All posts by Darren

Beverages and Gaming on a Saturday

coffee shop gaming, Fenland Gamers, game night

Yesterday a long over due Costa Gaming happened. Jonathan and I met up at the local Wisbech Costa on the Market Place to enjoy good beverages and hopefully some great games.

I had got there slightly early (had to get a birthday card for my Mum and a present, well it's kinda her birthday today), so I was looking through the games I'd bought with me. Oh why had I taken? Eight Minute Empire Legends, Traders of Osaka, Roll For It and Batman Fluxx. Traders of Osaka was out when Jonathan arrived.

So that is the game we played first. I've been wanting to get this to the table since it arrived.

It appears a simple game, on your turn you can do one of three actions, take a card for its monetary value, buy the whole market row, reserve a card.

Before playing and when explaining it the scoring of sets when a ship hits Edo sounds unnecessarily complicated using rounding up, multiplication and division. But when you start doing it, it actually isn't that much of a hassle.

There is a hidden depth and tactical decision making to the game. Having to decide when best to reserve a card, and when to take the card. Trying to manipulate the boats and when they arrive, or get stranded so they sink hopefully denying the other players of possible points.

I did like the game, it didn't disappoint. It worked really well as a two player game.

Our second game was a new arrival for Jonathan, Bohemian Villages.

 

This is a worker placement type game where your placement of your workers is controlled by the roll of four dice. You allocate those dice to generate a number, the only limitation is that you can't use a single dice to generate a number for placement. For instance if I rolled a 6, 2, 4 and a 3, I could use the 6 and 2 to make 8 and place one of my workers on farm or if I wanted a town hall I could use the 6 and 4 to give me 10, and then use the 3 and 2 to make 5 and allow me to place a worker on a tailor shop. As you can tell by that each building type is allocated to a number, for instance churches are 11. Some of these buildings give immediate scoring (which is in the form of money), others score at the end of the game (which is triggered when one player has no more workers to place), some like the inns once three other workers are in the village give reoccurring money at the start of your turn. Then you have mid game scoring that gets triggered when certain events happen.

At the end of the game the one with the most money is the winner.

Despite winning I like this game a lot. I like the rolling dice and combining them to allow you to place workers. There is a nice balance between immediate scoring, and end scoring opportunities. I like the art work. It's quick to learn. Jonathan and I did forget to claim some recurring money at the start of our turns once or twice. I think I lost about five points this way, Jonathan lost about three I think. Which brings me to the only “weak” spot of the game, and Jonathan and I both agree on this, the player aids could be improved, and made clearer about the recurring money, maybe some reminds to claim, and the wording on one or two is a little confusing.

After two great games Jonathan and I chewed the fat, righted wrongs, brainstormed before saying our farewells.

I had a great time in Costa, great games, great company. Can you ask for more?

Gaming this Wednesday

Fenland Gamers

This coming Wednesday is the monthly meet up of the Fenland Gamers, a boardgame group that meetup once a month in Wisbech to play board games.

If you are interested in coming along leave a comment below and I will message you the address. The gaming starts at 7pm and usually goes onto between 9:30pm to 10pm.

To keep upto date on meet ups join the clubs Facebook page here or the clubs webpage here.

 

Panda Smash

game night

Last night being Friday night meant after a day doing supply teaching I was at the local Friday night game group. The one I've not been very happy with due to inconsiderate noise pollution from the odd individual at previous meet ups playing loud music.

The first game of the evening was a four player game of Agricola. My first time playing the game. This was a far better experience than Caverna. Rules explained, had the score reference card, so I knew the scoring and how to avoid negative points, or at least reduce the amount of negative points I got.

So ok I don't know the “best” strategies to take for the game. However I did feel that I was in with a shout right upto the end.

So at its heart this is a worker placement game. And I like this mechanic. But! So do I like Agricola or come to that Caverna?

There are elements I like. Like the harvest and having to feed your workers, or the unlocking of new actions to do as you progress through the game. However I'm not keen on being limited to just two actions. Yes you can produce additional workers. But this just doesn't work for me.

This isn't my favourite worker placement game. I think Agricola/Caverna has joined Stone Age as my least favourite worker placement games that I'd play, but I wouldn't be that keen on.

So after coming in a respectable third in Agricola we played four player King of Tokyo with the power ups expansion.

I didn't roll a single power up card, only bought one card from the middle. Which was a pretty cool one, because it gave an extra victory point each time I started my turn in Tokyo, plus an extra point of damage when I dealt out damage whilst in Tokyo.

After a turn or two of rolling threes pumping up my victory points, Ben had been creeping towards a victory point win from a successful run in Tokyo. But we managed to get him out to avoid that outcome. With myself encamped in Tokyo my only card kicked in.

With some amazing rolls I took out two monsters at the same time. That extra point of damage was powerful, it meant that knockout blow was a six point hit!

My victory was inevitable! Well if I didn't get hit with five or more damage by the other remaining player. Unfortunately for them they only did a point of damage, played a power up card that forced me out of Tokyo and slightly delayed my victory. But I moved back into Tokyo to give me the final point I needed to grab a points victory, but it was also close for grabbing a last monster standing victory also.

I'd been playing the Panda monster, and both times now that I've played him I've won. Guess which monster I'm going to keep playing?

Ben had to go after this game, and I decided to call it a night also. It was at this point I got really pissed off. The guy playing with us, sitting next to me was going to play his newly purchased Epic card game. Fair enough. However instead of helping to pack away my game before setting up his, the ignorant git pulled out the cards for Epic and started shuffling them in front of him pushing my stuff out of his way to do so. Yes he was doing that style popular with Magic players creating multiple little mini decks. I've used this method myself to shuffle cards.

What a fracking dick. Even after I point out I was trying to pack my game away, all I got was “I'll move up the table”, which he didn't.

I was seething inside. This is the final straw I think. I'm not enjoying this group at all. If you take out Ben, Jamie (and his son) the majority of my experience playing with the others in this group is that they are selfish gits.

I might suggest to Ben and Jamie we find a different location to play, an alternative Friday evening/night gaming experience.

Afterwards on my way home I called in at The Luxe to mainly give Nath grief, and to confirm that they are actually getting the new X-Men movie, and when. Which they are, a couple of weeks after its release. I'm more than happy to wait a couple of weeks to see the movie at my favourite cinematic experience place. Plus Nath has to be nice to me and call me sir.

So that was Friday's gaming.

 

QOTW: Are we…

qot

Living in a golden age of Star Wars boardgames?

In recent years we have seen X-Wing, Armada, Imperial Assault, Star Wars Risk, Loopin Chewie, the role playing game, LCG, Carcassonne Star Wars edition, and the more recent Rebellion.

All of these are pretty good if not great games. Yes there are still the themed monopolies but I try and forget them, and they don't dilute the fact that the above are miles miles better games.

So with all these great games based on Star Wars are we living in a golden age of Star Wars boardgames?

World domination naturally…

chatteris warlords, game night

Tuesday night, must be Chatteris Warlords (unless it's the Fenland Gamers Formula D league night).

My first game(s) of the evening were Love Letter Batman and the classic original Love Letter. I won the Batman game. However Robert who I was playing with (plus another) didn't enjoy playing this version. His preference was the classic version, which Robert seemed to be remembering was different to the Batman one.

So I pointed out I had the classic version and we could play that. The enthusiasm wasn't overwhelming. It had been like playing with two doped up patients. Both half asleep.

We started our game of the classic Love Letter. Robert looked at the summary sheet of cards, and saw that the two games apart from the art was the same (there was one difference but I'll come to that).

However Robert did seem to visibly enjoy the classic much more than the Batman version, getting much more involved. Had he woken up?!!!

Robert went on to get the win after taking an early lead, which stalled and allows myself and the other player to come back into the game and come close to winning ourselves.

Now the only difference between classic and Batman is one rule change. If in the Batman version if you play the Batman card which is the guard card in classic (value 1) and guess correctly you get a point as well as eliminating the other player you just guessed. This is the bit Robert didn't like it “made the game quicker”.

Naturally I disagree, I love the Batman version. It's my favourite version of the game. I love the theme, the art, and I like the rule just described. I like it because yes it's a double edged sword, but it allows some-one trailing to get back into the game. Plus it fits thematically. That point is Batmans reward for capturing a bad guy that's escaped Arkham and putting them back.

So while we were playing Love Letter and our next game, there was a couple of Bolt Action games going on. Plus a game of Blokus that got followed by some Magic the Gathering.

My next game was a first for me, Marvel Legendary: Villians. I don't own this version of Legendary, I may do one day but at the moment, I don't (although Nathan does, well I did buy it as a present for him).

Our group of Villians which included King Pin, Venom, Ultron plus some others were having their cunning plans for world domination thwarted by Doctor Strange and the defenders and some other superheroes like the Uncanny X-Men.

In general this plays just like Marvel Legendary with some minor variations on somethings. What Villians has that Marvel Legendary doesn't is a neoprene playmat. Which is far superior to the cardboard one in Marvel Legendary.

Our motley crew of criminals did managed to beat Doctor Strange and his cronies. Which means we were free to take over the world!

Now once you defeat the Commander (Doctor Strange) because the game is cooperative it can end just there. However you can decide a “winner” based on how many heroes and bystanders that you defeated. Each has a point value. It's this after scoring that is used in official competitive Marvel Legendary play. So we tallied up our points and I emerged the victor.

As I left for home, a bunch were mid game playing Star Realms, including the heroes cards. Which I haven't played with myself. I must get round to doing that sometime.

Another great evening of gaming, that had something new but familiar, and something 'old'.

When multiverses collide

news

It was just a matter of time, a bloody long time actually when you consider it, but finally the worlds of Dungeon and Dragons have collided with the worlds of Magic the Gathering to give us Plane Shift:Zendikar, a set of rules for running a D&D campaign in Zendikar.

“Plane Shift: Zendikar was made using the fifth edition of the D&D rules. D&D is a flexible rules system designed to model any kind of fantasy world. The D&D magic system doesn't involve five colors of mana or a ramping-up to your most powerful spells, but the goal isn't to mirror the experience of playing Magic in your role-playing game. The point is to experience the worlds of Magic in a new way, through the lens of the D&D rules. All you really need is races for the characters, monsters for them to face, and some ideas to build a campaign.” Quoted from the original story here on magic.wizards.com

Considering that Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast are effectively the same company the surprising thing is we haven't seen a cross over like this between these two giant fantasy ip's before.

And the great thing about this epic collision is that Plane Shift: Zendikar can be downloaded as a PDF for free.

You can get the PDF HERE

 

By the numbers stats for April 2016

by the numbers, stats

So has it been a month already? Wow time flies these days. Without further ado let's look at my gaming stats for April.

Surprisingly I've only played in three places this month. With the majority of my game playing taking part on club nights.

This month we didn't make much progress with Pandemic Legacy for one reason or the other. Which is reflected in the number of plays, and the lack of Monday night gaming.

Fluxx in one theme or the other would be the most played game of the month with nine plays if my maths is correct.

As the vanilla graph shows I got a greater variety of games to the table, but there were less plays. I think if our Pandemic Legacy sessions hadn't been disrupted as much (and it's not going to improve for May due to one of the team taking a holiday for two weeks!) the number of plays would have been closer to the incredible March target.

Now let's try something new for these posts and pick the best and worst game I played during the month.

Best Game For April

Ok this has to Scoville. So much to love about this game. Great theme, the blind auction for turn order, set collection, hidden information. It looks amazing, lovely wooden chillies. Yeah, this has to be my game of the month for sure, no argument about it. This will be in my collection at some point. In the meantime I can't wait until Jonathan brings this to the table, or for him to get the new expansion.

Worst Game For April

I don't think the will be a surprise to regular readers of the blog when I say Caverna. The whole experience was a nightmare. Go read the blog post about it. It wasn't the games fault, and I'm sure once I've been taught it properly (on Jonathan's todo list) I'll like the game.

So that was the month of April by the numbers.

 

The first X weekending 30Apr16

new arrivals

So here we are with the stuff that makes up the expanding part of my collection.

So just added more tiles, unique abilities to the characters of Room 25 and a new couple of new mechanics which includes the mini expansion The Audience (as a separate purchase) by getting the second season of Room 25. This all nicely fits into the base game box that comes with the second edition that I have.

Thanks to Instagram and the a recent rash of photos and praise for Flip City I crumbled and ordered a copy. Whilst in a weakened state I added my first Vikings themed game to the collection, also from TMG Bottlecap Vikings. And that was of interest to me because of the light element, and the rondel mechanic it uses.
Traders of Osaka has been on the radar for a little while. And I just want to get this to the table to play.
When I saw this go up on the Facebook trading and selling page, I couldn't believe some-one tried to reduce the price, when I checked the asking price against it was over fifty percentage reduced already. A real bargain. So I snapped it up for the asking price.

However when the game arrived I did my usual ocd thing of checking all the components against the components listed in the rule book. Two tokens were missing. This wasn't mentioned on the sale post, I was not happy. I messaged the seller, who seemed surprised. And to be fair to the they have offered to refund my money and pay for the return postage. But I've put that on hold until I've heard back from Mayday games (the publisher) about obtaining replacement tokens. Having played it at the weekend I won't be sending it back, it's playable without them and if push comes to shove I can create replacements (not ideal for my ocd) .

I have to say this is the second game now that everything has not been as expected. The other being the Lost Legacy with the damaged card. I wish before selling the sellers actually checked the games before listing and listed the faults and priced accordingly. I think the majority do. I don't think my two “bad” experiences were deliberate. But still, check before you list.

And that's it for this week.

Oh what a wonderful day…

Fenland Gamers, game night

Yesterday was such an awesome amazing day. Not only was it my birthday, but it was also International Tabletop Day.

I'm not usually one for celebrating birthdays. However it was hard not to yesterday considering the alignment of the stars.

The day started off as you know with some Star Realms via the app. But not long after those initial posts I had to hit the road with a shed load of games and pick up my amazing birthday cake that Doreen created for me. After a chat with Sam and her daughter Zaphod in which we caught up on news, shocked me with the fact our gaming session in Wisbech that afternoon was being missed because Zaphod wanted to see an aging Canadian called Brian Adams singing some popular beats from way before Zaphod was a single cell, in Birmingham (apparently it was cheaper to see Mr Adams in Birmingham than to see him in their home town of Peterborough!!!). It was time for me to end a very long sentence that didn't really move the narrative of this post on, and head back to Wisbech and the afternoons gaming event.

With the weather being unusually good for a bank holiday weekend I should have realised that the A47 round Wisbech, and also going into Wisbech itself would be a mini nightmare. Which meant that I got caught up in what were mini traffic tailbacks. After winding my way through town via side roads I arrived not too late to our venue for the afternoons gaming.

Upon arrival Jonathan informed me Matt wasn't able to attend, but Debbie would be. I was just glad there was a trolley to move the games into the building.

With my selection of games and Jonathan's we had a wide variety of games, covering gateway games like Ticket to Ride, to complex euros like Caverna, and everything inbetween.

After a chat, I taught Jonathan Star Realms. It was going to be interesting to see how Jonathan got on. Why? Well scifi themed games are not his favourite theme, and he's also not a big fan of deckbuilders. So the odds were against it. However after pausing for Debbie's arrival, Jonathan went on to win the game, which he did not dislike. So I'm counting that as a win.

Our next game, and the first with Debbie was the current darling of the gaming echo chamber Quadropolis.

Having played Quadropolis I have to say I don't get why this is getting all the buzz that it is currently getting. After playing I was kind of left feeling indifferent. It wasn't a bad game, or a bad feeling of indifference (unlike Between Two Cities). I think the hardest thing is that I can't point at one thing like a mechanic that grabbed me and got me excited. But then I can flip that around and say there wasn't anything that I hated either.

I know that this game has been mentioned/compared to Dice City. And those comparisons have been in favour of Quadropolis being the better game. However I don't agree with that view. For me after a single play of both, Dice City edges it. But I'd happily play both again, maybe not go out of my way, but if some-one said “hey lets play…” I'd be ok with it.

On the plus side I won.

Debbie chose our next game which was Batman Fluxx.

Jonathan took the honours with this game.

We followed up the chaos that is Fluxx with some smash your face in, push your luck, monster bashing, King of Tokyo.

Debbie won our first monster mash up, but it was close if I'd had survived her turn, I would have won on victory points. It was a close game.

We then played again but this time with the Power Ups expansion. During this game I had bought the “it has a child!” card, that if you are eliminated gets discarded along with all your other cards and lose all your victory points, then heal back up to ten health and start again! This card gave me the win. After Jonathan was eliminated I stayed in Tokyo trading blows with Debbie, each of us knocking down the others health. Thing is I didn't care, I knew I was going to still be in the game if I got knocked out. So when that moment did come I lost the chance of a victory point win, but I had done enough damage to Debbie that it was easy to smash Debbie into the rubble of Tokyo and get the win.

I liked the addition of the power up cards. Especially because they give a use for the heart face when you roll them whilst occupying Tokyo. Plus the cards make your character a little unique, and the suspense of having these unknown ability that can be played at any moment. I like them a lot. The King of New York version of this expansion when it comes out will definitely be added to the collection.

After indescriminately destroying Tokyo with our epic battles, we headed off to the grand abbey to become novices, and take part in the hidden movement game Nuns on the Run.

We hadn't played this before, nor read the rules (which wouldn't be the last time this happened during the day). Apart from nearly sending Debbie into a coma whilst reading the rules from a truly atrocious rules book. I think this game would be better with more players. Although functional and playable with three, we had Debbie playing the two nuns we were trying to avoid. Still it felt ok. Just that awful rule book needs a reworking.
Just so the gaming records are kept up to date Debbie won.
Our last game before taking a break for tea was Splendor. After reminding Debbie of the rules, Jonathon went on to grab the victory.
The food break was at Wetherspoons, and Jonathan very generously treated me to my meal. Which saw all of us settling on a burger with sides of chips and onion rings, and a pint of cider (I can't remember which one but It was a favourite of Jonathan and Debbie's).
Fully fed and refreshed it was back to the table.
Our final game of the day was Glass Road.

Another new game to use all. Although I think Jonathan had played it using the app. I think by the end it took us around two hours to play this game. Which apparently should have taken forty minutes or so. Why did it take us so long? We were playing the game incorrectly!!! Calling the first two rounds of play a train wreck would be partially true. Maybe the wording of the rule book could be clearer in certain instances.

With only the last round being played correctly, Debbie went on to get the win. But is it a valid win! That counts?

I have to say despite being a minor train wreck in reality, and over long play time. I still enjoyed the game. It didn't seem to drag. There are things to like, such as if a card is played by another player and its in your hand you get to play that card to and cut down the number of actions the other player can do. The resource management and the moving dial giving the automatic production of bricks and glass is cool. I also liked the hand selection with the second guessing what others might also be choosing.

I definitely want to play this again with the correct rules.

What a fantastic day yesterday was. A day of surprise generosity of others, great gaming. You couldn't want for more. I really do feel blessed.

How did your Tabletop Day go?