Another month, another second Wednesday, another monthly meet up. This time for the month of April. Funny that. It also happened to fall on my brothers birthday, Happy Birthday little bro. Enjoy your last year of being in your forties.

Our first game of the evening was a learning game of the hidden role game Hail Hydra!

I still don’t think this game has been officially released in the UK, for whatever reason. Which is a shame I think it would sell well. I got my copy when it came out in the US last year. And it’s been sitting in the pile of shame ever since. Getting it to the table isn’t helped by the fact its minimum player count is 5.

While waiting for the others I set the game up based on the first time play rule sheet they include. Which is one of the things I like about the game. This is a read along, rules light version of the game that works really well. I liked how it taught the basic rules and flow of the game. And sets up using the full rules nicely. That step between the two rule sets is not big. With only a couple of small differences to learn.

Hail Hydra! is a fun game. Particularly a fun hidden role game.

I can see Gavin and John’s point about if you are consistently voted out of a mission of the game not being much fun. Although you are able to thin out your unwanted cards. I suppose the difference between this and games like The Resistance is the duration of a mission is longer in Hail Hydra! Not by much. But I think it felt longer for those sitting out. Plus those shield agents should of done a better job of not looking shifty.

The one time use character powers were an interesting addition to the full game. Although I think only two of us used our abilities.

Yeah this will hit the table again.

Our second and final game of the evening was Wingspan.

What can I keep saying about the game? Nine plays since getting it is massive really. I know John has played it more because he gets to play at home too. But even then compared to some online we have barely played the game.

This was Gavin’s first play of the game and despite initial reservations about the game, he actually enjoyed himself. Plus scored a very respectable 72 points.

Jonathan continues his nit picking over the fine details, like he doesn’t like the little plastic storage containers you get and has replaced them with plastic card containers. But he’s not the only one that doesn’t get on with them. They are a bit like marmite. I personally love them. Jonathan is currently looking at ways to track whether you have activated the pink ability of a card between goes. He does have a point in a five player game with a lot of those out it can be hard to remember who has activated what. There is a suspicion that a player unintentionally (I’m giving the player the benefit of the doubt considering who it was, and I don’t think it was me) did one twice between turns. I have a solution for him.

I will close the post with the almost cliche about great company and great hosts. It may sound that way. But it’s true. The monthly meet up folks are always great to see, play with and catch up with. The staff at The Luxe are always welcoming and helpful.

Last Wednesday stood out from the other Wednesdays that occur during March by being the second Wednesday of the month.

That was an important distinction, because the second Wednesday of each month just so happens to be the monthly meet up for our gaming group Fenland Gamers.

Games that hit the table that night were Reykholt, Wingspan and Perudo/Liars Dice.

It was great to have a good turn out (for us) of 7. On the whole our monthly meet ups tend to be our best attended meet ups. With the Friday fortnightly meet up usually getting three or four people turning up.

According to the Facebook club page we have 107 members. But as the above paragraph implies very few active/participating members.

We’ve tried different days for the sessions, based on feed back from members. But they have seen lower attendance. Often with the members who suggested the particular day not attending.

I think if my maths is correct our current home for playing is our fourth since the clubs birth. We’ve been lucky and found generous hosts that have allowed us to game for free. The locations have been a school, pub, hotel and currently a cinema. All with free parking, and no charge to attend (it’s part of the groups dna not to charge for attending).

So it makes us wonder just exactly how do we improve engagement/attendance?

Anyway last week was a good week for gaming. Not only was it the monthly meet up, but there was also a Friday evening gaming session.

The evening started off with a game of Via Nebula. This time we played with the more advanced side of the board. Still a quick, fun game.

But the big story of the evening a new member turned up with their copy of Tokyo Highway. Jonathan had been keen on playing this game. The name hadn’t rung any bells with me. But when he described it, the penny dropped. I’d seen photos/posts of Facebook but not really paid attention to them or the name of the game.

As the amount of photos I took shows visually this game is great table top theatrics. It looks fun and chaotic at the same time.

I may be wrong, but I think this might be the first dexterity game to hit the table at a game night.

I liked this a lot. It was a blast to play. The rules are pretty simple. But there is a bit of depth involved. You are planning your turn and adjusting your plans before your turn based on the actions of those before you. Trying to optimise that scoring opportunity.

The fact you basically have two modes to the game as well is also nice. The basic set up and the more advanced that uses obstacles as well.

Plus I won the first game, and was first loser in our second.

A very big thank you to The Luxe Cinema and it’s amazing staff for once hosting us last week.

I have four Martin Wallace games in my collection. But only one of them hadn’t been played before.

Via Nebula had been on my radar a while before it finally joined my collection last year. An opportunity to get a second hand copy for a bargain price cropped up on the Facebook page I hang out on. I say hang out, more lurk waiting for bargains to appear.

Last night at the fortnightly Friday meet up of Fenland Gamers (hosted once again by the ever generous The Luxe Cinema) after nearly a year sitting on the shelf gathering dust, it finally had a moment in the spotlight.

As usual for us, this was a learning game. I had watched a rules video briefly during the afternoon, and scanned the rule book. So I felt I had a good grasp of the basic ideas and flow of the game. Specifics could be dealt with as we played.

Set up is a doddle. We used the basic side of the board as recommended for first plays.

The headline is we loved the game. Three of use playing the game for the first time, learnt the game and finished it in under an hour.

The rules really are simple and quick to learn. On your turn you get two actions to take from five available things you can do. Although one of those options takes two actions to do.

I really do like the combination of route building and pick up and deliver. You get some really difficult decisions to make. Because you might want to place a meadow tile to open up a path you need to get a resource back to your building site. But by doing so it also benefits your opponents. Possibly giving them a route they can use to get a resource they need back to their building site.

The same goes for exploiting resources. It’s these decisions that make the game more tactical and have more depth than first impressions give with such simple rules.

It’s nice that the points scored by completing contracts and exploiting resources is hidden. It’s nice having that bit of mystery.

There is a lot of replay ability in the game. The random position of resources during set up, the random private contracts, and deck of open contracts. No two games will be the same.

Via Nebula is a fun game that will definitely be coming to the table again. Despite Jonathan wining the game.

We finished off the evening with a couple of games of Batman Love Letter. The honours were split between The Usual Suspect and myself.

It’s getting a bit cliched but we had a great evening gaming, at a fantastic host The Luxe Cinema.

Whaaaaat?! Another Friday evening gaming session at The Luxe Cinema? No way. It’s like this is a regular thing or something!

We knew Ollie was going to be late. So Love Letter: Batman (the best version of the game beyond any doubt, and if you disagree you are wrong) hit the table to pass away the time until his arrival.

The Usual Suspect easily won the game. At times unnaturally guessing Jonathan’s card on the very first play of the round. Luckily I managed to score one token before the inevitable victory. Sadly for Jonathan he didn’t, and was left with a big fat zero points.

We’d just finished the first round of game two with the opening point going once again to the Usual Suspect, when Ollie arrived. So we dealt him in and explained the rules to him.

This second game was a game of two halves. The first half was Jonathan trailing behind on the token front and slowly catching up, then over taking everyone to reach six tokens. We then entered the second half, where Jonathan just sat there on six tokens, and I come from behind to catch up with Jonathan and snatch victory from him.

I can’t remember at which point I did the following but it just seemed the right and funny thing to do at the time. In one of the rounds Ollie played Catwoman and chose me, so he asked to see my hand. So I stretched out my right arm, and waved my hand at him. Accompanied with “there you go”. Oh did we all laugh. Sometimes being literal can be a hoot.

Our next game of the evening was Heckmeck am Bratwurmeck. Jonathan went over the rules for Ollie whilst I topped up my beverage supply.

This ended up as a two horse race between Ollie and Jonathan. Early on Ollie didn’t look like he was in the running, whilst Jonathan looked like he was going to run away with the victory. But from nowhere Ollie started amassing points, while the Usual Suspect and I tussled for last place.

Ollie Ollie timed his come back perfectly and once again Jonathan had had victory snatched from under his nose.

A pattern for the evening was starting to emerge.

Our final game of the evening was Perudo. It is my sad duty to report to the long time sufferers of this blog that I was knocked out first. Or to put it another way, I was last. The final head to head was between the Usual Suspect and Jonathan. Can you guess which way the game went? Yep Jonathan grasped defeat and gave it a big huge hug.

After a surprise evening of just light filler type games, we had a great evening of gaming at a superb host. Topped off with the customary greasy dodgy meat with lashings of chilli sauce and shredded green stuff.

It was cold walking from the car to The Luxe. A definite nip in the air. I was kinda glad I had my big boy trousers on, and not my usual cargo shorts.

There were four of us due to meet up for the evenings gaming session.

We started off our gaming for the evening with Wingspan. That’s three sessions in a row now that this has hit the table. And once again one of the players was new to the game. Which I’ve not seen as being a disadvantage when playing so far. A testament to how good the design of the game is.

All four of the end of round objectives were eggs on nest based. Which guided my choice of bonus cards at the start. It tied in with one of the objectives nicely.

My woodland habitat was in MtG/Commander terminology a care bear or group hug line. I had a couple of when activated abilities that benefited everyone by giving them a resource as well as myself.

My grasslands habitat was a nice little egg laying engine, while my wetlands was a single bird that gave me a little extra card draw.

Jonathan’s first round was very confusing to me, he had accumulated a lot of resources, had one bird in his reserve. It looked like he was going to be playing a few birds in the second round. But at that point it felt like he was behind on the engine front when comparing his board state with everyone else’s.

Through the four rounds I was either first of second on the end of round objectives. My last round was triggering my egg laying and amassing points that way. It was worth five points each time, and for a couple of activations six. However my last action was wasted because I had no more space left to lay eggs, no resources or birds in hand to play a bird. So I accumulated some resources just in case of a tie breaker was needed. It also meant I didn’t get any extra eggs when The Usual Suspect triggered his when activated ability. So I also missed out on points there.

After the dust settled and the final tally was completed, I was first loser. I had lost to The Usual Suspect by 3 points. Which was the extra eggs I missed out on. But for the want of having an extra bird in my reserve to place eggs on I would have won.

Our second and final game of the evening was Lovecraft Letter. Earlier in the day I had finally opened and sleeved my copy of the game. At that moment in time I looked at the rule book to see what was different in this version to the others I had played. Mechanically it sounded very interesting, and I thought I’d take it along with me to the evenings gaming.

I knew Jonathan wouldn’t be a big fan of the theme. It’s not his thing. Which is fair enough. When selecting games to take along to play things like this have to be taken into account.

I like what Lovecraft LoveLetter brings to the table with the sanity mechanic. It brings some new decisions to make to the game, and win conditions.

Having to make a choice between going insane or keeping your sanity during the round is nice. However as Jonathan pointed out, that choice may be taken away from you if you start off with a card that has the sanity mark on it, and then draw a similar card. You have no choice but to go insane.

The sanity check at the start of your turn if you have lost your sanity is a nice push your luck element.

The benefit of losing your sanity is that on the cards with both a sane and insane option is that you can chose to do the more powerful insane option. It’s a risk reward choice. The more cards in your discard pile with the insane symbol the more cards you have to reveal on the sanity check. But you are doing more powerful actions, potentially if you get Cthulhu win the game. However you are more likely to be knocked out of the round, and need one more insane win than a player going for sane wins.

The component quality of the game, just like the Premium edition are out of this world. I really like the poker chips used to track round wins. They have a nice weight to them.

The art is for me on the right side of none offensive. With the Lovecraft theme it can be easy for a publisher to go dark. Which if they had would have made the game less appealing to a wider audience. It’s the right side of tasteful. More importantly I didn’t feel embarrassed or uncomfortable with Jonathan playing the game with the art on the cards.

However with the over sized cards and the larger really cool presented box (made to look like a book), along with the Premium edition. I do feel that these two editions have moved away from the micro game that fits in your pocket that you pull out and play at a moments notice.

Lovecraft Loveletter was the only outstanding version of Loveletter that we hadn’t played. It’s a nice addition to the family of games. Is it good enough to knock Loveletter: Batman off the top spot as my favourite? No. But it’s in the mix with The Hobbit and Archer editions.

Afterwards there was some gaming related discussion, where Jonathan reminded me that next weekend we are at the inaugural Alley Cat Games Con at their offices in Letchworth. Which I hadn’t forgotten about, but had for some reason not clicked was next weekend. I’m growing old. But take that as a warning about what you’ll be seeing on my social media and here next weekend.

We had a great evening of games. Awesome hosts in the form of The Luxe and the amazing staff.

During yesterday there was a discussion on the Wingspan Facebook group about pinks powers and when they triggered. A kind soul in the group posted the following extract from the rule book.

Jonathan responded with the following:

Which sparked a bit of friendly banter in the comments for yesterday’s post.

But let’s be honest and raw here. This is badly written, or not thought out, the rule book that is. I don’t care how well your eyesight is, you can not read the pink card from across the table. And I think it’s unreasonable to pass the responsibility of remembering on to the other players. If the player who has the ability forgets it, or misses it, tough. However I do think that a better solution would be that each player announces the action they are taking, and when they are taking any when activated abilities, and the outcome. Then the responsibility is put back on the player with the triggered ability. The other players have done their bit to help, by making sure everyone knows what they are doing. If then a player doesn’t announce their actions and when activated abilities, then I would agree with Jonathan you could assume that player is trying to cheat.

And yes there was more banter later that evening. Naturally this part of the post will spark more banter and discussion.

Last night saw five members of Fenland Gamers meet up at The Luxe to play Wingspan.

I wasn’t going to ever play at the full player count. But here we were about to play the game with five players. For the evening Ice Blast drinks were banned from the table. They drip everywhere. It’s the ice that forms on the outside. It melts and drips everywhere.

The Luxe are currently doing the branded/themed drinks for the Spider-man into the Spider-verse movie they are currently showing. Jonathan and I both had one, and I got a couple of the character toppers. I wasn’t going to get any, I knew I’d want to get them all. Katie arrived, I paid the extra to upgrade her drink, and get myself a third character topper. So from having zero, I’d got three in a single evening. Later in the evening near the end I had another drink, and got a fourth. I’m so weak willed sometimes. But now I just need the final one to finish the set.

Back to Wingspan. I was pleasantly surprised that it worked really well at the maximum player count. I’d like to say there was a lot more downtime between actions. But I try and use that productively planning my turns, adjusting plans. Plus once engines were starting to work, even on others turns you got to do stuff sometimes, like collect food, get a card. And turns are fairly quick.

In this game there was more group hug cards out. Which meant that I hardly had to do a draw card action, because I was getting enough cards from other people’s turns. Jonathan has an activated ability that gave everyone a worm token from the supply, plus The Usual Suspect also had a bird that gave people a resource.

Ollie grabbed the win by five points. But more importantly I was first loser, and beat Jonathan by a whole point.

It was a great evening. A great hosts. Let’s do it again in two weeks.

The afternoon saw a hors d’oeuvre gaming session with my friend Nathan. Nathan is very knowledgable about video games and movies. But I might question that after recent new information came to light. Such as until Pokemon Let’s Go X (can’t remember which one he got), he hadn’t played a Pokemon game before (Go does not count). Then if you saw his films of 2018 he enjoyed Superman 4 The Quest for Peace. I think ’nuff said on that. Just knowing that is enough to make my case.

We started off with a couple of games of Keyforge. We both played new unopened decks. So we had no idea about the decks, except the houses they contained. Which meant we got the full discovery experience as we played.

We only played two games, using new decks both games. If time allowed I’m sure we would have played best of three with each deck. But this was uber casual, playing for enjoyment. Which is why the honours being shared, a game a piece seemed right.

During the second game Nathan’s partner arrived. So after I had finally won the game, I taught them Kingdomino. Nathan owns the game, but hadn’t played it, and wanted to be taught how to play.

This really was a fun way to spend a Wednesday afternoon.

The first monthly meet up for 2019. And what a meet up. Some of those that attended got to play possibly the first big game of 2019, it’s definitely the hottest game of the year so far, Wingspan, approximately 3 months early!

But first we played a five player game of Sheriff of Nottingham. I’ve not played this game for a while, but like all things gaming it has a lot of stiff competition for getting to the table.

Sheriff of Nottingham is one of those games that really is reliant on the people you are playing it with. Get the wrong bunch playing it, and the game is not a fun experience. On the other hand, get people that ham it up, buy in to the roles they are playing, and the experience is really fun.

Last night we had a great bunch playing. There was banter, well two postman at the table there was going to be. Especially at their profession. Throw in some school boy humour based around male chickens. It was a blast playing the game. I think possibly the funniest game I’ve taken part in to date. Because of that I didn’t care I was nowhere close to winning.

Afterwards we split into two groups of three to play games. Naturally this is when Jonathan, myself and James played Wingspan.

Officially Wingspan isn’t due to hit the shelves of your FLGS until March. However thanks to me being impatient and jumping on the pre-order bandwagon of getting it direct from Stonemaier Games, it hit the table last night.

This is a really really nice engine builder, that looks amazing. Any faults found with the game is really nit picking.

We played using the competitive end of round scoring. So ideally you are building your engine with one eye on the end of round scoring rule for that round. Whilst also taking into account the end of game bonus you chose.

In our game we had three completely different engines. Mine was an egg and tucking cards engine. Whilst James had a card draw engine. I don’t know what engine Jonathan had. But that illustrates the variety you can have in the engines you build. And I know with the number of birds and their abilities in the game, there is a few more engine types and then mashups that we didn’t touch.

With 170 odd bird cards in the base game (an expansion is already planned) there is a lot of variety, and you are not going to see every card in a game. It’s also going to be a few games before you’ve seen all the bonus cards. With eight end of round scoring tiles, that are double sided, that are selected at random at the start of the game, there is even a bit of variety there. So I guess in a kind of long winded fashion I’m saying there is a lot of replay ability in the game.

I really like that you start off the first round with eight actions to take that round. Then at the end of each round that number goes down by one as you use one of your action cubes to mark your position on the end of round scoring track. But even though you get to do less on subsequent rounds, the actions you take are more powerful thanks to the birds you are attracting.

It’s a hard decision to make at the start of the game about which of the starting hand of five birds you want to keep, if any. Because each bird you keep costs you one of your starting five resources.

It seemed to me reflecting back on our game, that rounds one and two are your building your engine rounds. The third round is the start to exploit your engine, and the fourth and final round is your engine doing it’s thing.

I liked the mechanic on the Barn Owl card I had that used already selected resource dice. They got re-rolled and any mouse symbols went on the card. It just simulated the hunting of this predator perfectly. Loved it, seemed very thematic. There were a couple of times when I couldn’t use the ability because there were no used dice.

And the bird tower and the resource dice, love them. Love how they are used in the game.

The rule book is easy to follow, and I love the little designer notes scattered through out it. Having the reference section separate is nice. Although the quick start rules that it has inside the cover would have been better on the back page in my opinion. They even suggest if you are learning the game as you go along (which regular readers will know is something we like to do in our game group) to use these rules. When I read that in the rule book it bought a little smile to my face.

With the card tray, supplied containers for eggs and resource tokens, set up and clearing away is pretty quick.

The game looks beautiful. The art as I’ve said previously is gorgeous and could easily be in one of those Observer bird books. Out on the table being played, the bird box dice tower, and the eggs make great table theatrics. Overall with quality of components is amazing.

My nit picking for the game is that with all the cards sleeved they barely fit in the rather nice card storage box included. In fact I had to take the automata cards out and put in a small deck box. For those interested these are the sleeves I got, Mayday Games 57.5 x 89 mm sleeves Chimera USA Premium Card Game (Pack of 50). There is a couple of millimetres gap at the top of the sleeve. But I can live with that.

There is a typo that I’m not bothered about. But there is a couple of misprinted cards, with incorrect numbers on. The correct images are available on the games FAQ, but it would be nice to be able to get replacement cards.

I’m going to also nit pick about the thin card stock for the end of round scoring track. I’d have liked it to be a bit thicker, maybe even cardboard.

And I’ll agree with Tom on The Dice Tower that the score pad is a bit plain when you look how colourful the rest of the game is.

Wingspan really does live up to the hype. It delivers in spades on it’s promises. This is one game I can’t wait to get to the table again. The bar has been set really high for the rest of the year.

As usual for this type of post a big thank you to The Luxe Cinema for hosting the evening once again. And a “you rock” to the staff on duty.

I was feeling a little bit sick as I was getting ready for the evenings Fenland Gamers Friday meetup at The Luxe. I really did feel like not going. A multi coloured yawn felt imminent. But I battled on getting ready, which was basically putting my MtG stuff together and a couple of small box games in a bag.

At our fabulous hosts The Luxe I got everything set up for the evening. Which is basically getting our folding table out and chairs round it. I put two play mats out ready for playing MtG. This was a change from the normal routine. Which was bought on because earlier in the week a new member to the group had said they were coming along with a friend to play MtG. So that was what I was geared up for.

The start of the session came, only one person (an existing member) had turned up. I checked my phones and there were missed calls from Jonathan. He was blocked in by an ambulance and other cars with flashy lights. He’d be along as soon as he could get out of his drive way.

While waiting for people to show the two of us played a couple of games of MtG using my two standard decks, the mono blue mill and the golgari aggro mid range. The honours went one a piece.

At the end of the second game Jonathan arrived. But no one else had. Luckily he’d bought a couple of games with him. One of which was a new game. So we decided to have a learning game of Heaven and Ale. You know our approach to new games, learning on the fly.

Sometimes, depending on the publisher, the included rules are multilingual. Sadly not in this game. This was the German edition of the game, which meant Jonathan had to track down the English translation and print them out. Luckily that is the only bit of translation that the game needs, the rest of it is language independent. For non gamers, often the German version of the game is cheaper than the UK version, and is worth that little extra of visiting the bgg site for a translation (or the English rules may be on the publishers web site).

Continuing the tradition of being kind to readers of this blog, and having punished you enough already in this post, the headline for this game is I liked it.

Ok for those that are interested I’ll now go into what I liked about the game.

This is a nice tile placement game. I do like the method of getting tiles. It uses a similar mechanic to Glen More and Tokaido. You are selecting a tile space on the track, buying the tile, and placing on your player mat. Unlike the two mentioned games where the last placed player on the track takes the next move. Players take turns moving irrespective of position on the track. This variant of the mechanic is refreshing.

The price of a tile is determined where you plan to place the tile on your player mat. There is a shaded side, and a sunny side. The sunny side doubles the cost, and when a tile gets activated on it, it moves the matching resource tracker on your player mat. The shaded side does nothing to the purchase price, but when the tile gets activated it generates money.

Which means you have a nice series of decisions to make in this game. The first being the tile to select on the track. Which tile you want next, how far along the track you are prepared to travel, followed by which side of the player board will you place it.

There are two ways to activate tiles. The first is to select a scoring space, and the other surround an enclosure. The enclosure option adds up the values of surrounding tiles, which decides which enclosure tile you place there. This tile then allows you to advance your abbot token a number of spaces, and activate a number of surrounding tiles. These activations are the way you advance your resource tokens and abbot on your tracker, plus also generate income.

The one thing that isn’t great is what seems like the over complicated end game scoring. I’m not going to explain it in detail. But it involves getting your abbot as advanced as possible to determine point multiplier and a conversation ratio. That ratio is used to try and advance your least advanced resource token at the expense of your more advanced one. You want that advanced as far as possible because your last placed tokens position is the value you multiply the point multiplier with! See even that brief explanation is complicated. Imagine reading the rules and trying to work it out.

In our game I got a nice engine going, that exploited abbots sharing high value tiles. I was initially concerned that once the starting money had gone, that there would be issues getting more money. But the first couple of rounds I generated lots of money while the others struggled and ran out. Which meant that on one round they advanced around the track very quickly, leaving me to just pick up a lot of tiles. I completed two enclosures that round. The final round I scored barrels and picked up a lot of max point barrels. I think I was the only one who filled there tile spaces.

I’ve gone all fancy in the above photo to show a combo that worked well for me. When I activated that abbot on the scoring, those two four cost resources scored twice. Also that abbot being shared by two enclosures meant it would also get activated twice.

So you can guess from that above paragraphs that I smashed the game, and won. Jonathan was observing what I did during the game. So in future plays expect to see similar tactics from him, and used against me. Things will definitely be more competitive.

A great game, a nice change from the usual mechanics that hit the table.

Once again thanks to Jonathan you get the chance to see hobo Darren.

I have to admit I was disappointed that the MtG players didn’t show. I was all prepared for playing MtG, and fought through that feeling sick. It was lucky that Jonathan showed and had games with him. Otherwise the evening could have been a total washout. If you say you’re coming it’s good manors to let the organisers know if you can’t make it. As one other member did last night. We can’t cater for all eventualities, so we plan the games we bring along based on numbers and requests.

A big thanks to The Luxe for being great hosts once again.

UPDATE (5/1/19): Jonathan sent the following to me this morning:

“Looking at the Heaven and Ale playthrough, I think we were playing the monks incorrectly. The monks only score adjacent tiles when ‘triggered’ by using a purple scoring disc. They do not score adjacent tiles when placing a shed; all they do is move the Brewmaster 1 step per monk activated, when a shed activates them – something we were not doing.”

The joys of our style of learning a game, discovering the misplays afterwards! Plus there was no guarantee that we wouldn’t make misplays even if we had read the rules before hand.