Last night saw the (for now) fortnightly Friday Evening gaming for Fenland Gamers at our regular hosts The Luxe cinema.

As usually I got there early to set up the tables. Some-one has to do it. It saves time and means some-one is there to welcome folks as they arrive.

Last nights session was one of our best attended, if not the best, with eight members turning up for gaming plus one member of the general public who joined us.

We split into two groups for gaming, of four and five. Although thinking about it we could have gone to three groups of three.

However we did what we did, which saw Jeff, Jonas, Rachel and myself battle over the planet Arakas in Dune Imperium. Whilst the other group played Istanbul, followed by Saboteur.

This was the first time I’d played Imperium with the full player count. Whilst the others were new to the game and chose from the one pip player boards, I went with Duke Leto Atreides a two pip player board.

I got the extra agent/worker pretty early on. What I found interesting was in the previous two plays with the lower player counts I didn’t think the extra worker made much of a difference, gave very little advantage. However in this full player count game I think it made a big difference.

Intrigue cards also proved to be very impactful in this game too. Plus we were seeing more cards in the trade row, and got to see some cards that required you to move down a space on an influence track as a payment. I hadn’t seen them come out before.

In this game apart from the opening water you get at setup, I never had water after that all game. I did get much spice either. I was all about the solari (money).

I think Jeff is correct and we played the Alliance rule incorrectly. Which needs double checking before the next game. So that kind of puts a big asterisk next to this win.

However even with the cloud over the victory I won. And I’ll take that. Imperium still pips Lost Ruins for me.