Category Archives: Fenland Gamers

Fenland Gamers

Shadows of Porta Nigra

Fenland Gamers, game night

Finally Porta Nigra hit the table. That’s another one off the pile of shame. Which is getting smaller and smaller.

So how did this bit of shocking news happen?

It all started with an innocent Facebook post enquiring what games members of the Fenland Gamers group were playing this weekend. I’d got nothing planned, except continue making inserts to organise Zombicide. So I was curious if others were enjoying life, the universe, etc. 

Not long after posting this probing question I received an invite from Jonathan to play some games at a long time Fenland Gamers haunt.

This was the first time either of us had played the game, so we were learning from the rule book (once again – yep we tend to break that gamer rule about not doing this).

It took a turn or three to get the hang of what’s what within the game. But it was a quick game to pick up.

I liked the use of the players deck to control the duration of a round. That was neat. 

Having the player choose two or three actions depending on the card from the available ones on it, with a mechanism to take extra actions, was really neat. 

Despite the limited choice you still have to make some tough decisions, the first being which action card to play from a hand of two. Then which actions and the order of them. 

You are having to manage your resources, aiming for majorities in each building area, whilst trying to score as many points for your building. 

Jonathan managed to get a bonus card that gave him 30 points at the final scoring. Which put huge pressure on me to try and negate that. That pressure only increased when that bonus got power up’d to over 50 points. It’s only in the third and final round was I able to cut that damaging point surge to twenty odd points with my own 30 points surge.

I loved the end of round scoring where you counted up number of building blocks used to build your buildings so far to split between money and points. I went for a fifty fifty split each time. 

This is not a low scoring game I beat Jonathan by 2 points, 254 to 252. Which was much much closer than both of us thought it would be.

When the light was just right we got some awesome shadows on the board from our buildings. Plus I have an excuse to use a photo of me that is really all about the shadows taken by Jonathan.


Porta Nigra is a lovely game that looks attractive when you are playing it. I love that 3D element of it. 

We will definitely play this again. The problem is when now?

A great afternoon of gaming, thank you Jonathan for the invite.

Achtung Baby!

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night

It’s been a very quiet week from me on here and that’s been down to “manflu” taking me out for most of the week.

Luckily after going through the worst patch Wednesday night and Thursday, things started to improve. The downside of the bad patch being having to miss a first playthrough of Escape from Colditz that Jonathan and I had just got through the post.

So Friday was once again on us, I was feeling much better, not great, but functioning. So FEG@WL was a go.


So with Jonathan putting on his German prison guard hat, Deigo, Les and myself formed an orderly line in the middle of the courtyard to plan our Escape from Colditz.

Opening the box, this game oozes theme, and I just love the production quality of the game. A lovely touch was the separate history booklet that was included. Rightly so much thicker than the rule book.

We played with the new “updated/modified” rules of this 75th Anniversary edition. I will say the rules aren’t that clear. Ideally they should have reworked this making them easier to follow. Looking at them for a first time I found them a little difficult to follow.

All I can say is we had a blast playing this game. It really was a lot of fun. 

Yes there is that competitive element on the prisoner side with the first getting two prisoners out being the winner. But you also have a collaboration side as well.

In the early game I was deliberately taking out guards to give my fellow escapees a window of opportunity to move around without threat. I also hit on the idea of it getting the inner solitary confinement cells full so I’d get placed in the outer one and need less items to escape one let out!

We would be swapping escape equipment making sure Jonathan had no idea of who had what. That way we kept him guessing how we would be trying to get out.

We’d even be giving equipment to aid escape when a run for freedom was being made.

We’d make dummy runs to try and distract Jonathan.

There was one moment on my escape when Jonathan really should have arrested my prisoner instead of blocking me. But I’d tried putting doubt in his head, suggesting he’d missed some-one else’s plan. I couldn’t believe it when he blocked me, Jonathan thought he was blocking my escape. Which he hadn’t I just went out the other way open to me. The other way he’d missed. The other way to freedom!

I wasn’t the first to escape. That honour fell to Les. We had a dual escape going on, the other escapee being Deigo. This was presenting Jonathan with some hard decisions to make. We liked watching him squirm!

I was getting very few opportunity cards to help my escape because I was doing my usual rolling high! While Les was pulling loads of them.

We did find that maybe the rule about getting of solitary was maybe a little broken. The rules state you needed to roll a double to get out. So we found there were sometimes several turns where you could do nothing while you waited to roll that double to get some-one out, or draw an opportunity card that got a pow out. We may house rule this next time to even things out.

I’d highly recommend this blast from the past, if you can get a copy (Esdevium had sold out before they did their weekly update sheet!!) I will warn you it’s a long game. We cut our game short because of time, we’d taken 30 turns approximately in 2 hours. So you may want to pencil in an afternoon playing this.

This was a really fun evening of gaming. A great way to start half term.

FEG@WL 14Oct16

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night

A bit like Crackerjack when I was growing up, it was Friday, it was 6pm, it was time for FEG@WG. Not quite as snappy or as popular as Crackerjack, and also not at five to five!

The first game of the evening for the four amigos that had assembled to play games was Splendor.

Deigo crushed this game. An easy win he put down to the many defeats he’d suffered at the hands of his partner. 

Earlier in the day the postman had delivered the playmat for Tiny Epic Western. So naturally I wanted to take the mat out for a spin.

So with our Mexican stand off set up on the playmat it was time to admire it.

This is a massive playmat. 


But a lovely one, that not only really captures the poker element of the game in its colouring trying to evoke the baize of a poker table. It actually captures the feel with a baize like feel! What a great use of texture.

Gamelyn games make some really nice playmats for their Tiny Epic games. However they do take the games away from the Tiny ethos. 

In our Mexican stand off Ben was quickest on the draw and won. 

A great evening gaming once again! Some nice banter, great company. All finished off with the now traditional dodgy meat fest.

Fenland Gamers Oct 16 Meetup

Fenland Gamers, game night, Uncategorized

Last night saw the October meet up of the  Fenland Gamers at the White Lion Hotel. This was a first for the monthly Meetup.

Our first game of the evening was Keyflower. 

Part worker placement, part bidding. It’s a nice challenging game. 

You have to decide whether to use a tile for its ability or to try and bid on it to get ownership.

There is an advantage to owning the tiles. Points for starters, plus it may increase the number of workers the next round that you have to play with. Because if another player uses on of your tiles you get those meeples at the end of the round. 

You also get to bid for choosing bonuses at the end of the round. Get a chance using tile abilities to gather resources that you can use to upgrade a tile. 

It can be tough making that decision what to do. 

The art isn’t amazing, but has a nice cartoony feel to it. I do like the player screens that are used to hide your meeples from the other players. 

Despite loosing to Deigo it liked the game a lot.

We finished off the evening with Isle of Trains.

I’d nearly bought this game at the expo. Which is a shame as I liked playing this also. And it won’t be long before it ends up in the collection.

I love the multi use cards. Using them to pay for cards, to use them as carriages/trains or as a resource to activate an ability. 

That activating of an ability is genius. Because that only happens when you put a resource on an opponents carriage. But if you do that you are helping them get nearer to completing their contract. If you do it on your own train, nothing happens, but you do have the goods to use for completing a contract. That’s an interesting decision to have to make. How badly do you need the ability to meet your goals? 

The records will show that I won this game.

A great evening of gaming. Looking forward to Friday now for the next lot.

Wait this had no title!

Fenland Gamers, game night

I have to admire Jonathan it takes a lot of balls to build the Nantucket wing on his house.

Last night I’d hesitate to say we played the game Western Front. We tried it is the best I can describe it as.

I’m not going to waste more time on this game at the moment. When the best you can say about the game is you like the linen finish of the cards. It says it all really.

We followed up with Karmaka, a game I knew the theme would not appeal to Jonathan. However I thought he might like the mechanics and art.

I called it right, Jonathan beat me whilst not disliking the mechanics, but not enjoying the theme.

Our final game was a two player Tiny Epic Western. Which was an ok experience but much better with more players.

Luckily for me I won. Which ended our gaming evening and despite the false start a pleasant evening of gaming.

Back on top

Fenland Gamers

Sunday saw me invited to play some game with Jonathan and his dad.

Our first game was Airlines Europe. A game I won with the nice round score of 100 points.

We played with a couple of mini expansions Jonathan had for the game. The first at the scoring phases gave players the opportunity to block routes. This was ok, and I could take it or leave it.

The second one I liked. Each player got two random tokens that they had to keep secret. Don’t use them and they were worth one point each at the end scoring. However use them and you could be earning more than a single point. On the secret side was a colour that matched one of the airlines. Which if you were tieing for points on that airlines shares gives the tie in your favour. 

I didn’t use mine but cunningly left one each on one of my shares. Planting the idea that I had that airlines token. Which did fool Jonathan, until I came clean. 

Our second was Thiefs Market. Once again I came out victorious and rightfully claiming my title back.

After the game there was an interesting discussion about whether the first player at the start had an unfair advantage.

Naturally being the winner and the player that had held onto the first player token for the majority of the game (I wanted it more as Rocket would say), I disagreed.

I know I was taking the bare minimum of dice I needed, not taking any available notoriety or gold dice. So I was handicapped on the flexibility of cards I could go for, and not able to afford to lose a dice.

It was an interesting point. A check on the bgg forums didn’t find anyone else thinking along the lines of Jonathan and his dad.

I’m going to have to think more on this.

Anyway a great afternoons gaming.

The Iron Throne Round Two

Fenland Gamers, game night, game of thrones

Our skirmish over the Iron Throne seemed so long ago. But the memory of the other houses betrayal still stung with how they gave the Iron Throne to Jeff the Baratheon. 

Mid week once I knew how many could still make our planned fight club for the Iron Throne, I ordered the A Feast of Crows expansion for the game. 

This was my clever plan to gain the Throne. A Feast of Crows is a four player only expansion that replaces the win condition for the game, introduces a new house, House Arryn, objectives, a new setup. 

During setup I drew the Starks, Jeff got House Arryn, Jonathan House Lannister, and Diego House Baratheon.

Looking back on our game my tactical error on turn one that I missed until too late, of attacking House Arryn instead of the Lannisters, helped towards giving Jonathan his well deserved victory. If I had gone after the Lannisters I would have completed my special objective for my house and started racking up victory points, while denying Jonathan and his Lannisters 

The others helped towards his victory also by not taking him on, on their side of Westeros.

I liked this expansion a lot. The house specific objectives, the objective deck. Such a great idea. Completing them is the only way to earn victory points. It forces you to be aggressive. You can’t afford to turtle. 

It was a quick game, four turns! Not including setup time, our playtime was about an hour and a half. 

Setup especially contributes to the forced aggression, effectively shutting down the southern part of Westeros. You are also starting off with more developed forces if my poor memory of our first game isn’t playing tricks on me.

This is definitely my preferred way to play with four players now. I’ll happily play the original way. But this expansion for me is a far better playing experience. 

There is a six player only expansion also, which if we get a six player game together I will definitely get. I do wonder why there isn’t a five player expansion. 

The postman bought my Kickstarter copy of Tiny Epic Western Deluxe Edition yesterday morning. So after sleeving the player boards the game along with Bang the Dice Game and it’s first expansion Old Saloon were put in my game bag along with A Game of Thrones the boardgame.

Having seen Jeff usurped from the Iron Throne, only to see Jonathan placed on the throne instead. It was time to hit the old west and play Tiny Epic Western.

Naturally with the game being so new, none of us knew the rules. So this was a learning game, reading the rules as we played! 

Within a turn of playing I think we had the majority of the rules down. 

So we have an area control, worker placement, set collection, variable player powers game with a poker element too!

Yep there’s a lot of boxes being ticked here. But it works.

I like the duelling, although I think I only duelled once! It’s a cool way to resolve control of a space on the board.

Having player aids on the back of the character boards is a good use of real estate. Which means unused boards instantly become player aids. 

I loved the poker element of the game. It was rare I wasn’t with a five value card. So rare if I was wearing a long sleeved top the others would be rolling up my sleeves checking for cards.

The unique player boards with their player abilities is a nice touch. The four we were playing with didn’t seem over powered. 

Being the Kickstarter deluxe edition we had extra bullet dice, one in each players colour. But the whole overall component quality was good. We also got a plastic wanted card with a see through window. Which looked better to me than the standard included card.

I liked the wanted card as it encouraged duels. Ownership went to the winner of the last duel. It gives a bonus if you have it on phase three of the game, and if you have it at the end of the game two victory points. 

We did find the rule book a bit confusing in places. It was handy having a mini FAQ inside the box.

The only thing I regret is not buying the optional playing mat. But I’ll correct that soon.

Tiny Epic Westerns is a nice game. I like it, and definitely can see it coming to the table again. And I’m not saying that because I won!

So is this the best Tiny Epic game? Does it beat Tiny Epic Galaxies? 

For me I think TEG is still the best Tiny Epic game. But this easily takes second spot.

A great day gaming. Plus we pigged out on Krispy Creme donuts!

FEG@WL last day of September 2016

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night, Uncategorized

It’s Friday, it’s been a long, hard week. Only way to start the weekend, and blow away that built up stress from the week then has to be play some games with great company and an ice cold beverage.

Diego, Jonathan and I were gathered at the White Lion to do just that. 

Our first game of the evening was The Great Heartland Hauling Co.

We played with one of the alternate three player layouts and the truck stops expansion.

I made an instant dash to the GPS truck stop to buy that and gain the ability to move diagonally once per turn. However that left me with no ability to move and buy goods to trade. Which meant I was stuck at the starting point for three turns until I was able to draw fuel cards!

It was that bit of rashness I think that gave the advantage to Diego. Who went on to get the win. Although I came second, I was happy because I’d managed to sell everything I was transporting. So I didn’t get any negative points.

Jonathan had a complete disaster of a game. His truck must have been robbed of its tires at a truck stop and left on cinder blocks.

Our next game was Grifters. Oh this was a game of frustration for both Jonathan and me.

Jonathan just wasn’t getting the specialist cards to do much. While Diego was buying job cards just before I was about to, or blocked a plan I was going execute with a specialist action. Like grab the Blackmailer card off the top of discard pile but putting utter junk on top of it on his go.

As you can guess Diego romped home to the win.

Our final game of the evening was a new one to Diego and me. It was Skyline, a light dice game where you are building skyscrapers.

This has a push your luck element on the dice roles similar to Age of War and Elder Sign. Where if you want to reroll the dice you lose one if you are unable to use at least one.

Diego triggered the end game by claiming the 36 point building tile. I got lucky and was able to score a final 16 point building, while Jonathan was not able to score any big points to boost his score.

I have to admit that in this final go I was only looking at getting a higher score than Jonathan. I had assumed Diego had the win sewn up. So imagine my surprise when we totalled the points I had won by a single point.

Somehow I’d broken Diego’s amazing winning streak!

Skyline is a pleasant quick filler game. I enjoyed it.

Well you know how the evening ended after the games. We celebrated our wins and losses by consuming dodgy meat wrapped in naan, with salad (the token attempt to make it healthy, and ease the feelings of guilt) and some chilli sauce.

Tomorrow we attempt to usurp Jeff from his Iron Throne when we play A Game of Thrones the Board Game.

You are all colours

Fenland Gamers, game night

So Airlines Europe is a game I’ve never played before. It is however a game in Jonathan’s game collection. And also the game he chose for us to play at last nights mid week gaming session at the White Lion.

Airlines Europe is a game by some guy named Alan R Moon. He apparently created a game called Ticket To Ride that seems to be popular with a certain devil may care attitude to life and a hippy haircut.

Our game was a four player one with three of us having not played it before. So it was upto Jonathan to explain the rules and stress several times you are all colours and not just one colour when building routes.

I liked the share element of the game, and pushing the value of your stock up by building routes. 

You have to be aware of what your opponents are investing in, not just for scoring but also for which airlines you are going to advance in value. 

I benefitted a lot from Debbie pushing up the value of stock I had the majority in or was second highest in. 

I love the randomised mid game scoring. It means you have to try and second guess when it’s going to occur, do you invest those shares in your hand now, or do you still have time to push their value up? Jonathan and I got caught out by this during the game. Having shares in our hands that we failed to get out in time to allow us to score points. 

The red and orange planes are so close in colour it’s easy to confuse one for the other. I also thought the colour of the cards could have been a bit easier to tell, especially from the opposite side of the table. The iconography of the player aids could also be improved. 

This a solid game. I’d definitely play again. But I’m not sure I’d be able to repeat my stunning victory of this playthrough. 

Oh yes I WON!

A great evening once more of gaming.

To the max

Fenland Gamers, game night, Uncategorized

Istanbul is a bloody good game. That’s a fact. 

Adding in the “mini expansion” the kebab shop makes it a little better. It replaces the Fountain tile and I wouldn’t play the game without this now. 

Playing with the first full expansion Mocha and Baksheesh adds new and interesting elements to the game. Such as coffee and it’s alternate path to victory, and the ability to block routes.

But how would the latest expansion Brief and Siegel that came out this week effect the game?

Well Jonathan broke his self imposed game buying ban for the month to buy it, and he had it delivered Thursday. 

So with an exit pass granted Jonathan and I met up to throw everything Istanbul and the kitchen sink on the table for a mega epic version of the game.

With all the expansions in play set up takes a little time. And moving from four by four tiles to the four by five grid of tiles with the first expansion to five by five makes the game massive. 

Placing the rubies on the board on the relevant tiles, they now look lost! Dwarfed by this increase in size of the board. 

The new expansion introduces letters and seals, that are not only another way to get rubies but also away to get extra turns. 

Naturally you get letters by visiting one of new tiles (there are two of the new tiles that give letters out), or from the courier (which acts like the coffee trader,smuggler, and governor). Each letter has an “address” or tile number on it. When you get the letter it’s worth one seal, deliver it to the “address” it’s worth two seals. Visit the Secret Society tile, and you can trade six seals for a ruby and possibly between three and one coins depending when you get there. Or you can use three seals per round to take an extra turn.

Jonathan used his seals well to get that extra turn at key moments. I’d been using this new scoring opportunity early on to take an early lead.

I scored all my rubies between letters, coffee and the odd guild card that gave me cheap ways to buy a ruby pushing the value up for Jonathan. 

During the game I made no effort collecting lots of goods and trading. The only goods I collected were enough to purchase/fuel certain powers. 

My first tactical mistake was with my companion (a new addition to the game) where I moved him too far away from the Caravansary and the Guild Hall (which were next to each other). If he was in position whilst I was exploiting the tile combo Jonathan had stumbled across on the opposite side of the board (see below), I could have still been drawing the guild cards and bonus cards, and get extra coffee counters.

And that brings me to the companion another new feature of this expansion. Because of the size of the board now, this is a much needed addition. It does give you a choice each turn, do you move your merchant or your companion once you have them. The companion acts like the merchant except it can only move one tile at a time, he works alone (can’t pick up assistants) and any tiles/bonuses that show the merchant don’t apply to the companion. With the companion you are able to leave him on the other side of the board to your merchant. 

The Kiosk tile is awesome. It gives you a letter, plus it has kiosk mini tiles that have bonuses on them. You draw one more than the number of players, you pick the one you want, carry out that action. Then the other players do the same in turn order. Then the last tile left you get and action. I was using this a lot. 

With the increased board size the tavern bonus tile that allows you to move any number of places in a straight line is a must.

Once Jonathan hit the tile combo shown below he soon caught me up on the ruby front. I joined him in exploiting it too late. Although throwing the barrier in his way to slow him down and make his life a little difficult did work. If I’d have remembered I could jump the barrier (the draw back of not having played the game for a while) along with my other “mistake” I could have won.


In the base game the “Black Market and Tea House should have a distance from each other of at least 3 places.”  We felt that there should be a similar ruling for the above combo. Otherwise it’s too powerful a combo. We may house rule this. I think Jonathan is going to bring this up on bgg also. (He did here)

In the end this was a very close game with Jonathan pipping me to the post and the win. But I may have got the win if not for my two “tactical” errors.

Unless I’m playing this game with a new player I will not play this game any other way than with everything in play. The base game is a bloody good game. But with everything it gets taken to a new much, much higher level. The multiple avenues to victory, the random layout of the board each game, there is just so much variety and replayability. 

It should be noted that apparently according to bgg there is a camel driver mini expansion that for completeness I will get but wasn’t used in this game because we don’t have it technically!