Category Archives: Fenland Gamers

Fenland Gamers

Vampires and Monsters

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.

King of Tokyo Dark Edition

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.

The final scores for Vampire the Masquerade Vendetta

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.

Winning in style

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.

Final scores

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.

A civil gaming night

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.

Who got what civilisations

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.

Stay fluid

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.

Final scores

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.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner

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.

Who played what in Dune Imperium

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.

Final scores

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.

Final scores

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.

The other table

Monthly Meetup October 2021

Last night saw the first monthly meet up since global stuff kicked off.

It was looking like the trend set by the fortnightly Friday sessions of being well attended was going to continue. However we ended up with half the numbers expected turning up. Life changes plans, and the assumption was it had indeed changed the plans of those unable to attend.

However it can not be said we did not give a socially suitable amount of time for them to arrive before starting to play Dune Imperium.

I know it’s hitting the table a lot at the moment. However Marcin (a new member) had wanted to try the game as it was on his list of games to get. And who am I to disappoint?

So after a run through of the rules, the battle for Arrakis commenced.

Once again I played Duke Leto. I like the powers of the character, that discount makes a big difference. It allowed me on round three to get the extra agent and the seat on the high council. Jonathan likes playing Paul.

In this game despite having the solari to get the extra agent and on the high council in the first round I didn’t get the cards to do either in the second round. So that round ended up being a setup round.

I was also pretty slow in getting started on the score track. However I made up for that and soon caught up.

I did manage to get some good extra card draw going during the game. So I was pleased with that.

In one of the stage 3 conflict rounds near the end I did play an intrigue card to help Jonathan win the conflict against Marcin, and get me third place. It didn’t matter at that point if Jonathan got two victory points. But it did if Marcin got them as he would have been a point away from victory.

Our game nearly had me winning in round 9 but I couldn’t scrape out that extra victory point to do so. Which meant for the majority of the last round there was a three way tie for first place until Marcin bought a Spice Must Flow Card in his reveal stage to get the winning point.

In that final round I managed to avoid Jonathan stealing a victory point from me, and failed to return the favour. Which felt good to deny him that. Would have been better to have flipped his plan on him and to have won. That would have been a sweet sweet victory. But sadly in this reality it never happened.

Final scores

It was another fun evening of gaming. Looking forward to the next club night. And a big big thank you to our hosts for the evening The Luxe cinema.

The spice flowed

Last night saw the (for now) fortnightly Friday Evening gaming for Fenland Gamers at our regular hosts The Luxe cinema.

As usually I got there early to set up the tables. Some-one has to do it. It saves time and means some-one is there to welcome folks as they arrive.

Last nights session was one of our best attended, if not the best, with eight members turning up for gaming plus one member of the general public who joined us.

We split into two groups for gaming, of four and five. Although thinking about it we could have gone to three groups of three.

However we did what we did, which saw Jeff, Jonas, Rachel and myself battle over the planet Arakas in Dune Imperium. Whilst the other group played Istanbul, followed by Saboteur.

This was the first time I’d played Imperium with the full player count. Whilst the others were new to the game and chose from the one pip player boards, I went with Duke Leto Atreides a two pip player board.

I got the extra agent/worker pretty early on. What I found interesting was in the previous two plays with the lower player counts I didn’t think the extra worker made much of a difference, gave very little advantage. However in this full player count game I think it made a big difference.

Intrigue cards also proved to be very impactful in this game too. Plus we were seeing more cards in the trade row, and got to see some cards that required you to move down a space on an influence track as a payment. I hadn’t seen them come out before.

In this game apart from the opening water you get at setup, I never had water after that all game. I did get much spice either. I was all about the solari (money).

I think Jeff is correct and we played the Alliance rule incorrectly. Which needs double checking before the next game. So that kind of puts a big asterisk next to this win.

However even with the cloud over the victory I won. And I’ll take that. Imperium still pips Lost Ruins for me.

A much needed gaming session

Friday I was feeling I needed some game time. So on the clubs discord server I put out the call to see who was free for some gaming Saturday afternoon.

Luckily with a slight adjustment to the initial suggested start time two others could make it.

The initial games I had suggested playing were Lost Ruins of Arnak, Tapestry or Funkoverse (if there were only 2 of us). But during Saturday morning I had been tempted to take Dune Imperium. Even Wingspan for a fleeting moment was considered. It was a close call because which ever of the games I took I’d have to teach it because the game would be new to at least one person.

In the end I went with putting Lost Ruins of Arnak and Love Letter 2nd edition in the bag.

As usual I went a little early to start getting set up. I like to maximise the game time for the others playing.

I was still setting up when Jeff arrived, and almost finished when Julie turned up. Which meant I could start teaching the game to our noob to the game Julie.

Lost Ruins of Arnak

I like Lost Ruins but I think this second play cements my preference for Imperium. Well for the time being. The expansion may change that. After all the expansion does add one of the things I like better about Imperium the asynchronous player boards.

There is also a nagging feeling that in both plays we are not discovering enough new dig sites and focusing too much on the research track. It seems the game is more about racing up the research track than anything else. Although the margin between Jeff’s final score and mine was the two sites he discovered and defeating their guardians.

I did like how the blocking of some of the second spaces on the base camp spots in the three player game is random.

I did get some cool extra card draw going on, and at times despite there being fewer rounds than Imperium felt that I was doing more on my turns.

Jeff asked if the deck building side was more important in Imperium than Lost Ruins. And I think it is. Or more like it has a bigger emphasis. Although I do like how new cards in Lost Ruins are added to the bottom of your deck, so they come into play quicker.

The scores were much closer this time with Jeff still winning and starting his undefeated run with the game. Sadly I still managed to come last with a slightly better score than the first play.

Final score for Lost Ruins of Arnak

We finished off the afternoon with a game of Love Letter 2nd edition. Which was another new game to Julie. But this is soooo much quicker to teach.

The second edition is an update by Asmodee after taking over Love Letter from AEG. It increases the max player count from 4 to 6 players. The tokens have been upgraded from wooden cubes to plastic disks, and new art. Plus to accommodate the extra player count there are more cards, from 16 to 21. Which also sees some new characters/cards.

Firstly the number of guards has increased from 5 copies to 6. Two copies of new card The Spy (value 0) wins you a point if you were the only player to play or discard a spy during the round. Which is a pretty cool additional way to win that extra point each round. Finally there are two copies of the Chancellor (value 6) allows you to draw two new cards, add those to your hand, then place two cards of your choice on the bottom of the deck. It’s an interesting card. Great for burying a card and finding one you want.

Love Letter 2nd Edition

At the end of the day it’s still Love Letter and still great fun. Although this version will replace the first edition, especially when we want to make use of the higher player count. It doesn’t come close to knocking Love Letter: Batman off its perch as my favourite version of Love Letter.

Final scores for Love Letter 2nd Edition

As you can see Julie won, and once again I came last.

Despite coming last in both games I had a good time. It was exactly what I needed. However the heavy rain as we were leaving wasn’t! A big thank you to Jeff and Julie for taking the time out of busy weekend schedules to play some board games.

Jonathan rides the great worm to victory!

What a Friday.

It started out taking yet more clothes to the Salvation Army drop off spot in the Tesco car park. And ended with Jonathan somehow winning our second game of Dune Imperium!

I hadn’t planned on gaming. But after the roads in the area decided to throw spanners in the works for the majority of those planning to go to the Friday gaming session. Tied in with the petrol panic buying taking out others (what is this 2002 again?) I didn’t want Jonathan and Julie to be left high and dry at the last minute.

So I quickly got ready, grabbed a bag that already had games in it, and left for The Luxe.

I set up the new round table, and awaited the arrival of the others. Because I hadn’t made it to the previous Friday gaming session I hadn’t met Julie before. So introductions were made. Then Jonathan arrived and a game was chosen for the evening.

Our game for the evening was Dune Imperium.

I thought Dune Imperium played ok with two players. But with three it was great. Taking into account setup, teaching the game to Julie, the whole thing took about two and a half hours to play. Which is pretty good.

If I was asked to choose between Dune Imperium and Lost Ruins of Arnak, which I both really like. Imperium edges it for me.

The unique player abilities (which I believe the Arnak expansion adds), the combat, twice as many rounds, the influence tracks, the worker placement plus the reveal stage, dual use cards, the take that element. Oh and that the scoring is much closer. Just tip it in favour of Imperium.

Next time I play Imperium I’m going to use one of the more difficult leaders to play. The fact they rank the leaders in order of difficulty to play is a great little touch.

Whilst playing we were asked a couple of times about the game we were playing. Now get this one of them had met/knew Frank Herbert! How frickin cool is that? Plus what are the odds that whilst we are playing a game based on the Dune books in a small single screen cinema, in a Fenland market town (some would argue with delusions of grandeur, after all it is the Capital of the Fens) we would bump into such a person?

I had a fun time despite everything going on. It was great meeting a new club member.

Dune Imperium

Yesterday Jonathan and I met up for a learning game of Dune Imperium at The Luxe. It was also a chance to use the new 4ft diameter round table I got for club use.

I’m not going to write much about this as I’m not really in the mood for obvious reasons.

Ideally Dune Imperium should be played by 3 or 4 players. However it does have a deck of cards to provide an AI for a simulated third player (this is also used in solo play as well). There is also a free app that can be used instead of the cards. The app does the heavy lifting of shuffling the deck and interrupting what each card does. And that is what we used in our play.

All I’m going to say is I liked Dune Imperium, and not just because I won.

At the moment I’m processing a lot of guilt over being away from Nan for a couple of hours gaming. It’s during this time that she passed away in her sleep. I know even if I’d been there I couldn’t have done anything.

My only comfort is that the fur balls were with her. They have been her guardian angels since we got them.

Any way the posts will be infrequent for a while I think.