Category Archives: FEG@TA

FEG@TA

Reinventing the wheel

D&D, FEG@TA, RPG

Even as an inexperienced DM one early skill I think is important for a DM to develop (especially if they are running a homebrew campaign of some kind) is to know when to not reinvent the wheel.

I enjoy the creative process that being a DM exposes you to. Coming up with a world, story lines, adventures and all that each entails. They all have their own creative challenges.

However if like me your spare time is a precious commodity that is in short supply. Then how you spend it between sessions preparing is pretty important. You want to get as much done as possible for as little effort.

That’s where knowing when to reinvent the wheel comes in handy.

The first thing I do when I have an idea is research it. For example I had no idea how to run gladiator combat in an arena. I would have been surprised if it hadn’t been done during the 45 odd years of the games history.

My googling turned up a recommendation for an Adventure League module that had the perfect encounter for me to base the encounter I was planning on. All I’ve had to do is work out the changes I need to make to fit in with my campaign. Which is mainly location and characters.

It’s also worth as you read D&D or general RPG material squirrelling away stuff that may be of use in future. Such as those generic lairs that are part of the Lazy DM Workbook. Or as I’ve identified in the D&D Essentials adventures a couple I can repurpose for my campaign. This goes for towns as well. For Mintarn I’m using the map for Alhaster that was created for a Dungeon magazine adventure.

Not everything has to be 100% perfect for you to use it. Even if what you have found is only a 60 or 70 percent fit. That’s still a lot of work you have saved yourself.

Having a folder whether it’s digital or physical of all these snippets is a great resource you can call upon to help stop you reinventing things.

But there will be times when you do need to create from scratch. And being able to tell when that time is, allows you to spend that time productively.

FEG@TA Saloon Entrepreneurs 

FEG@TA, Fenland Gamers, game night, Uncategorized

You have just received your Kickstarter copy of Saloon Tycoon (hand delivered by the photogenic Jonathan), you are in a pub, what could be more thematic than playing the game in said pub?

I felt a bit guilty while we were setting up Jonathan’s copy of Saloon Tycoon. He’d still got some cardboard popping to do, cards were still in cellophane. 

Boy does this game take up a surprising amount of space. The table was just about big enough. If there had been another player we would have been screwed. Basically we’d have had to have put it away and play something else.

We have some beautiful looking games these days. You just have to look at Ashes or Hit Z Road as examples of the heights companies are reaching. However there is just something about a game that has a 3D element to it. Colt Express, Camel Up! and Imhotep (to a lesser extent) for example just have this visual impact that draws people to them. Saloon Tycoon joins that list of games that have that pleasing 3D visual impact when you build floors on parts of your saloon. I think it’s one of the things that attracted me to the game in the first place. For me this 3D element of the game, with each player board area being different, really works, both visually and game wise.

The rule books could be better. Probably with a reference book explaining the cards. Or more clarifying how they work. 

The player aid cards included I like. They provided a nice concise summary of a players turn, and scoring during play and game end.

Jonathan had an issue with the graphic design of the player score board. He thought it was a mess and hard to use. It was less of an issue for me. Although I think it could have been bigger! Score spaces are only big enough for a single cowboy meeple. At a minimum they should be big enough to have two meeples on a space.

A game turn is simple enough, I like the card driven play, but also being able to do something that doesn’t require a card, like draw more cards or take gold. 

With the cards controlling actions, you are able to get combos and have a little interaction with your opponents. Mostly in the form of taking cards from their hand or taking gold. There is also a bribe action that allows you to steal characters from other players.

It grates that when counting floors we are forced to use the Americian numbering. It’s just wrong, like the way they write dates and spell colour.

It’s also cool that each room type has some sort of one time bonus you get to perform when you complete building that floor/room. Before you can buy some of them they have prerequisites like you will need a specific room built already or have a first floor for instance. So you are not only deciding what to build on cost, but bonus and if it allows you to build a more expensive powerful room also.

I like the secret objectives players have, along with public ones anyone can go for. This goes a long way to adding to the games replayability. 

It was the secret objectives and completing his that made the difference and allowed Jonathan to come from behind and win.

As you may have guessed we liked playing the game. It continues a run of kickstarters that we backed that lived upto or exceeded what we thought they would be.

After building our Saloons it was time to hit the road and cross the zombie infested badlands of Route 66 in Hit Z Road. 

This time Jonathan made it to the end of the journey but fell short on the points front. Jonathan definitely faught more zombies than me, whilst I avoided them as much as possible. Yes I was more care free with my survivors and ended up with one making it to the west coast and safety. 

I’d also managed to amass more resources than Jonathan and was in a better shape for the last leg of the game. Plus it meant I was able to claim three of the four bonus cards at the end. Which was more or less the difference between our scores.

Yep this was just another Friday night of great games, friendship, finished off with dodgy meat covered in token salad and a liberal dash of chilli sauce. 

FEG@TA 2Sep16

FEG@TA, Fenland Gamers, game night

Last night saw the latest of the Friday night gatherings to play board games at The Angel. 

Our evening started off with a game of Thiefs Market. A game Jonathan had been wanting to try since getting his Kickstarter copy a couple weeks back.

I narrowly beat Debbie by two points to steal second place. The picture above tells you got to gloat on social media by winning.

Our next game before Debbie had to go was my game for the month of August The Manhattan Project Chain Reaction. Once Debbie had got the hand of playing the game again, she was able to beat Jonathan into last place, whilst I took the honours and glory that comes with winning.

After Debbie left Jonathan and I talked games. But more importantly about a project Jonathan was thinking of working on. 

We followed that up by end the evening with the now traditional kebab.

A great shortish gaming session.

FEG@TA 26Aug16

FEG@TA, Fenland Gamers, game night

It’s been a busy week and not much gaming going on. Hence the lack of posts this week. Plus I’ve also not had much to say. Which is unusual for me I know.

Anyway last night saw Jeff, Debbie and myself at The Angel for FEG@TA. The first at its new starting time of 6pm (last weeks didn’t happen because of holidays and such, or in other words I was the only one who could make it!) 

Earlier in the week Jeff and I had planned to play Tanks. But with “Calamity” Debbie (and she will kill me for just thinking that nickname up, but the poor girl has had a recent run of bad luck, which hopefully had come to an end) also coming along, Tanks was out, and our first game of the evening in. 

Since arriving (a couple of weeks back now) Jonathan and I have wanted to get our Kickstarter copies of Thiefs Market to the table. However life, the universe, and the usual unexpected things that life throws at you stopped us gathering with enough people to do so. 

So here I was, sitting at a table with two other people wanting to play games. We had met the minimum player count for the game. 

While setting up, we had the first player discussion to see which of us had most recently stolen something. Frankly I was so disappointed by the two goodie two shoes I was playing with. Obviously I am that Han Solo lovable rogue type, and the least trustworthy one at the table. So I took the first player token. 

After explains the rules as best I could, our band of thieves was ready to start splitting our ill gotten spoils, gaining notoriety, and trying to become the King of Thieves.

I have to say I enjoyed the game a lot. I love the first phase of a round where you are splitting the spoils (which are the rolled dice). That decision which dice and how many do you take, or do you steal from another player? I love the I’ll want x dice but if I take that many will I be too attractive to the other players that they will steal from me? This is a great mechanic. At one point I had a card that if I was stolen from I gained a notoriety point. So getting the first player token, then taking everything as the first player at the start of the splitting phase, forced the other players to steal from me and trigger that ability.

The buying cards phase is basically your engine building stage of the game. There is a lot of iconography. But the player aids break the symbols down, plus each card is explained on the rules sheet for further clarification if needed. And while you are learning the game things aren’t slowed down too much decoding them. The use of the cards as a means of giving the game an end and a clock is clever. So when you start being able to buy from the last deck you know that the game doesn’t have too many turns left.

During our game I thought Jeff was going to be the run away winner. But final scoring had the gap between his winning score and my second place score a lot closer than I thought it’d be. He had won by four points in the end.

For me the only main draw back is that this game is a minimum three players. I know why, I don’t think it will work with two. But it does mean to play with Nath, who I think will like this game, we will need to find a third player. 

I can see that the iconography may be a problem. But I think the player aids and the rule sheet mitigate this rather well. I also like that the player aids also summarise the setup, which to be fair isn’t complicated.

One thing I do like about TMG games or the ones I have that include it, like Harbour, is the social media winner card. Wisely TMG include one in this game. It just adds that fun bit at the end, celebrating the glorious victory. Or in this games case stolen victory!

I think this is a perfect game for FEG@TA and could be a regular.

So with Jeff crowned King of Thieves we moved on to clearing out dungeons in Welcome to the Dungeon.

I’d played Welcome to the Dungeon once before. Which longtime readers will recall was a two player game with Jamie. I wasn’t too impressed with it as a two player game at the time, and if my poor memory hasn’t failed me (and I can’t be arsed to go back and read what I exactly wrote) I thought it would be better with a higher player count.

Well our play through last night confirmed my suspicion. This game is far more enjoyable with even just the one extra player (plays two to four). It even improved the two player side once a player had been eliminated. 

Another game that has the potential of being a FEG@TA regular. Plus there is an expansion coming out later this year also.

Oh Jeff won this also by not scoring a single point. Despite Debbie and I both scoring a point each after successfully defeating the dungeon. Sadly we both failed to defeat the dungeon twice also.

Debbie had to go after Welcome to the Dungeon. So I introduced Jeff to the joys of building nuclear bombs in The Manhattan Project:Chain Reaction.

You know how I feel about this game. I’m not going to waste your time with more glowing platitudes about this game. All you need to know is that I won breaking Jeffs winning streak for the evening.

A great evenings gaming (that was finished off with that meaty pig out of a kebab). I’m planning to take Thiefs Market and The Manhattan Project: Chain Reaction to The Hobbit Hole (my FLGS) this coming Bank Holiday Monday. So if you’d like to try the games hit me up there. I’ll also have the new Star Realms United expansions with me.

There once was a man from Nantucket…

FEG@TA, Fenland Gamers, game night


Last night saw the weekly FEG@TA back on track after last weeks was cancelled.

The FEG@TA last night was only attended by Jonathan and myself. So what resulted was a pleasant evening of two player gaming, whilst the loud music and alcholic fuelled buffoonery raged around us.

Our first game of the evening was the two player worker placement game with a whaling theme Nantucket. Jonathan had got this for $3 as an add on to the game New Bedford (also about whaling) on Kickstarter.

For those that are already thinking tl;dr here’s the spoiler on what I thought of this game, it’s a pile of shit. It’s a stinker. It really is. 

The rules could be written better. Some bits were unclear. A player aid with the scoring for the whaling coin toss phase of the game would have been a great and much needed addition.

And now I mention it the coin toss mechanic used for the whaling phase, I hated. With cardboard chits for the coins this just doesn’t work. It feels so unsatisfying. 

Oh those cardboard coins! Whose bright idea was it to give the head side of the coin the image of a whales tale? Then two silver coins add up to one copper coin! Since when has copper been worth more than silver.

This is barely a game. I can’t think of one thing about the game I like. Maybe Jonathan and I are missing something. But this was not a pleasant experience for either of us. At $3 I think Jonathan was over charged. Oh Jonathan won this game.

Our second game had to be good to pick us up after such a start to the evening. So out came our current darling game The Manhattan Project Chain Reaction. I romped home with an easy win against Jonathan. It nearly was a whitewash and would have been if he hadn’t managed to finally score a bomb card just as I loaded up a bomb to take me to the game ending ten points. The cards just hadn’t been with Jonathan in this game. In one go I played 13 cards! Now that’s combotastic.

We followed this up with another crowd pleaser The Great Heartland Hauling Co. which we played using the expansion that comes with the game. The expansion basically gave you the chance to get upgrades/abilities. I grabbed two of the three that were on offer. One allowed me to move diagonally, the other allowed me to stay put by paying a dollar. Jonathan managed to nab the one that added an extra move space to a fuel card if you wanted to. But only after I had taken the other two.

I went on to use the staying put ability to great use irking Jonathan by tieing up one or two high value tiles. If I’d started doing that earlier and haf a bit of luck on the card draw to get the necessary cards I think that tactic of frustration could have won me the game.

In the end I was left with a lorry load of goods that flattered the victory Jonathan had.

I liked the addition of this expansion. It added a new element to the game that changed things up a little, while not taking away from the main game play.

Our last game of the evening was Valley of the Kings. Jonathan doesn’t do deck builders normally. But there was enough in this game that he enjoyed the experience. And that was despite me romping home to a comfortable win.

So despite Nantucket we had a fun evening playing games, with the spoils of victory split evenly between us.

FEG@TA 29Jul16

FEG@TA, Fenland Gamers, game night, Uncategorized

It was a mini meet up this evening, a kind of pre-con aperitif so to speak. What con? The yearly Madhouse Minicon held by Madhouse UK that run a turn-based fantasy game. 

Ok due to the continuing knock on effect on my social plans from two/three weeks ago, I wasn’t going to be spending the weekend at the minicon. This weekend if the plans work out will be spent gaming with Nath.

Debbie, myself and Lucus started our evening of gaming off with Dalek Dice. I won. But still think I prefer Zombie Dice to this.

Afterwards some con attendees arrived. So while Jamie introduced them to Dalek Dice, Lucus and I played Magic the Gathering using a couple of dueling decks. In our first game Lucus was just unable to get any creatures out to defend himself or to attack. He had land,in fact enough to summon creatures. Sadly it was all swamp, and he needed water! So I was able to happily field creatures and swing away at will. 

We swapped decks. And things went much better for Lucus. He was able to get some creatures out to attack with, and even inflict damage. However by that time in the game I had enough out on the battlefield to get me another win.

I like dueling decks. Magic without the collectable element. You can just play a game with two “evenly” pre-built decks and have fun. I do enjoy the deck building side, it’s just my pocket can’t handle the full on booster collectable experience, or justify the expense because I don’t play it enough.

What was to be my final game of the evening was 7 Wonders Duel with Debbie. 

I like this game a lot. It really is a great two player game. Which is why I think this has been the third week in a row this has managed to hit the table.

This game was particularly close and came down to the last card of the third age. If Debbie had gotten to the card first we would have had to start counting victory points. Which was going to be a hard one to call. I had nearly thirty coins, would have had ten victory points from the war track. But Debbie had a lot of cards giving victory points in front of her. 

However we didn’t get to that scenerio of points counting. The last card was mine. A war card doing three attack. Which gave me the instant war victory. It doesn’t get closer than that. Well maybe winning by one victory point. 

I think out of four games now, none have come down to points. They have all been instant wins split evenly somehow between war and science. 

Still love this game. 

But that was it. I was flagging. Strider had been sick in the night, and had been in and out for over an hour before hand. I think he was feeling sick but just couldn’t be during that time. So I was really knackered. I had started to drift off earlier in the afternoon! Debbie had also decided she was going to head off. The place was starting to build up with con attendees. Not much gaming at that point, more social, renewing friendships stuff.

This last photo shows how I finished off the evening. Yep stuffing lots of questionable meat into my face!

FEG@TA 22Jul16

FEG@TA, Fenland Gamers, game night, Uncategorized


Last night it was once more the time to celebrate the start of the weekend by playing games whilst enjoying adult beverages at the weekly FEG@TA. 

My gaming started off playing 7 Wonders Dual with Debbie while we waited for others to turn up. I won this game with a military victory. I just need a points win over Debbie and I’ve beat her using all three win conditions. But that may sound arrogant. Oh wait it is, but I will laugh the loudest if next time we play I lose big time.

As we were finishing Jamie and his son arrived. So a current favourite Qwixx hit the table. Debbie knocked it out of the park in this game, winning with an epic 98 points. That’s an amazing score. A well deserved win.

We finished Qwixx just before Jonathan and his daughter arrived. And she had only one thing on her mind, to destroy me at Bohemian Villages. Something she had been plotting all week since I beat her (and everyone else) last Friday.

So while the “grudge match” which Jamie’s son wanted in on took place, the others split off to play Pandemic the Cure.

Our game of Bohemian Villages saw mind games, plots and alliances. Mainly against me. But once more I was victorious. Do I feel big and clever beating two kids? Oh yes too right I do. What we can be sure of is Jonathan’s daughter will be plotting my downfall. 

During these two simultaneous games being played Jeff arrived. 

Niagara looks a nice game, visually attractive, especially with the moving discs simulating the flow of water and having the board on top of the game box then acting like the waterfall. I didn’t get to play, that will have to wait for another day. I instead I played another game of 7 Wonders Dual with Jamie. This time I lost to a science victory. But it was close, we were five cards from going to points, which I would have won. In our game we had some nice chaining of multiple actions to be able to build two or three wonders between us.

Our evening of gaming ended with a game of Dalek Dice. Dalek Dice was ok. It’s a more complicated push your luck style dice game along the lines of Zombie Dice. I don’t think the additional complication improves things. I prefer the simplicity of Zombie Dice, it flows better, and is more fun.

So that was another great evening of gaming, which can only be finished off one way. Yep dodgey meat in naan, salad and chilli sauce. So one or two of us headed off to the Charcoal Grill to pickup some totally unhealthy meat to take home and eat.

Same again next week…

FEG@TA Tonite

FEG@TA, Fenland Gamers, game night, Uncategorized


Just a reminder that this evening is the regular weekly Fenland Gamers meet up that we have at The Angel Inn in Wisbech.

Start time is approximately 5pm, finishing roughly around 9pm-9:30pm. Followed usually by a run to a near by perveyor of dodgey meat with chilli sauce establishment to top the evening off.


So if you fancy getting out of the house for a reason other than the enjoyable pastime of collecting pokemon in Pokemon Go, playing some great games whilst enjoying a grown up beverage, followed by the optional questionable meat in a wrap. Then we’d love to see you at The Angel this evening.

FEG@TA 15Jul16

FEG@TA, Fenland Gamers, game night, Uncategorized


This week saw another game move off my pile of shame. Finally I got the game Biblios Dice to the table.

Debbie, myself and Debbie’s Nath learnt to play Biblios Dice whilst waiting for others to turn up.

While setting the game up, just like Dead of Winter I discovered that a dice was missing! This time a black dice, which I was able to use a regular white dice I had as a substitute. But regular readers of this very niche blog will know I’ll be testing the publishers support out when I get home. 

Talking of support Fun Forge still months after raising the issue with them of the broken figure, have not replaced it. They keep saying they will post a replacement but never do. It’s become a matter of principle now that they will replace the figure. But shockingly bad customer support from them.

Anyway once we had got what the game was about, and how to play. Which was pretty quick. We had a good time playing the game.

There are some nice touches to the game. Like being forced to move your counter up each of the tracks. Otherwise at the end there is a negative points penalty. 

I like the two end game trigger conditions. In ours it was reaching the top of the Bishop track. But we also had 50% of the other condition complete as well with a player at the top of two of the other tracks. 

The bonuses on the tracks at key points a nice touch. First player to reach one bonus spot gets the biggest bonus at that spot, next player gets a smaller bonus and so on. 

Plus player order on a track mattering at the end is nice when it comes to scoring a track. Tie that in with the manipulation of the points each track scores during the game, then things get very tactical. 

I love the dice selection, and the decisions you are forced to make, because there is usually at least two or more dice you’d love to be able to choose.

Auctions and bidding although not complicated is just right for this game. And I love what may seem like harsh reprocussions for over bidding. Loosing all your money, having to reveal victory points collected and being excluded from next auction. Tough but fair.

Overall a fun game.

While we were playing Biblios Dice, Jonathan and his daughter arrived. So while waiting for me to win Biblios Dice (spoiler I did), they tried to escape the Forbidden Island with their artefacts. But being a Matt Leacock game naturally they failed big time, with the game winning.

With us all now able to play a game together we played Qwixx. Jonathan had been wanting to play this game for a while. After being destroyed by his daughter at the game (I got my lowest score so far in this game), what did Jonathan think of the game? He went straight online to add it to his Amazon basket (assuming they would have it). So that’s a big he liked it I think.

What would turn out to be our final game of the evening due to The Angel getting rather busier than normal for the time we are there, and the loud “dance” music, one of my recent favourites Bohemian Villages hit the table.

As per usual for this game a player (Debbie) forgot to collect money before rolling the dice, so lost that money. Luckily it was early on, so just one coin. But a loud cheer from Jonathan and myself burst out when it happened.

Jonathan and myself were up to our usual self offering advice to the others on their turn to try and manipulate things to teduce the scoring opportunities of each other. Trying to get Jonathan’s daughter to choose Debbie’s meeple to kick off a building I said “remember all those cheap tacky birthday presents you didn’t like she bought you” only to be corrected by Debbie and Jonathan with “what presents?” Which helped my lame attempts at manipulation. 

Gaming etiquette was ignored this evening by Debbie’s Nath when he refused to reroll a cocked dice! Blasphemy! Not sporting and soooo wrong. So although he ended up just above (spoiler) last place Debbie or fourth. It was a tainted fourth because of this. 

Jonathan’s daughter and I destroyed the others in final scoring. And I narrowly beat her by three points. Our scores were my 66 points to her 63 points. The others were in the 40’s, not even close. What was nice was when Jonathan’s daughter having been possibly coached/egged on by certain irresponsible individuals (me) at the table returned the “in your face” to her dad. Family feud gold ^__^

But Jonathan’s daughter didn’t take defeat easily and threw down the gauntlet and challenged me to another game soon, promising to crush me.

A great shorter than usual evening of gaming, followed up with the now regular large lamb donar kebab. Which is a great way to finish off any gaming evening.

Crazy Deputy

FEG@TA, Fenland Gamers, game night, Uncategorized

Friday evenings are still early days for trying to establish a weekly gaming meet up for Fenland Gamers. 

Our gaming started off with myself, Debbie, Jamie and his son Lucas playing Qwixx.

Qwixx is a new addition to my collection, and this was a first play for all of us.

This is a “light” game, it might even be described as a filler game.

Basically you are rolling dice, and crossing off numbers. But there is a little bit more to it than that.

There are six dice that you roll, two white, a blue, red, yellow and green die. The none white dice match the colour of four lines of numbers on a sheet that each player has. The numbers on the sheet are between 2 and 12, with two of the lines in ascending order and the other two are in descending order. 

On your turn you roll all six dice. You then add the two white dice together and announce that value to all the players. Everyone may then mark that number off one of their lines. Next you are then able to add the value of one of the white dice to the value of one of the coloured dice. You and only you may then Mark off that number from the matching coloured line of the coloured dice. If you do not mark a number off on your turn, you have to place a mark on your sheet in one of the penalty boxes. These are worth negative points at the end.

There is a complication when it comes to marking off the numbers. If there wasn’t life would be super easy. You can only mark a number off to the right of all the marked off numbers in the row.

If you have marked off at least five numbers in a row, you are able to lock the row off if you roll the right most number. When a row is locked the corresponding coloured dice is removed from the game. And you stop other players scoring more points with that line.

Two locked lines or a player marking their fourth penalty points ends the game. Then scoring commences. The more checked off numbers on a row the more points you get. Highest score wins.

This is a nice little game, with some nice little decisions to make. I like the white dice for all, and then having an exclusive number to use. 

The penalty for not using the dice being used for negative points and as lives is a nice touch.

Deciding on whether you can use a number is sometimes a hard decision because it may block off too many numbers too early in the game.

Yeah I like Qwixx. It’s a nice addition the the library of filler games, and ideal for our Costa gaming sessions.

We had just finished playing Qwixx when Jeff arrived.

With Jeff now with us we played Bang the dice game. Our first play through saw the outlaws win when the sheriff died. In our second game Lucas was the deputy and shot the sheriff! In fact it was Lucas who killed the sheriff!!! Which he found funny. Our third and final play of the game also saw Jonathan join in. Which once again saw our crazy deputy once again shooting the sheriff (this time Jonathan) to give the outlaws the win.

Six players, split into two teams of three. Sounds like Codenames to me.  With Jamie, Debbie and Lucas on one team, and Jonathan, Jeff and myself on the other. Jamie was thinking the odds had been stacked against him. 

Jonathan was our first clue giver, while that duty fell to Debbie. But Debbie gave better clues, while Jonathan struggled. So that should tell you our team lost. 

We swapped clue givers over. Jeff stepped up for us, while Jamie did the honours for his team. I think it was turn two for us when we nerfed ourselves and hit the assassin to steal the loss. Staying with the same clue givers we reset the board with new words. Guess what we did in the new game? Yep nerfed it again hitting the assassin again.

Our final game was a game of Coup. Which I mixed up by using the Jester and Bureaucrat, instead of the Ambassador and the Duke. Which it did a little, and added a little bit of confusion while people got used to the new roles.

I had to leave then because my aunt had been trying to call. I really wanted to speak to her because she’d had a big op earlier in the week. So on the way back I somehow picked up a kebab on the way home.

But a great evening of gaming.