Last night was the fortnightly Fenland Gamers club night, and what was to turn out to be a record breaking one.
Since the reintroduction of in person gatherings last year our club numbers have grown to what I thought was the lofty heights of between 8 and 10 regulars on a club night.
But we went into the stratosphere last night with 14 turning up!
Jonathan had already prearranged a game of Railways of the World. So as they got setup to play it, the rest of us decided what we were going to play. We had one table playing Dinosaur Island. Whilst on my table we played Libertalia.
Out of four plays now this is only my second win.
For this game we used the stormy side of the board with its “meaner” loot abilities.
There were certainly days on the voyages where I had no loot tokens or even a crew on my ship.
At the start of the last voyage I was on 33 points, Jeff was on 28, and Ben was leading on 36. It was anybodies game to win really.
But when your opponents both take out each other’s Wind Nymph leaving it open for you to have yours out and collecting coins, you have to chuckle.
The game is fastly becoming a favourite. It’s quick to teach. Plus it’s a relatively quick game.
As the scores show I did narrowly win this game.
Next we played a new game to me from Oink Games called Scout. Which is a trick taking game.
After a very confusing rules explanation things became clearer once we started playing.
It’s actually a nice little game. So nice I’ve added it to my wish list.
On the last round I should have let the game end when I had a chance. But I took one for the team and it cost me dearly. I wouldn’t have won. But the others would have had much much lower scores.
You know how this post ends.
When I think how we started Fenland Gamers (with just 3 of us) and all the difficulties of actually finding local players, to where we currently are, it makes me think that its been worth the struggle. If all our regulars had been in attendance on Friday night, we would have been up at around 20 attendees! It is certainly going in the right direction and gives us more opportunity to try different games and get some of those unplayed games to the table. Fenland Gamers has always worked on the Ethos of being ‘free at point of use’ and we have never charged and become a ‘pay to play’ club; we have our generous hosts to thank for that and over the years there have been several: Orchards Primary School, The Angel Inn, White Lion Hotel, The Luxe Cinema and our current hosts Wisbech St. Mary Sports and Community Centre. Not forgetting our very first venue, The Sportsman at Elm (which was in actuality pre-Fenland Gamers and really under the watch of Posh Games). Our regular Friday open sessions are always going to suffer from having newer gamers attending (making it difficult to get those heavier games to the table) but, as they become more experienced, they too will be able to handle the heavier games, giving us more and more options. And we always have the ad-hoc sessions to play games that we’re not able to run on a Friday night.
As for Friday’s session, it was lovely to see new faces enjoying themselves, nice for Nino to finally get his game of Dinosaur Island played, and Colin to take the title of Mr. Bondsman (or perhaps James Bond) for going into a loan spiral in Railways of the World (all a good learning experience for him). Not so good to see Darren winning a game (and by only one point; how annoying!), but pleased that he was utterly trounced at Scout, so balance is restored. Joking aside, it bodes well for the future :)
After some of our attendees had to leave, six of us sat down to a game or two of Secret Hitler. It was a really good social deduction game, very similar to The Resistance (which is a game I enjoy), so it worked well for me. Hopefully Marcin will bring this along again another time.
A really good evening, great company, friendly folk; what more could you want from a Friday evening? :)
To paraphrase that famous quote from Field of Dreams, “build it and they will come”. And indeed they have since lockdown has been relaxed. You should be proud of what you have built/started. Fenland Gamers wouldn’t be here if not for you. A big thank you from all of us.
Well that’s very kind of you to say, but if I had no one to game with in the first place, then it also wouldn’t be here. Yes, we might be the originators of the group (Matt, you and I), it’s not a one-man effort, or even a three-man effort, but a whole team, each and every one. With every new member come new opportunities for gaming and growth and I thank everyone for joining the group and being willing to accept that we are all at different levels in our gaming experience; thanks to all for the assistance that is needed to get new gamers on board (pun intended).
Because of our numbers, we’ve finally got to the stage where we can now get sub-groups going to play some of those games that deserve repeated plays. We also have an RPG sub-group and I’m proud of what the group has achieved as a whole.
It seems a long time ago now that I saw a picture of a man playing Catan in a local pub and I thought, ‘there must be more gamers in the local area’ and went on a mission to find that person. And that’s where it really began :)
Oh the dark days of gaming with Tories – I’m so ashamed of that period of my life.
And a quick search through your blog shows me that it was August 2015 when you were playing Catan at the King’s Head and by September 2015, Fenland Gamers had begun :)
So this September will be the clubs 7th anniversary