Category Archives: Fenland Gamers

Fenland Gamers

Choo Choo

Fenland Gamers, game night

Last night saw Jonathan and I visiting the pad of Debbie and Jo to play a “marathon” play session of Ticket to Ride. Ok not so much a marathon because Debbie was catching a bus to Kings Lynn at 10:30 to sign fans autographs.

In the meantime our evening of trains geekery kicked off with a game of Ticket to Ride Europe.

Once more I was faced with an upside down map of Europe. My tickets seemed to fit together okish.

During our game play there was plenty of banter and laughter. And somehow I was completing tickets! What was funnier not until I was nearly out of trains did anyone notice I was getting to that point!

Finally scoring and I had won! My first physical game win in a long time.

Our next Ticket to Ride map was the latest one released the UK. None of us had played this map before.

For the UK map they introduced technology cards. Cards that you had to buy so that you could do things like create ferry routes, or create routes in Scotland (or Wales, Ireland and France), or create routes that required three and four cards to build.

I liked this addition to the game. Remembering you needed them before making a turn did slow one or two of the others.

My initial starting tickets were interesting, I don't think I had one worth more than five points. Plus I had a one point route I could complete straight away!

With lucky draws I was able to get the technology cards I needed to be able to complete my tickets. Then I started holding the cards needed to get the technology that would make each completed ticket worth two extra points.

After getting that I was trailing on the score board. But there was a way to catch up and go into the lead. Sitting on the board was a massive forty points in the form of a ten card route to New York. So I went for that. No one else was going for it.

I think it came as a surprise when I played that route and jumped massively into the lead. I was waiting for the “that's over powerful” comment.

By the time I had scored that massive route, I was within striking distance of triggering the end game. The others still had lots of trains in front of them. So that's what I did, I went for routes that would allow me to trigger the end game as quick as possible.

After the final counting I had won again.

As I said I loved the technology cards. At the start of the game with such short routes I was wondering how anyone could get to one hundred points. Were the designers being optimistic? But at the final count I ended up with ninety nine points. I was even pleasantly surprised that there were route cards worth over ten points.

We finished up our evening playing a couple of games of Codenames. Our teams were split up as boys against girls. Both games were won by the boys. I think this was the first time I've played where I also got to guess from the clue.

Another great evening of gaming, and I had a clean sweep of wins ^___^

 

He’s Dead Jim!

Fenland Gamers, game night, pandemic, pandemic legacy season 1

So one more time with feeling…

This post is about my play through of the game Pandemic Legacy Season 1 with my friends. So the following may or may not contain spoilers for the game. If you don't want to read possible spoilers for the game then stop reading now and join me in my next post.

Right if you are still reading this post let's begin…

Last night Debbie was back from her award winning performance of third tree from the left in the local amdram performance of Annie. Apparently the reviews were amazing. How good was Debbie's performance? Several dogs mistook her for a real tree, that's how good.

Before our game started with the agreement of Jonathan, Debbie and Matt, I swapped my character from Token Sexy Scientist to Wanda (I think that was her name) the quarantine specialist. I could now travel using the army bases, place one quarantine token anywhere on the board once per turn, and if a quarantine token was on the same city as me it stayed put if there was an infection there.

Before we got underway with the month of June, the legacy deck introduced equipment to the game. We then carried out the initial infection once more, decided our starting spot, along with our starting funded events (because of previous failures we were back upto six for this attempt at June).

I think this play through of June can best be described as close, but not close enough.

We had two cured diseases, about to eradicate one, nearly had army bases in all zones, and close to having seven quarantine markers out. But despite all that hard work, we got our butts handed to us and were overrun by outbreaks.

Our third loss. One more and we get to open the 'box'. The one you open after four losses in a row.

Time to reset the board and try again with eight funded events.

The faded are starting to get established on the West Coast of America. But we in reply are starting each game now with four army bases already in place. A great start of achieving one of the objectives very quickly. We got a few quarantine markers out on the board. Once more we cured C-ThatCam-Major.

If you are in a city with a faded in it at the start of your go, you take a scar. A scar is something negative, like you can hold one less card in your hand, or you get one less action a turn. I made the mistake of being in an occupied faded city at the start of one of my turns and had to take a scar.

Matt also made the same mistake, and took a scar. He then had to take another scar later. One more and his Zardoz would be dead. Guess what? An outbreak of a faded happened on the city he was safely sitting in. Zardoz was dead.

Below Matt gets all emotional at the death of Zardoz.

Matt had to take over one of the civilian ids to finish off the game. Which luckily was a couple of turns later.

We had army bases in all the zones, more than seven quarantine markers and was just about to eradicate C-ThatCam-Major for the win.

The fourth defeat had been avoided, but at what cost?

Before the start of July we get a bonus for completing June. Matt will get to choose a new character to play, which I believe he has already decided on. And we will be down to six funded events.

That's 50% of the game played. Wow, what an experience so far.

 

Yes Yes Yes

Fenland Gamers, game night

Last night was the monthly meet up of the Fenland Gamers gaming group in Wisbech (Capital of the Fens, Centre of the Universe).

Our first game of the evening was a five player game of Istanbul. We were playing the base game with the kebab shop promo. Which replaces the water fountain tile, which as popular opinion and I agree on is the better of the two tiles to use. It doesn't just allow you to recall your assistants but gives you an alternative action to do instead of paying two coins to send your criminal relative to another tile on the board to do the action of that tile.

For our game we used the random tile setup, instead of the short or long routes setups. Jonathan has his little game plan for the short route setup that scores him gems very easily using just three tiles that are close together. I wasn't sure if he had a similar plan for the long route setup. But I wasn't going to risk it. Neutralise the plans with randomness. See before the game had even had its first turn, the game had started in the setup!

Luck was on my side in this game, and I took an early lead in collecting three of the five gems that I needed, while the rest struggled to get enough goods together to collect one. I'd hit on a nice little engine, that allowed me to recycle a bonus card to get me the resources I needed to go buy the gems.

Katie did interrupt that flow by buying one of the gems pushing up the cost of my next one. But I'd got four gems this way before it was no longer a viable scoring option for me. I needed one more gem to win. The others had started scoring gems, Jonathan was starting to get close.

But I had a plan.

If I could gather sixteen coins I could buy my final gem from another tile. The others hadn't spotted what I was doing. They had hardly any money each, so none of them was going to be threatening to ruin my scoring opportunity.

I had a bonus card that allowed me to move three or four tiles instead of two. Then a five coin bonus card was left on the tile that allows me to grab a bonus card. No one took it. I got to the tile grabbed the bonus card, checked my math, I had the sixteen coins needed to buy the winning gem.

My next turn would be my winning move, despite the tile I needed to get to being three tiles away. I had that nice bonus card that allowed me to get there in one move and win.

Wow I'd won my first game of Istanbul ever. Ok I've only played it a couple of times previously, but despite loving the game I'd lost them.

Next up after my glorious victory, was a four player game of WWE Superstar Showdown. I sat this one out, although it's a game I want to play (well I do own it). My contribution to the game was ref! And just like the real thing, not an impartial ref.

It was boys against girls. Gavin and Jonthan had drafted Big E and the apex predator Randy Orton. While the Katie and Jo had John Cena and Daniel Bryant.

The figures representing the wrestlers are quite good, and a nice size. Although the game supports upto four players, I think from my observation the game is more suited as a two player game.

The “rock, paper, scissors” mechanic when simultaneously revealing cards, and the pre-programming of your moves by selecting the three cards you want to play, works well I think for this game.

I think thematically loosing cards from the deck mimics a wrestler getting weaker, more tired as the match goes on really well.

As Jonathan pointed out the iconography on the cards takes a little getting used to. Luckily there are some handy reference guides on the board itself.

I'd love them to release an expansion for the game of some classic wrestlers like my favourite Stone Cold Steve Austin, or The Undertaker. Maybe add more event types.

In the meantime this is one I'll play with Nath (he's a wrestling fan, or was). I think it helps if you are a fan of wrestling to get the most out of this game. It does seem to capture the theme well. What I observed hasn't put me off the game. It won't go down as a great game. But it will be one of those fun, light games I think. But proof of this will be when I play it with Nath and see what he thinks.

 

Man v Demons

Fenland Gamers, game night

While Debbie is off answering the lure of grease paint and treading the boards reprising her off off off Westend Olivier Award winning performance of third tree from the left, the rest of our pandemic fighting group had to find our own entertainment for last night.

Sadly Matt was unable to make it, leaving Jonathan and myself to duke it out over the tabletop field of cardboard.

Our first game of the evening was Discoveries. A game Jonathan had been wanting to try.

During our game I was snapping up the tribes cards, especially after I got one early that allowed me to ignore whether the tribe was a friendly or hostile tribe. What I had forgotten was the points are awarded for the tepees based on who has the most, and not for the actual number you have. Which gave me a six point advantage instead of a twelve point one.

Damn that was a big miscalculation. One that cost me the game. Jonathan did better on the set collection than me, and edged the points scored on completed explorations also. So the six point advantage I got on the tepees was not enough to swing the game in my favour.

I think when the worst thing you can say about a game are comments about how the dice feel too light, or they should have included the score pad, then the game has to be good. And it is an enjoyable game. Is it a great game? No. But definitely one that will see more play. I have to try it with more players, who knows the whole game may change and become great.

Our second game of the evening was Battlelore Second Edition.

I was playing the Uthuk Army, while Jonathan played the Daqan Army.

One of the nice touches over Memoir '44 is the mustering of your army. This is basically building your army from the forces available to you before combat. This was our first play so we went for the other nice touch of using one of the predefined armies provided for the game. The ones we chose are shown below.

I chose mine because I wanted to play with a big monster! While Jonthan chose his because he thought a smaller army would be easier to command while learning the game.

The great thing about Battlelore is having the setup being part of the game. Which means Jonathan and I get to choose a scenario for our half of the board.

These scenarios decide victory point scoring, and extras like getting lore points. They also decide first player!

Scenario with the lowest starting letter goes first. Which meant Jonathan was going first.

Then after setting up the board according to the scenarios chosen, it's time to place your forces on the board. And here is another great little touch. You place cards representing the units face down, along with dummy cards to disguise where your forces are. Then once all placed, both players turn the cards over and place the figures for their forces on the board.

Draw your starting hand of command cards and lore cards, and let battle commence.

Before starting I thought we might struggle to get enough lore to play lore cards, especially the higher cost ones. However that was not to be the case.

I made one tactical mistake right from the start. I thought I'd camp my Chaos Lord on my building to get the two lore tokens each go. However what I hadn't read before positioning near to the building was it can't occupy a building hex. Doh!

Destroying units doesn't earn victory points in Battlelore, as they do in Memoir '44. However occupying banner hexes at the end of your turn do. During the early game Jonathan was scoring two victory points each turn and taking an early lead on that front. The best I could achieve was a single point. But I was getting plenty of lore. So I thought my best avenue was to eradicate Jonathan's forces from the board, the second win condition.

I managed to stop Jonathan's victory point engine, and make good use of my lore cards. Occupying both banner hexes I had started getting two victory points each turn. Jonathan eventually started scoring victory points again. It was going to be a race for a victory point win. A smite the enemy from the face of the board was still on for me. But before that would happen one of us would have reached the required sixteen victory points.

My victory was a close win. If I hadn't won that turn, Jonathan would have won on his. It was that close.

Jonathan had been getting frustrated with his forces. The army was too light for going against mine. With the archers acting like artillery in Memoir, it didn't help that Jonathan was rolling badly! Which isn't helped with only one face on the die being the hit for archers. He wasn't much of a fan of the lore cards. I on the other hand was, I'd been using mine more effectively. I had even called a swarm to block line of sight on my units, stopping an attack.

I like Battlelore, it's your Memoir fix when you want a fantasy setting. There are some great touches to the game. Definitely one to get back to the table, and add to its armies.

 

Pandemic Legacy May

Fenland Gamers, game night, pandemic legacy season 1

“I've got sunshine on a cloudy day.

When it's cold outside I've got the month of May.“

My Girl

 

One day I may get bored with writing this intro warning you that the following post may or may not contain spoilers for the game Pandemic Legacy, and just go straight into the post with no warning. But in the meantime if you are trying to avoid spoilers for the game then you may just want to leave and join me in my next post.

1…

2…

3…

Right if you are still here you really can't complain if I spoil the game for you.

Last night saw the usual suspects of Debbie, Matt, Jonathan and myself meeting up to tackle the month of May in Pandemic Legacy Season 1.

Because of our success in April we were now down to two funded events to shuffle into the players deck. Our staples of one quiet night and the one that allows us to rearrange the top six cards of the infection deck were our choices. How we would cope without these two I don't know. We also still had our unfunded events in the players decks (the dual use city cards) to fall back on if need be.

Our briefing gave us the task of completing three objectives out of the four available. We chose our starting base, and which city to remove a faded figure from. COdA had mutated again, so when we drew a red city card from the players deck this to would cause that city to be infected with one of the faded, but if it would cause an outbreak nothing would happen.

We thought we were doing well, no Cleggmidia had come out, we had cured and eradicated C-Thatcam-Major (one objective complete), working on curing Sithite. Then the Cleggmidia cards started hitting, as did the epidemic cards. Joburge had fallen completely, pandemics were spreading like wildfire.

Our group decided maybe we could build the six garrisons quicker than trying to get the third cure. But before we could implement the plan, we had lost, over run by the pandemics.

We had failed, so quickly it took us by surprise at how fast we had lost this one. The defeat had seemed to come from nowhere.

After a brief team conflab, we chose our four funded events. I still love this mechanic. Do well you get less funded events, do badly you get more. Just like real life!

Our plan was to fore go finding three cures but to instead build the six garrisons, have seven quarantined cities, and eradicate one disease. That seemed do able. We could even build road blocks now to stop the spread of the faded and the curable diseases.

Like the previous game the wrong unfunded events were landing with Matt and Debbie. If one quite night, or the two extra actions had been with Jonathan or myself we could keep re-using them as long as we had the city cards. We've used this ability of ours to great effect in previous games.

Still, we had cured one disease, built five garrisons and the seven quarantines would not be a problem. But once more epidemics snowballing into pandemics cost of us the game. Much to the relief of Matt who wanted to get back to watch the latest episode of the new X-Files. In fact he was willing on the cards when an epidemic broke to cause the pandemics.

That was May. We did much better the second time around, there was definitely light at the end of the tunnel, the finishing line was in sight, and any other cliche saying you can think of.

This was definitely a “wait! What just happened?” Month.

Due to the lure of the stage lights and grease paint calling to Debbie we will not be playing June next week. So a week off from the spoilers for you all.

We get six funded events in June ^___^

 

So near but so far

Fenland Gamers, game night, play test

Last night saw Jonathan and I patrol once more the Streets of Commonville.

It was going to be a weird play session, there had been some “requests” made to Jonathan from some of the small but elite folks that had viewed the previous play through.

Once more we were filming the play through, but we had a wishlist of things to cover.

The first twenty minutes or so of filming was spent explaining various elements of the game. We then started a two player game.

I thought for the sake of this recording we would be taking a couple of turns and then “fast forwarding” the game state to show various in game situations.

However we were opening the board up fairly fast. A lot faster than our other two player game together.

I was soon able to level up to Captain, giving me five dice and an intuition (alter a dice to a value I need), plus my starting donut. It wasn't long before we were also able to get Jonathan up to the same rank, with similar additional powers.

But the clock was ticking. We hadn't revealed all the evidence, but we had done enough to get down to one suspect (shockingly not Dr Kinky this time), give that suspect a weapon and a set of handcuffs.

With the clock dangerously low, we had one turn to get myself to join Jonathan (who arrived the previous turn) and the suspect and defeat the suspect.

I needed three dice to get me to the suspects tile. Then we needed to score between us forty five points with our remaining dice. We totalled up our points, we had forty four points. Short by one! One lousy point!

The game had beat us. But that was the closest game we'd played. Amazingly close. Great fun.

So some editing for me, then the “directors commentary” to record and then edit back into the video, before putting up for viewing. How I ended up doing more work I don't know. All I know at the moment with the size font that will be needed in the rules book for my name in the thanks, the page will have to be a gatefold!

Pandemic Legacy April

Fenland Gamers, game night, pandemic legacy season 1

Aren't you tired of reading this first bit yet? Obviously not… The following post may or may not (OK most definitely does this week) contain spoilers for the game Pandemic Legacy. If you don't want to read the spoilers and keep the surprises for when you play, then this most certainly isn't the post for you. If that is the case see you in the next post.

Still here?

Ok let's talk April…

After being victorious last week the funding organisation rewarded us for our success by cutting our funding!

After reading our mission brief, which was the same as March's we chose our four funded events we would be playing with.

We had lost our previous starting bonus of being able to place a starting quarantine marker anywhere on the board. But we gained being able to place a garrison anywhere on the board instead. So Shanghai became our first garrison of the game, deep in COdA-403c country, with a character upgrade done to Matts character Zardoz once at the garrison he can chuck out quarantine tokens to the connected cities.

The briefing also told us to place a reminder on the third epidemic spot. Which when reached meant turning over some more cards on the legacy deck.

Our plan was to have Matt in COdA country quarantining the cities, and making use of the garrison and his upgrade, while the rest of us fought the other outbreaks and find cures.

We got the unnamed yellow disease cured, and eradicated early. But success was quickly followed by two epidemic cards. We hit that reminder token and now had to see what was being thrown at us next.

We hit an Alert, COdA was mutating!!!! There were also a lot of tabs to open. We were in for a rough ride. New stickers were being added to the rule book to cover the faded and how they are handled. Plus new stickers to mark the board with when a city becomes faded. And then…

OMG the faded victims of COdA are amazing!!! Little translucent green figures to add to the board. As Jonathan said the game is worth getting just for these alone.

All of a sudden a game about fighting disease and curing them, has turned into a zombie game!!! Ok they don't call them zombies but the faded. But they look like little zombies. This is AWESOME!

We soon after cured and eradicated Sithite (Matt), and with the player deck dwindling fast we got found a cure for C-Thatcam-Major (Debbie).

We had won against the odds! Our first upgrade chosen was to make Shanghai a starting garrison, and we also took the new unfunded event.

Finally we had to name the unnamed yellow disease, since we eradicated it. Which was given the name of Cleggmidia.

With two funded events for May, the odds are stacking up against us of succeeding. Bring the onslaught on…

Defusing the bombs in Costa

coffee shop gaming, Fenland Gamers

It's been just over a month since the last Costa gaming session, so long over due. Yesterday saw myself, Jonathan and Debbie meetup at our local Costa in town to drink a hot beverage and play a game.

I arrived at the Costa first, and the place was very busy. I was lucky to get a table, sadly not one really suitable for us to use for gaming. So while waiting for the others I was waiting for a more suitable table to come free.

Debbie showed up not long after me, then Jonathan arrived last. While the other two were getting their beverage of choice (hot chocolate) a larger more suitable table came available. I quickly nabbed it, the table needed a wipe, the tray on it taking away. But hey we had a larger table, we could play now. Then a minute later an even larger table was free, and I nabbed that instead. This table was clean! And much more suitable for us.

Considering we were about to play Bomb Squad Academy , you could look at the table moving thematically as me searching for the bomb so we could start to defuse it.

By the time Debbie and Jonathan got back to the new table with their drinks I had set the game up ready for us to play.

Debbie hadn't played the game before, so a whistle stop summary of the rules and gameplay was given.

Debbie soon got the hang of the game and took an early lead, a lead she kept into the third and final round. I was trailing in last place, not by far, I think by only three points at one time.

However in the final round Debbie kept “copying” me, and we were sharing a lot of points because we kept going for the same coloured wire trying to score the pressure plates. While we were splitting the points, Jonathan took advantage of this and stole the victory from Debbie.

So with Jonathan victorious some brief boardgame talk took place, before we parted our ways, which saw me grabbing a hotdog from the dodgy meat seller on the marketplace.

The Dark Knight Patrols The Streets of Commonville

Fenland Gamers, game night, play test
Last night saw a three player play test of The Streets of Commonville. Jo, Jonathan and myself donned our suits of blue and shields and once more pounded the pavement, uncovered evidence and “questioned” suspects to capture the wrong doer.
There had been some tweaks to the game for tonight's playtest. Some graphical like the addition of the cctv camera on the arrow counters to make them a bit more thematic. The player boards now had you controlling the upgrade from a choice of three, donuts (ability to pass a dice to another player, or reroll), another dice, or the ability to alter the value of a dice known as intuition.
Before play Jonathan made a quick adjustment to a dice that swapped the ability to get two minutes of time back to the ability of swapping an ability on your player board with one in the precinct. I did disagree with Jonathan on this, it meant the dice would give you that ability 50% of the time, and no way to get time back.
Below photo property of Jonathan
This was Jo's first time playing the game, and after a brief intro to the basics of the game, we were off fighting crime, fitting up innocent people, and eating our way through a tonne of donuts.
Early on in the game the Jonathan suspect token hit the board. It wasn't long before we were fitting him up with handcuffs and transferring him into his alter ego Dr Kinky.
Below Batman captures Dr Kinky.

The game still took an hour and half to play, and like previous play throughs didn't seem that long. That's the surprise of the game. There is virtually no down time, everyone is involved through out the game. I've pointed this out before in previous posts on the game, this fact alone I think is a big big positive of the game.

Another great play through.

 

Pandemic Legacy March

Fenland Gamers, game night, pandemic legacy season 1

Once more I issue the mandatory warning that this post may or may not contain spoilers for Pandemic Legacy. If you wish to avoid any possible spoilers stop reading now, and I'll see you in the next blog post.

Right now they have gone let's begin…

Last night saw the rescheduled play of the month of March that was meant to happen last week, but got cancelled due to illness with one of the team.

Funny enough three of the team were this week infected with some form or other of the lethal man flu (or in the case of Debs just a minor cold). Mind you I've had this cough, chesty thing since just before Christmas. It just might be time to see the doc about it.

Back to the game, before deciding what funded events we were going to use this month (because of the win we were down to six funded events that could go into the player deck), it was time to read the scenario for the month.

We were getting some military support and now able to build garrisons instead of the research centres if we wanted to. We also got two new objectives to try and achieve along side the default objective of finding cured for the three curable diseases. Our goal was to complete two out of the three objectives.

There was some confusion though with the mission card, and building garrisons. We had no counters to show a garrison had been built. The mission card told us to open up in order three items when we saw the numbers. Did that mean now, or would we be hitting these numbers later on? We played safe and decided to hold off opening them. This was very confusing, not as clear as the previous card.

We got a new possible team member to add to our rosta. Whose speciality tied in with the garrisons. Plus one of our new objectives was to build a garrison in each of the six zones on the board. The other new one was eradicate one disease.

Once we had chosen our funded events, we drew the initial outbreaks, and then decided which of our three starting research stations we were going to start from. For the last time we also got to place a quarantine marker during set up.

This was an even closer game than February. We eradicated C-Thatcam Major, it was the easiest one to do. I only needed four cards to get the cure, and also now didn't need to be in a research station to find the cure. So naturally that was the first cure we got, and we also managed to eradicate it. One objective down.

Debs and Jonathan were busy keeping COdA-403b under control using quarantine markers. Our unnamed yellow disease got cured. We just had to find a cure for Sithite.

Epidemics happened, as did the outbreaks, COdA-403b came dangerously close to costing us the game. Our planning was based around trying to get Matt and Debbie in the same city to hand a single Sithite city card to Debs, so we could complete the second objective.

This was going to be closer than the previous month, there were five cards left, three by the time it was Debbie's turn. But she had drawn the the fifth Sithite city previously, no need to meet up with Matt. Just a dash to the nearest research centre and discover the cure, all in four actions!

We had won!! But only by the thinnest of margins.

After reading the end of mission legacy card, and seeing the extra rewards to choose from, we choose our winners rewards.

Still the mystery of the garrisons existed. We decided that we had already seen them, and opened up the relevant panels and boxes. There were garrison pieces, a new upgrade of having starting garrisons, a new build garrison action. This should have been done at the start. But that wording was soooo confusing. Jonathan vowed to go read spoilers for March to see what others did. Would this have made the month easier having a garrison in Sithite territory? Would we have got an easier victory being able to build the six required garrisons? Well we will never know.

I think the wording on the mission card could have been better, less ambiguous. Or were we just missing the obvious, and being dumb?

April is going to be HARD…