All posts by Darren

Epic smackdown 

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The only game yesterday that Nath and I played before having to complete some chores and my traveling back home, was Epic the card game.

We started off drafting our decks using the two player open draft rules. 

None of this deal two random thirty card decks from the top of the deck. No we were going to get the full draft experience. 

I split the deck in half and we both took the top two cards from our deck and placed them face up in the middle. We then naturally took turns choosing from those four until there were none left. Can you guess what we did next? Yep we repeated the process of drawing and selecting until we both had a thirty card deck.

The remaining cards were then put away, and we prepared to battle on the awesome playmats I got from the Epic Kickstarter. 

I know some folks out on the interweb think that the cards are too powerful and they come out to quickly. But that is the whole point of the game I thought. The Magic like experience with none of the setup, you go straight to the big feck off monsters, and just stand toe to toe knocking six shades of brown stuff out of each other.

I like Epic. I love that in the box you do get that Magic experience, you can do drafting, you can do constructed, that you can play upto four players out of the box, add more boxes (upto three) to support upto eight players. That there is such variety in how you get to that starting thirty cards in your deck.

The artwork is beautiful on the cards. Nath and I did have to keep referring to the rules to check what words meant. But that will come with more plays. I’m more forgiving I think of this than I am the iconography in Cthulhu Realms. Which is interesting. I think it’s because we were having to do this for every card in Cthulhu Realms, whilst in Epic it was just for some.

Eventually after holding out for a few turns Nath started demolishing me. I did manage to land some damage on him, so it wasn’t a complete whitewash.

I think Nath at the start of the drafting thought that may have been a bit dull. But once we started playing he enjoyed the game.

So far with games like Magic, Netrunner, I have shielded Nath from the “joys” of the drafting or deck building. We have used pre-constructed decks like the dual decks in Magic, or the default decks in the Netrunner core set. So exposing Nath to his first draft to build a deck to play with was his first step down a slippery slope. 

I left Nath a spare copy of Epic to play with. I’m slowly building up his gaming collection. He can have the Kickstarter promos once I get him a deck box for the cards. 

Can’t wait to get the Tyrants expansion…

A mid week father son gaming day

father son gaming, game night, news, star realms

I'm down visiting Natha at the moment. I had to come down to make sure he got to the dentist. Let's just say that his track record of attending has been poor. So yesterday he went to his second appointment to sort out some tooth ache he'd had a couple of weeks back. Which resulted in the pain inducing tooth being extracted! So even more pain for Nath.

We followed the dentist visit up with a trip to the Farnborough cinema to see Deadpool (such a great movie) and London Has Fallen (an average at best sequel). This is something that I haven't done in a long time, back to back movies. Between films we grabbed a quick guilt loaded bite to eat at McDonalds.

But that was our Tuesday. What about today though?

Well once Nath was up, and I had fed him breakfast (American pancakes) we played our first game of the day Eminent Domain. A game I have been wanting to get to the table since getting it second hand off Facebook.

I liked playing Eminent Domain a lot. The game did not disappoint. Setup was fairly easy, and quick. Always good. I like the turn structure a lot. It's simple, but does the job. At the start of your turn, you can play a card from your hand if you wish to perform its action. You then have to select a role from the middle and play that role ability. This builds up your deck, allows you to get resources for the path you are following, explore planets, research new technologies. The other players also have the option of also following that role or dissenting (which is basically draw a card from your draw pile).

Finally the turn is ended with a tidy up phase for the current player where played cards go on the discard pile, a player can discard unwanted cards in their hand, and finally draw back up to five cards.

I ended up taking an explore colonise path, while Nath went down the more aggressive war route and conquered his planets.

Neither of us tried the produce/trade route, and Nath was the only one out of the two of us who did any research to get those more advanced technology cards for the deck.

There is very little interaction between players, but you are still involved between turns, trying to work out whether following the others role phase is useful in advancing your own goals, or is it better to draw that extra card?

I ended up beating Nath 39 victory points to 27.

Next up was what must be Nath's favourite card game or even modern board game, Star Realms.

It felt like we were playing with everything plus the kitchen sink in the cards we were using. Base game, Gambits, Crisis (minus heroes cards), Colony Wars, plus Cosmic Gambits. That's a hell of a lot of cards. We had the draw deck for the trade row split into three piles.

There was

In the end having done superior scrapping to give him the edge he needed, Nath delivered the killing blow of 21 points of damage to remove my 19 points of authority.

Our final game of the afternoon was Discoveries. This game is on my list of ones to try and play this first quarter of the year.

Once again a very quick game to setup. There was a bit more referring to the rules for our play of this compared to Eminent Domain.

However once you get used to the turn structure this is a nice little dice allocation game. The part of American history this is set in is neither here or there for me. The look of the game is nice, and subdued. They have gone with wooden dice for the game, that do feel “light”, but look and fit in with the theming.

Once again there is very little interaction between players. Being limited to the grabbing of your dice back from another player, or grabbing a grey tribe dice from the player with the most of them. Between turns you are mainly planning how best to utilise the dice you have available to achieve your goal.

As I said I liked the game, it will be interesting to see how this plays with three or four players. Will it feel different?

Oh and as the score pad shows I won ^__^

Finally some news!

Coming soon to a Kickstarter near you I believe (can't remember where I saw this Kickstarter reference) from Albino Dragon is The Goonies Adventure Card Game. Once I know more details I'll post them.

When I mentioned to Nath about this, all I got was “what is The Goonies?” He hasn't seen the movie!!! I never thought I'd fall into that group of bad parenting that also includes having not shown their kids Star Wars, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones. How did this happen? I've made a point of making sure Nath has seen the modern classics.

I'm going to have to rectify this ASAP.

 

Pandemic Legacy May

Fenland Gamers, game night, pandemic legacy season 1

“I've got sunshine on a cloudy day.

When it's cold outside I've got the month of May.“

My Girl

 

One day I may get bored with writing this intro warning you that the following post may or may not contain spoilers for the game Pandemic Legacy, and just go straight into the post with no warning. But in the meantime if you are trying to avoid spoilers for the game then you may just want to leave and join me in my next post.

1…

2…

3…

Right if you are still here you really can't complain if I spoil the game for you.

Last night saw the usual suspects of Debbie, Matt, Jonathan and myself meeting up to tackle the month of May in Pandemic Legacy Season 1.

Because of our success in April we were now down to two funded events to shuffle into the players deck. Our staples of one quiet night and the one that allows us to rearrange the top six cards of the infection deck were our choices. How we would cope without these two I don't know. We also still had our unfunded events in the players decks (the dual use city cards) to fall back on if need be.

Our briefing gave us the task of completing three objectives out of the four available. We chose our starting base, and which city to remove a faded figure from. COdA had mutated again, so when we drew a red city card from the players deck this to would cause that city to be infected with one of the faded, but if it would cause an outbreak nothing would happen.

We thought we were doing well, no Cleggmidia had come out, we had cured and eradicated C-Thatcam-Major (one objective complete), working on curing Sithite. Then the Cleggmidia cards started hitting, as did the epidemic cards. Joburge had fallen completely, pandemics were spreading like wildfire.

Our group decided maybe we could build the six garrisons quicker than trying to get the third cure. But before we could implement the plan, we had lost, over run by the pandemics.

We had failed, so quickly it took us by surprise at how fast we had lost this one. The defeat had seemed to come from nowhere.

After a brief team conflab, we chose our four funded events. I still love this mechanic. Do well you get less funded events, do badly you get more. Just like real life!

Our plan was to fore go finding three cures but to instead build the six garrisons, have seven quarantined cities, and eradicate one disease. That seemed do able. We could even build road blocks now to stop the spread of the faded and the curable diseases.

Like the previous game the wrong unfunded events were landing with Matt and Debbie. If one quite night, or the two extra actions had been with Jonathan or myself we could keep re-using them as long as we had the city cards. We've used this ability of ours to great effect in previous games.

Still, we had cured one disease, built five garrisons and the seven quarantines would not be a problem. But once more epidemics snowballing into pandemics cost of us the game. Much to the relief of Matt who wanted to get back to watch the latest episode of the new X-Files. In fact he was willing on the cards when an epidemic broke to cause the pandemics.

That was May. We did much better the second time around, there was definitely light at the end of the tunnel, the finishing line was in sight, and any other cliche saying you can think of.

This was definitely a “wait! What just happened?” Month.

Due to the lure of the stage lights and grease paint calling to Debbie we will not be playing June next week. So a week off from the spoilers for you all.

We get six funded events in June ^___^

 

My Feb 2016 Gaming Stats

gaming stats

So I'm still going strong recording my game plays using the BG Stats app on my iPhone. Which means for my second month of using the app I am now able to present to you my gaming stats for the month of February.

I actually increased my number of plays this month from 24 in January to 31. But this was for only 12 games, down by one from January.

By far my most played game of the month has been Android Netrunner, with Pandemic Legacy Season 1 and Jonathan's Streets of Commonville drawing level for the number of plays.

It also looks like I have been more sociable last month too, having played games with eleven people!

I think the take home summary is I've played more and been more social in a shorter month than the previous one.

I think for March I don't think that there will be much change for the top three played games. But hey who knows what other games I will get to the table or try.

So far I've not managed to get any of the following:

  • Five Tribes
  • Magic the Gathering Arena of the Planeswalker
  • Discoveries
  • T.I.M.E. Stories
  • Ashes Rise of the Phoenixborn

 

To the table yet.

The challenge was to get as many of these as possible to the table within the quarter. March is the last month of this quarter. It's not looking good.

 

Prepare for battle…

ages, epic, news

Hot on the heals of the announcements last week for Epic of the game day kits and store tournament kits comes this new announcement from White Wizard Games about giving Epic a Worlds.

That nice funny money figure of $100,000 is not for one person, but spread out amongst those taking part in the Worlds. With a not to be sniffed at top prize of $25,000.

Here are the words that White Wizard sent:

“I am thrilled to announce the $100,000 Epic World Championship tournament. Event details can be found here.

Epic was designed to provide a complete trading card game style experience at a tiny fraction of the cost. I am very proud of the depth of game play and strategy the game provides for both sealed and constructed play.

The one thing Epic was missing was high-end events to inspire players to build the best-possible constructed decks and to push their strategies in awesome limited formats like dark draft. This high-end play doesn't just benefit the competitive tournament player, it also provides a wealth of internet content like cool deck lists that casual players can build and try at home or in a local casual event.

Every one of the 64 qualifying players in the Epic World Championship will get a cash prize and awesome Epic swag! The road to Epic Worlds begins at SXSW Gaming in just a couple of weeks. Best of luck to all in your quest to qualify!

Thank you again for backing Epic!

-Rob“

My concern is that there will not be a nationals in the UK, and therefore a chance for a UK champion to participate. We will be lucky if we get a store tournament, let alone a regionals to feed into the nationals.

There seems to be very little up take in the UK or even a distributor (I'm sure there must be one, but I'm waiting to find out who from White Wizard so my local FLGS can order the game day and store kit).

I love that White Wizard are doing this, it shows ambition and support for a great card game.

The deck building card game with a historic theme has been relaunched on Kickstarter. This is a great game and worth a punt if you like the genre.

You can back Ages HERE

 

Planeswalkers and Being Epic

news

In the last couple of days White Wizard announced the release date for the first expansion for Epic called Tyrants.

Before this announcement they had been putting previews of some of the new cards in the expansion up on the Epic Facebook page.

At the same time White Wizard also announced the details of a game day kit, and tournament kit. You can guess what I'm going to be asking my FLGS to get in.

This is great news seeing White Wizard supporting the game. My question on the expansion is will I need three copies as I do for the base game for catering for the larger draft formats or deck building?

Also the expansion may hit stores in March in the US. But there is a loooong delay afterwards before we will see them on the shores here. We still haven't seen the Star Realms Colony Wars yet over here. This seems a regular problem for White Wizard, and I'd love to see them resolve this.

Magic the Gathering Arena of the Planeswalker

Over the last couple of days news has also leaked out in the autumn we will see another expansion for Magic the Gathering Arena of the Planeswalker.

From the info/rumour I've seen on a forum or two this will be a large expansion, same size of the original game, and not require the base game. It will have five new Planeswalkers, which will be dual colour, plus all the supporting terrain, cardboard, etc. And naturally be playable with what has come before.

So MtGAotP has been out six months now, we have seen one expansion, that barely added much to the game. Team/deck building is not really an option as it stands.

If I compare this to Imperial Assault in fourteen months we have seen two deluxe expansions, and several Hero and Villians packs, a Worlds competition, active support for stores to host game nights with kits. In the skirmish games there has been a lot better ability to team/deck build.

Imperial Assault really does show what might have been and could be if Hasbro actually got behind this game. Failing that I pray Plaid Hat buys the rights to the game mechanics/rules and releases an Ashes version with better support.

 

New Loot 27/2/16

expansions, new arrivals

Welcome to my weekly round up of stuff that dropped through my letter box.

Even though I haven't got Ticket to Ride Europe (yet) this mini expansion is free from Days of Wonder, you just pay for the postage.

I've already blogged about the following, looking at its contents. However the publisher hasn't responded to my email yet about getting a replacement figure for the broken one. I have been forced to register with their call tracking system. But that was an automatic response to my email. I've uploaded evidence of the fault. But no update has been put on there either. Walls of silence are great customer service!
At my weekly Netrunner fix there are plans afoot to play the draft format of the game. With a lack of the draft rules online, I ended up getting this draft starter just to get a look at the formats rules!

There is going to be a “marathon” Ticket to Ride play session in March by some of the Fenland Gamers. So I thought this might be a fun “chaotic” expanse to throw into the mix. Or at least have the option there of playing it.

 
This week I met up with an old school and college friend who I hadn't seem since 1987(?). In the meantime he moved to the land down under, and made a life down there. Fast forward the clock, with the aid of Facebook we got in contact again. That friend is now back in Blighty for a visit with his wife and latest addition to the family.
I made a little gift package for them of the following two games and Love Letter (from my collection) after hearing they were just using a pack of cards and playing canasta as entertainment. I think I covered a few genres with these three, cards, dice and tiles!
Thanks to Gavin who alerted me to this little bargain currently on Amazon, if you are a WWE fan you should be snapping this up. And with unlimited music streaming from Apple I'm sorted for the entrance music to play for each wrestler.
 

Oh how much of a bargain was it? Just under a tenner! That's a twenty odd pound saving. Plus my Prime membership it was free next day delivery.

That's it for this week.

New Releases For Next Week 29/2/16

netrunner, news

So it's that time of week again when the local branch of the Asmodee collective Esdevium come down from upon high and tell us what we are being allowed to buy next week from them.

First up is a game Tom Vassel of Dice Tower fame is singing the praises of…

Next up is a reprint of the game I haven't got to the table yet Dead of Winter.

Remember last week they released a Super Mario Playmat? Well this week we are getting Super Mario deck boxes. They look bloody amazing.

Finally the biggy of next week for me is…

Some Netrunner fans have this already because they paid the excessive postage wanted by FFG to ship it. Now it is the time for those of us who were prepared to wait for it to arrive in the UK to get our copies.

I think from one or two posts I've seen the supply is limited, and some shops aren't getting their full orders. So I think I'm going to be one lucky person when I get my pre-order.

So I'm looking forward to next week…

 

So near but so far

Fenland Gamers, game night, play test

Last night saw Jonathan and I patrol once more the Streets of Commonville.

It was going to be a weird play session, there had been some “requests” made to Jonathan from some of the small but elite folks that had viewed the previous play through.

Once more we were filming the play through, but we had a wishlist of things to cover.

The first twenty minutes or so of filming was spent explaining various elements of the game. We then started a two player game.

I thought for the sake of this recording we would be taking a couple of turns and then “fast forwarding” the game state to show various in game situations.

However we were opening the board up fairly fast. A lot faster than our other two player game together.

I was soon able to level up to Captain, giving me five dice and an intuition (alter a dice to a value I need), plus my starting donut. It wasn't long before we were also able to get Jonathan up to the same rank, with similar additional powers.

But the clock was ticking. We hadn't revealed all the evidence, but we had done enough to get down to one suspect (shockingly not Dr Kinky this time), give that suspect a weapon and a set of handcuffs.

With the clock dangerously low, we had one turn to get myself to join Jonathan (who arrived the previous turn) and the suspect and defeat the suspect.

I needed three dice to get me to the suspects tile. Then we needed to score between us forty five points with our remaining dice. We totalled up our points, we had forty four points. Short by one! One lousy point!

The game had beat us. But that was the closest game we'd played. Amazingly close. Great fun.

So some editing for me, then the “directors commentary” to record and then edit back into the video, before putting up for viewing. How I ended up doing more work I don't know. All I know at the moment with the size font that will be needed in the rules book for my name in the thanks, the page will have to be a gatefold!

Tokaido Collectors Accessory Pack

expansions, first look, new arrivals

So today (and I'm jumping the gun here, because I normally talk about new arrivals on Saturdays) the Tokaido Collectors Accessory Pack arrived.

After opening the box up my initial excitement was damped by disappointment to see that one of the figures was broken. I've emailed the publisher via their website for a replacement. Time to see how their customer support matches up against the likes of AEG and Portal Games.

So in the box you get sixteen unpainted plastic figures representing the characters in both the base game and the Crossroads expansion. Sadly there is not a figure for the Eriku promo character.

Also in the box is a nice cloth bag for storing the coins that also come in the box. Plus a CD of Japanese inspired music to play in the background while playing the game is also included.

Naturally if we have a cloth bag, we also have to have something to put in it. That something is fifty metal coins. These are lovely, have a nice feel and weight to them.

You also get five replacement score tracker tokens in the shape of coloured packages. Plus a coloured base cover for the figure you are playing with, and finally a “second” (assuming you have the Crossroads expansion) dice.

As a pimp my game kit, this is a really nice little kit. Despite a model being broken, the models are really detailed, and look great. And I can't wait to get Tokaido to the table using these new components.

If you love Tokaido this is a must buy.