At Costa. It’s totally not a hipster thing to do.
All posts by Darren
How many servers?
Last night was the weekly Chatteris Warlords meet. Or as I like to call it my weekly Netrunner fix.
The evening started off with a four player game of 7 Wonders. This would technically be my second play of the game ever, despite getting the game straight after my first play. So naturally I was asking questions to refresh my poor memory.
So despite my lack of experience in playing the card drafting game 7 Wonders I think coming second was rather good.
Then it was time to do some running against the corps. It was Darren v Ben. Our first game was my NEH deck verses Ben's Noise.
Ben was scoring agendas and soon hit six agenda points. During that time I was landing tags with my ice rather easily. Which made landing my drawn Scorched Earth easy. I needed to find my other Scorched Earth, Traffic Accident, find and score my Private Security Force, or hope Ben hit a snare.
As you can see I created a few servers trying to find a card that would allow me to finish off the runner. While I was doing this I was reminded of Timmy Wong and his server spawning at last years Worlds. There were four agendas hidden amongst them. But I had given up on the scoring agendas route to victory. I was going for the murder, there were plenty of tags landed, Ben still was within easy reach of that goal.
It really was a race, Ben to score that final agenda, and myself finding that damage to kill him. Sadly it was a race I was to loose. A great enjoyable game. I learnt a lot about my deck in this game.
Second game was my Noise against Ben's Personal Evolution.
Within three turns I had Pancakes/Wyldside installed. I'd got Same Old Thing down, plus Aesop's. My rig was building up nicely. Datasucker was out and building up with virus counters, thanks to an unprotected archives. My bookmarks and Streetpeddlers were doing there jobs of storing cards for me. Inject was getting cards in hand and getting me cash.
I quickly scored some agendas, Ben scored one back. I needed one agenda to win. Ben built a scoring server three ice deep. He hid a possible agenda behind it, and advanced it twice. It was run now or, well there was no other pressure at this point.
I had David install, Faust, and trashed my installed DDOS. All of sudden the ice wall was thinner, and I was ready to run hard on the server. So unable to rez the first bit of ice, the second was my first encounter. It was rez'd Faust ate it up. The third and final piece of ice had a strength of five. David territory. David ripped that ice to pieces. I was through. Had I been duped? Was this a trap?
Nope, it was my winning agenda. The evening ended up even.
How do you follow that sort of exciting game play? With a game of Catan of course.
I'm not going to bore you (well more than I already have). But Ben totally ruled this game, and got the win easily.
A great evening gaming.
Posted by me using my iPad and the Blogsy appPandemic Legacy April
Aren't you tired of reading this first bit yet? Obviously not… The following post may or may not (OK most definitely does this week) contain spoilers for the game Pandemic Legacy. If you don't want to read the spoilers and keep the surprises for when you play, then this most certainly isn't the post for you. If that is the case see you in the next post.
Still here?
Ok let's talk April…
After being victorious last week the funding organisation rewarded us for our success by cutting our funding!
After reading our mission brief, which was the same as March's we chose our four funded events we would be playing with.
We had lost our previous starting bonus of being able to place a starting quarantine marker anywhere on the board. But we gained being able to place a garrison anywhere on the board instead. So Shanghai became our first garrison of the game, deep in COdA-403c country, with a character upgrade done to Matts character Zardoz once at the garrison he can chuck out quarantine tokens to the connected cities.
The briefing also told us to place a reminder on the third epidemic spot. Which when reached meant turning over some more cards on the legacy deck.
Our plan was to have Matt in COdA country quarantining the cities, and making use of the garrison and his upgrade, while the rest of us fought the other outbreaks and find cures.
We got the unnamed yellow disease cured, and eradicated early. But success was quickly followed by two epidemic cards. We hit that reminder token and now had to see what was being thrown at us next.
We hit an Alert, COdA was mutating!!!! There were also a lot of tabs to open. We were in for a rough ride. New stickers were being added to the rule book to cover the faded and how they are handled. Plus new stickers to mark the board with when a city becomes faded. And then…
OMG the faded victims of COdA are amazing!!! Little translucent green figures to add to the board. As Jonathan said the game is worth getting just for these alone.
All of a sudden a game about fighting disease and curing them, has turned into a zombie game!!! Ok they don't call them zombies but the faded. But they look like little zombies. This is AWESOME!
We soon after cured and eradicated Sithite (Matt), and with the player deck dwindling fast we got found a cure for C-Thatcam-Major (Debbie).
We had won against the odds! Our first upgrade chosen was to make Shanghai a starting garrison, and we also took the new unfunded event.
Finally we had to name the unnamed yellow disease, since we eradicated it. Which was given the name of Cleggmidia.
With two funded events for May, the odds are stacking up against us of succeeding. Bring the onslaught on…
Cats out of the bag
You know from the posts that the last couple of weeks have seen some playtesting of a game that Jonathan and Rebecca have been working on called Streets of Commonville.
I've been recording the play sessions for Jonathan and Rebecca to review and placing them on YouTube for them. It's the easiest way to share the video considering Rebecca is in the US of A. Unless you have the link you can't see the video. Well apart from the South Park style humour from me, and my low opinion of law enforcement, these videos weren't meant for public consumption.
Anyhow this has changed with the latest one.
Today Common Man Games (home of Police Precinct game) have shared that link for the last game play with their fans on Facebook. Here is how they spilled the beans…
“APB (episode 209): Today's headline reads…
“BACK TO THE STREETS!”
Talkin' About “The Streets Of Commonville” which is a game we have mentioned previously here (see APB #193 and others). It's being designed by a UK/USA team. We (CMG) have not yet entered the process, except to say that we are ecited to see what they come up with and to publish it if we love it and think YOU will too. We want to try to feed you-all the occasional update on this game's development. Within the past 24 hours Jonathan (one of the designers) provided me with a video of a full play-through of the game as it stands now (by all reports, it's quite developed but still being tweaked). I watched some of it and it looks fun and easy to play! I would watch the whole thing right now except that I have to prepare to ship a ton of games out the door (4 pallets headed this way). YOU can watch a bit too, enjoy!…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtYQqv9v5pQ“
Please remember this video is unedited, it's loooong… Nearly two hours in duration and shows the whole game being played.
If you do watch it please leave feedback in the comments below on this post. Jonathan is able read them and respond to them here.
Maybe this filmed playtesting is something I could offer as a service to publishers and designers for a small financial consideration. Wouldn't that be something? I can dream.
My Netrunner Media Fixes
This post is aimed squarely at my fellow Netrunner players in the growing meta at Chatteris Warlords.
I thought it might be an idea to share the podcasts and YouTube stuff I listen to and watch about Netrunner.
First up I'll list the three podcasts I subscribe to.
This is an Australian podcast by a panel of Netrunner runner champs at various levels down under. It's usually a shortish podcast running at about half an hour. You can subscribe to it HERE.
Run, Last, Click is a UK podcast by two Netrunner players based in London. They have regular guests on the show, including interweb Boardgaming personality Quinns from Shut Up, Sit Down who is a major Netrunner addict. You can listen to Run, Last, Click HERE.
Terminal7 is hosted by two Canadian videogame developers who have a Netrunner addiction. They two also have from time to time Quinns on the show plus other guests. You can listen to Terminal7 HERE.
Finally here is the YouTube stuff. Ok there is only one YouTube channel I follow for Netrunner and here it is…
Teamworkcast does some brilliant commentated matches from various tournaments from around Europe. The commentary is very entertaining, once you've watched one or two you will get why I call some cards by nicknames such as pancakes or sexy bot. You can watch Teamworkcast HERE.You may like this video from the recent Teamworkcast output which gives advice to a runner on playing his deck as a commentary.
So I hope this has been useful to my fellow players at the club.
Defusing the bombs in Costa
It's been just over a month since the last Costa gaming session, so long over due. Yesterday saw myself, Jonathan and Debbie meetup at our local Costa in town to drink a hot beverage and play a game.
I arrived at the Costa first, and the place was very busy. I was lucky to get a table, sadly not one really suitable for us to use for gaming. So while waiting for the others I was waiting for a more suitable table to come free.
Debbie showed up not long after me, then Jonathan arrived last. While the other two were getting their beverage of choice (hot chocolate) a larger more suitable table came available. I quickly nabbed it, the table needed a wipe, the tray on it taking away. But hey we had a larger table, we could play now. Then a minute later an even larger table was free, and I nabbed that instead. This table was clean! And much more suitable for us.
Considering we were about to play Bomb Squad Academy , you could look at the table moving thematically as me searching for the bomb so we could start to defuse it.
By the time Debbie and Jonathan got back to the new table with their drinks I had set the game up ready for us to play.
Debbie hadn't played the game before, so a whistle stop summary of the rules and gameplay was given.
Debbie soon got the hang of the game and took an early lead, a lead she kept into the third and final round. I was trailing in last place, not by far, I think by only three points at one time.
However in the final round Debbie kept “copying” me, and we were sharing a lot of points because we kept going for the same coloured wire trying to score the pressure plates. While we were splitting the points, Jonathan took advantage of this and stole the victory from Debbie.
So with Jonathan victorious some brief boardgame talk took place, before we parted our ways, which saw me grabbing a hotdog from the dodgy meat seller on the marketplace.
New Additions 20/2/16
It's that time of week where I share my new arrivals on here, but if you know me on other social media outlets then you will have seen these photos during the week as they arrived.
Those cards from DriveThroughCards arrived at the start of the week. And boy was I impressed with the quality of the cards. Great prices, amazing quality. Can't go wrong. I'm thinking now that I will get the print and play cards for the time machine promo for Colt Express that a fan made done now. That would be really really cool.
I managed to get a real bargain on Council of Verona second addition from the Facebook Trading and Selling page. A second copy by a different seller appeared the next day for twice the price! I'd love to get the second expansion for the game, plus the spin off game, but for some reason the publisher has decided to make it nigh on impossible to get them in the UK. Which also goes for this game. I don't get that. Obviously making a living is against the publishers ethos.
My other two arrivals were also great deals from the Facebook Trading and Selling page.
The Lost Legacy was the game plus the three expansions in the single box. The seller hadn't included the two little storage bags that came with two of the expansions. So I've emailed AEG about how to go about getting the bags.
Eminent Domain a deck building game about building your space empire was also a really good bargain.
I should point out when these second hand games the first thing I do is check that everything is there. It's not that I distrust the seller, it's more for my piece of mind. If I didn't do it, the thought that something was missing would just eat away until I couldn't ignore it.
So that's this weeks new stuff.
New Next Week 22/2/16
It's that time of week where the UK branch of the Asmodee Borg collective Esdevium let us mortals know what presents from above we will be bestowed with, and allowed to buy.
As always this is what caught my eye, and is not everything they are distributing to stores next week.
First up is the Blessed vs Cursed Duel Decks for Magic the Gathering.
These are a great deal for those that are into “Magic lite”, who like playing but don't want to invest tonnes of money into the game.
There are also deck boxes and a two player playmat themed around this duel deck coming out at the same time.
Next up is one I'm really really excited about.
Tokaido is a beautiful looking game, and a game I love playing (needs to hit the table soon I think). So a chance to pimp it out with this official kit is really exciting. And just the excuse to get it back to the table.
Finally oh I've got to get this playmat.
Now you've seen it, I needn't say any more about it, it's bloody obvious why I want this.
A Pleasant Afternoon Gaming
Despite loosing my two games of Netrunner this afternoon, which were a repeat of Tuesday's games where I won. I had a blast playing. I said previously that these are going to be my decks for the regional at the UK Games Expo. Yes my Corp deck will be seeing some work, but only after I've played it some more.
Now it's play, play, play, and learn how to play my decks properly. What cards do I need to hit early? How do I fair against the different factions? What's my best play when X happens?
Yes my opponents are playing “basic” decks with the odd data pack adding to their pool. As my results are showing their decks are still competitive.
So yes I lost today. But I learnt something whilst losing.
After my defeats, we played a couple of games of Magic the Gathering, allowing me to test my first constructed deck.
Our first game I was royally destroyed. I drew two lands, and that was it, I kept drawing creatures. So not able to do anything. Our second game I faired better and provided more of a challenge. I even landed damage on my opponent.
The afternoons gaming was rounded off with a game of Colt Express. I think this was my best score in the games I've played so far with 2600 points at the end. Which wasn't enough to win, but enough to get me second place.
So that's how I spent my first afternoon post my last official day in the office. Technically I'm still an employee for another sixteen working days. But they are holiday I was owed.
The Dark Knight Patrols The Streets of Commonville
Last night saw a three player play test of The Streets of Commonville. Jo, Jonathan and myself donned our suits of blue and shields and once more pounded the pavement, uncovered evidence and “questioned” suspects to capture the wrong doer.
There had been some tweaks to the game for tonight's playtest. Some graphical like the addition of the cctv camera on the arrow counters to make them a bit more thematic. The player boards now had you controlling the upgrade from a choice of three, donuts (ability to pass a dice to another player, or reroll), another dice, or the ability to alter the value of a dice known as intuition.
Before play Jonathan made a quick adjustment to a dice that swapped the ability to get two minutes of time back to the ability of swapping an ability on your player board with one in the precinct. I did disagree with Jonathan on this, it meant the dice would give you that ability 50% of the time, and no way to get time back.
Below photo property of Jonathan
This was Jo's first time playing the game, and after a brief intro to the basics of the game, we were off fighting crime, fitting up innocent people, and eating our way through a tonne of donuts.
Early on in the game the Jonathan suspect token hit the board. It wasn't long before we were fitting him up with handcuffs and transferring him into his alter ego Dr Kinky.
Below Batman captures Dr Kinky.
The game still took an hour and half to play, and like previous play throughs didn't seem that long. That's the surprise of the game. There is virtually no down time, everyone is involved through out the game. I've pointed this out before in previous posts on the game, this fact alone I think is a big big positive of the game.
Another great play through.