All posts by Darren

Seven shifts until R&R

life, the universe, and everything, still alive

I can’t believe it’s been a week nearly since my last post.

The work life balance seems out of whack at the moment. Maybe not in hours worked but more the physical and emotional toll.

Sometimes it feels age is catching up with me and despite getting about eight hours sleep. I am still having an afternoon nap.

However since the last post I’ve been on the first of three training courses to become a union health and safety rep. It was a three day course at the unions branch office, with accommodation provided at a local Premier Inn.

Yes breakfast was included. So it would have been rude to not have the full English to start the days off correctly.

I even made a batch of cold brew coffee over night in the hotel room to have during the day on the course.

Yes they had coffee, tea, biscuits etc to help yourself to during the day. But sachets of Nescafé coffee just won’t cut it as the caffeine option.

So I felt forced to make the cold brew to get that fix.

How did I make the cold brew?

Well I had my 1 litre Nalgene bottle, cold brew filter bags, Hario mini mill plus, and some coffee beans in the car (along with a few other bits, like gas stove, dehydrated food).

That first night in the hotel room saw me grinding beans, filling the filter bag, placing it in the Nalgene and pouring in the bottled water purchased from the Tesco next to the Premier Inn.

The next morning I had a litre of cold brew ready to take in with me.

I had been due two back to back days off but I was asked if I’d do some overtime Friday. Which I agreed to.

The bright side of all this is that in seven shifts time I’m on holiday for a week. I’ll talk more about those plans in another post.

Castle Combo arrived, and once some more Mayday premium sleeves also arrived, was sleeved.

Thanks to Jamey Stegmaier and his latest YouTube video (at time of writing) about his favourite mechanic in Splendor: Pokémon I have now ordered a copy.

The thing about this version of the game is it’s not available out side Korea. So to get a copy you have to import a copy or hope a company specialising in imported games has it. I went the former via eBay. The later could have been an option but the company I found was out of stock for it.

This kind of reminds me of the “original” Star Wars Love Letter that sadly was only available in Russia. At the time I did try and get a copy. But as you have probably already guessed I was unsuccessful in those attempts.

Carcassonne Star Wars was a similar thing for the US. Available in the UK and EU. But not licensed for the States.

The joys of franchise licensing.

Back to Splendor. I don’t actually own the original game, despite liking it. I sold on my copy plus it’s play mat once I had the Marvel edition in my collection. I preferred the extra bits that they added to the Marvel version such as the Avengers Assemble tile.

I can see there being room for two copies of the game (possibly).

I’ve been looking everywhere for my copy of Strike! But can I find it? So like previous times in similar situations I’ve ordered a replacement copy. If it does turn up it’ll be handy having two copies.

Right I think that’s enough for this post time to spend the day just chilling before work tomorrow.

A Couple of Gaming Sessions

Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night

Friday evening was once again club night.

For me it was a light evening of gaming with my friend Jonathan.

That’s right Jonathan had made it to club night, and it was great to be able to game with him. It’s just a shame that Diego was on the other table. Then it would have been like the old club days.

We started off on our table with a game of Castle Combo.

Apparently this game had been getting a bit of buzz which had completely passed me by.

I quite liked this card driven tableau building game.

You are building this 3×3 grid, so in total you are getting nine turns before the game ends. So in that time you are trying to purchase cards that generate you money (to buy further cards), get keys, and meeting end game scoring conditions.

The symbol reference card is handy and very much needed through out the game as you learn the iconography.

It’s fun, accessible, fairly quick. And probably why I ordered a copy this morning. At £17 plus postage not that expensive either.

Our follow up game was Big Shot. My copy had arrived that morning. It was an odd experience with Martin our third player not taking out any loans, not winning a single bid, and finishing with the original money token he started with.

We finished off our evening with a game of Sushi Go. What more can I say about this fun drafting game? It’s a great filler game.

Sadly it was a clean sweep of victories for Jonathan. But great to share the evening gaming with him.

Sadly our Saturday afternoon plan of playing Cosmic Encounter was a three player game.

I used the Cosmic combo cards to select the alien races we would use for this session. After scanning through the 34 cards I settled on the quick-start set up.

I do like these Cosmic combo cards. They are a great way for 3-5 players to choose alien races around a theme such as trade or really aggressive. Shame FFG didn’t make these available as a separate print on demand deck for existing owners of the game.

We also used the tech cards (and associated rules), flare cards (played wrong btw) plus the reward deck.

Three players was fun, but a very different experience to our first game.

I liked the tech cards, and will probably include these in future plays. They give an additional choice to make if you win an encounter as the aggressor. Do you initiate a second encounter or draw new tech cards to gain new tech?

Charlene managed to beat Anthony and myself.

Our afternoon of gaming was finished with a game of Big Shot. Yes it’s fastly becoming a favourite filler game. Quick to teach and play. I managed to win this one.

A great afternoon of gaming with plans starting to get TI4 to the table.

Hello is there anybody out there?

#backtothehills, hiking/backpacking/camping, life, the universe, and everything, outdoors, still alive

Wow I can’t believe it’s been so long since I posted last.

I have been rather tired and dozing off in the afternoon once home from work, and then getting to sleep early. But that’s just getting older.

There has been some gaming but not much. I got to spend a rather pleasant afternoon Saturday gaming with Ben and his family.

We played the newly arrived expansion for Tokyo Highway, Rainbow City.

We jumped in with using the additional rules for missions. Which makes the game a bit more gamery!

It was a big hit with Ben and his family.

We also played Tonga Bonga. Which was great fun. I did like the mechanic of placing money on your ships to tempt people to place their die on your spaces over others. That and placing your dice gets very very tactical.

The afternoons gaming was finished with a very cut throat game of Big Shot. That I really liked. I do like the auction mechanic it uses.

I liked both the (to me) new games. They weren’t heavy by any means. But still very fun.

Tying myself in…

A few weeks back I asked Dave if he’d use his wood crafting skills to make me a practice board for tying knots.

In one of the posts was a 5mm hole that allowed me to thread through some 5mm bungee cord to create a loop to simulate a tent/tarp tie off point.

The idea is that whilst I’m chilling at home whilst I have something on tv playing I can have this out and practice my knots. Practice makes perfect they say.

Knot practice board

Back in a previous post I wrote that I personally only needed to know and practice five knots.

This board allows me to practice those five knots.

Bowline
Clove hitch
Bowline
Truckers hitch
Prusic knot

I’m tempted to ask Dave to add a horizontal bar connecting the two vertical ones maybe 2 or 3 inches from the base.

But I do love what he has made for me.

A little update on life

life, the universe, and everything, still alive, UKGE

Life is moving along.

Work is still frustrating at the moment.

But the big thing over the last few of days is I did put in a bid for the first expansion for the Fallout board game on eBay.

However I didn’t win the auction. The final price for the winner of the auction was £170 plus postage! Yeah the expansion isn’t worth that amount by any imagination.

The Road to UKGE 2025 #3

I know this could be a separate very short post in its own right. But I don’t feel it warrants it.

Continuing my opportunistic approach to buying camping gear ready for next year I’ve bought a stove for camp use.

Sadly it’s not the Jetboil Genesis Basecamp. That’s very expensive and not sold in the UK. So the cost gets even more expensive getting it from abroad.

This morning one of the cheaper alternatives I’d been looking at on Amazon was part of the Prime Big Deal days. The Naturehike 2-in-1 Gas Camping Stove was reduced by 15%. So I decided to pull the trigger on purchasing it. It comes with a griddle. Which has saved me the expense of getting one.

I’ve also bought a ultralight portable beach table. It should be wide enough for the new stove, and low (or is it high?) enough so the stove can be used whilst I’m sitting in my little camp chair. The table was also part of the Prime Big Deal day.

The nice thing about not leaving the purchase of needed equipment to nearer the time is that I can take advantage of such deals.

Fallout the board game

Fenland Gamers, game night

Last night was the fortnightly club night.

Still numbers are not back up to the heady heights that we were seeing earlier in the year. Marcin even commented so when he arrived.

That being said the seven of us that were there had a good time playing games.

We split into two tables. Four on one table playing Azul, and Camel Up. Whilst Marcin, Dave, and myself were on the other table playing Fallout the board game.

I’ve owned this game for a few years now, and it’s sat there on my pile of shame ever since.

It was only recently that I purchased the official play mat, plus the second expansion Atomic Bonds. This second expansion makes the game co-operative. Something I’m not keen to include. But you never know. It was a completeness purchase.

However the first expansion New California remains elusive. Mainly because the English version is out of print (you can pick up a German version very easily).

I think what has made the situation for New California even worse, and also driven demand for the base game is the popularity of the Amazon tv series.

I have played the modern third person version Fallout 3 back in about 2010 on my 360. I didn’t complete the game, or even get close. But I did enjoy the experience. I even went back and played a little of the original turn based rpg Fallout on a pc.

Obviously I enjoyed the recent Amazon tv series based on the Fallout games. Unlike a major trend over the years of adapting video games badly to the silver screen, Amazon actually did a decent job.

Last night we played Marcin’s copy of the game that had the New California expansion mixed in.

We played the introductory scenario Welcome to the Commonwealth with the extended map. I was playing the robot Mister Handy, Marcin played the Ghoul, and Ben was the Brotherhood Outcast.

The game was great fun.

I think it captured the theme really well through the art, miniatures, quests, and mechanics.

On your turn you get two actions. One is exploring. That allows you to flip over an adjacent unexplored tile. So you get that exploring feel, discovering new areas, revealing new threats.

The quests or encounters you can go on have some great thematic text to read out.

Combat is simple and quick. You roll three dice, hopefully getting the required bits of the body to defeat the enemy and not get any hits in return. The “AI” to move/activate enemies on the board was very simplistic. Which involved turning over an agenda card and looking at icons on the bottom of the card for what gets activated.

With the learn of the game, it took us roughly three hours to play.

Obviously I want to play some more of the game. I really did have great fun playing it.

I survived!

Fenland Gamers, game night, life, the universe, and everything, star wars, Star Wars Unlimited, still alive

It’s Saturday morning. I’ve been awake from bloody early a.m. on my day off.

The status update of my McDonald’s breakfast seems stuck on “picking up my order”.

I’m just too knackered after my seven day tour of duty at work.

I’ve come out of it feeling battered emotionally. I won’t go into details but the frustration levels have been through the roof.

So I feel I’ve earnt this lazy start to my day off.

Yesterday Mini Rails arrived from Zatu without any problems. Which has been my experience with them every time I’ve ordered from them. That will shock some. But for me my experiences have been positive.

Also through the letter box came the new Zelda game The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. Where I think for the first time you can actually play as Princess Zelda. Another entry in my long to play list.

Last night was a “get it to the table” night for Fenland Gamers. Which saw Marcin, Anthony, and myself play Marcin’s copy of Coimbra. Which frankly I’m shocked he owns based on its theme alone! It’s not exactly post apocalyptic.

However it’s a fun game that has dice drafting, and then using those dice to do something, with the value of the die being used determining the cost of what you purchase. Plus the colour of the die comes into play in a later stage of the round.

Each round player order changes based on number crowns each player has accumulated that round.

You have a bit of engine building going on with the cards you purchase. Add in also trying to move a pawn round a map to collect bonus tiles, and racing up four influence tracks to try to have the most in each. This a lot to try and do with the three dice you draft.

It’s also only four rounds and plays very quickly.

It is a fun game.

History will record Marcin won on a technicality.

Along with Mini Rails the final cards of my two new decks arrived.

Those two incomplete decks got an outing on Tuesday just gone when Marcin and I play Star Wars Unlimited (SWU) using our Twin Suns decks. I suppose you could say that this was the SWU equivalent of the popular MtG singleton (one one copy of a card) format Highlander.

The two incomplete decks worked well. Or I should say as intended. So I have three Twin Suns decks. Marcin has two. Which means if we have a fourth player join us we can lend them a deck if they have no deck of their own.

I now need to write up these decks.

New Games To The Table

Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night

Despite me starting this epic seven days of work without a break (currently on day 4 as I write this post) I’ve managed to get some gaming in.

It was club night Friday evening with only five people able to make it along. Is this the new normal? Why has attendance slipped?

The only five player game we had was Tribes of the Wind. So I was glad to be able to get this latest addition to the collection to the table.

This is a nice game. It even played well at five players, despite one of those players being well known to suffer from analysis paralysis (ap). Even with an ap inflicted player we played the game in about an hour and three quarters.

Although on the table space we had five players was rather cramped.

Production is great, and I really like the art by Vincent Dutrait. He has also done the art for After Us, the Amun-Re 20th Anniversary Edition, Broom Service, plus many more. The three mentioned I also own, and love the art.

I love how you need to take into account the cards your neighbours are holding. It means that whilst you can plan your next turn while waiting for others to take theirs. That plan might go out the window because the cards held by a neighbour have change meaning you can’t play that card you wanted to.

It’s cool that when you build a village you get to choose a village card that is duel use. You can either use it for an immediate benefit, or for its end game scoring bonus.

Each player board is unique. Well in which conditions you need to complete to be able to select one of the four unique guide cards each player has. You get up to two of these cards. They act like ongoing special abilities throughout the rest of the game.

They are also unique in the distribution of pollution on your player board.

The uniqueness is continued with the starting tiles that give differing starting resources.

The iconography is easy to pick up, as is the learning curve. As I pointed out in just under two hours we learnt and played the game.

Yeah I liked this game a lot. Sadly I didn’t win, the ap inflicted player did.

Afterwards I had to pack away and get home rather quickly. My curfew was way earlier than Cinderella’s. With work and the start of the seven days the next morning I needed to be in bed and sleeping by 9:30pm.

Sunday saw me round Ben’s as soon as work had finished. Diego and Charlene would be joining us.

I had suspected Charlene might be. So I had put Stamp Swap in the car.

After punching the cardboard Ben and I set up Stamp Swap. By which time Charlene had arrived. Not long after followed by Diego.

After going through the rules we started stamp collecting.

This is a fast game. The three rounds flew by.

I loved the drafting of the stamps in the first phase. Especially with some of the stamps being facedown unknown to anyone. The I split, you choose of the second phase. Great fun and just as tactical as the drafting. Followed by the puzzle bit of fitting the stamps in your play area. I really enjoyed how these three mechanics had been melded together.

That last phase is heavily influenced by the four goals and the final scoring goal. At the end of each round you select one of the four available goals and score it. Once selected you can’t select it in further rounds. Plus you only get to choose three out of the four.

Each player may has a unique end of round scoring card, also directing your focus of stamps to draft.

Yeah for me this is another Stonemaier hit. Who knew stamp collecting could be so much fun.

Having been robbed of a joint victory by a bs tie breaker we followed up with a game of Mini Rails.

I hadn’t played Mini Rails before. But I liked this share based game.

Each round you get to do two actions once. Build a track, take a share. Which share or track you buy/build determines your turn order for your actions next round.

It’s not a heavy game or a massive high scoring game. But it gets very tactical because the share/track you want might not get you where you want in the turn order next round. Plus the trying to manipulate the share price.

How much did I like it? Well a copy is now on its way to me. Zatu have it for under £20. A big discount. Might be due to a new version due to hit kickstarter soon (fancy meeples, and new cuter art, same game). But I’ll take the cheap option.

Our final game of the afternoon was Nokosu Dice. Love this trick taking game that utilises cards and dice. Which apparently is hard to get hold off, and if you can it’s for silly money.

Charlene just smashed this one breaking Diego’s run of wins for the afternoon.

It was a great afternoon of gaming, with great friends.

The Road to UKGE 2025 #2

UKGE

I didn’t think I’d be writing anything about next years UKGE so soon. In my mind the next post was months away in early 2025.

But here I am with another brief post.

I had been thinking that for the camping experience next year I’d use my tarp configured as a “tarp tent” using a poncho as a vestibule. The inspiration for this was the YouTube video below.

However I made the mistake of looking on the Alpkit website and seeing they had a sale on!

I had liked the look of the Tarpstar pyramid range of tents they did. I nearly pulled the trigger on the two person Tarpstar 2. However I ended up going for the single person Tarpstar 1.

They both have the identical outer. It’s the inner where they differ. In the two person Tarpstar 2 the inner takes up all the space. However this means getting in and out of the Tarpstar opens the inside to the elements, such as rain. Which is equally true when it comes to cooking in bad weather too.

Whereas on the Tarpstar 1 the inner only takes up half of the inside, leaving you with a pretty large vestibule to stash gear, cook in bad weather etc.

So as a single person you have to decide what’s more important that inner with the larger living space or having that vestibule.

For me it’s that vestibule. Being able to stash the camp chair away during the day, cool box, etc was more important.

So that’s why I pulled the trigger on the Tarpstar 1.

I’ve “chosen” a campsite to book. Sadly not able to book the UKGE dates yet.

Twin Suns Shenanigans

lcg/ccg/tcg game night, star wars, Star Wars Unlimited, Twin Suns

Two weeks ago was our first game of Star Wars Unlimited using the Twin Suns multiplayer rules and decks we built.

As my little announcement video below shows I was playing my Sabine Wren and Jyn Erso deck (you can see the deck list here).

I was up against two decks by Marcin. They were

  • The Mandalorian/Bo-Katan Kryze/Security Complex
  • Boba Fett/Cad Bane/Command Center

Dave and Marcin took turns playing the decks.

None of the three games we played this first time went beyond the seventh round. So very short games. Expensive cards to play were resources. There would be no chance to play them.

I won the first game, with my deck seemingly working to plan.

Marcin won the remaining two games.

Reflecting back I think although my base Jedha City with its ability while very handy to nullify a threat or reduce the impact. With its health being 25 instead of 30, I felt left me feeling a little more vulnerable.

Although I’m happy with the cost curve it felt I was lacking answers to the threats Marcin and Dave were posing in the two games Marcin won.

This week we once again played Twin Suns games. Dave had his own decks this time (I forgot to make a note of his leaders).

The two games we played this time were longer games. I got the Krayt Dragon out! It won me the first game. I was surprised I got to play the card.

But I had no right winning that game. I was no able to keep a presence on any of the battlefields. It was mainly Dave and Marcin duking it out trying to position themselves for the win. I was just a bystander. Both couldn’t finish off the game by killing me because the other player would win. So they had to concentrate on getting slightly ahead on damaging the other players base.

Dave won game two with some great tactical play especially utilising his leaders to deliver a winning blow by knocking out Marcin. I had sat on cards that dealt with upgrades from my initial hand because of Marcin’s Mando deck.

I am really enjoying our games of Twin Suns.

I think now after five games I might look at what ramp I can possibly introduce to the deck.

As an exercise I might try and classify the cards in the deck by use, such as removal, etc. That might help me identify better areas I’m weak in.

I now have two decks nearly built. I’m just waiting for a handful of cards to arrive. Whilst the third deck that I was inspired to build is 60% complete.