Category Archives: Fenland Gamers

Fenland Gamers

It’s Clobbering Time

Fenland Gamers, Game day, magic, MtG

I know it’s been rather quiet on here lately. Well I am a firm believer of if you haven’t got anything to say then don’t say anything. Which really will surprise friends, family and work colleagues, because I talk a lot of crap. However you already know about the man flu, and life events that took out a couple of weeks of play. Then as everyone knows the weather last week kind of killed things off.

Surprisingly I did play some Magic last week.

As the photo above shows although not perfect we have at least enough room in my classroom to play Magic during breaks.

Sunday saw our party of brave adventurers return once more to the world of Gloomhaven. Oh SPOILER ALERT!!

The plan from our previous time in the Gloomhaven universe was to help out the local law enforcement and bring down a local crime lord. A local crime lord that we had already done the bidding of, by murdering some Inox caravan raiders. Just to teach them a lesson on behalf of the crime lord. Yeah our hands were dirty from that. Reflecting back on it, that mission if you remember didn’t sit well with me. Our mission was to infiltrate a warehouse in Gloomhaven owned by the crime lord. Sadly this mission was denied to us. Between our times in the Gloomhaven universe, Justin had visited his brother and they had started a new campaign, with new characters. Although they hadn’t started off with the intent of doing our planned mission. They ended up doing it anyway. I was a bit salty about this.

I have to admit I’m not a big fan of this mechanic that the designer built in to Gloomhaven. I think almost to a point that it may actually ruin the game for me. Or more specifically this play of the game. I still enjoy the game, and the mechanics. But I don’t like that missions etc can be denied from me. We had decided we were going to do the warehouse mission, but we can’t now. We won’t get to see the end of that story arc, or experience that mission and atone for our acts of murder. I know there is the argument, that “oh, we went along to the warehouse and found that it had been already raided”. But I don’t like that.

After a little debate and ruling out some watery options because we didn’t meet the mission requirement, our party settled on visiting the Windswept Highlands.

This new mission was heavily pushed by Charlie. Possibly because it offered the chance for him to make inroads on his characters objective for the campaign. We were on look out for some ingredients for an alchemist. All we had to do was visit the plateaus of the windswept highlands, fight against strong winds battering us around those plateaus. Oh and the small matter of defeating the indigenous monsters, such as sleeping spitting drakes, and the sun and wind demons. The spitting drakes would wake up if attacked or we were next to them.

There were also 3 treasure tokens we had to get to to open up 3 doors. The third and final treasure token when collected would open the door that would allow us to get to the exit point and victory. Naturally opening a door would not reveal anything good. My suspicion was more monsters.

If that wasn’t hard enough if one of us ended up exhausted then that was it mission over. The only plus point was if we got exhausted on the exit point we were ok.

My mission objective was to be the first person to kill a monster. Sadly this was not going to happen. Because of a road event, and not being able to clear a blocked path of a rock fall we started off this mission with 2 cards in our discard pile. Obviously this was to show how exhausting clearing heavy boulders away was. Not exactly a good way to encourage us to do the right thing in the future, putting us at a disadvantage before we even start killing stuff.

I got separated from the others when I opened the first door and then had a battle with two wind demons. Whilst the others went off to try and open the other 2 doors. Sadly the overwhelming odds of lots of sun and wind demons, plus the sleeping spitting drakes proved too much for the party. Despite the others in the party achieving their individual mission goals, it was all to no avail. Despite being a big bruising brute that likes to rush in and clobber things, Edmunds character took too much damage from the superior numbers. His character became exhausted and that was all she wrote. The mission was over and we had failed. None of the completed personal mission objectives mattered.

The wind mechanic introduced was interesting. At the end of each round our characters if able to would move 1 hex on the board left, up, right and down depending on the turn. It meant you had to think about where you finished your turn, because if you finish in the wrong place you could end up blown into a trap or worse blown into a space next to a sleeping spitting drake. I felt it did capture that being battered by gusts of strong wind.

Our first defeat. I’m sure that we will experience many more throughout the campaign. But still I was hoping we would of had a longer winning streak before suffering our first loss. I know how an Arsenal fan feels now.

Also over the weekend I was looking at some mono red land hate cards to put into this mono red Commander deck I am building. That Boiling Seas is awfully lonely at the moment and needs some friends. The nice thing about this land hate is that it slows and cripples my opponents, while leaving me mana rich. I’m waiting for Blood Moon to hopefully drop a little in price once Masters 25 hits FLGS this month. I’m not sure really who my Commander for the deck will be. I may play it with a different Commander each time to see which one is best.

Right hopefully now all the other events are out of the way and normal service has been resolved.

Much ado about nothing, an uneventful week of gaming

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night, magic, MtG

Well the week has been spent coughing, and generally feeling crap and sorry for myself. There has been no gaming during the week apart from games of MtG with Dale and the students. Which meant I got the chance to play the latest Strictly Better MtG deck I bought (and had arrived during half term) Blue’s Clues. It was kinda funny to start with because I’d forgotten the aim of the deck. I looked through the cards that made up the deck. Wait, no creatures! Then I read the text on Sphinx’s Tutelage, Fleeting Memories and Startled Awake. Oh it’s mill. But no creatures! Although it does generate an 8/8 Octopus token when Crush of Tentacles is cast for its surge cost. Which did come out in two or three games. It even won a game for me. Which did feel odd winning a game by inflicting damage with a creature in a deck with no creatures!

The deck or more specifically Sphinx’s Tutelage love mono colour decks. The milling damage can easily be 6 or more cards each time you draw a card. I love the combo of Sphinx’s Tutelage and Fleeting Memories. Sacrifice a clue, mill 3 cards, then as you draw the card mill again.

This blue mill deck continues the run of fun decks to play from Dev. Although my students and Dale seem to hate it. I am finding I’m learning a lot about deckbuilding from Dev and his decks. Plus I’m getting to experience different styles of deck.

Yesterday WotC put up for the world to see the deck lists that make up the soon (April) to be released Challenger decks. I have to admit I like the look of them. I do like the look of the HAZORET AGGRO deck. With the Chandra, Torch of Defiance in the deck you are getting some value in the deck. I think currently that’s like a £25 – £30 card. Ok that price is likely to drop once the deck hits the street. But still that’s the cost of deck in the one card, everything else is gravy. So yeah I’ll be buying this and the other 3 Challenger decks. Will I keep them whole or break them up? I’m not sure yet. I’d definitely like a second Chandra in my red aggro deck. I do think by publishing the deck lists WotC have shown that in this case that they have listened, and shown this “new” product the respect it needed.

Last night was the weekly Friday Night Gaming for Fenland Gamers, and the first I’ve attended in about a month. We started off playing Mint Delivery.

I started off so well in the game with a massive misplay. That put me a turn behind. Still I did manage to get a nice little scoring route going that in the end didn’t win me the game, but did mean I shared second place with Edmund. Jonathan drove away with first place. It’s still a nice little pick up and deliver game. Maybe next time we’ll play with one of the advanced variants.

Our second game of the evening was London (Second Edition). I do like this card engine builder. So far in the games I’ve played I’ve managed to grab Westminster so I get to control the end of the game. Not sure how I’d get on if I didn’t get that borough. I hope I don’t ever get to find out. I just love having control over my card draw and not having to waste a turn drawing 3 cards. Edmund won our game, and once again I came in second place.

Earlier in the day I set up some future gaming events. It started off with wanting to organise a Twilight Imperium session so I could play the game with the new 25th Anniversary playmat that I had just taken delivery of at lunchtime. The Open Gaming on the 28/4 is the weekend before I turn 50 (yeah I’m ancient) and also International Tabletop Day. So is a double celebration. Which means there will be cake at this session. Now I just need to set up something to get Kemet and Cry Havoc back to the table so I can play them with the expansions I got for them recently.

Here are the sessions I’ve setup. You can find out more details on the events section of the Fenland Gamers Facebook page.

  • 13/3 – Monthly Meetup
  • 17/3 – An Afternoon of Gaming
  • 24/3 – MtG Commander
  • 14/4 – Twilight Imperium 4
  • 28/4 – Open Gaming

First Boss Fight – Gloomhaven

Fenland Gamers, Game day

The one thing that I hate about the winter we have had so far is that being on the East coast we haven’t had any really snow for nearly 8 years now. By real snow I mean snow that closes roads and gets you days off work. Oh other parts of the country are getting that sort of snow heaven, but not us on the protect desolate wind swept East. So when it started snowing yesterday morning I wasn’t holding out much hope for it sticking around.

Oh yeah before I start SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!! I’m going to be discussing our second game of Gloomhaven. I’ll try and not spoil too much. But there is always the chance that I will put my foot in my mouth and ruin things for those that want to play the game and avoid spoilers. So I’m saying now, if that is you, stop reading NOW! And come back for my next post when it appears, or go off and read some of my old ramblings.

Right off we go then..

I braved the snow storm (I don’t know how I typed that really, because that is so inaccurate) to get to Justin’s so that our band of adventurers could continue their journey in the Gloomhaven universe. If you remember our heroes had entered the Black Barrow and met some resistance. Which we overcame. Being fool hardy we decided to travel deeper into the barrow, into the Barrow Lair!

Upon entering the lair we were greeted by 4 Bandit Archers, who were using a couple of traps to protect them from us just rushing in and kicking several shades of brown stuff out of them. Before the mission I pulled an objective that said I had to either cause a trap to go off, or disarm a trap. The only other option I had was another objective that wanted me to finish the mission with a low health. I hate those ones, they are particularly bad for a magic user like Glamdalf. So I had no option really but to take the trap based objective and hope that we ran into some traps. Luckily there were these 2 right in front of me. There was talk from the others of using abilities to draw the archers into the traps and set them off. I did not want that. These it turns out were stun traps. Probably the safest ones I could trigger and not take damage from. The combat went easily our way, indeed my fellow adventurers did pull an archer into one of the traps. There was one left, I had to manoeuvre Glamdalf so that she would trigger the trap and allow me to complete my objective. Charlie was looking at disarming the trap on his turn. Luckily I had priority, and ran into the trap, setting it off. Mission complete, now we just needed to beat the scenario for me to get the reward.

While the majority of us were resting, Charlie’s character decided to run into the next room. She was left alone briefly to face the Bandit Commander and 2 Bandit Archers. The Commander was a beefy enemy to take on with 40 health points. Plus it’s first special ability meant it jump to an unopened door and open it. I should point out, only the Commander could open these doors. Obviously there was not going to be anything good in these locked rooms. Like all fantasy dungeon crawling RPG tropes, most likely lots more monsters. The Commanders other special ability allowed them to spawn an elite living bones. Our mission objective was to kill the Commander Boss and all revealed enemies. This had the potential to snowball out of control very fast.

We were keeping on top of things, got rid of the 2 archers, made some damage on the Commander, when he pulled his first special ability. Rats. Well not rats to fight, what we were getting was a room with 3 living corpses in. Luckily the Commander was blocking them from getting out.

But a couple of turns later, his second special pops up. We had a room full of living corpses hiding behind the Commander, we’d been trading blows with him, and now we were getting an elite living bones joining the party. Things were still manageable. Possibly. Then the Commander pulled his special again, a second door open. 3 more living corpses about to come into play. Oh and there was a treasure chest in the new room.

We needed to kill this mission off quick, but not before we grabbed the treasure chest. Which I did, and I was rewarded with 10 gold for my troubles. The problem was I was running out of cards in my hand, and discard pile. I’d already pulled Glamdalf’s party trick of returning the cards in the lost pile to my hand. I was on a very short clock before my character would become exhausted and be out of the mission.

It was going to be very very close, but it would be possible for the last couple of creatures to be killed before I would become exhausted. Justin was being very very helpful at this point. Suspiciously so even. But the play worked out, and we completed the mission before I became exhausted. Just. Then our secret mission objectives were revealed and Justin had the one that said there must be no exhausted characters. I can’t remember what Edmund had for his. But Charlie had one that said he couldn’t pick up any coins, which he naturally completed. He got 2 ticks on his character sheet for that.

After selecting our next destination, and completing a city event, buying some equipment (that gold sure burns a hole in your pocket), we packed away the game.

There was enough time after all that fighting for us to play Escape the Dark Castle, a new game that Justin had received in the week.

Escape the Dark Castle is a co-op adventure game. Each player takes turns in reading the top chapter card from a 15 card deck that represents you all adventuring through the castle before taking on a big bad boss. Some of these chapter cards will have to be tackled by the person reading the card, whilst others will involve the whole party.

So what did I think of the game? Once we sorted out how to play the game. Which was about half way through (that’s the draw backs of learning as you play!), I can see this being challenging. And to be fair it was a pleasurable experience. In fact the game play almost reminds me a bit of the One Deck Dungeon game. Although I do have some concerns about the production side of things.

The chapter cards are pretty large, and the quality of them, especially the black backs reminds me of London Second Edition, and the problems that they had. I would want to sleeve these cards. But where I’d source the sleeves I don’t know. I fear that the backs of these cards will mark easily, and I could swear that one was already showing signs of wear! The quality of the dice wasn’t great either. They were a nice large size. But the ink on them was already looking very tired and rubbed off.

There are a lot of chapter cards, so there would seem a lot of replay ability. Which I like. 6 or 7 end level bosses. So once again a little variety there also. Add in the item deck, and the random draw from that. No two games should be the same.

But the biggest drawback for me for the game, even more than the production issues has to be the art. I’m not a fan of it at all. In this day and age there is no excuse for this art at all. It reminds me of a GCSE art project, or art from of the 80’s role playing video game hint books I used to get. I just don’t like it. I think the art is nearly enough to put me off playing the game again. The experience of reading the chapter card, and overcoming the challenge revealed, just gets ruined by the drab, amateurish drawings.

Nice game. Crap art.

After defeating the castles big boss, it was time to go home. Outside it was raining, and all the snow was melting away. I was right not to get my hopes up for a snow day.

Countdown to doomsday

Fenland Gamers, Game day

Yesterday Justin, Nathanial and I met up at The White Lion to play Scythe with the latest expansion The Wind Gambit.

The Wind Gambit adds two things to the already awesome Scythe game. Did I say that I absolutely love Scythe. It was my game of 2016, came in at the number 1 spot in my Top 100 last year. So yeah I kinda like the game. Anyway, this new expansion brings in these awesome airships, and alternate ways to end the game with resolutions.

Naturally even though Nathanial was playing Scythe for the first time, I didn’t think that adding in both of the new modules made the game harder to learn, so we included them. The only thing I did not use was the two factions from the Invaders from Afar expansion. I thought that the little extra those added were potentially a step too far for a newbie to the game.

A first for playing Scythe for me was allowing players to select their faction. Usually we do it randomly. But I wanted to play my favourite faction Rusviet Union. Ok I have a thing for Olga and Changa!! Who wouldn’t want a pet tiger? Yes I know I love dogs and Gunter has the wolf Nacht. But I’m a fen boy, born and bred and we are known as the fen tigers. Plus I love the power of Rusviet Union of being able to repeat actions. After selecting our faction, we did go random in selecting our player mats. I got the innovative player mat.

Justin randomly selected the two cards we were to use for the airships. You can see in the photo below which two that were pulled. Then Justin randomly selected the resolution for the game. As you can also see in the photo below he pulled the Doomsday Clock.

Wow, what a difference the Doomsday Clock made to the game. 20 turns and that’s it. 20 turns is a quick game, you have to hit the ground running. My game plan for this game was to push up my popularity to the highest scoring area, grab as much land as possible, and maybe get a couple of objectives. First thing first get that river walk going, then get my commander to the factory, use the airship to drop off workers around the map. Hopefully hold onto the factory, and maybe use the airship to tie down some of my opponents forces. I did manage to get 3 objectives, and a factory card. I think I was the only one to get a factory card. Justin did manage to get 3 objectives also. And on his last go grab the factory from me, but in doing so he pushed himself into the lowest scoring bracket. My last turn managed to compensate for losing those 3 lands that the factory would have given me.

In the end I did win, but it was fairly close between Justin and myself, a five point gap I think. Nathanial got 23 points which for a first play and in such a quick game wasn’t bad.

I’m going to have to remember that if I want a game of Scythe but not much time to play it, then this Doomsday Clock is an ideal resolution to use. I think that Rusviet is an ideal faction to play with this resolution, because you can ramp very quickly. The airships were such fun to play with, and look amazing on the game board itself. I can’t wait to get this to the table again and play one of the other resolutions. Yeah this expansion is a great addition to the game, and freshens things up I think for anyone thinking the game was getting a little stale after playing it a lot. Which isn’t me at the moment. But I do like what it brings to the table.

Journey Starts

Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night

STOP BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER THERE MAY BE SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE GAMES GLOOMHAVEN AND CHARTERSTONE. WHILST I WILL TRY AND TALK ABOUT THESE GAMES WITHOUT RUINING TOO MUCH. THERE MAY BE A CHANCE I MAY SOMETHING THAT MAY OR MAY NOT SPOIL THE GAMES FOR YOU IF YOU ARE INTENDING TO PLAY THEM. IF THAT IS THE CASE THEN THIS IS NOT THE POST FOR YOU. GO AWAY ENJOY LIFE, PLAY SOME GAMES, DRINK SOME GREAT COFFEE, EAT CAKE, AND WE’LL SEE YOU IN THE NEXT BLOG POST.

It’s just been one of those weeks. Which is lucky for readers of this blog because it has meant I haven’t been able to write any posts that share my boring life with you.

Last Sunday was the start of what basically is going to be a very very long campaign set in the Gloomhaven universe. Which is a long winded way of saying that Justin, Edmund, Charlie and myself started playing Gloomhaven.

Oh and if you are planning to play the game, please be warned SPOILER ALERT!!! Possibly.

I chose the spellweaver as my character because none of the others went for a character with spell casting abilities. The others went for the brute, tinkerer and I think the last one chosen was the human scoundrel. I named my character Glamdalf. Wait for it…

Naturally Glamdalf has a personal objective, that I’m not going to share on here in case the other party members get so bored that they read this post. When Glamdalf achieves this super secret personal objective I believe I will have to say good bye to her as she retires from the game. Or more likely goes off in search of further adventures down a different path to mine. While I get stuck breaking in a noob while facing who knows what horrors.

We were dumped straight into the action with scenario 1 – Black Barrow. We are in the Corpsewood, just out side of Gloomhaven. I can’t remember why, but we had ended up in a barrow full of thieves, and we were going to clear it out!

With some great team work, we completed the scenario, which also allowed me to complete my battle objective (See above). Playing the spellweaver was great fun. I love casting the spells, using the invisible cloak, being able to pull back spells from the lost pile. A very cool character. I’m looking forward to seeing how Glamdalf grows, and what more powerful spells she learns.

For me Gloomhaven is yes a dungeon crawler, but it’s also like a RPG campaign without the role-playing element. Dare I say best of both worlds? We’re back in Gloomhaven in 2 weeks time. I’m looking forward to it.

Tuesday saw the arrival of the cards I ordered to make three pauper decks that Strictly Better MTG brewed and shared on his YouTube Channel. The decks I built from these cards were UG Elves, and from his 5 Standard Pauper Decks for $5 Each! video UB Control and Mono Black Aggro. The Elves were great fun to play. I quite liked the Black Aggro, but the Control deck I’m not too sure about. But still they were pauper decks so not that expensive to put together, and can be used like the battle decks etc for some casual play. What did annoy me is that I got caught by the post office for the tax on these cards, which I don’t mind paying. The bit I do mind paying is the £8 part of it that is the Royal Mail “handling fee”. Talk about taking the piss for doing sweet fa. We thought that the banks were a bunch of thieving gits with their bank charges. I think there needs to be some investigation into the Royal Mail and other couriers about these rip off handling fees they are charging. It’s down and out robbery.

Last night saw the start of my second legacy style game, but with a shorter campaign of just 12 plays ahead of us, Charterstone.

Oh and just like for Gloomhaven – SPOILER ALERT!!!

The intrepid heroes for this campaign were Diego, Jeff, Jonathan and once again myself (naturally seeing as it’s my game). Like a forgetful person who has forgotten something, I forgot my phone to take photos from the first play. Luckily Jonathan was able to take some and share them with me. Hence the photographic evidence below.

At the moment Charterstone is a legacy worker placement game. Very much with the worker placement mechanics of place a worker, or retrieve all of your workers as your options on a turn. Just like The Manhattan Project , which for the life of us Jonathan and I both couldn’t remember the name of last night when we noticed this similarity. It was siting on the edge of our tongues, we both knew the game. But no matter how hard we tried couldn’t say the name. Luckily at the end of the game it came to me!

There are some nice touches to this as a legacy game. I like how that instead of ripping up cards any discarded cards are placed in an archive box. Which if you buy the recharge pack so you can play the game again using the reverse side of the game board, allows you to know which cards you have to replace. I like how the rules unravel as you work through the initial cards building up the rule book.

Turns were fairly quick in the game. Mind you there were a limited number of options. But this may slow down when there becomes more to do each turn.

We enjoyed our first game of Charterstone. There are other bits I liked about the game. For example the art style. But I’ll look at these in future posts as I cover our game plays.

So there you have it, what you missed by me not posting since Saturday. I hope it was worth the wait.

Friday Night, Saturday

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night

Number 30. That’s the number on the tin for my eager enthusiast copy of Mint Delivery. This is a limited edition (50 copies only) early copy of the follow up to Mint Works. I went for this backer level because I’m impatient and couldn’t wait until March/April time to get the game. I will get a final production copy of the game also. But it’s great to have this early copy. It beats making a print and play copy of the game. I’m hoping the final tin is a little deeper so everything fits in. So why am I talking about this now? Well the game arrived between Christmas and the New Year, and has the honour of being the first game I played in 2018 that isn’t Magic the Gathering.

Last night Diego, Chris, Jonathan and myself played a learning game of Mint Delivery. It was the basic game, in the rules sheet there are rules for more advanced variants of the game. The map set up will be the same each time, which is why they are able to produce a playmat for the game. A playmat does seem to move away from the original ethos of these games. And this is me playmat addict saying this, but I don’t think it’s necessary for this game.


With the way the game is setup the variability, and thus the replay ability for this game comes from the contracts you complete and their random placement on the board, and the ability and obstacles in the advanced variants. Like Mint Works, this excels at giving you a taster of the main mechanic it is based on in a reasonably short time period. This is a fun, quick, pick up and deliver game. I think it took us about 20 – 25 minutes to play. I liked it, Jonathan said he liked it more than Mint Works. So I don’t think we’ll have a problem getting this to the table to play again.

The rest of the evening I spent facing one of my own decks, while testing another one against it. My blue control deck which illustrates an infinite loop was destroying me last night as I put my take on Death and Taxes up against it. I just wasn’t hitting the land drops last night. Sometimes this just happens, not much you can do about it. Just hope the cards are kinder to you next game.

I wasn’t feeling too well, so after 3 or 4 games I left for the evening. I think the heat of the room we were in was making me ill. I don’t do heat. I’m a cold weather person.

I had a lazy start to Saturday. I was going to go to the Magic Open House at my FLGS. But rushing around so I could be back in time to play Civilization:A New Dawn didn’t grab me.


Diego, Jeff and myself pitted our fledgling empires against each other. It was interesting to compare this 3 player game against the 2 player one. There was hardly any combat in the game. Although it was through combat that I grabbed the final objective I needed to trigger the end of the game, and after the final turns of Jeff and Diego were taken, victory. Jeff was close to being able to grab victory in his last turn of the game, but unluckily was short by 2 points in his last combat to being able to achieve that. Jeff had admitted afterwards he’d been too focused on Diego and what Diego was doing, and ignored me. Which allowed me to sneak in under the radar. Mind you at the time I wasn’t aware of that. Yeah I liked this at 3 players. Less aggressive (Or this game was) than the 2 player first play I had with Justin. But still good fun.

Oh my copy of Tao Long arrived this morning. I backed this on Kickstarter, and got the deluxe addition, with the four seasons expansion and 4 player expansion add-ons. I have to say the production quality of the game is really good. Now I have to arrange to get it to the table. I think an abstract game session is in order. An excuse to get other great abstract games to the table also.

War and Politics

Fenland Gamers, Game day

Yesterday 5 tribes went to war, did some trading, made alliances and generally had a great time. Yeah Twilight Imperium 4 made it to,the table with 5 people playing it.

I’m just going to say wow! The politics, the ebb and flow of alliances, deal making, attempting Jedi mind tricks. The trading and agenda phase aided and enhanced all of this. One of those deals between red and green gave green the centre of the known universe Mecatol Rex. Which afterwards quickly went south and saw their two massive space fleets duking it out. Further alliances were formed, lines drawn. But this was all a distraction that allowed green to keep Mecatol Rex and score some easy points.

My starting position seemed anomaly heavy and planet light, and boxed me in stopping me expanding out, or even getting to the centre of the universe to claim it for my own.

Yeah this game is fastly becoming a favourite. Hopefully I’ll be able to get it to the table a couple times a year. If it gets out that many times I’ll be really happy. I’d love to get it out to the table again real soon, but I don’t see how with the current schedule of games planned that it’s possible. In the next 2 weeks 2 campaigns start, Charterstone and Gloomhaven. Both are legacy style games as well, that are going to be running for a few weeks. Then in February we start our next MtG league using the Rivals for Ixalan set that comes out on the 20th January.

‘Twas the Friday and Saturday before Christmas

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night, magic, MtG, Uncategorized

It’s a dangerous thing this internet. Especially that YouTube thingy bob. I’m innocently watching these Magic the Gathering deck tech videos and suddenly “oh that card would be good in …[insert name of a deck I’m building at the moment here]” pops into my tiny easily influenced mind.

That’s why Soul Warden and Kor Firewalker (above) are on their way to me. Kor Firewalker is a sideboard card for the death and taxes deck I’m building, and it’s there just for a students burn deck. Soul Warden might make it into the deck but could see use in the planned angel deck. I’m looking forward to completing the death and taxes deck and seeing how it fairs against my students decks. Which reminds me I need to put up the revised Dino deck list.

Last night was the last Friday Meetup of the year. Before others arrived John and met up to squeeze in a play of The Pillars of the Earth.

I had never played the game before. So I wanted to see what all the fuss was. Why was it demanding so much money when it was out of print?

Yes since the game originally came out mechanics have evolved, there are some really great worker placement games that have come out during that time also.

Building the cathedral is a nice piece of theatre. It has that wow factor when completed at the end. Pulling out the master builders from a bag to determine action selection order, with the added factor of if you come out early it costs you money to take advantage of the fact, a nice touch.

It’s a good game. I enjoyed playing it (yep I won). But having played it I’d not have payed the stupid money it was going for when it was out of print. I’d happily play it again. Will I go out of my way to buy a copy for the collection? No. Having it in Jonathan’s collection is good enough for me.

We also got the latest (Kickstarter only I believe) expansion for Flash Point, Tragic Events to the table. I liked what these cards bought to the game. But need to play the game in expert mode a couple more times to make a more informed conversation about them. This was after all the first time the game had hit the table in over 2 years. And that last time we played was the novice game not the expert.

Our final,game of the evening was the classic gateway game Ticket to Ride. I rocked the game this time. I completed my initial two tickets, and just went unopposed taking the 6 carriage routes on the map. Racking up 15 points each time I did one. Naturally I triggered the end game, plus was able to get my last two carriages out for a final 2 points. This was a surprisingly easy victory.

Yesterday an amazing deal appeared on Amazon for the 2 player starter set for Star Wars: Destiny. It was being sold for half price! So I alerted Dale, bought the 2 copies I wanted (so I had a playset) , then alerted a couple of friends on Facebook a bargain Christmas gift was to be grabbed. As a couple of store owners pointed out on a UK Destiny page, this price was cheaper than they could get it for! One store owner had bought 10 copies to sell in his shop.

Naturally today it’s back to full price. But I have my 2 copies sitting on my stairs.

Our game group has been discussing on and off starting a rpg of some sort. I have Paranoia sitting upstairs, Edmund has recently got the D & D 5th Edition beginners box set. But no decision has been made to what system to use, let alone setting, and who is playing etc. Which brings me nicely to the just released Genesys system from FFG. Which is meant to be a generic system that can be used with any theme/setting. They give examples/ideas of five example themes/genres in the core book, like sci-fi or modern. Although I don’t play Netrunner any more the world of Android still interests me. I’d love to play a rpg set in it. My only fear about spending time building up the world for a campaign is that FFG release a module for this that is Android. I know with the art books for the last four or so sets of Magic the Gathering and the pdfs you can download from the Wizards site you can run a D & D campaign set in the Magic universe. But with those two sources it shouldn’t be hard to set a campaign using the Genesys system there either. Although I’d like to “play” in that universe, and the differing settings, I’m not sure the others in the play group would be that keen. I’m also thinking about the Star Wars rpg (a reprint of the original one is due out by the end of January – I have that pre-ordered) and the Middle Earth rpg. But first we need to start playing!

Epic Sagas

Fenland Gamers, Game day, Uncategorized

I know the postings have been sporadic this week, especially since Wednesday. But that’s when things got busy.

I had to miss this months monthly meet up for the Fenland Gamers because my local cinema The Luxe was running a Star Wars double bill. They started off with episode VII The Force Awakens at 8:30pm. I knew I’d booked the double bill, so when Netflix added The Force Awakens recently I avoided watching the movie so that it would be more fresh on the night. A plan that worked. I think this was the first time I had been at The Luxe since the change in ownership, the new screen and projector. The viewing experience has definitely improved. No more annoying mark/tear on the screen. There were some dressed up people at this showing, the cinema staff were also. The young lady behind the counter serving drinks and selling/printing tickets was dressed as Rey. She had done an amazing job. An hour after The Force Awakens at five minutes past midnight it was onto the midnight release and the first showing of The Last Jedi. I’m not going to put spoilers up. I enjoyed the movie. It could have been a bit shorter, a tad too much humour for me.

The problem with a mid week midnight showing like this is work the next day. Luckily after just short of 4 hours sleep, I managed to make a flask of coffee to help me stay awake through a days hard work watching student presentations, and then crawl my way into work. I do love this part of the course I teach on. Students pitching their game ideas as professionally as possible. It’s cool to see them dressed so smartly. Plus the ideas they come up with are really interesting, and imaginative. By the time it was time to go home having seen 17 pitches, I was in remarkable great shape on so little sleep. And yet despite that lack of sleep I wasn’t tired and ended up staying awake to just gone midnight!

Friday wasn’t going to see me getting to bed earlier than my normal rock and roll bedtime of 9:30, because we had a team Christmas meal planned for after work. Luckily my free time before going was spent playing Magic the Gathering. I really have created a monster at work with this game and my students. Our Christmas meal was at a Thai restaurant, the food was pretty good. Portion sizes were just right, despite my initial reaction that they were a little cheap on the quantity of sticky rice I’d been given. There was a random secret Santa, which I suspect was not as random as initially intended. Somehow the only person with a bushy beard (me) got given beard baubles. Even I without a sense of smell, smelt something was up. When I arrived home there was an unexpected parcel waiting for me. The mystery present was a Christmas gift of some Lego from my friend Duncan. There was even a Christmas card from him with a humorous reference to my dislike of Barenpark and Nantucket. There was also a play set of the Abrade card for Magic also waiting for me.

I really could have done with a relaxed, drifting in and out of sleep type of morning today. Catching up on some of the sleep I had deprived myself of. But no a while back I had arranged a learning game of Twilight Imperium 4 for 10:30. So I had to get up early, and punch some cardboard. I also wanted to get to Fenrock early to get the place setup ready to play. So I turned up 30 mins early, got the table in place and started setting up the game ready for the others. We were already a man down because earlier a car failure meant Diego wasn’t able to attend. But a very last minute message meant that we were now down to just Jeff and myself to play a game designed for a minimum of 3 players. If I’d known before I’d left I could have bought Star Wars: Rebellion a 2 player game to play. Instead we had to make do with a makeshift solution that would allow Jeff and me to play TI4 as a 2 player game.

Despite it not being designed for this player count, the trade and political side not really practical, we still had a good time playing the game. Fuelled by the excellent coffee that Fenrock do, despite taking an early and having the military superiority I still lost.

But playing the game this way did allow me and Jeff to get familiar with the games turn structure and basic rules. For Jeff he was also able to see how the new 4th edition differed from the 3rd, which he already owned.

I’m really looking forward to playing TI4 again on the 30th. Hopefully everyone can make that day and we get to play the game as intended. Now I have the rest of the weekend to catch up on some sleep, start building some decks around the infinite combos that arrived today. Or I might just browse some ideas for a Death and Taxes deck. Whatever happens I will be doing as little as possible and just relaxing.

Council of Nations

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night, magic, Magic League, MtG

Wow no posts for 3 days, you all must have been hoping I’d given up blogging. Sadly I haven’t. I was truth be told just being lazy.

Friday evening saw Jonathan and myself meeting up at The White Lion Hotel to play some games.

Our first game was a recent addition to Jonathan’s collection Council of Four . This was a foreign version of the game, which meant two things. Jonathan had gone online and printed out the translated English rules (in colour), and that he got it a lot cheaper than the English version over hear. I think Jonathan said around the 8 or 9 euros mark, compared to (I want to say) over £20. So a massive saving. And the game is language independent. Which means it really doesn’t matter if you get the non-English language version.

I think my main issues with this game are production issues. The assistant tokens for instance (see close up below) look awful. The art work could be much bigger, and less white space. I also had an issue with the black permit cards. They look more brown. Especially when they actually have a black border, that is black! Not only that the black meeples were also not very black. The graphic design could have done with a little bit of tweaking on the use of the arrow symbol. The same arrow icon was used in several spots for different things. Ideally there should have been a different symbol or type of arrow used to symbolise it’s different meaning.

The actual game itself isn’t bad. It was fun, I liked that you can combo emporiums, which can be very powerful. Build an emporium in a city next to one you already have an emporium in you get that connected cities bonus too, and repeat until you come to the end of your chain of connected cities. I had a very effective “engine” going that gave me money, points, and cards every time I built a connecting emporium.

I won our game. It was close. I had that combo engine going, while Jonathan was being more targeted in where he was building his emporiums and collecting bonuses for building in cities of the same colour. It did look like I was running away with the game. But after taking into account bonuses earned during the game, and the odd end game bonus, the game result was much closer than both of us were expecting.

And that is one other thing I like about this game, that we both had different plans in place for scoring, and I can see the possibility of one or more other ways to. And that’s a nice thing to have.

I’d play this again. Would I ask to play it again? Maybe not. It’s a good game, just not a great game.

Our second and final game of the evening was an old favourite, Nations the Dice Game. This game soon went out of print after it came out a couple years back. I had bought mine just after I think it was my first UKGE, after hearing the buzz about it at the expo. When I heard that Stronghold Games had picked up the rights to the game, and not only were they reprinting the game, they were also going to be publishing an expansion for it, I was excited. At the time of the news breaking I did ask Stronghold via social media if the expansion would be compatible with the original printing, and was assured that it was.

Which brings us to Friday night. I had the new expansion Unrest and the perfect excuse to get the base game back to the table.

This expansion adds a new die to the game, that makes rolling for resources a bit riskier, but has a bigger pay off. There is also a new reroll token, new nation boards, bonus tiles, pass bonuses, and more progress tiles.

The new nation boards actually fix an issue I had with the original game. In the original game it made no difference which nation you chose because they were all basically the same. Everyone got the same starting dice and tokens. Now with the new boards it matters which one you chose, and also which side. You get that feeling of uniqueness.

Ok the game is still over really quickly. But the added bonus tile that gives you a second thing to aim for other than just the famine and war bonus, is a nice addition. Plus passing now also gives you a little something, unless you are the last to pass.

I like this expansion, I don’t think I’d play the game without it. Even with new players. It adds stuff to the game, but not that much. Fixes a couple of problems. Yep glad I bought this expansion.

You know how this will end. A big thank you to The White Lion for allowing us to play there Friday evening.

Saturday was the final day of our Ixalan league. Unstable and life meant this last MtG meet up before Christmas was attended by five of us. I played 6 games, two best of three, and came away with a 1-5 record overall. These weren’t quick wins. They went to the long game. Which for 5 of the games saw my deck bettered. After I handed out the three prize packs for most wins, most plays, and most friendly player, and some packs were bought off me, I was left with 3 packs. I consoled myself with those 3 packs and was rewarded with the following card:
This is my third Huatli, Warrior Poet planeswalker. So nearly a play set. But is it good enough to break into my R/G Dino deck? I do like that ability to generate 3/3 dino tokens. Maybe in the sideboard?

Yep another thank you to Fenrock for hosting our MtG league.

Our next planned league will be at the end of January once Rivals for Ixalan has come out. But there will be one or two one off events before then. Keep an eye on the events page for Fenland Gamers to find out when they are announced.