Jonathan has bought a trophy for our “annual” Bohemian Villages competition that is held on Christmas Eve.
Finally our friendly rivalry over this game goes to a new level of bragging rights.
As current champion I am the bookies favourite to retain the title.
Naturally, and you have been warned, there may be more smack talk as we get nearer to the day.
Friday evening saw some Commander action taking place. This time it was against some ex-students.
The first game we played saw me take my Eldrazi deck out for a spin. But it was too slow, and none of us could stop Bob doing the inevitable and defeat us all. Once he had his Emrakul, The Aeons Torn out it was game over. I wasn’t finding any answers. I definitely wasn’t getting to my big Eldrazi hitters. All we could do was say “gg” through gritted teeth.
Our second game saw my Ur-dragon deck hit the table. Two cool things happened in this game. Firstly I got to play Tiamat. Which is an obnoxious card to play. Being able to get from your deck your five most nastiest dragons is obscene. It puts a big target on you as your opponents know what you just got.
Secondly despite having over 100 life I was still able to have my dragon horde swoop in and kill Bob. Giving double strike to them all really helped. Sadly only 20 points of that damage was Commander damage. Despite me trying to find a way to get that final single point of damage.
Taking Bob out meant I was also dead. But there was nothing I could do to stop the silly number of hydra tokens that were coming my way.
It was a fun evening of Commander. But my losing streak was continuing.
Saturday saw not only Diego playing Tapestry but Jonathan joined us as well.
Both had not played before. But that didn’t scare me off from teaching the game with Plans and Ploys (P&P), and the Arts and Architecture (A&A) expansions thrown in to the mix.
I had rigged the tech and tapestry decks so that we got to see the new cards from the newest expansion A&A. Plus we only chose civilisations from the two expansions. I also didn’t use the advanced capital city mats from A&A. However I did shuffle up both sets of landmark cards from the expansions before drawing four of them.
Even taking into account the above setting up, plus the addition of the fifth track and masterpiece cards. I don’t think with the expansions added into the mix there was too much additional stuff, or over complication to the game to make it too much for new players to take in.
I specifically advanced on the new Arts track because I wanted to see it in use, and try the new masterpiece cards.
I have to say I liked the new masterpiece cards. But not the card size! Can’t sleeve them unless I cut some sleeves down.
Loved being able to use the inspiration tiles to upgrade one of the resource tracks.
I was already a fan of the landmark cards after they were introduced in P&P. So having more of them is just great.
Another thing I like about the arts track is that you choose which type of income building you move to your capital city. It made hitting the landmark card trigger I had very easy.
I need to sleep on the above and get some more games in so I can expand on those very basic initial thoughts above. At the moment there is a germ of a thought that the above is too powerful. But is it? Does it balance out if others are also doing it?
I think this was the most I’d done completing rows and columns in my capital city. It felt pretty cool. It certainly looked pretty cool.
I knew Diego would like the game. But would Jonathan?
He did indeed like it. And that’s despite getting salty over the dystopia tapestry card I played allowing me to grab any landmark on the landmark board. Naturally I went with the tallest (on the off chance there was a tie for first place).
Plus the end of turn trigger for one of his landmark cards was an issue. Jonathan will explain better than me in the comments his issue with this. For me it was not an issue.
Anyway here are the final scores showing I had indeed broken the week long losing streak I’d been on.
You know how this post is ending.
Last night was the monthly club meet up for December.
Unlike the Friday session numbers which have been incredible (for us) this get togethers attendance was on par with previous ones.
We split into two groups of three. Which saw Gavin, Colin and Jonathan playing Ticket to Ride, followed by Love Letter: Batman.
Whilst Julie, Macin and myself played a game Macin bought along Adrenaline.
The boardgame stats app reminded my it was way back in 2017 when I last played Adrenaline.
It was nice to have this back to the table.
Naturally a refresher was needed on the rules. But things soon came back to me, and we were all running around, shooting each other with cool weapons, picking up items, and trying to get the killing shot.
Adrenaline is as fun as I remember, and I’m glad Macin bought his copy along.
This morning on my day off I got to play a game of Vampire the Masquerade Rivals with Diego.
Today it was the two new clans from the new Wolf and Rat expansion doing battle.
Diego chose the nosferatu deck, whilst I went with gangrel.
I got off to a good start but seemed to run out of steam in the middle to late game.
Although I did burn one of Diego’s vampires. Which was pretty cool.
However the nosferatu agenda is pretty powerful, and soon allows them to catch up any lead others might have, and then pull ahead.
After being beaten by Diego we had enough time to do a learning game of Fields of Green (the game I bought off Gavin last night).
I got Fields of Green over Amongst the Stars because of the theme. With the farming theme I’m more likely to get it to the table with Jonathan. He doesn’t do sci-fi (amongst other themes).
I really liked this engine builder.
A two player game is slightly different to a regular three or four player game. So I’d like to try the game at its higher player count.
It plays quite quickly really for two players. But with the higher player count a draft mode is added at the start of each round. Which I’m sure will extend the play time.
But there is a lot to like about the game, but I’ll talk more about that stuff after the next play.
In the meantime the final scores below will confirm that I’m on a three game losing streak at the moment.
Ok having played a new to me game my challenge stats have been updated. So let’s share that progress.
Finally it’s time to end on the usual high note of Jonathan’s photos.
Last night saw me staying up way past my bedtime playing boardgames! Oh what a naughty stop out I was.
Ok let me explain.
Now that for the foreseeable future I have gainful employment which requires me to start at 5am (or 7am on a Sunday). As you can imagine I go to sleep around 7pm (Nico and Loki permitting!). Which coincidentally was the start time of our gaming session last night. But careful planning meant I knew I didn’t have to be up before the crack of dawn, and in fact could sleep in.
All I had to worry about was not falling asleep at the gaming table. After all with Jonathan and Jeff my opponents for the evening who knows what they would have been egged on to do by Nathan.
Our game for the evening was Tinners’ Trail. And like every learning game and first plays we do, we threw caution to the wind, ignored common sense, good practice, and read the rulebook at the table for the very first time.
Look when we read the rulebook out loud at the table, this is no Friends Reunion table reading of an old episodes script. It’s a hard thing to do. You are reading aloud, possibly paraphrasing, trying to parse what you are reading, trying to listen to the others at the table, answer questions. You get the picture. It’s like a Jim Davidson comedy routine waiting to happen.
But sometimes this is the only way we can do it. We let people know in advance it’s a learning game and all that implies. It’s why usually it’s a separate session from a regular club night (although as you know that’s not always the case). Those of us attending accept this and any other caveats.
Onto the game itself Tinners’ Trail.
Basically the game is about mining enough resources to sell, and then with that money buy victory points. And you do that over four rounds.
But it’s how you get those resources and how much they are worth that’s the interesting bit.
I decided very successful to drain Jonathan and Jeff of their opening cash and action points during round one so that I could pick up mining areas cheaply, and boost my cash balance. So I used my cards to help bluff and put my plan into action. Another element of this plan was to push up the bidding so the winner spent more. It’s that push your luck element of knowing when to drop out before getting stung paying over the odds for a rubbish plot. Which Jonathan did fall into the trap of once or twice, as did Jeff.
By the end of the first round I had no cards left. It wasn’t a drawback for the later rounds. Or it was, or should have been but I wasn’t punished for it. This is quite an aggressive thing to do that could back fire. Luckily in this instance it didn’t.
I like how the price for the two resources is determined at the start of each round by rolling three d6 dice (although they were not proper numbered d6). Which means that it could possibly be more practical focusing on mining one resource over another because it’s worth lots more.
Recently games that have a fixed number of rounds like Lost Ruins of Arnak or even Wingspan have left me feeling I’d like one or two more rounds. But Tinners’ Trail felt just the right length.
What you do get left wanting more of each round is more action points to spend so you can do more. But I also like that whole you have ten action points, here are the actions you can do and the action point cost of each. It makes you focused and trying to work out the optimum order to do them in.
I also like how resources within an area you are mining are limited. So you have to manage when the optimum time to mine them is based on their market cost.
Naturally there were one or two misplays and/or mistakes. But that’s something you accept is going to happen in a learning game. After all it’s a learning game!
But the important thing is I won. Quite comfortably in the end.
Tinners’ Trail is an enjoyable game. I’d definitely play it again. Would I be as successful next time? Who knows.
And before we finish with the last bit of the post the photo by Jonathan from the evening. I’d like to say a big big thank you to our hosts The Luxe for being so splendid.
Last night saw a Commander session at The Luxe with myself, Diego and new member Sam battling it.
Whilst Diego was playing with some of Sam’s decks. I played my Ur-Dragon deck that I hadn’t played in a long long time.
Some new cards had been added during that time, such as Tiamat, and one or two Nicol Bolas cards. So the deck was long overdue an outing.
The first game of the evening was over pretty quickly. I hadn’t hit my land drops, didn’t get to any of the mana rocks or ramp. Diego was doing much better with the enchantments deck he was playing, however neither of us had any answers to the problems Sam was presenting on the battle field. Especially when damage was getting doubled.
I stuck with the dragons for game two. Sam went to a new deck, and Diego stuck with the enchantments (I really should have made a note of the Commanders, next time).
By all rights I should have lost this game. However thanks to mercy or pity (take your pick which) from Sam I didn’t. I was down to 8 life. Sam needed help taking on Diego. So a deal was made. I wouldn’t attack him if he let me live.
That bought me time to get pieces into place and get dragons on the battlefield. My dragons would be coming in with haste and dealing damage based on the number of dragons I controlled to a player or Planeswalker. So when Sam finished off Diego I was able to play some dragons and chip away at his life, and then swing in for lethal and victory.
The final game of the evening I broke out the new Eldrazi deck. Sam and Diego swapped decks also. They both had life gain decks. Both adding counters to creatures. But the one Diego was playing was generating counters and tokens like crazy. On top of all that life gain.
I was going under the radar for much of the early game. I had plenty of land but no cheap creatures to get out. Rounds 6 and 7 were the earliest I was going to get anything out. Field of the Dead was going to help me get some 2/2 zombie blockers out.
Despite drawing Helm of the Host turn 2 I sat on it for most of the game. It might have given a big hint to my game plan and put a target on my back.
I was forced to play my Commander so that I could trash my land that enabled me to fetch a colourless creature. This deck isn’t built around playing the Commander. It’s a nice +1/+1 effect if out. But not a crucial part of the plan. However as I said I was forced into this because Diego was getting out of hand, and his flyer with 19 counters on could kill me his next turn. So I went and got Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre and took it out. Diego swore he wasn’t going to do that, but attack Sam with it. But previous turns that creature had been used to attack me. I wasn’t convinced.
Some how I got another turn and that’s when I played Helm of the Host and attached it to Ulamog. The token then swung at Diego. It was pretty much my last act of the game. Diego crushed me on his turn.
It was then a battle of the life gain decks. Both Diego and Sam broke the 100 health barrier. Neither were showing signs of getting the killing blow. The film for the evening had ended and the poor staff of The Luxe were cleaning up. A draw was called.
It was a fun evening. Sam’s decks were awesome and scary at the same time. Especially the one Diego was playing at the end. Can’t wait to play some more Commander.
I think if my maths is correct (and I’m sure Jonathan will confirm or point out my glaring mistake) we had 11 at last nights Friday gaming shindig. Which potentially makes it the best attended gaming session so far.
However being victims of our own success and our hosts cutting down on the available area we could set up and play in (they had cordoned off an area for their Christmas tree and seasonal decorations) things were a little cramped around our two tables. Luckily we didn’t need the third table up as that would have been an issue.
We settled on two gaming tables of a group of five and a group of six.
Jeff, Nathaniel, Rachel, Marcin and myself made up one table. So whilst the others played some game or other on their table, we played King of Tokyo Dark Edition.
I love the art in this new edition of the game. But then again I liked the art of the original version. Although obviously the colour palette used in the all new art work is darker.
The new wickedness mechanic is an interesting addition. It adds a new way to power up during the game. I didn’t manage to get one of the new wickedness tiles. But the ones Rachel and Nathaniel got looked like pretty cool bonuses to have.
The components in this edition live truly up to the deluxe description. The lightning bolt shape of the energy cube, the shaped tokens, the embossed box.
It’s a really nice edition of the game, and it’s still fun to play. But you have to like take that games, the Yahtzee mechanic, and player elimination.
In our game Marcin managed to get a points victory by hitting that magic number of 20.
Our second game of the evening was a learning game of Vampire the Masquerade Vendetta. And I mean learning game as in a live table reading of the rulebook as we set up and tried learning the game.
Vendetta is at its heart an area control game. But with a twist! Each player gets a random vampire clan that has a unique deck. And although everyone starts off with the same two named cards. What they actually do is different for each player. Then at the start of each of the three game rounds you draw two cards from your deck, select one to keep and one to put at the bottom of your deck. So slowly over the rounds your hand size gets bigger giving you more options each round.
There is however a catch! In each round you don’t get to play all your cards. You are always left with one card in hand. Which is cool as it means your opponents aren’t sure exactly which cards you have played. Especially if you also played cards face down on your turn. The bluffing you can do in this game is incredible.
I love all this. But also how you build up a picture of what cards your opponents have, but you never have a complete picture as there is always that new card you have no idea about.
I think a player aid would have been useful for players to remind them of the round structure. But that’s a minor quibble.
As you can see I ended up Prince of the City.
Breaking from the new normal of finishing the post off with some of Jonathan’s photos from the evening (I’m not sure he took any) I’ll finish with an update on the progress made on the three challenges I set my self.
UPDATE 22/11/21: The natural order has been restored! Plus there is a great comment from Jonathan on this post too.
Our second monthly meet-up since club gaming sessions started back up happened last night.
Earlier it looked in doubt whether Jonathan or I could make it! For me it was dependent on whether mum felt up to dog sitting. She had been looking after them for most of the day while I was at work. Oh yeah I have a part time job that I started this week.
Luckily things worked out for both of us to be able to attend. Unusually for me I was the last one to arrive at The Luxe. Despite being on time. I’d been caught up with phone calls with family and friends, plus catching up with a neighbour after delivering a parcel that had been left with mum for them. So I wasn’t late, just not my usual early self.
There were 5 at the table and it was decided to play Wingspan “fully loaded” (all the expansions). I know Jonathan and I had both said we’d never play Wingspan at its full player count again. But here we were setting up for 5 players.
After a rules rundown for Colin who hadn’t played the game before, we started play.
I’d forgotten how long a max player count of Wingspan can take. I think including setup (which is pretty quick), rules explanation, the total time playing was a tad over 3 hours.
To be fair it didn’t seem that long.
But it’s funny to think it was only the previous Friday that we did a 4 player Civilization A New Dawn game in less time than this fully loaded 5 player game of Wingspan. I think Tapestry was around this play time as well. However Jonathan won’t play those games. The theme, and type of game aren’t ones he enjoys. And the duration of last nights game I suspect pushed the limits for Jonathan.
It certainly did for me, but for other reasons. I’d told mum I’d only be a couple hours! So I did have to apologise when I got home. The saving grace was she could have an easy day to day and not get up early.
The final scores are below. As you can see it was a very comprehensive win for Diego. And done in such style by achieving the holy grail of our two achievements for playing Wingspan of filling up all the spaces on the player board. But not only that Diego got the other achievement as well of getting a score over a hundred. And I think this was also the first physical game to break that barrier. So bravo Diego.
And finally we finish with Jonathan’s photos of the evening.
It was a great evening of gaming, great banter, great fun, with great hosts.
Friday evening once again saw The Luxe hosting The Fenland Gamers. Once again the evening was well attended. In fact if there hadn’t been a couple of last minute dropouts due to life stuff, we would have been up to three tables and our best ever attended session.
Before hand I had put a call out for interest in playing Civilization A New Dawn (CAND) with the Terra Incognita (TI) expansion. It would be tight but it should be playable in the time we usually have for a game night.
As normal I got to The Luxe ahead of time to get the tables set up, and because it was a “big” game I was playing start setting up the board.
Luckily I have organised my copy of CAND so that everything each player needs (other than choosing a civilization) is in one bag. It speeds things up both setting up and tearing down.
As a group we decided to choose our civilisations randomly from new ones in the TI expansion.
Then it was time to go over the rules. It wasn’t the best explanation, I was rusty (nearly 3 years since I last played it) and combat was left until one of us needed to do it.
TI changes things up pretty drastically for CAND. From setting up the board, introduction of fortresses and the objective cards related to them, exploring, districts, armies and combat, unique civilisation focus cards, new event dial, extended focus bar and government tiles. Oh and nearly forgot a fifth player (which should only be used with the expansion).
I enjoyed CAND. It did give that civ like experience in a streamlined game. And I really loved the focus track. However! With the addition of TI CAND gets taken to a new level for me. Spoiler alert, I won’t be playing CAND without the expansion. Yes it’s that good.
The unique civilisation focus cards make each civilisation feel even more unique than they already are. I love the growing map from exploration (something I forgot in game I could do). Fortresses were interesting. I liked that controlling them were victory conditions that if you lost control meant you lost that victory point. Which is the opposite to the other victory conditions, which once gained you don’t lose. So the fortresses become ways to deny an opponent from winning.
I liked the addition of armies and the tweaks to combat. It just felt better. It’s certainly an improvement. A big improvement. The government tiles are a nice addition, allowing a focus card with one on to be activated earlier but act as if it was one or two spaces more advanced depending on the tile. Districts is another great addition and can be very powerful when activated.
Naturally the event dial has changed to cater for the additions to the game. I also like how now when the appropriate space is reached on the event dial wonders get a trade token placed on them. This acts as a reduction to the cost of buying the wonder. When a second trade token will be placed on a wonder all tokens are removed off the wonder and it is discarded, and the one underneath revealed. I love how this means the wonder trade row does not remain static and stale.
As you can see from the photo above (I played red) I was cut off from everyone else. My path blocked by a fortress and a city-state. I failed on two or three attempts to capture the fortress (bad die rolls). My wagons couldn’t get passed the city-state. You can see why I’m kicking myself after the fact about forgetting to explore.
However despite not achieving a single objective and coming last I still had an enjoyable game. Jeff won. His civilisation ability would have been perfect for where I was on the board.
As is now the new normal for these club posts I end with a couple of photos taken by Jonathan.
Looking forward to our monthly meet up this coming Wednesday.
Well the plans for getting Tapestry and it’s expansion Plans and Ploys did change. One of the players had to drop out. We knew it was a possibility. One we hoped wouldn’t happen, but that’s life in the current world events. It was out of the control of everyone.
However as Confucius said ‘The green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm.’ a last minute plea for players was answered with a maybe. Our plan was still alive but we wouldn’t know until mid day if it would survive.
But survive it did, so Marcin, Julie and myself met at The Luxe to build our civilisations and see which one would be the victorious.
I had one aim in this game. I wanted to get into space. I’d never done it before and it was something cool I wanted to do. Even if doing so meant I didn’t win.
Naturally the Plans and Ploys adds more tapestry cards, more civilisations, more technologies, more tiles. And that sort of stuff is always welcome. However the new landmark cards I liked. All three of us got our personal landmarks out during the game. Which was cool. I liked how they gave you something to possibly aim for.
I think the title of this blog post and the Confucius quote best describes my approach to Tapestry when playing. You need to be able to adapt to changing circumstances, mainly from the tapestry cards you draw or play. At one point I was planning to play one tapestry card on my income phase however because of a conquer action that Marcin took I decided to play a different tapestry card to exploit that instead.
I managed to draw a few tapestry cards early on which included two trap cards. Which I did use. The first time I used one was with Marcin attacking the central tile that I controlled. Sadly he had one of the new cards that countered a trap card! Foiled. However the second time that Marcin tried taking over one of my lands the trap card was successful.
Somehow my civilisation did manage to get into space and discover a monolith (one of the new tiles). All very 2001 A Space Odyssey. But so cool. Getting into space didn’t disappoint.
Marcin was the first of us to do the final income round, and in doing so set the score of 136 that Julie and I had to try and beat in our final income rounds.
Julie was next and did really well to get over 50 victory points to take her into first place with 138 points.
Then it was my turn. For the majority of the game I had been languishing well behind the other two. My final two ages saw me catch up and move into second place. But could I get enough points to win? I wasn’t sure I could. I thought I’d end up last. However after my final income round I slide into first place by a point.
It was a very very close game in the end. But whether you win by a single point (as I did today) or by a country mile it’s still just a win at the end of the day.
Just realised as I write this post after the fact I missed 10 points for reaching the end of a development track! Doh!
It was a great afternoon gaming, great to get Tapestry to the table again, great hosts, and great friends.
Oh the title of this post I took from S.W.A.T., it’s what the team leader Hondo says to his team before they leave the tactical vehicle to respond to an incident.
Two weeks has just flown by. Last night saw another club night of gaming on a Friday evening at our fantastic hosts The Luxe Cinema.
Once again the evening was well attended. And that’s despite life forcing two attendees to stay away until they are clean again! So instead of 10 attending we had 8.
I’d spent the afternoon combining the Oceania expansion for Wingspan into my copy of the game, in the hope it might get to the table in the evening.
However I’d forgotten Gavin had wanted to try Dune Imperium which I also had with me. So that once more hit the table. I’m not complaining I love the game. I got to try another leader Helena Richese, which was forced on me because Julie took Duke Leto this time. I do think the next couple of club nights I’ll be leaving the game at home, unless someone asks me to bring it along.
You can see below who played what in this game.
I really liked Helena and her on going ability as it changed drastically how I played the game. Basically I didn’t have to worry about those spaces unless I wanted the mentat. It took the pressure off taking them before anyone else. The signet ring ability was also pretty cool. For me I was pretty restrained in using it to hate remove a card to deny the others. I only did that once to remove a card that when purchased pushed the player up one spot on all the influence tracks.
Like our game of Vampire the Masquerade Rivals, Gavin’s deck hated him! Which tainted his experience a little I think. It’s fair to say that Gavin didn’t enjoy Dune Imperium. Part of that was having to play cards with the relevant symbol on to go to a space. Often there would be a space he’d want to go to but not have the card to do it. I don’t see that as an issue. I’ve experienced it. I had it in the previous games, and I had it in this one. However I looked at what I could do, and tried to use those to set up a big future turn.
I was pretty chuffed that I got both Jessica cards and got to play them together. They combo nicely.
This game went to the last conflict round. Up for grabs were two influence track positions for the winner. This was crucial to my plan. Diego and I were neck and neck. I’d got two intrigue cards that would get me victory points. However I failed on one of them because I was short by 1 persuasion to buy one of the spice must flow cards. That would have nabbed me 2 victory points if I’d had enough!
I did have enough spice to buy the other victory point though.
The crucial part of my plan? Oh that was to win the combat, jump up two spaces on the Fremen influence track and take the Fremen alliance from Diego. Basically forcing a 2 point swing. Diego would lose a point and I’d gain one. That’s how things unfolded. My forces stormed to victory on the combat phase. And the victory was even more sweet having pulled off this point steal.
Whilst basking in the glow of victory we decided to play For Sale.
I hadn’t played For Sale before. So after a quick run through of the rules from Gavin, bidding commenced.
There really isn’t much to the game.
However I enjoyed the bidding round. I like the choices you have to make. Like when to drop out, or do you try and force the price up to drain your opponents of money? I did deliberately start the bidding high on one occasion to drain the others of money. I think that worked this game as I was able to pick up the two highest value cards.
The purchase round was also fun. I liked the playing of cards blind then all revealing at the same time. I think it was easy for me to get the two highest value cards. All I had to do was save the two highest cards for those rounds. I also through away my lowest cards when there was no 0 cost card to get.
Obviously this time these tactics worked for me as I won.
I liked the game. It’s relatively quick to play and teach. Has some decision making to make. It’s fun. A nice filler game.
I finish this post about a great evening gaming (any evening when I win the games I play is great) with a picture of the other table and some photos taken by Jonathan. I’m sure Jonathan will be kind to us and leave a comment sharing which games they played.
