Yesterday was the second Wednesday of the month, so yep that time of month again that sees members of Fenland Gamers get together to play some games.

Last nights monthly session was kindly hosted by Wisbech’s premier cinematic experience The Luxe Cinema. Which was a change from our regular venue (for the last couple of years) The White Lion. New owners will be taking over The White Lion at the end of the month, and apparently it’s facilities will not be open to “outsiders” (guests only?). So we have at the moment lost our free gaming location. Which means we are looking for a new forever home(s).

Part of the club ethos, nah DNA is that members should not have to pay to play. Our hobby is expensive as it is. But finding locations that are suitable and free is a bit like finding a needle in a haystack.

Luckily the great manager at The Luxe is a tabletop fan, open to trying new things, and a visionary (I hate saying nice things about him, his ego will get as big as mine, although his dress sense is worse than mine, just) and wants to see the cinema as a hub for the community. After a chat at the tail end of last week, we came up with a plan which saw us arranging a trial “date” or two. Which is how we ended up playing games at The Luxe last night.

Part of the unwritten contract we have with our hosts like The Luxe, The White Lion and Fen Rock is that because we are being allowed to use their facilities for free, that we will purchase our beverages and snacks from them. With our current heat wave, the fact I could purchase a large Tango Ice Blast at The Luxe was really nice.

When I arrived at The Luxe an area had already been cleared for me to put my folding table up. Knowing the size of the table, the number of potential people coming to play, a warning was given earlier about bringing small foot print games. Table space was going to be a premium to fit everyone in. No large games this time.

We split into 2 groups, Jonathan taught and played Pandemic the Cure with one group. While the rest of us played the latest Kickstarter hotness to be delivered to one or two of us, Mint Delivery.

With great timing both games finished within seconds of each other. I’m not sure if Jonathan and co managed to save mankind. But I suspect that they doomed mankind to a plaque ridden doom. James in our group won our game.

After replenishing our beverages, our groups changed slightly, with James joining the others to play Bohemian Villages. Which left Gavin, Katie and myself to play the other half of Gavin’s Kickstarter delivery, Mint Works. The second edition has been tweaked from the first. The tin is deeper to match that of Mint Delivery. Plus the red mints that represent 5 white mints, are now included. Before this second edition the only way to get the red mints was in the promo pack that was printed. Which also has a second edition that does not include the red mints now (they forgot about this on the Kickstarter and they are having to send out red mints separately for those backers that bought the promo who had the first edition of Mint Works and needed the red mints). I like the improvements, the game hasn’t changed, they are just tweaks really that are cosmetic. I crushed this one and was victorious.

Because Mint Works is that quick worker placement fix, we were finished well before the other group. So I broke out Love Letter: Batman. This is definitely my favourite version of Love Letter. Although The Hobbit version comes pretty close. Our game came down to a tense final round, where the game could have been won by either Katie or Gavin. I wasn’t close at that point. But luck was on Gavin’s side and he took the victory. Which meant we had finished once more as the other group were doing final scoring. No idea who won. I suspect Jonathan.

That bought us to about the right time for finishing the evening of gaming. The initial after session post-mortem with the manager was positive. But there will be more trial “dates” and more post-mortems before both parties make any final decisions/commitments.

A big big thank you to The Luxe for hosting us for the evening. You were amazing hosts.

Last night Chris hosted a game of Mansions of Madness: Second Edition at his humble abode.

Real long time sufferers of this blog (hence known as the suffering) will remember the last time I played this game. That ending was running through my mind and bringing a smile to my face as I drove to Chris’s Pad.

I do like the game. But for me the thing that still stops me adding the game to my collection is the app. However I do appreciate the app also makes the game!

There were some nice touches to the scenario we played last night. I liked the changing board state. Rooms would disappear and get replaced by something else. Rooms would move around the board too.

That was pretty cool. And I can’t see how that could be done so seamlessly and quickly without using an app.

We ended up in a basement with a moving library room connected to it, holding a valiant last stand against wave after wave of horrors, before losing the game.

Somehow mine was the only character that didn’t go insane! Which compared to my only other play was a miracle and minor win in itself.

We had a great evening, and it was generous of Chris and his fiancé Jordan for inviting us into their home. Amazingly I didn’t steal their 2 lovely well behaved dogs.

As the following photo shows I’m getting back on track with the halfling wizard. Ok seeing as my character in our intro D&D campaign is called Dram, I might as well call the mini Dram.

Felt better doing the painting a second time. Still going for the full,worn, weathered feel to the look.

Last night deceit, half truths and smuggling where the order of the day as we tried to smuggle contraband past the Sheriff of Nottingham.

It’d been a while since we had played the game last. And this was a first time for Nathanial and Jess.

Since Jonathan and I last played the game I had managed to get hold of the mini that the publisher did for the store game kits. This mini replaces the cardboard standee used to signify who is currently the sheriff. As minis go it’s rather nice, and I bet it would look awesome painted.

At some point I should get the expansion for the game. But considering how often we get or play them game there is no great pressure.

It would appear from the result of our game that I am indeed the most deceitful. But we knew that before the game. I lied, bluffed and bribed my way to victory.

Our second and final game was also another favourite game that we haven’t played for a long time, Dice Town. This is another game with expansions which I don’t have. And yet again the amount of times this hits the table, would it justify getting them?

I’m pretty sure me asking the question not once but twice will have shocked my friends.

I was denied victory by one point. One point that I had until Nathanial played a card taking a gold off every other player at the end. That card gave him the win by one point. If he hadn’t played it, I’d have won by 3 points. Those types of victory are the sweetest. Nathanial seemed to be really happy with stealing the win. He said this was the first time he’s beat me. But I’m sure that’s not right. Sadly I can’t confirm either way because at the moment on the app I record game plays he gets logged as anonymous.

But still despite the heat we had a great evening of gaming.

Throughout this post I may or may not discuss things that if you are playing or plan to play Charterstone you may not wish to know. In other words SPOILER ALERT! Stop reading now, go read one of my other posts if you like, and we’ll meet up in my next post.

Our guidepost for game 7 was going to be won by whoever had the most reputation at the end of the game. So that was me out. I think in our previous games I managed to get onto the reputation track just the once. There was also a temporary rule that if you used another villagers building they got the money or resource paid to activate it.
Like the last game I managed to take an early points lead. For me success is amassing points to reach the multiple of 10 milestones. Reach 10 points that’s a bonus star, reach 20 that’s a second bonus star, and so on. Bonus stars at the end of the game mean if I complete a row I can get that bonus at the start of each game. I also at the end of the campaign get to score points for each bonus star I have. So I’m taking the long game into account. With the losers also getting to store more stuff between games, I’m building up a nice little engine I’m hoping to just collect those bonus stars, build buildings and let the others fight for first place.

In this game I built a 15 point building, opened box 43 that gave me a new persona, and a new 20 point building to build next game, and now added rules that allow players to build over existing buildings (except basic buildings). Guess my 3 point building is getting demolished next game.

Unlike previous games, I actually ended up with 4 of the minions by the end of the game. Helped by Jonathan building a building that allowed me to get a minion everytime we could chose a bonus from the friend characters we had in front of us. I do find that minions are more of a discouragement for players to use a building than encouragement. Mainly because you don’t want the other player to get the benefit of that minion for using the building with the minion on.

Jonathan at the end of the game had the most reputation, and managed to amass enough money to remove the spirit worker he had been given last game. Despite getting on the track, and for a large part of the game in the running for sharing the third place points, I still walked away with no points.

So it was left upto Jonathan to scratch off the foil from the guidepost and read out the reveal words. For being the most reputable this game Jonathan had to decide how the end of campaign scoring would be done. Would it be we all had the same end scoring, or would we each have different end scoring at the end of the campaign? Jonathan went the communist route and chose that we all had the same scoring when the moment called for it.

After end game scoring I came in last, sadly missing out on reaching the 30 point milestone for the third bonus star, and having to settle for just the 2 this time. But I am now keeping 2 minions between games, so I’m happy.

We had a great evening once again playing another fun installment in this campaign. I’m hoping that the session gave one of our group a break from the slings and arrows that life had thrown at them during the day.

Roll on Fridays gaming session, and a second play of Outlive. Yes my second hand copy of the game arrived earlier in the day. With luck and the postal service on my side (fat chance) the KS exclusives might also arrive by then.

Time flies so fast when you are running out of it. Well that’s what it feels like being 50 now. It seems like only yesterday we were holding the last monthly meetup.
Last night once again we hit the heady heights of 7 members being able to attend. So once again we split up into 2 groups.

The first group decided to become the Scooby gang and investigate a haunted house by playing Betrayal at House on the Hill. Despite liking Betrayal I wanted to play Gavin’s game that I picked up for him from the UKGE, Outlive.

On the way back from the expo I had been listening to a recent Secret Cabal podcast where they had talked about Outlive, and how much they liked it. Naturally this got me interested in playing the game. So I was keen to give the game a try. Luckily Gavin was also interested in giving his latest addition to his collection a whirl to.

It would be fair to say that I liked Outlive. For starters I love the theme, the post apocalyptic setting isn’t an over used theme like say zombies. I think I have a handful of games with that setting, ok and one that combines it with zombies.

Does the theme come through? To some extent, you do feel that you are scrambling for scarce resources to survive. It’s not super thin and could be any theme, but it’s also not super heavy.

I like the use of leaders to give each player a unique feel and starting setup.

Once out of the box this game with all the components sprawls across the table. So you will need a bit of table space. The component quality is ok, lots of small bits of cardboard for the resources. I’d have preferred thicker player boards. I do like the meeples used to represent your workers who go out scavenging for your community. Having them stand up when used during the day phase and lie down to signify resting from the night phase. Brilliant mechanic that shows which has been used, it also thematic.

Being able to get “power ups” in the form of equipment, that needs to be repaired before you can get the benefit is cool. Plus if you have 2 pieces of equipment repaired and with matching symbols you get a bonus point at the end.

The radiation mechanic, which can kill you, forces you to either have survivors in your airlock to mitigate it during the night phase, or force you to reduce radiation by either visiting a specific location first, or get lucky scavenging in one of the city locations.

I like that each of your scavenger meeples has a number on the side to indicate the number of actions you can do with it at a location. These range between 3 and 5. These numbers are also used for hunting at specific locations, and to intimate other scavengers to get resources from your competition.

There is a lot to this game, and I’ve only scratched the surface. There is a whole resource management mechanic I’ve not talked about.

It’s a fun game, I’m hoping Gavin’s wife doesn’t like it so I can pick up a bargain. If not this will be in the collection at some point.

By some coincidence the Scooby gang finished almost the same time as us. So after packing away both games, it was near the time to head our separate ways.

A great evening. Looking forward to the next.

SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! If you don’t want to read possible spoilers for game 6 of Charterstone then look away now, and come back for the next post.

I’m going to be honest, it was hard for me emotionally to take part in anything yesterday.

During the day, holding in the emotions was a real battle. Arriving home was not good. I struggled to hold it in, and was very short with mum when she was trying to tell me what she had done for me. I just wanted her to go, so I could have leaky eyes. Selfish I know. I know mum is hurting as well. But I find it hard to talk about Strider without the emotion coming out of my eyes.

Despite being a mess, I managed to pull myself together for our irregular campaign game of Charterstone.

It was game 6 for us last night. The half way point of the campaign. The guidepost had us competing to get top spot on the quota track, with a temporary rule that when you visited another persons charter to use one of their buildings you rolled the charter die, and if it match either your own or the other persons charter symbol you both got a vp point. We were also using the peril tokens for the first time, that actually did something this game also. One of the objectives required you to have 4 different coloured peril tokens, and there was also a quota track for them too.

I was out of the starting blocks on the vp track quickly. Probably a big surprise for the others. But my lead didn’t last for long before Diego steamed off into the lead. But I did manage to hold second place until the end scoring. Not getting on the prestige track does let me down. But still I’m racking up the glory points, and building buildings.

At the game end Diego, Jeff and myself shared the honours for winning the guidepost. So we let Jeff do the honours of revealing the game end surprise. This time we had to go off to a url, enter in the combined score for the game, and get ranked. If we were above average we opened one box, and if below average we opened a different one.

I liked the novelty of this. However I’m not sure what you would do in the future if you were playing Charterstone and the site wasn’t available anymore. I suppose you could house rule it at that point, or flip a coin.

As you can see from above we were as this blog posts title told you, below average. So we got to open the appropriate box, which was funny because Jonathan lost his big meeple and had it replaced with a spectral worker instead. There is a catch to having this, I think unless he removes the spectral worker by paying I want to say 9 coins he can’t claim something. My memory isn’t with me as I write this the day after, and I don’t have the rule book to hand, as that is in Wisbech and I am at the hotel the night before UKGE kicks off.

It was good getting out, and taking my mind off things. It was still hard walking into the house and not to be greeted by Strider when I got back.

Last night it was the second Wednesday of the month once again, and yes we are back to Wednesdays after that very brief dalliance with Tuesdays.

Because of the numbers that turned up we split up into 2 groups to play. Gavin, Jeff and Katie played Gavin’s recently arrived copy of Sagrada. Whilst Jonathan, Jeff’s son and myself played Majesty: For the Realm (from Jonathan’s collection).

I hadn’t played Majesty before, and after a little banter between groups directed at Gavin who also owned the game but didn’t have the nice play mat that Jonathan did, we got on building our engines in this nice little engine building game.

There are some nice little touches to this game, that although clearly a gateway game is enjoyable for more hardened gamers. The take that mechanic within the game is simple and quick, and more importantly generally doesn’t target a specific player, but all those that can’t defend against the attack. Naturally if only one player can’t defend against an attack then it might feel like they are being targeted.

The sliding trade row, with items positioned nearer the supply costing more is a nice mechanic. Similar in style to choosing a race in Small World, but instead of using coins, you use meeples from your limited supply.

You are building an engine basically with the cards you are placing in front of you. But you are also having to pay attention to the cards that other players are collecting. At the end bonuses are awarded on majority for that card type. So you are trying to maximise the coins you collect when you place a card in your tableaux, but also trying to minimise giving stuff to your opponents, while making sure you maintaining your majorities, or sneakily stealing one.

Oh the play mat was a custom one that Jonathan had made. I actually liked it, and thought apart from having a 5 value coin would be the other addition the actual game needs.

Yeah I liked this, happily play it again.

Unusually both games ended at the same time. Talk about good timing. It even meant I could get a good photo of Jeff holding the social media winners boasting card for Sagrada. Yes that means he won the game.

The groups mixed up again for the second game of the evening. This time Gavin, Jeff’s son and myself played The Flow of History, while the others played Vikings.

Let’s just say despite getting The Internet I was still first loser as Jeff calls it. But I still on a second play of this game enjoy the game. Gavin won the game, despite constant protests during the game of “I have no engine” or “I have no resources”. He did protest too much I think, and then sneakily won!

Jonathan had a few days earlier grabbed a charity shop bargain for me of this old MtG Official Encyclopedia for a whole pound of the realm. Which was very kind of him to do.

The Vikings game finished before ours, so they started playing a Rick and Morty themed game of some kind. A lucky escape for me. It’s not a game that really grabs me.

It was really great to see what for our meet ups was a very good attendance.