August will see me hopefully back in full time employment! Assuming everything between now and then goes to plan.

Which means I was spreading the good news to my fellow fenland gamers at the weekly Friday Evening gaming sessions at The Angel Inn.

If Debbie had arrived earlier we would have had a first play of New York 1901. However Jo and I were just about to pack it away as she arrived because there would not have been enough time to play it before Jonathan was due to turn up.

Instead we ended up playing the classic Age of War. Debbie took an early lead, that was soon closed and over taken by Jo. For me it was another chance for the dice to continue showing their contempt and hate for me that they started on Wednesday at the monthly meetup. The dice even gave me a glimmer of hope of at least not coming last, but firmly shut that door in my face. Of course Jonathan and Jamie arrived just in time to help rub salt in the wound of being last.

We followed up my glorious defeat with a five player game of Forbidden Island. Yes we know it's four players maximum, something we “stumbled” upon half way through the game as it was kicking our collective butts. Now Jonathan had bought this game at the expo after being told off by his eldest daughter for having traded his previous copy away. I had a copy sitting in my pile of shame. So despite having been defeated by another Matt Leacock game, we did get three of the four treasures before the helicopter landing spot sunk. Plus it's one more game removed from my pile of shame.

Our final game of the evening was a new game to me from Dice Hate Me (and at the the moment they certainly do) called The Great Heartland Hauling Co. I really liked this pick up and delivery game.

You move your lorry either by spending cash, which in reality you want to avoid doing because this is also your victory points. Or by using any fuel cards in your hand. The nice touch is you can't mix and match cash and fuel cards to move. Plus fuel cards range in value from one to three. You have to move as the first thing you do. So if you don't have fuel cards it's going to cost you points. However you may not have enough fuel cards to get to where you want to go, so you may have to spend cash instead. But if you were going to sell, will you be making a loss because you spent cash to get there? Some lovely decisions to me made.

Then there is the buying and selling goods. To buy goods you need a card of that good you want to buy. And the reverse is true to sell it. However if the good isn't a “native” good to the location you are buying at the cost of buy a good goes up by one. So to say buy three pork/pigs you would need three pork/pig cards or if it is none native the most you would be able to buy would be two at the cost of four pork/pig cards. The reason for this is the max hand size you can have is five cards. In fact you will always have five cards, because at the end of your turn you draw back up to five cards.

Luckily selling isn't handicapped by the “native” rule of buying. If there is a market for your good at the location, you may sell as many goods as you have in stock and cards for. Add the money to your score and start plotting your next delivery.

Once some-one hits thirty points, the other players get one more turn and its game over. Any left over goods you have are negative points and get taken off, and the player left with the highest score wins. Which in our case was Debbie. But the good thing is I didn't come last in our game.

So with the great evening of gaming over. Jonathan and I grabbed a kebab from down Norfolk Street before saying our farewells. I then went off to scoff my kebab in my car before seeing the enjoyable new X-Men movie at The Luxe, and take the mickey out of Nath there for his tv appearance earlier in the week.

Overall a great end to a good week.

Posted by me using my iPad and the Blogsy app