I originally hadn’t planned to attend this months meet up. Currently being economically challenged meant the resources weren’t available. Jonathan was tied up with a work commitment. So it had looked like there wouldn’t be a meet up organised this month.

Luckily Nathan took up the mantle of running and hosting this months meet up. Which I appreciated a lot.

Yesterday morning it looked like only Nathan and Gavin would be attending. So I took Nathan up on his very kind and generous offer to spot me a beverage.

I don’t find it easy accepting help, let alone letting people in close enough to know it may be needed. So when I had thanked Nathan last week for organising the meet up, and letting him know why I wasn’t doing it (something that I usually do) he kindly made the drink offer. But that was a big thing for me to have admitted the true reason and not use Nan or Mums health as an excuse. I thought Nathan deserved the truth. It hasn’t been easy writing this part of the post I’ve said more about me personally than I normally like to.

We started our evening of gaming off with a couple of games of Doodle Patchwork.

This roll and write version of Patchwork is light, quick, and surprisingly enjoyable.

Don’t get me wrong I enjoy the roll and write genre. There are three or four in my collection. But this is different. It’s more spacial than logic. You are fitting tetronome shapes into a grid trying to fill it up, and make a scoring rectangle.

It actually makes a refreshing change from the other roll and write games out there.

Second game of the evening was new group darling Las Vegas. We played a couple of games of this. Our second game roped in one of the Luxe staff who was off duty. Boy did I suck in that game. I kept getting screwed over. However the new person really got into the game, and her banter towards Nathan was very colourful and humorous when she thought she had denied Nathan a $90,000 note, only for him to get the majority back on his turn.

During our playing of Las Vegas a person came in and started talking to Nathan. Which isn’t out of the ordinary. It is his place of work. It’s his job. But there was some confusion on my part. They were actually there to find out about the club! Which to me wasn’t that obvious to start with. I gave details about when we run sessions, how many normally attend. But it hadn’t really clicked even then that this is what they were there for, and not to see Nathan. I definitely wasn’t as welcoming as I should have been. It’s not an excuse but I was a little caught off guard. My introverted self came through.

Our third and final game of the evening was Skull that pulled in two more people. So became a six player game. This was a blast to play.

Through out the evening there was plenty of banter and laughs. A very relaxed atmosphere. Probably one of, if not the most relaxed one of our sessions has been. It was very evident during the games of Skull.

This was a really fun evening. A big big thank you to Nathan for running and hosting at the Luxe.

Games played: Patchwork Doodle, Las Vegas, Skull

Banter between players is a part of game night. That friendly ribbing between players.

Part of our banter at Fenland Gamers is over the colour yellow (which we will refer to as filthy yellow) and Jonathan’s irrational liking of the colour. It’s his favourite colour to be fair. So often the banter is that when people are selecting who plays what colour normally Jonathan hides yellow up, and says there is no yellow, and then surprisingly when it comes to him selecting a colour he discovers there is yellow after all. Whilst I try and remove yellow without him seeing.

Ok you have to be there. It doesn’t read as funny.

Another source of banter when Jonathan pops out a new game that has deckbuilding as a major mechanic. It’s funny because Jonathan is not a fan of that mechanic.

That’s why playing The Taverns of Tiefenthal (TOT) with him as a learning game last Friday evening was funny.

I think games like TOT are probably the just acceptable form of a deckbuilder that Jonathan will play. And dare I say it possibly enjoy!

I have to say TOT uses deckbuilding nicely as the main mechanic. Add in the dice placement and drafting, with a fixed number of rounds and you have a nice game that gives you some interesting decisions to make each round.

I’d go as far to say you almost don’t feel that you are deckbuilding. There are opportunities to thin the deck of cards, but it’s not an aggressive strategy you could follow. There is not enough time over the limited number of rounds to do that.

Your main decisions on a round are based on the cards you draw for the tavern and the dice you are able to draft. Basically you are either generating money or mugs of beer. You then have to decide how you are going to spend what you have generated. Are you buying tavern cards with the money or upgrading your tavern. Upgrading your tavern gets you a high scoring noble card on top of a more powerful action space. Or are you buying guests with the beer generated?

It is a nice blend of mechanics and decisions. If you asked me I think I prefer this over Clank! And it is miles better than the recent Undaunted: Normandy, where I didn’t think the deckbuilding worked at all.

Our gaming finished with a couple of games of Las Vegas. Still loving this classic.

Games Played: Taverns of Tiefenthal, Las Vegas

A movie and gaming, what a great way to start the holiday season and the weekend. How could it be any better? Well Netflix decided they could by dropping The Witcher (based on the books and video games) tv series.

So the morning was spent watching the first few episodes of that. I’ve not played the video games (shocking I know, and something I should put to right at some point) and I’ve never read the books. Which means I’m coming in cold to this knowing nothing of the lore, the characters etc.

It also means that I was sold entirely on this series in the run up by the promos that were released during the year. So what little excitement I had was based on those alone. There were no expectations or preconceived ideas, other than those created by the said promos.

From the three or four episodes that I’ve watched so far I’m enjoying the series a lot. I like the aesthetics of the series. The costume design, set design, tone. For me it works. Production wise, ok we weren’t going to get the massive army battles of LoTR or even AGoT. But the one major battle so far I was impressed with. It was handled well. I like the way the plot is developing, and the interchanging between each characters storylines. You know at some point they will intersect, and I want to know how, and can’t wait for it to happen, and see where that goes. That for me is the sign of good storytelling.

One thing I did think is this whole Witcher universe would make a great setting for an RPG. Guess what, one has already been done. I know nothing about it, no idea what system it’s similar too, or even how popular it is.

But the whole premise isn’t too dissimilar to a D&D campaign with the traveling from town to town killing monsters for financial reward. It’s the lore and the role of magic within the world that is obviously different. From what I can tell from the tv series, the world that The Witcher is set is very low magic. Similar to Dragonlance I suspect. What magic there is comes at a price.

I don’t think it would be too hard to put a Witcher based campaign together. There are pdf files out there by fans for the official RPG that stat out all the monsters that exist in the Witcher world. I’d be tempted to just do the D&D thing and reskin an existing D&D monster.

If you want something cool to binge watch this weekend this show is it.

Ok the big release of the weekend (Well technically mid week) Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was a movie I did have some preconceived ideas about. In the run up to it’s release the leaks, rumours and general feel for this movie was not looking good. So I naturally had set my expectations low.

I actually enjoyed the movie. It’s definitely better than The Last Jedi. Which for the record I dislike.

It’s rushed and the story is a mess because of the previous movie. The criticism that this trilogy was created with no over all arching story/plan is evident when you look at the three in a whole. The hoops that this movie has to jump through to pick up the pieces left by the train wreck that was the previous movie, have a negative impact. But I will add despite this criticism the movie is still enjoyable.

There is some great fan service in this movie. Which does add to the enjoyment.

Overall it’s an average Star Wars movie. Not the best, but not the worst.

If after watching you want to play some Star Wars board games, any of the FFG games would suffice. I’d avoid the mainstream offerings, unless it’s Looping Chewie for a younger fan. FFG also do the official RPG if that is a universe you want to explore. Plus the original 80’s RPG was reprinted last year. So you could step back in time to play a classic 80’s RPG.

After the film Jonathan and I had some time to kill before the start of the Fenland Gamers Christmas gaming session. So after getting a beverage, Jonathan cracked out a game we hadn’t played since 2016 (according to the stats app I use).

Our main game of the evening was five player Wingspan. It’s not my favourite player count for the game. I prefer the middle counts for the game. I definitely wouldn’t want to play it at six players as some online are asking for.

I managed to get a tuck engine going on the wet lands, plus a nice round end triggered bird that tucked cards based on grass land actions done by another player.

But in the end all it got me was third place.

Our final game of the evening was No Thanks! We played using the Amigo variant detailed in the rules. This basically removes the 10, 20 and 30 numbered cards from the game plus six random cards. It made the game a bit more interesting. Some how Jonathan won this also.

It was a great day. Star Wars, board gaming. Great hosts as always.

Games played: Brew crafters, Wingspan, No Thanks!

Last night was once again the second Wednesday of the month, and therefore time once again for the monthly meet up of the Fenland Gamers.

Our game for the evening was a five player (The Usual Suspect, Diego, Gavin, Ollie and myself) game of Wingspan with the European Expansion. Plus the Swift starter pack cards were also shuffled in.

For those not aware a slight tweak was made to the Wingspan base game. For starters it’s price was increased a little to cover the addition of the Swift starter pack that was added. This consists of ten new bird cards and four guides for new players. The guides take new players through their first four turns of the game. They even specify which of the ten new birds that the player starts with. So a very new player friendly addition to the game. I can see why they did this. With the wide appeal the game has outside of the hobby, making it easier for those new to this type of game get playing it is a great idea. Naturally this is something owners of an original version of the game can pick up from the Stonemaier website for $5 plus postage. It’s probably one of the better “promo” things for a game value wise you can pick up. You can easily pay the same for a single promo card for other games elsewhere.

So with the new expansion plus the starter pack, that’s an additional 91 cards being added to the game. Which with the 170 cards of the original game makes a grand total of 161 bird cards.

After a brief recap of the rules we started to play.

I deviated from the usual setup by dealing three bonus cards to each player to choose from.

Our end of round goals were (Round 1 – 4 going left to right in the photo below):

The round 2 goal fitted nicely with my end game bonus card that was to do,with birds that could only be played in the grasslands.

It was nice to have pulled one of the new goal tiles for this game.

I’d like to point out Gavin did get one of the OP raven cards in his opening hand. But played it into his wetland instead of grassland. Which was a minor tactical error for that card.

I think by the end of the game everyone had one of the new birds in their reserve giving them an end of round bonus of some sort. Mine was one that allowed me to discard up to five food and then put that many cards from the deck tucked under it. That alone got me 13 points.

Diego had one that put a number of rodent food tokens on his bird based on which player had the most birds with the hunting symbol. Which Ollie kept adding to his reserve. I think last round that got him 6 points. It was a nice synergy for Diego, because Ollie’s bonus card needed him to have those cards out.

Unusually for me I had only 9 eggs out for scoring. I have lots more than that usually. The decision you have to make during the last round for each action you get to take is, will this get me more points than taking the egg action and any when activated stuff that gets points? For me taking the food action could match it, plus set me up for the end of round activation as well. This is why I rarely play a bird in the final round. It rarely is worth the points it gives you, both in terms of action economy and points generated.

In the end I managed to sneak a win by 4 points. Then Ollie and Diego drew for second place, and Gavin and The Usual Suspect drew for last place. The draws surprised me. I don’t think I’ve seen a double draw like that before.

It was a fun evening, great hosts as usual. Looking forward to our holiday sessions.

Life likes to throw little obstacles in our way from time to time. Although at the moment I think I could make a good argument it has decided to bunch them all together.

The one we had last night was that the delivery van screwed up delivering the new chairs and tables to our hosts The Luxe Cinema earlier in the day. Which meant that as shown in the photo below there was a single table and two chairs for customers to use. Table wise not a problem. After all we use my fold up table for our gaming sessions at The Luxe. But lack of chairs, despite there being only five of us due to play, was.

Luckily I was able to get hold of Jonathan to bring along a couple of camping chairs, and the very helpful staff were able to rustle up a third chair.

While we waited for Jonathan to arrive with the extra seating. Gavin set up for a game of Flamme Rouge.

I hadn’t played the game before, and it was one I was interested in trying. After all it got a bit of buzz when it first came out a couple of years ago.

I liked it. It’s a solid game.

The deck management side of the game is nice. I like how you need to really think about which card you are going to play. After you play the card it gets removed from the game. So you really do need to think about when you play your big movement cards and when to dump out that low movement card. Add into the mix that certain sections of the track limit the distance you can travel. And the leaders of each pack of cyclists also get to water down their decks with a low value card from the supply.

Timing that push to the finish line becomes a fine art of reading the pack, route and controlling your deck.

Our last game of the evening due to time constraints (our hosts were closing up just after 9pm) we had a game of Citadels. I think this is the first time I’ve played the game with five players. Still great fun. Jonathan managed to grab the win with a single point. Which is despite Katie doing a fantastic move to trigger the end of the game, and blocking anyone stopping her by getting the bishop. No Warlord destroying one of her districts.

It was a fun, although shorter than normal monthly meet up. A big thanks to our hosts and the amazing staff for hosting us once again.

Games Played: Flamme Rouge, Citadels

Wednesday saw the Fenland Gamers monthly meet up for October.

It was a small affair, with just 4 (including me) attending.

I don’t get our club sometimes. I may have mentioned this previously. But I’m not sure how we increase attendance to events. I’ve put surveys up asking what days would be best for for members to attend. You guessed it, even those are poorly responded to.

We try and vary when sessions are held. We aim sessions at specific games and different types of games. But we get the same disinterest each time. I flabbergasted and at a loss on how to improve participation at game sessions.

Wingspan as always was a joy to play. Really looking forward to the first expansion coming out next month. European birds, a couple of new mechanics, new bonus cards and end of round scoring tiles. So expect to see it being played lots once I get my grubby mitts on it.

We rounded off the evening with a change from the usual Love Letter: Batman. We played the Hobbit version instead. A couple of slight rule changes. But still a great fun game to end on.

Games played: Wingspan, Love Letter: The Hobbit – The Battle of the Five Armies
Wednesday Fenland Gamers we’re approached by BBC Radio Cambridgeshire if we would be available Thursday to do an interview to use in a piece about boardgaming for the mature gamer that they were doing on Friday morning.

A bit short notice, especially considering people have jobs. But I have some flexibility in my schedule. So I arranged for the interview to happen at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole.

Thursday morning saw John (FLGS owner) and Kath (who helps out at the store) and myself being interviewed about boardgames by a local BBC radio journalist on his iPhone!

So that there were some “gaming” noises going on in the background during the interview, the reporter had John rolling lots of d6 dice and Kath and I playing Connect 4 (the journalist bought a copy with him).

I hadn’t played Connect 4 since about 1988. I was back then pretty good at the game, and unbeaten. And that streak remains. I still got the skills. I won all of the games Kath and I played.

The interview took about 20 minutes. More material than they could use for the 5 minute slot they had planned.

In the end the interview went out about 9:10 on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire (you should be able to listen to it on the BBC Sounds app). It was about 3 minutes long. And concentrated on why we played games. Despite having notes written down, the reporter got who I was wrong, and said Fenland Games, but got it right in the interview itself!

It was an experience, and a little promotion for the club and my FLGS.

“You free to play some light games this evening?”

Not surprisingly I was.

So last night Jonathan and I ended up at The Luxe playing some light games.

We started off with a game of Penny Lane. Which saw my worst score for the game. I just didn’t get the engine side going. My butt was truly kicked.

Next up was the classic abstract game Santorini. We played using just the god cards from the base game, leaving the Golden Fleece expansion in the box. Each player was dealt two god cards, and selected one to use. We got some cool combos, where the god cards were opposites to each other. This is really one of those “just one more game” games. So quick and fun. After an initial run of victories, I hit a losing streak.

Our final game of the was the classic two player game Lost Cities. Jonathan hadn’t played this before. He wasn’t entirely sure about the game after the first play, but I think he had warmed to it after our second game. The actual game itself is simple, and has some interesting decisions to make. It’s the end of game scoring that seems over complicated, and takes a little getting your head around. I’ve been playing this game for years. But the app version, which does all the scoring for me! So you get lazy on that front. I also missed the little card count of the deck as we played. It helps having that info at a glance, knowing roughly how many turns you have left, and can plan cards to play based on that. But it was nice to actually play the physical version against a friend, and not just people online I’ve not met.

We shared the honours one game a piece.

Jonathan and I did have a gaming related discussion about an opinion from a friend on Stonemaier games. Which lead to a brief chat about luck of the draw within Viticulture, and how it can have a big impact on a game. So many games rely on or have as part of the game a luck element. But even if we just consider luck of the draw, lots of games rely on this to varying degrees, such as every Deckbuilder, Magic the Gathering, Tapestry, Scythe, Wingspan, London, Memoir ’44, etc, etc. The list goes on.

You either are going to love that element of luck, and the having to work around the challenge it throws up. Or you hate it, and need to find games that don’t have that element.

I don’t mind it. I like how it adds variety to games, varies the challenge from game to game. And if I get totally screwed by the cards, I accept that from time to time that will happen. I certainly don’t take it to heart and start sulking. Which some do.

Anyway that’s my not some well thought out thoughts on the subject

Jonathan and I had a great evening of gaming to end the week at The Luxe.

Games played: Penny Lane, Santorini, Lost Cities

Our hosts The Luxe are not quite there yet with the refit. But they sure are a lot closer than they were back in May. But more importantly now in a position to start hosting us again for game sessions.

It felt good to be back.

We advertise our meet ups on the clubs Facebook page as events. Members then say Going/Maybe/Not Going in response. Well some do. However the responses to events, or even questions such as “what days would you like sessions to be run?” is very low (about a 7% of members responded when I asked that question recently).

Before Jonathan and I leave the house we usually have checked the event to see how many are attending. It helps us decide which games to take along for the evening.

Last night we were expecting 5 in total. It’s that awkward number. Not large enough to split into two groups, and not small enough for the majority of games that are usually 4 players maximum.

With that player count in mind, I decided to take Lords of Waterdeep, and some smaller “filler” games that supported that number of players.

So after arriving early and getting the table and seating set up with the help of the lovely on duty staff. Imagine my surprise when The Usual Suspect turned up, after the day before specifically changing his Maybe attending status for the event to Not Attending. He’d changed his mind!

WTF?!

Gavin arrived with news that Jonathan was going to be late.

So instead of starting a game of Lords of Waterdeep, we cracked open Coup.

I blame Game the Game on YouTube for me throwing Coup into the bag. They had recently put up two episodes of it being played (base game and with the Reformation expansion).

I could have thrown in the Reformation expansion. But considering that the majority hadn’t played before I stuck with the core game.

After losing the first game, Jonathan arrived just in time to join in for the second. Which I also lost.

Our main game of the evening was Lords of Waterdeep. Which hadn’t seen table time for two years. It was long over due.

It was lucky for The Usual Suspect that I also had the expansion with me so it could support 6 players. But to do that I’d have to use one or both of the expansions. I went with just mixing in the Undermountain expansion.

It’s the logical expansion to go with when two thirds of those playing hadn’t played the game before. It doesn’t introduce anything new to the game mechanic wise. You basically get three new actions spaces, and some more intrigue, quests, buildings and lords to shuffle in. Unlike the skullport expansion that introduces corruption, and just over complicates things for the first time player.

So after setting up and explaining the basics of the game, we set off recruiting adventurers, completing quests and hopefully expanding the influence of our secret lord of Waterdeep.

I managed to get the win. Not my best score. But I broke the 100 barrier, so that was something.

Everyone but The Usual Suspect enjoyed the game. But I’m beginning to think he’s not a worker placement type of person. His plays are sub optimal. Like giving me a mandatory quest on the final round, when I had no open quests left. And no intention of getting another one. His optimal play would have been anyone else but me. Because they all had quests they could complete. It’s something I’ve noticed with Viticulture as well. And we won’t mention the Stone-age debacle. There is something about worker placement not clicking there.

Anyway another great evening of gaming.

Games Played: Coup, Lords Of Waterdeep