Last night was a Fenland Gamers Friday club night.

I know what you are thinking. “Gaming twice in one week, what’s going on Darren?”

Hey what can I say? It’s been a good week.

A really good week.

Early evening Jeff messaged he would be arriving early, ordering some food, playing a game and possibly leaving early depending how he felt.

This was amazing news.

So I made a point of getting to our new host early so someone was there.

It was so good seeing Jeff again after the massive curve ball life threw at him. Although it’s only in reality been a couple of months, it has felt so much longer.

After food we split into two groups. John’s group played Sagrada and we played Kingsburg.

This was a first for me playing the game.

I think it was inevitable that I’d like this dice placement game. After all the other one that I really like with a similar mechanic is Marco Polo.

I like the catch up mechanics the game has. The extra die, or the ability to build two buildings or use an occupied space are great to get when behind but not over powered.

For much of the game I was last on the victory point track, but a late surge meant I came in third, not too far from the front two.

But the main take home of playing this game was how much fun it was to be playing a boardgame again with Jeff. And amazingly it was the first time I’d played a game with his wife playing too!

Jeff’s “gamesmanship” has been sorely missed. I don’t think Colin was ready for the Jedi mindtricks, and being talked into blocking the only space Jeff’s wife could go to with her final die. But despite that sort of shenanigans Jeff’s wife won.

After Kingsburg had finished Jeff said good bye and retired for the evening.

Which left Colin, Julie and me to play a game of the latest addition to the Love Letter family, Star Wars: Jabba’s Palace – A Love Letter game! What a mouthful. I’ll just call it Jabba’s Palace.

As a first play we stuck to the traditional end of game objective of having the highest valued card in hand wins.

Although that’s one of the first notable changes in this version. There are four end of game objectives. One of them allows for two winners!

Another change is each card has one of two faction symbols on them. They are either belonging to the rebels (good guys) or Jabba’s crew (bad guys).

The faction a card belongs to does make a difference. Not only for three of the end game objectives, such as most rebel cards in front of a player winning. But also for card abilities like the Jabba’s the Hutt card (see below) that defeats a player if the card they are holding is a rebel card.

You’ll also notice that Jabba the highest valued card is not like the Princess card in regular Love Letter. You can actually play the card.

In the GameBoy Geek’s review of Jabba’s Palace he would have liked the game to have used one of the more recent Disney Star Wars movies for its basis. What utter tripe no one buys stuff for that, the only Star Wars stuff Disney sells is original trilogy or Mandalorian. Plus we all know what a train wreck the Disney trilogy is.

Anyway. I really like how this version played. And not just because I won!

It was a great evening gaming. Even more so with Jeff being able to get along.