In our game we had three completely different engines. Mine was an egg and tucking cards engine. Whilst James had a card draw engine. I don’t know what engine Jonathan had. But that illustrates the variety you can have in the engines you build. And I know with the number of birds and their abilities in the game, there is a few more engine types and then mashups that we didn’t touch.

With 170 odd bird cards in the base game (an expansion is already planned) there is a lot of variety, and you are not going to see every card in a game. It’s also going to be a few games before you’ve seen all the bonus cards. With eight end of round scoring tiles, that are double sided, that are selected at random at the start of the game, there is even a bit of variety there. So I guess in a kind of long winded fashion I’m saying there is a lot of replay ability in the game.

I really like that you start off the first round with eight actions to take that round. Then at the end of each round that number goes down by one as you use one of your action cubes to mark your position on the end of round scoring track. But even though you get to do less on subsequent rounds, the actions you take are more powerful thanks to the birds you are attracting.

It’s a hard decision to make at the start of the game about which of the starting hand of five birds you want to keep, if any. Because each bird you keep costs you one of your starting five resources.

It seemed to me reflecting back on our game, that rounds one and two are your building your engine rounds. The third round is the start to exploit your engine, and the fourth and final round is your engine doing it’s thing.

I liked the mechanic on the Barn Owl card I had that used already selected resource dice. They got re-rolled and any mouse symbols went on the card. It just simulated the hunting of this predator perfectly. Loved it, seemed very thematic. There were a couple of times when I couldn’t use the ability because there were no used dice.

And the bird tower and the resource dice, love them. Love how they are used in the game.

The rule book is easy to follow, and I love the little designer notes scattered through out it. Having the reference section separate is nice. Although the quick start rules that it has inside the cover would have been better on the back page in my opinion. They even suggest if you are learning the game as you go along (which regular readers will know is something we like to do in our game group) to use these rules. When I read that in the rule book it bought a little smile to my face.

With the card tray, supplied containers for eggs and resource tokens, set up and clearing away is pretty quick.

The game looks beautiful. The art as I’ve said previously is gorgeous and could easily be in one of those Observer bird books. Out on the table being played, the bird box dice tower, and the eggs make great table theatrics. Overall with quality of components is amazing.

My nit picking for the game is that with all the cards sleeved they barely fit in the rather nice card storage box included. In fact I had to take the automata cards out and put in a small deck box. For those interested these are the sleeves I got, Mayday Games 57.5 x 89 mm sleeves Chimera USA Premium Card Game (Pack of 50). There is a couple of millimetres gap at the top of the sleeve. But I can live with that.

There is a typo that I’m not bothered about. But there is a couple of misprinted cards, with incorrect numbers on. The correct images are available on the games FAQ, but it would be nice to be able to get replacement cards.

I’m going to also nit pick about the thin card stock for the end of round scoring track. I’d have liked it to be a bit thicker, maybe even cardboard.

And I’ll agree with Tom on The Dice Tower that the score pad is a bit plain when you look how colourful the rest of the game is.

Wingspan really does live up to the hype. It delivers in spades on it’s promises. This is one game I can’t wait to get to the table again. The bar has been set really high for the rest of the year.

As usual for this type of post a big thank you to The Luxe Cinema for hosting the evening once again. And a “you rock” to the staff on duty.

Use Any Miniature Systems

miniatures, RPG

One trend or genre I seem to have stumbled upon In recent weeks is that of miniature rules that you can use any 28mm miniatures with. These are rules that you use whatever you have lying around, and don’t rely on you having to buy starter sets, or construct “armies” from only official models, or buy lots of extra specific rules aimed at specific army types.

The first rule set I came across in this genre was via my friend Duncan. He tweeted a link to the rules for Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse. Duncan knew with my liking of Zombicide that it might be of interest to me.

It’s the ideal entry point for me, because I can use my Zombicide stuff. It even got me painting minis (mainly zombies so far) from Zombicide (although I need to get back into the painting mood, not been feeling it since the Summer).

So Last Days is a zombie survival skirmish game. Both players have a squad of survivors that will be fighting it out with the added threat of zombies roaming about on the board.

The rules have about 5 scenarios for you to use as the basis for a skirmish or to string together into a campaign. Plus there is a planned expansion coming out later this year I think with further scenarios in, and whatever else they decide to include.

The game plays on a 3ft by 3ft play area, uses d6 dice, some miniatures, terrain, tokens or something to act as the tokens, and a tape measure.

The latest one to find it’s way to me is the Rangers of Shadow Deep system. This is a fantasy based solo or cooperative rule set. Which as far as I know makes this kind of unique. There aren’t many systems as far as I know that play solo, or are cooperative, if any.

The rules come with 4 missions that have sub scenarios, plus an additional campaign setting. So a lot of play there already, plus you can buy a cheap mini expansion single mission.

For playing this, it differs from Last Days in that it uses d20 dice instead, and is mostly played on a 2.5ft by 2.5ft area. Otherwise you have the same themed requirements.

For me not being a massive miniatures gamer, I’m coming from a zero starting point. Which means I’m having to build up slowly the necessary bits to play with.

For Last Days I’m in a better position than I am for Rangers of Shadow Deep. Last Days allows me to use all the stuff I have for Zombicide. With the Walking Dead miniatures game I can pick up stuff for that to re-use. And that is what I have slowly been gathering bits for.

On the fantasy front I have zero stuff to repurpose. Although stuff like trees (once I have them) can be shared. So when funds allow I’ll slowly build up what is required.

If you are into the miniature based gaming it’s likely that you already have a lot of stuff you can use.

For me I’d like trees, bushes etc, I’ve looked into the cost of buying and boy is that stuff expensive. There are tutorials online for creating my own. But (there is always a but) I don’t have the tools, skills or time. Excuses I know. However I’m struggling to paint as it is at the moment.

One drawback for me, is these games require tokens. Luckily for Last Days I found some pre-made ones. I’m hoping that I can find a kind soul that has also produced some tokens that can be bought for Rangers of Shadow Deep.

I’d love to be playing these games. But I need at least the unpainted stuff to be able to. Last Days is the one I’m closest to being in that position for. So these games are a side project for me, as I slowly build up what is required.

But I think both of these would appeal to the none miniatures gamer because of that lower entry point, of any mini will do. You don’t need lots of minis, these are squad based, so up-to 5 or 6 (depending on squad construction) should be enough for a player. The rules aren’t overly complex in my opinion. Plus the rule books are less than £20 in both cases.

Wingspan – The hotness arrives

Uncategorized

It’s arrived! Preordered on the first day available, and under a week later it’s in my grubby mitts.

Naturally I took photos as I was opening the box. Which I bored people on other social media with yesterday. And now presented here in glorious technicolour for you just in case you managed to avoid them. There is no escaping some things.

I have to admire how the planning of the game storage takes into account the dice tower. There are far too many games out there that don’t put that much thought into things, and give you a dice tray or tower and don’t make room to store it.

Tomorrow once the sleeves arrive it’s sleeving around 200 cards time.

This Wednesday at the monthly meetup of Fenland Gamers they will get to play the first hot game of 2019 over two months early.

Ravnica Allegiance Open House Weekend

magic, MtG

This weekend is Open House weekend at your FLGS.

I’ll repeat myself from previous posts. I have had new people to the blog, and they may not know about these events.

Stealing the WotC image from their LGS pages, you can see that these Open House events are aimed at new players. They also hope to hook players back into the game.


So you want to learn to play MtG, or are a returning player and want to get back into the game. Turn up to your FLGS this weekend, get a free Welcome deck, and either the store owner or one of the MtG regulars will teach you to play the game.

After a few games of MtG you keep the free deck, and also get the following promo card.

This promo card will guarantee that there will be plenty of MtG regulars there to teach you how to play and play against.

I’m not sure if the Welcome decks will have any Ravnica cards in them. They won’t have any “value” cards in them, after all they are free. But they are a great way to try the game for free.

I’ll be at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole’s Open House event this Saturday. There might even be a Commander game to join in if I’m lucky. If you are in the area then pop in and catch a game with me.

Just for those that might be interested this is the upcoming schedule for MtG over the next few weeks as Ravnica Allegiance comes out.

If you did make it to the Open House, and had a good time. Then the following weekends Prerelease weekend is a fun event to attend. But I’ll talk more about that at the start of next week.

From Golgari to Simic

magic, MtG


And we are back to some MtG coverage. I know some of you will skip this post altogether, while others will be lapping this up. As they say you can’t please everyone all the time. Although it would make a nice change to please some of you.

With the next MtG set Ravnica Allegiance just three weeks or so away, spoiler season in full swing, it’s time to decide which guild I’m going to be for the upcoming pre-release event, and look at some of the spoiled cards.

A quick disclaimer.

“This isn’t a comprehensive look at the spoiled cards. It’s a look at cards that caught my eye at the time of starting the post (a week ago now).

I’m certainly not a master deck builder claiming these cards will win tournaments, if they look like they are fun to play and do a thing then I’ll be happy.

A lot of the time when I’m evaluating cards I’m thinking whether they will fit into an existing deck, or go into one of the deck ideas I have. Sometimes they may even spark the idea for a deck.“

I have to say there have been some sweet cards shown so far. But I saw one that spoke to me and my horrors from the deep commander deck.

What a great card that will be. In Commander X can potentially be a big number. If this hits mid to late game, it’s a game changer. Handful of cards, life top up, and a big bad on the board. Plus the art is pretty cool.

With the horrors from the deep deck being a Simic deck, Allegiance will give me a tonne of new cards to consider for it.

I don’t think I do much, if anything with +1/+1 counters in the deck, or activated abilities. I’ll have to check that one. So at the moment Biomancer’s Familiar is a border line utility card for me. But it does combo off with the other two cards I’ve included with it below.

Simic Ascendancy, gives me a mana sink that makes my big creatures scarier, plus an alternate win condition. Zegana, comes in as a 4/4 but can quickly join the big creature squad with it’s adapt 4. And has that synergy with Simic Ascendancy.

Aeromunculus will not see play in my Commander deck, but I can see it being of use in a standard deck. I do think that these cards so far have potential for a Simic Standard deck.

Now Growth Spiral is just what the doctor ordered for my deck, card draw and ramp. Perfect. I like the split card. Removal and dig for a creature. The costs aren’t too bad. I’d prefer not giving an opponent a 3/3 body to hit me with next turn. But if it’s a choice between that and a much bigger dude I’ll take the 3/3 option every day.

These next cards will go in other decks. For instance Lavinia will certainly be welcome in my death and taxes deck. That deck is all about frustrating the other players and punishing them for playing the game. I can’t see how Mass Manipulation is anything but a Commander card. It’d be a funny card to play, but is it a great card? I don’t think so. 6 CMC to gain control of a single creature, 8 CMC for two, 10 for CMC for three. It’s an expensive card to play. I’d play it for that shit and giggles, it could be a game winner. Stealing a Planeswalker just before it ultimates and doing the ultimate yourself would be hilarious.

Wilderness Reclamation will definitely have a home in my big green stompy deck. But I can see it in the horrors from the deep, my elf deck, basically anything that splashes green.

Smothering Tithe and Verity Circle are so going into the death and taxes deck. I really love Smothering Tithe. It’s going to give so much ramp in Commander. By the time things get back to you, you could be 3 treasure tokens better off. So you are able to play big cards ahead of the curve.


Sphinx of Foresight I like the scry ability. Potential creature for the death and taxes. But I think in Standard this can be a powerful card too. That opening hand ability to sort your first 3 card draws isn’t to be sneezed at.

All the art from the spoilers I have seen has been awesome so far. I particularly like the rakdos stuff that’s been coming out.

When it came to choosing a guild for Allegiance, and especially the pre-release event, it was hard. I really do like a couple of the new mechanics, and the cards in one or two of the other guilds.

But it was the lure of going after cards for the horrors of deep deck, and trying to increase my chances of getting that Hydroid Krasis that finally swung it for me to chose Simic as my guild. I also like the idea of playing around with +1/+1 counters in Standard.

Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu

switch

While I was fact checking (Wikipedia) for when Pokemon Red/Blue were released it said 1999 for the EU. Was it really as late as that? It seemed further back than that.

It was the height of the Pokemon craze, although my kids were into the card game, the cartoon, for me it was all about the video game. I went Red, while my middle son went Blue. My first pokemon was Charmander. Yes the first gym was easier with Bulbasaur. But a little grinding and it was a bit harder but still do able. Yeah I’m a fire player through and through. Apart from Pokemon Yellow, I always choose the fire pokemon as my starting pokemon.

Naturally during that whole initial Pokemon crazy my two youngest sons were really into catching ’em all. Ok I may have been a little hooked myself. I think my fondest memory of this time was a family holiday down in Dartmoor. We were on a walk with the boys, my middle son wanted to go to a Pokemon event in London later in the year. My wife had said he couldn’t go. Both were a bit head strong, and an argument ensued between the two of them. Even at one point as we waited for a heard of cows to pass us in a lane, the clash of wills raged on, oblivious to the bovine menace passing by.

I think excluding the last 3DS release and spinoffs I’ve played every Pokemon handheld release since.

Over the years players have wanted that good ol’ Pokemon handheld experience on their none handheld Nintendo consoles. Nintendo decided to give players the likes of Pokemon Stadium or Snap instead. It was Pokemon, just not what everyone wanted.

Fast wind to the latest Nintendo console the Switch, and finally we get that handheld experience Pokemon experience on the big screen. Although you could argue, if like me you only play your Switch as a portable device, it’s still handheld.

Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu and it’s alternate version Pokemon Let’s Go Eevee bring an updated Pokemon Yellow to the Switch. The version you buy decides your starting Pokemon. Naturally if I couldn’t start off with my beloved fire pokemon, Pikachu would be my next choice.


Graphically this is a lovely looking version of Pokemon. Naturally and easily a step or two above the 3DS releases. The cartoony style has been there since day one, but now with current hardware we are starting to get the cartoon on our screens.

The use of modern techniques like particle effects and shaders to enhance various parts of the game, look beautiful. Or I’m assuming that’s what was used during the evolution cut scenes, or for various attacks like thunderbolt.

Naturally there are differences from the original version. I will put the disclaimer in that this is not comprehensive, and is based on a fading memory of a game I played many many years ago.

The first most obvious one is that the random wild pokemon encounters are out. Instead you see the wild pokemon roaming around. So you can avoid them altogether, or just capture the ones that you need to complete that pokedex. I really like this change. It streamlines and speeds up play a tonne.

This naturally leads onto the capturing the pokemon. You no longer have to battle the pokemon first and get their health real low before throwing the pokeball to capture them. That battling part is gone. Now using the gyroscopes in the controllers you move a target around the screen and throw pokeballs at the pokemon. I believe this is more like capturing pokemon in Pokemon Go! (not played it in a long time so can’t remember exactly). You can also throw berries at the pokemon to try and increase the odds of capturing the pokemon.

Now I do like this streamlining. Once again it’s a nice time saver. Although for special pokemon like Snorlax, or the legendary ones you have a timed battle in which you have to defeat them before the timer runs out. Only then if you win do you get the chance to throw pokeballs at them.

The safari zone is gone, and has been replaced by a Go! Park. This is the forced link with the Pokemon Go! App. Sorry Nintendo I’m not going to get back into that. It had its 5 minutes of use. Now it’s dead to me. With the loss of the safari zone has gone the running around capturing pokemon within it.

I miss the old safari zone, and the loss of being able to use it to build up that pokédex. But I can see why they replaced it with the Go! link up. It’s just not for me.

The HM’s are replaced with special techniques. They are renamed, the number cut down (I remember a rock breaking one not present in this), and don’t take up a slot on your pokemon’s moves. Which is nice. Plus they can be taught to any pokemon! So my Pikachu knows the version of surf and fly! Before you’d have to have the appropriate pokemon to learn the HM, so fly could only be learnt by flying pokemon for example.

I don’t remember having to meet requirements to be able to enter a gym to challenge for a badge. But in this version you can’t get into a gym to challenge a gym leader for the badge unless you meet the minimum requirements. And these vary from gym to gym.

There is no computer to store your excess pokemon in. This has been replaced by a readily accessible box. What difference does this make? Well in the original versions, you’d have to get to a poke centre to swap out pokemon. Now as long as you are not in battle you can do it it whenever. So whenever a pokemon faints you can replace it easily enough to keep your team at full strength. I suppose this could make the game easier. I have to admit I haven’t used it this way myself.

There have also been updates slipped in from newer versions of the game too. For instance choosing the gender of your character at the start, being able to dress up your pokemon with costumes, battling two trainers at once, and mega evolutions. They are the ones I noticed.

With Pikachu on your shoulder through out the game, it is also possible to have a pokemon from your party walking behind you. Which is pretty cool. If it is a flying pokemon, once you become the league champion, instead of walking around you are actually flying on the back of the pokemon.

I really am looking forward to Nintendo releasing more Pokemon RPG games on the Switch or it’s successors. However I’d like them to move away from this “updated version” release to presenting us with a brand new adventure in the series, making use of the platforms improved hardware. If Nintendo insist on the “updated version” idea, I’d prefer they give us a single purchase that is a collection of updated Pokemon games and get it out of the system as quick as possible.

I really like this updated version. Playing it on the larger screen, and taking a very enjoyable journey down memory lane.

The differences on the whole have made a better, quicker game in my opinion. I did find the game less grindy than my memory recalls. Which is always a good thing.

Right I have a Pokédex to complete, gotta catch ’em all!

Heaven and Ale

Fenland Gamers, game night


I was feeling a little bit sick as I was getting ready for the evenings Fenland Gamers Friday meetup at The Luxe. I really did feel like not going. A multi coloured yawn felt imminent. But I battled on getting ready, which was basically putting my MtG stuff together and a couple of small box games in a bag.

At our fabulous hosts The Luxe I got everything set up for the evening. Which is basically getting our folding table out and chairs round it. I put two play mats out ready for playing MtG. This was a change from the normal routine. Which was bought on because earlier in the week a new member to the group had said they were coming along with a friend to play MtG. So that was what I was geared up for.

The start of the session came, only one person (an existing member) had turned up. I checked my phones and there were missed calls from Jonathan. He was blocked in by an ambulance and other cars with flashy lights. He’d be along as soon as he could get out of his drive way.

While waiting for people to show the two of us played a couple of games of MtG using my two standard decks, the mono blue mill and the golgari aggro mid range. The honours went one a piece.

At the end of the second game Jonathan arrived. But no one else had. Luckily he’d bought a couple of games with him. One of which was a new game. So we decided to have a learning game of Heaven and Ale. You know our approach to new games, learning on the fly.

Sometimes, depending on the publisher, the included rules are multilingual. Sadly not in this game. This was the German edition of the game, which meant Jonathan had to track down the English translation and print them out. Luckily that is the only bit of translation that the game needs, the rest of it is language independent. For non gamers, often the German version of the game is cheaper than the UK version, and is worth that little extra of visiting the bgg site for a translation (or the English rules may be on the publishers web site).

Continuing the tradition of being kind to readers of this blog, and having punished you enough already in this post, the headline for this game is I liked it.

Ok for those that are interested I’ll now go into what I liked about the game.

This is a nice tile placement game. I do like the method of getting tiles. It uses a similar mechanic to Glen More and Tokaido. You are selecting a tile space on the track, buying the tile, and placing on your player mat. Unlike the two mentioned games where the last placed player on the track takes the next move. Players take turns moving irrespective of position on the track. This variant of the mechanic is refreshing.

The price of a tile is determined where you plan to place the tile on your player mat. There is a shaded side, and a sunny side. The sunny side doubles the cost, and when a tile gets activated on it, it moves the matching resource tracker on your player mat. The shaded side does nothing to the purchase price, but when the tile gets activated it generates money.

Which means you have a nice series of decisions to make in this game. The first being the tile to select on the track. Which tile you want next, how far along the track you are prepared to travel, followed by which side of the player board will you place it.

There are two ways to activate tiles. The first is to select a scoring space, and the other surround an enclosure. The enclosure option adds up the values of surrounding tiles, which decides which enclosure tile you place there. This tile then allows you to advance your abbot token a number of spaces, and activate a number of surrounding tiles. These activations are the way you advance your resource tokens and abbot on your tracker, plus also generate income.

The one thing that isn’t great is what seems like the over complicated end game scoring. I’m not going to explain it in detail. But it involves getting your abbot as advanced as possible to determine point multiplier and a conversation ratio. That ratio is used to try and advance your least advanced resource token at the expense of your more advanced one. You want that advanced as far as possible because your last placed tokens position is the value you multiply the point multiplier with! See even that brief explanation is complicated. Imagine reading the rules and trying to work it out.

In our game I got a nice engine going, that exploited abbots sharing high value tiles. I was initially concerned that once the starting money had gone, that there would be issues getting more money. But the first couple of rounds I generated lots of money while the others struggled and ran out. Which meant that on one round they advanced around the track very quickly, leaving me to just pick up a lot of tiles. I completed two enclosures that round. The final round I scored barrels and picked up a lot of max point barrels. I think I was the only one who filled there tile spaces.

I’ve gone all fancy in the above photo to show a combo that worked well for me. When I activated that abbot on the scoring, those two four cost resources scored twice. Also that abbot being shared by two enclosures meant it would also get activated twice.

So you can guess from that above paragraphs that I smashed the game, and won. Jonathan was observing what I did during the game. So in future plays expect to see similar tactics from him, and used against me. Things will definitely be more competitive.

A great game, a nice change from the usual mechanics that hit the table.

Once again thanks to Jonathan you get the chance to see hobo Darren.

I have to admit I was disappointed that the MtG players didn’t show. I was all prepared for playing MtG, and fought through that feeling sick. It was lucky that Jonathan showed and had games with him. Otherwise the evening could have been a total washout. If you say you’re coming it’s good manors to let the organisers know if you can’t make it. As one other member did last night. We can’t cater for all eventualities, so we plan the games we bring along based on numbers and requests.

A big thanks to The Luxe for being great hosts once again.

UPDATE (5/1/19): Jonathan sent the following to me this morning:

“Looking at the Heaven and Ale playthrough, I think we were playing the monks incorrectly. The monks only score adjacent tiles when ‘triggered’ by using a purple scoring disc. They do not score adjacent tiles when placing a shed; all they do is move the Brewmaster 1 step per monk activated, when a shed activates them – something we were not doing.”

The joys of our style of learning a game, discovering the misplays afterwards! Plus there was no guarantee that we wouldn’t make misplays even if we had read the rules before hand.

Lancaster

Game day

Thursday saw the chance to do some gaming with Jonathan, and play my first game of 2019. Which happened to be one of Jonathan’s Christmas Haul, Lancaster.

As usual this was a learning game, so we were making it up as we went along. Correction, reading the rules as we played. Yeah I know gamers out there will be having sharp intakes of breathe, tutting away in disgust that we hadn’t read the rules, watched the YouTube tutorial, downloaded and printed off the rules errata/FAQ (and memorised that also) before playing. But that’s how we roll.

Lancaster is a worker placement game, and we were playing the two player variant.

So for those with short attention spans and have had enough of this post already, the headline is I liked the game.

For those interested here is what I liked about the game.

The production of the components for the game is pretty solid. The battle and scoring rules cards were not actually cards but thick cardboard, more a tile than a card.

I loved the fact you could upgrade your workers. Thus making them more powerful, and unlocking the possibility of more locations you could chose as an action using the more powerful worker. But you then had the difficult choice of did this new more powerful worker get used to select one of these newly available slots, or did you use them in combat with the French?

You were also limited in the maximum number of workers you could recruit, but also you could never exceed the maximum power level. You were limited to a single worker at the maximum level. Although in the two player variant with the friendly house you could have more than one potentially.

I liked that when selecting an action you had to have a worker with the minimum strength indicated to be able to use it. You could then use a squire token to bolster your strength in the space. Why would you want to do that? To lock out your opponent from taking that action instead. On your opponents turn if they want to use the action instead of you, they have to place a worker on that space with a strength one more than the combined strength of your worker and the number of squires on the space with them.

The reason this is a thing is that you don’t get the action straight away. You only get it at the end of the round if you are still on the space.


The battles is a nice addition. Going to battle gets you an instant bonus, plus if the French are defeated at the end of the turn you get points allocated on strength of your forces committed to the battle. This means my opponents can help win the battle, and get a share of the spoils (victory points). If the French aren’t defeated everything slides down. Some consolation points are awarded, and you have one more round to add to your forces and hopefully defeat the French. If after the second round the French remain undefeated, the workers in the battle are captured, and can be bought back or you lose them basically back to your supply.

The voting at the end of the round for which new rules get added to the end of round scoring was ok.

I also liked that when it came round to taking the action on the space you could take the noble (if you didn’t already have them) or the action. But if you paid three coins you could do both. The more nobles you collected the bigger points bonus you got at the end of the game. A nice additional decision to make.

It’s also not a long game, it was four rounds I want to say, based on my fading memory.

I know the whole theme is medieval times, castles, knights, battling the French. But the theme is paper thin really.

In the end it was the end of game bonuses that enabled me to steal the win from Jonathan by 2 points.

Lancaster really is a nice worker placement game. If you like the mechanic/genre then you will enjoy this for sure.

Afterwards as you can see The Luxe had just gotten in the promotional drink toppers for the Spider-man Spider-verse movie. They look pretty cool.

I have to thank Jonathan for a great afternoons gaming, and the chance to try this game. And as all good award ceremony speeches, a big thank you to The Luxe once more for hosting the impromptu session.

My game of 2018 is…

Uncategorized

Ok I’ve decided to do a fourth and final instalment in this end of 2018 wrap up. So you have this one final post to endure.

Previously I’ve chosen my game of the year from the exclusive list of my game of the month winners from through out the year. But since stopping those month by the numbers posts that proved so popular and caused such an uproar when stopped, I needed another way to short list the games to choose from.

Luckily enough I did that yesterday with my Top 9 New To Me Games of 2018 post yesterday.

So for those who didn’t read it, and can’t be bothered to scroll down the page (although that would ruin this post because you’d see who the winner was). I present the Top 9 once more.

This was a really hard decision for me. There are some great games here, covering a spectrum of genres, mechanics and challenge.

The runners up after a lot of heart searching and deliberating are…

That leaves just one game as the winner, and it was a really hard decision.

My game of 2018 is…

This is what I said about the game back in June.

“It would be fair to say that I liked Outlive. For starters I love the theme, the post apocalyptic setting isn’t an over used theme like say zombies.

…

Does the theme come through? To some extent, you do feel that you are scrambling for scarce resources to survive. It’s not super thin and could be any theme, but it’s also not super heavy.

I like the use of leaders to give each player a unique feel and starting setup.

Once out of the box this game with all the components sprawls across the table. So you will need a bit of table space. The component quality is ok, lots of small bits of cardboard for the resources. I’d have preferred thicker player boards. I do like the meeples used to represent your workers who go out scavenging for your community. Having them stand up when used during the day phase and lie down to signify resting from the night phase. Brilliant mechanic that shows which has been used, it also thematic.

Being able to get “power ups” in the form of equipment, that needs to be repaired before you can get the benefit is cool. Plus if you have 2 pieces of equipment repaired and with matching symbols you get a bonus point at the end.

The radiation mechanic, which can kill you, forces you to either have survivors in your airlock to mitigate it during the night phase, or force you to reduce radiation by either visiting a specific location first, or get lucky scavenging in one of the city locations.

I like that each of your scavenger meeples has a number on the side to indicate the number of actions you can do with it at a location. These range between 3 and 5. These numbers are also used for hunting at specific locations, and to intimate other scavengers to get resources from your competition.

There is a lot to this game, and I’ve only scratched the surface. There is a whole resource management mechanic I’ve not talked about.

It’s a fun game, I’m hoping Gavin’s wife doesn’t like it so I can pick up a bargain. If not this will be in the collection at some point.”

In fact I couldn’t wait for Gavin’s wife, and got a copy, plus the parts of the Kickstarter that I liked the look of. Which if I remember correctly was the improved player boards.

It’s a great game, and deserves more love from the gaming community.