Last night saw a Christmas holidays session of the Friday Gaming at The Luxe Cinema.

Jonathan and I met up an hour earlier than the scheduled time to get a little extra gaming in. It gives us a chance to try out new games/expansions, play 2 player games (which sadly don’t get enough love). Plus because of the holidays we are able to do it, something the majority of the time we are not able to.

Jonathan had been playing games most of the afternoon. Apparently, he was being taught how to play Poker. I don’t think he specified the actual version, but I’m sure Jonathan will leave a comment letting us know.

Don’t think I’ve actually played Poker as a physical game. I think my first brush with the game was Sam Fox’s Strip Poker on the Commodore 64. Probably not going to ever go into the annuals of any record book as a classic game, nor Poker game. But it was the eighties, I was a socially awkward teenager (yeah I know nothing has changed), Sam Fox and the Page 3 girls were probably at the pinnacle of their popularity (before their slow decline to oblivion). You soon learnt how to play the game as a sad desperate young man intent on seeing the titular Ms Fox in her near birthday suit. Hey this was a tasteful, classy game, not just a cheap, quick, smutty cash-in. The fact never occurred to me at the time, why don’t you just save your time and go buy a copy of The Sun, then play a Llamasoft game instead? Since then over more recent times (I’m defining that as anytime after the year 2000) I’ve tried the odd Poker app. Which I vaguely remember as being ok, but nothing that grabbed me so much that I was hooked/addicted to playing them.

I know my brother and two cousins play Poker. And they have had poker sessions in the past. In fact in the last week one of them shared a photo/memory on Facebook of them all playing at one of these previous sessions. It was years ago when the photo was taken. But I did think why was I never invited? Probably have to refer back to my earlier confession about my social skills.

Then as I wrote this post I start to evaluate my relationship with my brother. I don’t think by any imagination you could describe us as close. I love my brother to bits. But he’s almost as big an arse as me. Ok I don’t have to be top in everything, he’s a bigger arse than me. We’re not always on the phone talking, sharing our deepest thoughts, or talking about our emotions. Our conversations when we do see each other are very superficial, with such subjects covered as I’m currently watching such and such, or have you see seen? In a way it’s sad that we are not closer and better friends to each other. All those years wasted, lost. Then I ponder how much is down to me, how much is down to my hang ups, my “issues”? Probably a lot.

Back to Jonathan, he was really enjoying his poker sessions. But I did warn him, first Poker next he’ll be playing Magic the Gathering (MtG). Which Jonathan scoffed at the thought of. Jonathan will admit he doesn’t get the attraction of games like MtG. But a lot of the skills needed for Poker are also used in games like MtG. Maybe as he continues his journey as a Poker player, he will start to appreciate the similarities and dare I say enjoy a game or two of MtG/Keyforge if he ever tries them again.

Our first game was Pickomino aka Worms with the expansion Heckmeck Extrawurm. We actually loved what the expansion added to the game. You get two new tiles, 11 and 13. That you can only claim if you get the exact number to claim, and they can’t be stolen. Then you get the five “power ups” that go on certain tiles to be claimed. You are only allowed one at a time. So if you get a second you have to chose which to keep. These can be stolen also. You also get seven worm tokens, that can be gained via the crow power up or putting aside at least two 1 dice. Once all seven are gone from the general supply you can start stealing from other players when you need to get one.

The power ups were nice. The weasel gives you a reroll each turn, the hen stops you having a tile or worm token stolen or having to put a tile in the middle on an unsuccessful roll. The yellow/golden die gives you an extra die to roll each turn, the worm means you have a guaranteed worm each turn if needed so you can score a tile. And I’ve already spoken about the crow.

It really is a nice expansion, that adds to the game, everything fits into the one box. Component quality is really good. I’m almost boarding on saying this is a must have expansion.

Plus this initial play got the misplays out of the system ready for when we played it later. Oh and I beat Jonathan.

Pocket Sub was one of two small games Jonathan bought to get the Dice Hospital promos that came with them. And Jonathan teases me about my promo buying! I’m not going to waste time and words on this game. Which should tell you all you need to know about the game. It’s nearly a candidate for that Nantucket wing of shame Jonathan has built. I’m going to go out on a limb here, and predict that this game will not remain in Jonathan’s collection for long.

With everyone now arrived Worms and its expansion found its way back to the table. I’ve already talked a lot about this game and now it’s expansion. So I’m not going to repeat myself. But Katie just destroyed us all. The rest of us were left scraps and fighting it out not to be last, or to get a single point. It was a very competitive battle at the bottom. Despite the usual suspect getting up to a familiar pattern of targeting me. It’s like I’m some sort of Boogeyman of boardgames to this person. Even if it’s not the optimal play for The Usual Suspect, nine out of ten times I will be the target for them. But I’ve spoken about this before.

Our next game for the evening was Sagrada with the new expansion. The new expansion was a Christmas present that Jonathan had been given by his family for Christmas.

This expansion increases the player count to five or six players. Which is handy because there was five of us. It adds a personal dice pool that you roll at the start of the game, and store in the provided dice wheel. This stream lines the turn to the common dice pool is one more than the number of players each turn, and you only get to draft once each turn from the common pool, and take a die from your personal supply, plus use one of the tool cards.

You also get extra cards that get added to the game. This is probably why I’d get the expansion. That extra bit of variety. It’s a shame you can’t just buy these by themselves.

It was ok as expansions go. Not sure if like Catan I’d play it with the higher player counts again. Although if I did the streamlining is definitely needed. I like the visual of the personal dice supply. But in the cold light of day I’m a bit indifferent over it. It’s not something I’d use with the base game. Maybe it will grow on me.

As the photo below shows Jeff is posing with the social media gloating card, so you can safely assume he won the game.

Two years! Has it really been that long since I’ve played Coup? We used just the basic game rules and roles. But we played with the alt art cards that I got from various Indie Board and Cards Kickstarter’s that I’ve backed. They actually have a rather nice linen finish.

Like that infamous scene from Spartacus one game started off with four of us claiming “I’m the Duke” unchallenged. At least one of us was lying.

I did have to ask The Usual Suspect not to eat his small tube of Pringles he’d just purchased while we played with my unsleeved cards. He was being a bit rough on the cards already, and I’d had to ask him to be a bit gentler with them. I really should sleeve the cards. I have thought about it recently but never got round to ordering the correct sized sleeves. They are not your regular MtG sized cards. I have a few sleeves in that size naturally. Despite politely asking them not to eat the pringles while playing with my cards they still was going to go ahead. So I had to be a bit more forceful in my insistence about not eating.

But I’m still getting used to this lack of respect to other people’s games. That’s unfair, I think it’s more lack of common sense. The club code of conduct was introduced to help with this sort of thing. It wasn’t going to be an instant cure. There were bound to be hiccups. But sometimes considering the person involved it does feel deliberate sometimes. I’d dread to think what the No Thanks! cards would look like if they’d been left unsleeved. The abuse they receive from The Usual Suspect. I wince at the thought.

The evening was wrapped up with a game of Liars Dice. Sadly “dice counting, calculate the probabilities” Jeff won, despite taking an early hit on the dice in his pot front. It was a bit unfair in the final showdown. Both Jeff and the Usual Suspect had one die left. Sadly for the Usual Suspect he doesn’t really get bluffing. So the money was always on Jeff to win the head to head. It went as predicted.

It is the holidays, it’s a time of excess, luxurious food, food that’s definitely not good for the waistline. So what harm would a little bit of dodgy meat, smothered in chilli sauce and hidden under a layer of salad do? The greasy meat and chilli sauce is like a pallet cleanser for the soul. So Jeff, Jonathan and myself made our way to our regular cut my own throat dibbler establishment and purchased our indeterminate meat.

I’m running out of platitudes to express just how great our hosts The Luxe are and how grateful we are for being allowed to play there.

A great evening of gaming, and repeated next Friday.

Yesterday was the Christmas meet up for The Fenland Gamers, the first of our holiday season sessions, at the wonderful The Luxe Cinema. Whilst we played games the regular patrons of the cinema were enjoying showings of Mary Poppins Returns.

Jonathan and I had arrived a couple of hours earlier than the scheduled time to play some games together.

Our first game of this pre-meet up session was Pick-omino or as my German copy of the game calls it Heckmeck am Bratwurmeck (has English rules). My Dutch friend Janne calls it by a much simpler name Worms.

Janne is how I found out about the game. Friday Janne posted a photo on Facebook looking sad, having just lost a game by a large margin against her partner. Something she apparently never does. So being the naturally curious person I am, I asked what the game was. Janne told me. So after a quick google, I saw that it was a Reiner Knizia game. Which peaked my interest, he is after all a designer I like. My quick research gave the impression it was a press your luck style game. I was curious. Janne really enjoyed the game, Amazon had the German edition (which I knew had English rules inside) for less than £20, I had prime. The only question left was would it arrive in time for Saturdays game session?

There was some real doubt yesterday that it would arrive in time. When it is Amazon using their own delivery services instead of a third party, for some reason I’m usually the last house on the drivers route. Which means my orders usually arrive late in the evening. Imagine my surprise, and relief when the game arrived at 3:15pm. Just in time for the evenings gaming.

So after all that I suppose you would like to know about the game.

Worms (I’ll call it that from now on in this post for brevity reasons) is really fun. Knizia certainly knows how to use the push your luck element to make fun games. The production on this version is pretty good. It came with some pretty solid, nice weight to them, domino tiles and 8 wooden dice. For my tastes I’m not a big wooden dice fan, they feel too light in the hands for me. But after a roll or two I soon forgot about that.

The rules are so simple, and easy to teach. That’s such a big bonus for a game like this.

I like the fact when you reroll the remaining dice you can’t select a dice value you have already selected previously. So as you keep going the chances of you rolling values that will end your turn without scoring increases.

There is a nice take that element in the game where you can steal the top tile of a players stack of tiles if you roll the exact value of the tile.

The repercussions of pushing your luck too far or not scoring high enough to get a tile are “fun” too. End up with a failed turn, and you lose the top tile of your stack. Which returns back to the middle, and the highest valued tile (if it is not the tile you just placed back) gets flipped over, and is out of the game.

This game played really well at two players. Next more players to see how it holds up.

Jonathan and I played two games and shared the honours. This bit is for Janne if she ever reads the post. Games with a similar push your luck mechanic and dice worth looking at Zombie Dice, and Age of War. Both small games, easy to carry around to play on the go. Bigger games that use it King of Tokyo/New York, Run,Fight or Die! and Elder Sign. There is a bit more game to these, but the core mechanic is still that push your luck element.

Our second game was Kamisado Max. This was one of Jonathan’s grail games which he managed to pick up at a real bargain price.

Despite Jonathan kicking my butt on this game (twice) I really liked this abstract game. Once again like all good abstract games, it has a simple rule set that is quick to teach and learn. But that simplicity hides a deeper depth to the game than first appears.

The production on this edition of the game is stunning. Although in the less than perfect lighting of our venue it was a little hard to tell the difference between similar colours on a couple of the castles.

I liked the fact that the colour square your piece ends on determines the coloured piece your opponent must move on their turn.

Oh and the games were nice and quick.

Below can you spot the photo of Jonathan below where he knows he’s won, and my delaying tactics of taking photos isn’t working?

I could like Worms, suggest similar abstract games that folks might enjoy. But I’m going to talk about one of them in a second. If you would like me to do this on a regular basis when I talk about games in similar posts, let me know in the comments.

We finished off our early gaming session with Onitama and the newly released Way of the Wind expansion.

The expansion was a welcomed excuse to get this great abstract game back to the table. It had shockingly been over a year since I’d last played the game. Naturally we were a bit rusty on one or two of the basic rules.

With the expansion a new piece is added to the board that can be controlled by both players, along with new cards, and a modified set up.

I’m going to cut to the chase and say although I like the expansion. It brings new tactical elements and decisions to make to the game. This is not one of those must have expansions that you would say the base game has to be played with. It’s a take it or leave it expansion, that can be used to add a bit of variety to the game if you are playing the game so often you need to shake things up a little.

Jonathan and I played three games in the end before the others arrived for the official start of the evenings gaming. I edged the honours winning two games to one.

I had just finished showing Jonathan how little difference there was between Grifters: Nexus and the original version. Component wise it’s identical. When Diego arrived. As we started explaining Worms to him, others turned up. Which meant we ended up playing a 6 player game of Worms.

It surprisingly held up at that player count. The game supports upto 7 players. There was a lot more of the stealing tiles in the game we had. The down time wasn’t too bad either, with a bit of politics going on trying to encourage the current player to steal some-one else’s top tile.

Thanks to Janne I think we have another group staple here.

During Worms we had two more turn up. So we split into two groups of four to play games after the game was finished. Suffice to say Jonathan and I didn’t win the game of Worms.

In Jonathan’s group they played Dice Hospital. While the group I was in played the press your luck game Deep Sea Adventure. I’d not played the game for a long time, so I was a little rusty again on the rules. Unsurprisingly after 3 rounds I scored absolutely zero points. Which won’t come as a surprise to anyone that I didn’t win.

Our group followed up with a couple of games of Kingdomino. I actually managed to win one of these games.

The other group were nearly finished playing Dice Hospital, so we squeezed in a quick game of Love Letter: Batman (my favourite version of the game). Amazingly I managed to have the most points when it came time to end because the other group had finished with Diego getting the victory. So that goes down as a win for me too.

The evening was finished off with an eight player game of Perudo. To accommodate this number of players Jonathan had to get his copy of the game too. My copy of Liars Dice only plays six tops. Eight players all shaking plastic cups full of dice is apparently noisy. Who would have guessed? But with such a high player count the game still held up to the stress test. After the noise had died down, the bluffing called, Diego once again ended up top of the heap.

After packing away there was a bit of chatting, and stuffing faces full of popcorn by one or two.

After such a great evenings gaming there was only one way for it to be topped off. Yep dodgy meat smothered in chilli sauce, some salad thrown over it, all in the middle of a warmed up wrap.

The Luxe Cinema were once again their usual amazing selfs (despite the curve ball or two thrown by one of our members during the evening), and a big thank you for allowing us to use them as our venue for playing games. Without them we would have struggled to have a free venue to play our games. And it was very generous of them to step up and fill the void left when our previous venue closed.

Thanks to Jonathan you get a Christmas treat of some photos of me, or with me in from the evening of gaming.

Insert my favourite cliche about time flying here. Otherwise let’s get to talking about last nights monthly meet up for Fenland Gamers. That once again was hosted by The Luxe Cinema.

I arrived as usual slightly early to get the gaming area set up. During the banter with the staff I checked on numbers for today’s afternoon Wreck-it Ralph 2 showing. There were zero bookings. I soon remedied that by booking my favourite seat in the cinema. If all goes to plan it will be like having my own private showing of the movie. Sadly a similar plan for Aquaman is unlikely to happen. The showing in Friday I was looking at had 5 people booked. Not only that my favourite seat was gone!

Gavin arrived first with his delivery of the Kickstarter edition of Dice Hospital for Jonathan, and an unexpected gift for me. Gavin had gotten a large, heavy metal D20 die that had been just sitting on his bosses desk, and asked if he could have it. The response was in the positive, and here it was, now in my possession. I instantly imagined Edmund’s table if it was made from sapian wood shedding a tear with the thought of this die. And that’s before my table breaker dice have arrived. They are due any day now.

Our first game of the evening was a game we usually end the evening with, and that was Liars Dice/Perudo. Gavin hadn’t played before and was keen to learn.

We didn’t really have any other 5 player games with us. Unusually I was the only one who had bought games, except for Gavin’s delivery.

Gavin was curious to try Keyforge. So while Gavin was learning that, the others had a 3 player learning game of Dice Hospital (using Gavin’s copy of the game). After Gavin lost 3 keys to 1, he shared his opinion of the game. It would be fair to sum that up as “meh” or it was ok. Gavin wasn’t knocked over by the game. But by his own admission Gavin isn’t a big lcg/ccg player, he doesn’t have that ability to see combos, or as I paraphrase his words “look at cards and think oh that card will go well in such and such deck”. The positive thing that comes out of this, is it has saved Gavin money. He was going to potentially buy a starter set. Now he knows not to.

After the Keyforge experience, Gavin wanted to learn/try Azul. So that’s what we did. I narrowly won the game. But this was a much more positive experience for Gavin, despite getting maximum negative points on one round.

While waiting for the Dice Hospital game to finish we chewed the fat, discussing games and the quality of the components for Dice Hospital.

I have to say overall the component quality is pretty good. The cardboard tiles are a good thickness, the meeples look fragile but cool. The plastic ambulances look impressive on the table, although the detail, finish isn’t fantastic. They have a weight to them, but easily with the finish could easily have been done on a 3D printer. I know they are used for holding the dice, but really they are a bit of table top theatrics with no real game play impact (something I believe will change in an expansion).

The score trackers for the players although cardboard versions of syringes, and fit thematically. They did let the side down. With all the other pimped out stuff added to the game, I’m surprised these weren’t also.

The card stock of the cards had a nice linen like finish, but shockingly thin. Definitely will need sleeving.

But it’s little details like the last 2 things that for me let the side down. You’ve already pimped everything else out. Why not go that little extra? Maybe Alley Cat Games should employ me as consultant.

The next thing I suppose for me is to play the game. Which I’m sure I will get the chance to do with Jonathan real soon.

A big big thank you to our hosts for once again being totally amazing. And another great club meet up.

I say this every time but 2 weeks already? Numbers for the evenings gaming was a nice even 4. Once again the evening was hosted by The Luxe Cinema and it’s wonderful staff.

Our evening of light gaming started off with a couple of games of Kingdomino. What more can I say about this game? Not a bloody lot. Our first play of it saw a first with Jonathan and myself sharing the honours with exactly the same score. The second game was won by new member Syringa. Which goes to show how easy this game is to pick up. Learn in first game, then wipe the floor with them in the second.

Sagrada followed to the table next. A game we hadn’t played in a while. So it was good we could get it to the table again. It clicked at the start of the game that basically Sagrada is Rolling America but with dice, instead of writing down the numbers. Nathanial walked away with the honours for this game.

Now the draw back of writing a blog, and taking photos to use on it is Jonathan can spot mistakes. After the above was shared across social media Jonathan noticed something I hadn’t I had a die placed illegally. Luckily when I corrected the scores to take it into account, instead of Jonathan beating me by a point it was 2 points. It made no difference to Nathanial winning, he was in front by a large margin.

We finished off the evening with a few games of No Thanks! I think everyone won at least one game of this.

Basically last night although not “heavy” games, they were still fun and enjoyable. There were laughs, and banter. A perfectly enjoyable gaming session. What’s more we get to do it all again in Wednesday at the monthly meetup.

Once again a big thank you to the amazing staff at The Luxe and the cinema for letting us use its facilities.

Wow 3 new members last night came along for the first time. And it was great to meet them and share a game or two. Now we need to find a way to get more people to come along to the sessions. We seem to get between 4 – 8 people coming along each time. It would be nice to see this grow.

While waiting for all those that we knew/thought were coming along we cracked out Kingdomino. Yeah what can I say? I surprisingly won the game. I thought another player was going to be the walk away winner, but they screwed up the 10 point bonus at the end, which gave me the win.

While James and I played Keyforge. James wanted to try it (I was more than happy to go along with this). The others played Sheriff of Nottingham. We started off learning the basics with the introductory decks in the starter set. I lost that game. We followed up playing with 2 of the unique decks (Mrs “Slingshot” Badscout v Andromeda “Silverfish” Beligus), and I managed to steal the win in that game by playing Key Charge (which for the cost of an ember allowed me to forge a key at the current cost).

Then our third and final game with (A.X. Obserkorg of the Awkward Region v Yorkferou, Factory Protector) saw James back with the glory of victory as he easily won, using my own trick from the previous game!

But the games were fun and I think James is now considering getting a couple of decks for him to play with his partner.

We were all back together playing as a single group for our remaining games of the evening. The first of which was a couple of games of No Thanks! What more can I say about this game? It’s just a great filler game, quick to teach, fun to play. (In fact I’d go as far as to say this should be in every ones game bag. If you are looking for a stocking filler/family game, to play over the hols, this is a no brainer. Stuff it I’d happily recommend any of this evenings games for the holidays and family time. Well not Keyforge but that’s only because it’s a 2 player game.) Didn’t come close to winning either of the 2 games we played. I think this was the first time I’ve played it with 6 players. Surprisingly it still worked at that player count. Sometimes games at their maximum player count aren’t fun or at their best stretched to their limit. Which is also true sometimes at their lowest player counts also. But No Thanks! held up well.

The evening was finished off with a game of Perudo/Liars Dice. Yeah if you are going to get a version of this game the Richard Garfield 30th Anniversary Edition of Liars Dice is worth the extra for the play mat. It also confuses the odd player that reads the bid the wrong way. Any little advantage helps. Sadly not enough for me to win. Jonathan managed to do that.

Also at last nights meet up we had a couple of mugs with the Fenland Gamers logo on display for members to see.

There were two designs. One with a big all round logo, and one with a smaller logo on one side.

My friend Sam produced these using the supplied image from me. I think these turned out pretty amazing. What’s even more incredible is that Sam is only charging a fiver for them plus postage.

The link to Sam was provided on the clubs Facebook page for members to order their own if they want one. I hope that Sam gets some orders from our members. They’d make the perfect gift for that impending gift exchanging event next month.

Once again I have to say a really big thank you to our hosts for the evening The Luxe Cinema and the amazing on duty staff.

These meetups come around real quick. Once again our fantastic hosts for the evening were the totally awesome The Luxe Cinema, and it’s amazing staff.

Somehow we managed to squeeze 8 people round the table to play some games. Naturally we split up into 2 groups of 4 for reasons.

Our group of 4 had started off playing 7 Wonders, whilst the other group played Tiny Epic Galaxies.

Not to sound like a broken record but I’ve not played 7 Wonders in 2 years! A new member to the group had said they’d wanted to try the game along with the next game we played. Did I need any better excuse than this to get the game back to the table? Nope.

We were a little cramped on table space. But it didn’t stop us building our empires and wonders.

Myself and the new member dominated the military side of things. Jeff had developed a science community that gave him a massive point injection at the end. But not enough to deny our new member from grabbing the well earned victory.

Next up on the want to try list was a current favourite Azul.

Azul when I’m playing it will always be a 5 round game. I did warn everyone that is my tactic at the start. I like that ticking clock, the pressure it puts on everyone, the focus. It also means I’m not having to worry about when the game will end, or whose ending it.

I thought I’d won. But the end game bonuses when added in gave Jeff the victory.

While we played Azul the other group of players played Deep Sea Adventure. I like this light push your luck game. And so did a couple of that group, who after playing were online ordering their own copies!

Our group finished the evening off with the now out of print Love Letter: Batman (you won’t believe the silly prices the licensed themed copies of the game go for now). While the others played some Rick and Morty card game (can you tell I’m not a fan of the show or the games?).

Jeff once again claimed victory for the game, with myself coming in last. But we had a blast playing the game.

As we packed away, evidence was taken to show that I had been trusted with Diego’s Kickstarter copy of Robin Hood and His Merry Men. Must remember to take it with me next time I see Diego.

But a great evening game, fantastic hosts. A big thank you to The Luxe Cinema and the staff there.

The fortnightly gaming meetup started off differently for Jonathan and myself this time. We had been swapping messages discussing games and numbers for the evening. Which turned to whether we would be going for a kebab afterwards. I hadn’t had a kebab in a long time, and fancied having one again.

But Jonathan had been craving a pint and food at Spoons for most of the day. I pointed out that by the time we’d finished gaming he’d be competing for table space with people that would be jacked up alcohol, or just about starting on their night of alcoholic debauchery. Not the greatest atmosphere for enjoying a quiet pint and food.

So I suggested I was up for the Spoons thing, how about eating before we started gaming? 15 minutes later we were sitting at a table, food ordered, drinks in front of us and chatting away about life, the universe and gaming.

I did think my food was a little on the cold side, maybe not as hot as it could have been. Possibly a timing issue bringing my plate of food together. I think a couple of items had been waiting for the wings to be ready. Ok I admit it, I do like the wings that Spoons do. I could easily eat just a plate of them.

At The Luxe we got setup ready for our evenings gaming. We just needed to wait for the official start time, and those to turn up that said they were coming. While we waited Jonathan showed me the latest prototype of his Sherlock Holmes reskin (trolling him there) of The Streets of Commonville. I forget what he calls it. But it has those muted colours that suggest Victorian Britain and the setting of the Holmes stories. It’s nice theming. We discussed mechanics, particularly the dice rolling. I suggested he looks at games like Age of War, Bang the Dice Game and Elder Sign for their approach, and even Run,Fight or Die!. But I can see why he’s gone for a more Pandemic the Cure approach. It is his favourite Pandemic I believe.

After the brainstorming I taught John the quick drafting card game Tides of Time.

I really thought I’d played this game before with Jonathan, but I hadn’t. Drafting isn’t one of Jonathan’s favourite mechanics. But this is a quick game, with a slight twist to the drafting. The game is literally over before Jonathan realises he doesn’t like drafting!

For me this was a welcome return of the game to the table. Last time I had played this was before I’d started tracking my game plays. It is a very nice 2 player game. Like many games deserves more table time. But like so many games it’s competing for that limited time. Adding to the difficulty of getting to the table is the fact it’s a 2 player game, and those gaming opportunities are even rarer.

Although as I write this and think of my 2 player games that don’t get nearly as much love as they deserve, I’m rather happy with the fact I think I have a pretty strong 2 player game collection.

By the time we’d finished playing, no one else had turned up. We’d seen a message from one person letting us know they were ill. But there was no sign of the father and son we were expecting. I know life throws things in the way, plans change. But it is annoying when this happens. Part of our earlier discussion was about what games to bring along that were for the appropriate player counts, and audience. This information really does influence what we take with us for people to play. If we’d known it was just going to be Jonathan and myself we would have bought different games.

Our next game was a 2 player game of Waggle Dance. A game new to both of us, and only recently added to Jonathan’s collection. This is basically a gateway worker/dice placement game.

The dice are cute with a bee representing the number 1. On the whole the components are reasonable quality. Although both Jonathan and I think a playmat would be nice for the game.

Waggle Dance plays nice at 2 players, it uses 12 dice from one of the unused colours to occupy 3 random spots on each of the actions that can be selected.

The flow of the game is nice, as is resolving the various actions in the same order each turn during the night phase. It means you have to think about that order so that you have the resources in place to be able to take a later action in the same turn.

The Queen bee cards are the only way to mitigate dice rolls. The only way to get the cards is by putting a die on one of the spots for the action that gets a card. The cards do more than mitigate die rolls. They allow you to get honeycomb tiles, eggs, resolve a honeycomb tile with differing dice, etc.

The cards are pretty important. Jonathan took an early lead on having 2 more dice in his pool, and therefore able to do more on a turn. But I got cards from turn 1. I think it started off with a single die allocated. But after getting a free tile with it, I was allocating 2 dice each turn. The abilities I was drawing negated the advantage of the extra dice, or gave me the advantage. Jonathan started getting cards pretty late in the game, and too late.

The game uses that action selection based on the values of the dice you roll mechanic. Similar to Marco Polo (but not quite) and Covert. I quite like this mechanic, and because it’s not used a lot (well in the majority of games I own and play) it’s refreshing.

I won our game. But it could have gone in Jonathan’s favour. The cards gave me the edge, along with a couple of times Jonathan messed up his turn.

During our game Justin popped in to say hi, so there was a short intermission while we chatted and I hooked his son on Ice Blast drinks. It was great catching up with Justin.

Despite the low turn out this time. We still had a great evening gaming. And once more a big thank you to The Luxe for being our amazing hosts.

Have 2 weeks passed already? A Friday evening gaming and a monthly meetup in the same week, that’s always a good week. Jonathan had repaired the table. Which I’m very grateful for. He saved the day.

According to the Facebook event we were expecting to be a total of 3 turning up. But ended up as 7 in total. It’s a bit annoying when this happens because we generally use the information from the event page to help guide what games to take along.

We split into 2 groups. James and I played a learning game of Targi. Whilst the other 5 played Forbidden Sky. I bought Targi as a purchase of opportunity at Tabletop Gaming Live the other weekend. It had been on my radar since Zee looked at it on the Dice Tower YouTube channel earlier in the year.

Targi is a 2 player worker placement game, with some set collection thrown in. Because of the number of players playing the other game James and myself were playing on a table that was just big enough for the main board. We had to use chairs for the player tableaus.

I liked the robber mechanic used in the game. It acts as a timer for the game for starters. Once the robber has completed a circuit of the board the game ends, unless the other game end trigger happens first. The robber is also used to block actions. As the robber moves on to a space, that space is not available for selection that round by players. And finally there are 4 spaces (the corners) on the board that when the robber lands on them trigger the players having to give up resources,gold or victory points.

The whole taking turns to select actions on the outside of the board, and not being able to select a row column occupied by the other player is nice. Because you are also getting to take the tribe or goods card in the middle where your Targi intersect, you are having to try and balance between choosing actions you really want and getting the goods/tribe card in the middle you really want. Sometimes these are mutually exclusive. I love the fact you only take the actions selected at the end of the round when you remove the counter. You get to select the order things resolve. That way you get to make sure you have the resources needed to buy that tribe card.

It’s cool the middle area of the board is constantly changing as you use the goods or buy the tribe card there. Especially when the used card gets replaced by its opposite. So a tribe card gets replaced by a goods card, and vice versa.

There is no resource hogging in this game, you are not allowed more than 10 goods and 3 gold to carry over between rounds. Any excess gets returned to the general supply.

The set collection element of the tribe cards for your tableau is nice. The fact they only score on complete rows of 4 is a great touch. Either player getting 12 tribe cards in their tableau also triggers the end of the game.

You can probably tell there is a lot to this game. I haven’t covered everything, about 80% or 90% of it. It actually took longer to play than I thought it would for a 2 player game. Maybe that’s because it was our learning game. But still it was a very enjoyable game, and definitely one I’m glad to add to my collection of 2 player games. The only issue with this whole game category is they don’t get played often enough.

Oh the history books will record that James beat me by a narrower margin than I thought it would be. I think there were 4 points between us, and that’s despite him having a complete 12 card tableau to mine incomplete one of half the cards.

As luck would have it both games finished at roughly the same time.

Our second game of the evening was a members favourite, the dice bluffing game Perudo. This time I was able to bluff my way to victory.

We finished the evening off with Small Detectives. A great little find by Jonathan, and still enjoyable. I think this was the first time I’d played it at the full player count of 5. Not sure if the optimal player count is 3 and 4 for this game. 5 players meant I was being blocked a lot of the time, I saw only one tile before Jonathan correctly guessed the solution. So it worked out in his favour, he got to see enough to make a correct guess. I did suspect and was proved correct afterwards that one player (the tablebreaker) had been cheating and making a note of the suspects and weapons they’d seen on their phone. It’s a memory game, you have 6 things in total to remember. I’m not impressed by this person as you may be able to tell. Still no apology for breaking the table. Although Jonathan did make a brave attempt at defusing any tension, and the elephant in the room by making light of the table incident. Jonathan compliments me quite well, he’s a better human being than me. I still had as little to do with the tablebreaker as possible.

It was a great evening of gaming. The staff at The Luxe were super amazing as usual. Fantastic hosts.