Yep it’s been one of those weeks with not much on the gaming front going on. Which explains the lack of posts this week. Think of it as having a much needed holiday from my ramblings.

Earlier in the week Jonathan set up the Facebook event for the evenings gaming session. I posted a suggestion on the comment section for the event of playing Viticulture again but with the Visit from the Rhine Valley expansion.

Visit from the Rhine Valley was a small expansion that both Jonathan and I had picked up at the UK Games Expo over a year ago. Which as you can guess from the previous post we had not played. In fact my copy until Wednesday was still sealed.

Visit from the Rhine Valley is an alternate set of visitor cards for Viticulture. However these cards focus more on wine production than producing victory points. Setup is dead easy. You use these visitor cards instead of the ones in the core game.

I enjoyed these new cards, and their focus. They did seem very combo like. Earlier on I was able to play 2 Summer visitor cards that would unknowingly payoff and get me the (spoiler) win. Using the Vine Trader I was able to discard 2 cards to get €6 to take my coins up to the required €9 that I needed for the Premium Wine Dealer. Which in a single play gave me 7 champagne without the large cellar.

That would turn out to be a great play for later.

I love cards like the Skeptic where you could age something and fill an order. That card was a life saver. I was short by one for an order and would have had to wait until the next year before filling. But this card let me fill the order and get that all,important residual payment. But that card would easily combo with others that would allow you to make wine to use for using the Skeptic.

I was in the lead in our game, but Jonathan wasn’t far behind. I needed one more contract to complete to trigger the end of the game. Sadly I didn’t have the wine to complete any of the ones I had in hand. So I took the draw contract action, got to draw 2 cards. One of the two needed 9 champagne to complete. Wait I had 9 sitting in my cellar. That 7 I’d initially got had now aged into 9 bottles. I could complete an order. What a fortuitous top deck. And seeing that earlier play pay off. Wow. Until that point I hadn’t seen any contracts that needed champagne to complete.

It was enough to trigger the end of the game, and give me the win.

If I had one complaint about this expansion it’s the wording on some of the cards could be clearer.

One or two of the cards were worded like the example above. It wasn’t really clear was it pick just one, or could you do the first and one of the last two? We house ruled it was the former.

But this was a fun expansion. Loved the focus on wine production. Definitely a must buy for fans of Viticulture. Especially if the game has been played a lot, and you want to spice things up a little.

Our last game of the evening was Love Letter: Batman. It’s still a great game. Definitely a group favourite as a way to unwind at the end of an evening of gaming. Sadly Jonathan was able to grab the win.

A great evenings gaming.

Games Played: Viticulture, Love Letter: Batman

Wednesday was a bit emotional again because Striders ashes were ready for picking up. Once Nath can get up for a visit we will put his ashes where Bud and Barney are buried. Hopefully this will happen over the Summer.

After a post on the Fenland Gamers Facebook page to gauge interest Jonathan setup a Friday evening gaming session to play some of the games that folks purchased at the very recent UKGE.

For this session I didn’t take any games with me. Forgetting I’d bought a couple at the expo other then The Lost Expedition. But I knew that Jonathan had bought some, and looking forward to trying My Village (bargain of the expo). However that wasn’t on the cards this evening.

Our first game of the evening was Small Detectives, a game Jonathan bought to play with his eldest daughter who is a big Cluedo fan.

I was pleasantly surprised by this game, and that was not influenced by the fact I won. It’s a fun, deduction game. Super light, but that benefits the game because it plays quickly. Your movement around the board is determined by a card from your hand that you play. Which ever tile you end up on, as long as you are the only player on that tile, you get to investigate it. Which means you look at it secretly. However this means you can block others from looking at a tile, by ending up on the same tile. You also have to remember that the card you play will be passed on to the person next to you. So a nice little choice to make there when playing a card.

Yeah a nice little game that delivers that Cluedo experience.

Our second game of the evening was Finca. I liked this the first time I played the game, and this second play was no different. History books and my bgg logged plays will show I was first loser this time.

Our final game of the evening was Azul. Jonathan and I have now both played this at 2, 3 and 4 player counts. We both really like the game as a 2 player game, and is probably our preferred player count for the game. But it’s still an enjoyable game at the higher player counts also. History will also note I won this game.

It was a great evening gaming. But records will show that only one of the games played was purchased at the expo.

A little while ago after seeing photos of Istanbul the dice game I wasn’t sure about it. Jonathan also had doubts, not sure what sparked those. But we both agreed that we’d wait to see some reviews first before deciding whether to buy it or not.

What I hadn’t remembered at the time was I’d already pre-ordered it! So imagine my surprise when Meeples Corner told me it was ready to be sent.

The game arrived mid week. Which after messaging Jonathan was going to definitely be hitting the table on Friday. The bigger question was would the expansion for Nations the dice game arrive in time?

Come Friday the evening the answer was sadly no. Yodel tracking was not informative as to where it was. It had left the Newton Abbot depot Thursday morning , and hadn’t been tracked since!

Which brings us nicely to last night and the two games Jonathan, Diego, Edmund and myself played.

As you might have guessed from the big clue earlier our first game of the evening was Istanbul the dice game.

History and records will show that I did indeed win this game.

In the past few years there have been dice versions of more substantial, complicated games. Roll for the Galaxy (Race for the Galaxy), Nations the dice game (Nations), Biblios dice (Biblios) etc. And these lighter, streamlined games have not only captured the feel of the bigger brother, but in some cases been preferred. Or that’s how some reviewers have spoken about these games. Although I can’t really speak about this because I don’t have the big brother version of those games, and have not played them. But I do enjoy the dice versions of those bigger games. I think this will be the first time I’ve played both the big brother and the dice version.

This is a nice game. There is an engine building mechanic, buying tiles that give you a boost, such as get 3 coins at the start of your turn, or get a gem that allows you to reroll dice at the start of your turn, or get an extra die to roll each turn. Without getting the tiles you won’t stand a chance of winning.

You have a large luck element to the game with having just the single dice roll each turn (unless you have a gem to spend to allow you to reroll). But despite that you are never stuck for an action to perform on your turn. One of those actions being able to get a gem.

Does it capture the spirit of the original game? I think it does. The collecting rubies, which you get by buying them, or swapping resources for, is there.

It’s a nice, quick, light game. For me not as good as it’s big brother. But that was always going to be a hard act to follow. The price is really good at £23. I think I’d happily play this with none gamers. Something I’d not do with the big brother (especially with all its expansions added in which is my preferred way to play it).

Our second and final game of the evening was London. Which after the dust had settled, money counted, poverty adjusted, saw Diego claim the victory.

It was a great evening gaming with great friends, at a great location.

The last day of half term started off with Edmund, and Jonathan being regaled with my tales of woe about the Sub Terra kickstarter. I have to say the publisher ITB have left a very bad taste in the mouth, making me less than enthusiastic about the game. There is no way I will ever back or buy one of their games again. In the meantime all I want is for them to fix the mistakes and missing items in my copy of the game. Then I need to decide if I want to keep the game or sell it on. 

After hearing my tales of deceit, poor quality control, broken promises and general inability to organise a piss up at a brewery we switched to lying and bluffing playing the classic Perudo aka Liars Dice. Which thinking about it is the game that best describes ITB.

While we were partaking in this battle of wits, Diego arrived. By the time he had purchased his usual beverage, Edmund was on the brink of being eliminated. 

It was just Jonathan and I, and three dice between us. In the end I was proven to be the biggest liar and bluffer.

For a city I hate, I sure like London (Second Edition). This time we were playing with the full player count. And with the help of Edmund a correction to a major misplay from the first play last weekend.

The rules correction did impact how many times we ran our cities, well for Jonathan and I. It added another element to consider, hand size. Last weekend we hadn’t been adding in poverty for each card in our hand when running our cities. It did make us run our cities less.

London held up well with the maximum player count. I liked it as a two player game and at the full count. There aren’t many games that can do this.

Edmund won the game after having to go to a tie breaker with Diego. More importantly I was third. Only four points behind them.

And that was our Friday evening of gaming. 

Remember my post about my students enthusiasm for Magic since being introduced to the game? They are even emailing me (at work) telling me about their new purchases.

After spending most of the day tucked up on the sofa sipping lemsip and having snoozes, fighting the symptoms of man flu, I dragged myself off my sickbed to play Guilds of London. Maybe we should have played Pandemic instead the way I was feeling.

Guilds of London was lasted played by Jonathan and myself in June 2016. Basically just after last years expo where we both bought the game (my copy was signed by the designer Tony Boydell, while Jonathan forgot to get his signed). Like Covert (and many others in our collections) Guilds of London has been kept away from the table by the cult of the new, and other great games. Which is a shame because this too is a really good game. It’s not a game for new players to the hobby, or those that like lighter games. Which is also a factor that kept it away from the table.

Naturally with with just two players we used the two player setup for the game. And after refreshing our faded memories about the rules, I took an early lead.

There was a major struggle for control for the Church of St Lawrence Jewry. 4 points and four cards were at stake. After three attempts to resolve it, we were still tied. The fourth time it went to Jonathan. But not long afterwards realised that the third tie I should have claimed it because I had a guildmaster adjacent to the tile.

It was not until the final three rounds that Jonathan caught up score wise and over took me to get the win.

Guilds of London is still a great game, with still its main problem being decoding the meaning of the cards. It should have had four player aids instead of just the two. 

After the game Jonathan and I chatted, but I wasn’t feel too good. Playing the game had taken it out of me. I was getting hot, and the effects of the lemsip were wearing off. 

A great evening gaming, but it nearly killed me!

Somehow Jonathan, Edmund, and myself managed to fight our way through the trials and tribulations of life to get to the White Lion last night to play games.

One of the hardest things to do for a game night is deciding before hand what to take along to possibly play. Too many games competing for attention. Thanks to the “I’m going” option of the Facebook event for the evening it helps narrow the options down. But it’s still a hard decision. You have to cater for those going (taking into account their likes and dislikes) and potentially for anyone else that turns up.

In the end, after minutes of indecisiveness, I grabbed Tiny Epic Quest, The Manhattan Project, Love Letter: Batman and Red 7.

Our first game of the evening was the classic worker placement game The Manhattan Project. 

When I recorded that we were playing the game in the boardgame stats app it showed as a first play! So it has been around two years since Jonathan and I last played the game. That’s so shameful. A great game like The Manhattan Project deserves to be played more regularly. But with so many games between us, and new stuff coming in, it’s so hard to get everything to the table.

With there being such a long gap since our long play we were having to refresh our memories of the rules, whilst explaining the rules to Edmund. 

I have the expansion for the game, which is modula (you only play with the bits you want to). The bit we have played with is the Nations module, which are some cards that make each player unique, giving them an ability that only they can use. I combine the expansion Nation cards with the cards from the Nations mini expansion.

Jonathan had forgotten about testing bombs, which he remembered after I tested mine. But at that point it was too late he’d screwed his game plan up. I was the first to test a bomb, therefore picking up 8 whole points. There was some pressure from Edmund but I’d got a good engine going on my player board that meant I was mostly just doing actions on my board and not the main one.

I managed to grab the win. But Edmund and I had ran way ahead on the points front. 

We really are blessed with some great worker placement games in our collections. It’d be fair to say we enjoy that mechanic. We must try harder getting them to the table. But it won’t be easy.

Our second and final game of the evening was a learning game of Red 7.

I’d picked this up at the Expo. Since it’s release a couple of years ago now it’s had really good buzz. 

Having now played the game I can see why. At first it seems so simple. 49 cards, split between 7 colours each numbered between 1 to 7. Each colour is associated with a rule, for example for Red the rule is highest value wins. Each player starts with a hand of 7 cards, and a face up card in front of them called their pallete. On your turn you can play a card to your pallete, to the canvas (like a discard pile) to change the rule. Or do both. The only condition is you have to be winning at the end of your turn or you are out.

This is a real thinker. It’s great fun playing it in the basic mode, or the advanced. Basic mode is a single round game. Advanced is first to a point total based on number of players. With 3 players it was 35 points. The advanced mode sees cards being removed and kept to one side to track points. The winner of a round scores the cards that meets the winning criteria. They go under that players player reference. So removed from the game. Which adds another level of strategy you have to consider. Plus it’s possible to draw cards in the advanced mode. It’s so much fun in advanced mode. It gets even more thinky! 

Plus we didn’t use the optional rule that brings into play the icons on the odd numbered cards!

Oh Edmund rocked this game and won the basic game and the advanced one.

This was a fun game. Lived up to the hype. Will definitely be hitting the table again.

A great evening gaming again, with great people. Cliched I know. But it’s true.

Same time next week?