There is no mid week games this week. No Vampire Wednesday Morning with Diego. No Commander with Gavin and Diego.
There is however a club night this Friday.
The first club night since world events meant they had to be stopped.
I’m pretty excited about it but also a tad anxious.
If all come who said they are coming, this will be the best attended Friday night session ever. Plus there is also the possibility that the numbers may be more if we get members turning up that hadn’t replied to the event.
With so many coming I don’t think we have enough table space.
There is our 6ft x 3ft folding club table. Which even splitting into two groups would be cramped. Ideally we would be three gaming groups on the night. Which means three tables.
The club table could get six round it, three each end, as long as the games being played are not space hogs.
Hopefully Jonathan, the manager of The Luxe (our hosts) and myself can work something out.
“It’s been a long time since I rock and rolled It’s been a long time since I did the stroll Ooh let me get it back, let me get it back Let me get it back, baby, where I come from” Led Zepplin, Rock and Roll
It’s been a long time since we gamed at The Luxe.
But last night we finally returned to our gracious hosts for a test gaming session with limited attendance.
The plan was hold a game night at The Luxe. See how it went. Review the evening and make a decision about restarting regular club nights.
Our game for the evening saw Lost Ruins of Arnak hit the table. A game that joined my collection over a year ago and remained unplayed until last night. I hadn’t even punched the cardboard until Tuesday when I discovered I hadn’t even done that.
Naturally I arrived a few minutes before the designated start time for the evening to get set up. It’s a little thing but it does ensure that the majority of our game time is spent playing and not setting up and packing away.
And that brings me to my main comment about the Lost Ruins of Arnak. It’s a lot of setting up. Lots of fiddling about with mixing up tokens and placing them on the board, shuffling decks, shuffling of piles of tiles.
Once you start playing it’s a lovely game, a great mash up of deck building and worker placement. I can see why this was getting a lot of buzz when it came out.
I love how it’s 5 rounds and that’s it. It forces you to focus. And seems a popular mechanic in some great games (Imperial Settlers and Wingspan come to mind). Like those other games you are left wanting at least one more turn. Which I like.
Also like those other games you start off not being able to do much and as the game progresses you are able to do more and more on your turn as you buy items or artifacts to make your deck more powerful.
Naturally there were misplays and a need to refer to the rule book on a regular basis through out the evening. Our impression of the rule book was it wasn’t great. We found trying to find information not easy due to it being spread over multiple pages, if it had what you were looking for. Plus on more than one occasion we found that it was also unclear in the information it was giving. I think our best example of this was artifact cards, buying them and using the ability straight away.
I loved that new cards (unless an artifact) went on the bottom of the deck. Getting to use the new cards quicker is cool.
The research board is a great addition as you race the other players up it to claim bonuses before the others.
I was surprised how few sites we explored to. In the end there were 4. I think it’s more that we all got distracted by the research board at the cost of exploring.
Photos taken by Jonathan and therefore his
Jeff took the honours and romped home to the victory. Sadly I came last by a point to Jonathan. So now I got to live with that until I can return the favour and crush him.
The general consensus around the table was we liked Lost Ruins of Arnak. Definitely a game we want to get back to the table (aren’t they all?)
It was felt the evening went well. We all felt safe enough. The precautions our host have in place to mitigate risk were excellent. Although the cinema wasn’t busy, no crowds in the foyer. So we decided to go ahead with holding regular gaming sessions again. But at a slow, cautious pace. What that means is instead of weekly gaming sessions on a Friday they will be fortnightly. As for the monthly meet up. Before starting that up we decided to get some feedback from the club members about the best night to hold that.
For those interested we are asking that those attending are either vaccinated against covid and/or have taken a LFT (which is negative) in addition to any requirements that our hosts The Luxe require.
I’m hoping to get Dune Imperium, Star Wars Outer Rim, Rolling Rome and Vampire the Masquerade Vendetta to the table over the coming weeks.
Before you know it over a week has passed since the last post.
Not much has happened to share on here. Obviously world events are still putting a dampener on things like playing board games in person. Plus there hasn’t been much online gaming using apps (outside of Star Realms and Epic the Card Game) either.
My “secret” project is going slowly. I’m not sure what folks will make of it. It is a departure for me and this blog. Which I hope folks will like.
On the Kickstarter side of things Vampire the Masquerade: Rivals finally landed (after it hit retailers).
Naturally I’ve sleeved it all up with the official sleeves that came as part of the Kickstarter. I’ve even used a couple of the Stonemaier token containers to surprisingly store the tokens for the game.
From a recent Renegade live stream it was revealed what the next expansion will be after the first expansion Blood & Alchemy comes out. It will be called The Wolf and The Rat. But it was also revealed they have a third expansion that has finished production and a fourth currently being worked on. Both of them currently remain unnamed.
And yes for the record I have pre-ordered Blood & Alchemy. The bonus for doing so are a couple of alt art vampire cards, one for each clan.
Vampire the Masquerade: Rivals first 3 OP kits
Another big reveal from the stream were the contents of the first three OP kits for Vampire Wednesdays. These will be available for your FLGS to order, or for those that can’t get their local store interested, or get to a store to participate you can order direct from Renegade. These OP kits introduce three new vampires that will eventually be available on the Renegade website to purchase.
I got the season 0 OP kit as part of my Kickstarter and plan to get these as well. These will form part of my attempt to kick off a Rivals scene in Wisbech once Fenland Gamers starts up gaming sessions again. Although my track record in doing that sort of thing is pretty poor.
Which brings me nicely onto the news that Jonathan and I have had chats between ourselves and also with our hosts The Luxe about when and how we will start gaming sessions back. Taking into account current world events we are eyeing September as our target month for once more holding meet ups.
Hopefully in the meantime those corrupt, lying bullies in charge of running our country will not screw things up (although history is not on their side on that front) and we will indeed be able to safely once more gather to roll dice, shuffle cards and move pieces of plastic around a board.
On the D&D news front apparently next week (Tuesday) instead of releasing stories setting up the next MtG set, because that set is a D&D/MtG standalone crossover set, WotC will be releasing five free D&D adventures for players to download. These 15 to 20 page adventures are aimed at tier 2 characters, specifically levels 8 – 10.
Hopefully the next thing you read on here is the “secret” project. But you know me!
Last night there was another virtual game night for Fenland Gamers.
Sadly it was just Jonathan and myself that were able to virtually meet up to play games. So mirroring one or two of the real life meet ups of yester year.
At Jonathan’s suggestion we played a game of Wingspan. It’s not as if I’m going to say no. We both love the game. So I started a three player game with an AI player taking the third spot.
I should screen shot my opening cards and discuss my decisions about what to keep, etc. I’ll do that for the next game. In the meantime all I can remember about this games starting cards is that I had a bonus card that synergised with the final rounds end of round bonus. That I had two cards in hand that not only counted (if played) towards my bonus card (and by implication the final round bonus) but also allowed the setting up of a tuck engine on the grasslands.
The Wingspan scores and final board state for me
I think I only took the initial draw cards wetland action once, and that was my first action if I remember correctly to grab a bird needed for the engine. After that all my card draw was coming from doing an egg run.
During play I had guessed Jonathan was struggling. He was taking a lot of draw cards actions. Jonathan was hunting for something. Later during the game my suspicions were confirmed when Jonathan posted a message on Discord (and I’m paraphrasing here) that the cards in this game indeed hated him and were conspiring against him.
The final scores did surprise me. Especially Jonathan’s. His claim that this was his worst scoring game ever, was probably right. I don’t remember him doing so poorly.
But that’s the nature of the beast. You see it in every game. Sometimes the stars don’t a line, and everything seems to be working against you. In these situations I think it helps to be the optimist and write the game off as one of those things that just happen, and next time will be different. It’s not fun as it’s happening, and can be frustrating. But you have to play to the last turn on the last round. Things might turn around.
It’s like the game of Epic the Card Game I had last week (lucky for the world the app doesn’t allow you to replay the whole game to record it). Early on in the game I went down to 2 health. Whilst my opponent was gaining life also. It wasn’t looking good.
Life savers!
But drawing into the two cards above I was able to stabilise by removing big threats from attacking, and basically neutralise tokens. This bought me enough time to draw into hopefully solutions to whatever the current threat on the board was.
There has even been games of Star Realms like this. I’ve been on one authority with my opponent in the 60s, and still hung in there and won! That game might actually also be on YouTube. There have been numerous games of MtG like this. Plus just as many that didn’t pan out.
When there is a turn around like the above they become epic gaming moments that you retell time and time again. The boardgaming version of “this one time in band camp…”
I’m digressing from the fact I crushed Jonathan, and had to settle for the fact the only banter was by sharing the above screen shots showing the emphatic victory on social media.
Afterwards we agreed to start up another game of chess via discord. This time it’s Jonathan’s turn to be white.
21 or more days after starting our 4 player game of Wingspan we have finally finished playing today!
Yes that is a long time to take to play a game of Wingspan.
However considering we were all basically only taking one turn a day (I think there was a day when we got to play a second turn). Taking over 21 days to play the game was to be expected.
I’ve mentioned in the past this game was going to take a lot longer than our regular games where we play in real time (with or without discord) so that one of our friends could participate.
So how did the game end? I won comfortably. Which was a bit of a relief after all the round one hype of me playing a raven.
Final scores and my end board state
After you get and play the raven early there is the pressure that you are going to run away with the game. However without cards that combo well with it, it’s not a big advantage.
In this game I got some that worked ok with it. I did have to set up a card draw engine and round 2 was basically me drawing cards looking for cards to work with the raven. So I had a massive number of cards in hand to use through the remaining rounds.
How did I think it went playing a game that went on for so long? It was ok. Not something I’d want to do regularly. The long delay between turns was frustrating. But the fact it allowed a friend who otherwise would not be able to play to join in counts for a lot.
Right now to organise the next virtual game night.
Last night our game club Fenland Gamers held another virtual game night.
We had a new (not new to the club) member join us for the virtual game night, so I added their Asmodee username to my Asmodee friends list. I do this through the Asmodee web page. It’s easier and quicker that way. It does make sending game invites a lot simpler if folks are in your friends list. Once that was done, it was deciding what to play based on the overlap between the apps everyone owned. Which was either Carcassonne or Ticket to Ride (TTR). There were other overlaps but not for everyone.
Our game for the evening was Asmodee digitals TTR. I’ve not played the TTR app in years, and even then it was just me against the AI. So it was a first for me to be playing it online. I definitely needed to remind myself of the interface. The last time I had played any version of the physical TTR was the New York version in 2018. The original TTR I last played in 2017, and the TTR UK was 2016 on 18th March. Literally a day short of being a full on 5 years to the day!
We started off playing the original base game of TTR because I didn’t know what expansions everyone had. Which I needn’t have taken into account. It was pointed out over discord during play that only one person (the one starting the game) needed to have the expansion.
I wasn’t doing amazing in the first game, I put that down to getting back into the swing of things. Even though I didn’t win, I wasn’t last, and scored more points than Jonathan.
The second game was using the TTR UK map. I think out of the versions of TTR that I have played so far over the years, this is one of my favourite maps to play. I like the having to purchase technology to open up various parts of the map, get extra points for competing routes etc.
One annoying thing did happen right at the end when I was going to share the detailed results for the TTR UK map. It crashed! And every attempt since to go back into the game (not the app) to get those results sees the app crash. So Jonathan kindly sent me the images you see above. Sadly the UK map does not show the completed routes at the end of the game. It’s the board state just as before I trigger the end of the game and the final round. But it does show that I got the New York route that was worth a massive 40 points plus the bonus points I had from the technology cards.
Despite that app crash at the end I think that the combination of using official app versions of a game along with discord for voice/text chat works really well, especially if using a tablet device. My experience with the virtual tabletop apps hasn’t been great. Especially their iOS versions. Nope for me official app version on the iPad, and use my iPhone with headset plugged running the discord app for the chat. Works a treat.
Anyway we all had a good time. That’s the important part.
A bit of a sensational post title, many many other players have achieved this. But this is a first for our group.
But before I go into how that was achieved I just want to sing the praises of one of the Wingspan apps features that I really like. That feature is the Preserve Archive.
When you finish playing a game before returning to the main menu you are given the option of saving that game to the reserve. I’ve been doing that for all the games I have played so far (I only play Wingspan against my friends online). So it’s like keeping a running record of those games, which I really must turn into data that can be analysed and graphs drawn (wish there was an easy way to get to this data). But it really is cool being able to go back and look at the detail of everyone’s final board state.
Yesterday I got to play three games of Wingspan.
The first game of the day was a three player game with Jonathan plus an AI opponent during the afternoon.
For some reason the Switch version of the app decided to play up by crashing. And then once back up and online, deciding to play the background music so it sounded corrupted! Even quitting and go back in didn’t seem to fix it. But I soldiered on through this adversity to tie the game with the AI. Which was given the win on some bs tie breaker.
The second game of the day was later in the evening and saw Jeff joining in to make it a four player game. Having done absolutely nothing between games to rectify the earlier sound issue, it was now fine!
It wasn’t until the later stages of the game that I decided to look at the board states of the others. I was horrified to see Jonathan had both Ravens out. But he was struggling for some reason (He’ll hopefully put his experience and reasons in the comments about this). I still thought the game would go to Jonathan.
So I was pleasantly surprised that I scored more points than him. And I’ve only just noticed I scored the exact same score as I had in the earlier game. Alas thus was not good enough to beat Jeff, who romped home to his first win. I suspect he’s been practicing.
We started our third and final game, after all our first game had taken about an hour. There was time for another. Or so we thought. Jonathan noticed it first. But this third game was taking an age. Despite taking our turns almost instantly (there was no AP going on), the little egg timer would appear and be there for minutes (never timed sadly). Something was up. But we were committed now. It was well over two hours for the game to finish.
The game did finish though, and when the dust settled, scores tallied. Not only had Jeff hit the 100 point barrier, I had smashed through it and got the win with 102 points. Just like buses if I was to use an old tired cliche.
As you can see below I needed to set up a card draw engine to get cards into hand to fully utilise my bonus. So I took the early decision to forget the end of round objectives and try and get as many birds in hand as possible. I certainly got a lot of value out of tucking cards, such as draw another card, gain an egg, discard a wheat to tuck two, gain a wheat. Because I was drawing so many cards I was able to cherry pick cards that fitted in with my plan and deny the others.
This morning I realised I should have scored 103 points, but failed to tuck and draw one more time on my last turn! I was too set on making sure that I had 8 cards in hand to max out my bonus, forgetting the last tuck replaced itself. That slip could have cost me the game. Many a game has been won by a single point.
I did miss out on 2 points from the final turn. Basically if I had the nest space I could have gained a further 2 eggs. But I was 100% full, no room at the inn. So not an option.
Below are the final board states for both Jeff and Jonathan.
As you can see Jonathan was one bird from completing a self set achievement of completely filling his reserve. The next achievement for us all to try and beat.
I’ll leave you with a parting gift of Wingspan tallying up the final scores. While watching this 30 second clip (the Switch is great at creating these) trying and imagine being Jeff and thinking you’d got this. Then it dawning on you that I had a lot of tucked birds as they got added to my score, and you had just been beaten. I can still here the echoes of Jeff screaming “noooooooooooooo!”
Last night saw 5 members of Fenland Gamers meet up virtually to play games.
The clubs discord server was used to host the evening, and made use of its text chat channel and an audio chat channel.
This side of the evening seemed to work really well, especially the audio chat side. Despite a dip in audio quality from time to time, I enjoyed our banter during the game.
Our first game of Carcassonne was just the base game, no expansions. Both games that we played used the following options:
I do like the dead and remaining tiles features. It’s so handy seeing what tiles are left. It offers hope that you might draw the tile you want, or snuff out that hope knowing you will never complete that town. Dead tiles I like as they act as a constant reminder you or your opponent will never complete that town or abbey.
I got screwed by Oli early on with him tying up two of my meeples for the whole of the game. I was playing at a big disadvantage then. So I was chuffed I drew last place. It was the best I could hope for.
Gavin on the other hand I think was a bit shell shocked with the aggressive play and the whole stealing towns off of players. And I can see how it may be seen a bit cutthroat. But that’s how I’ve always played the game, whether against others or an AI.
Jonathan was able to claw out a victory for the first game.
Our second and final game of the evening used the following expansions:
Naturally with the expansions being used the game took longer to play. But I do enjoy playing Carcassonne with them. It’s why I have them for the physical game as well. I didn’t include the Princess and Dragon expansion because I knew Jonathan wasn’t a fan of it. Although with this many players it would become so tactical, and yes add even more playing time.
There were some great battles going on in this game for control of towns and fields. One of those battles involved Jonathan, Oli, and Gavin for control of a field. It looked right up to the last two or three tiles that Jonathan had it. But Oli managed to steal it from him and the win.
We had a great time playing a classic board game using a really great digital version.
I know shocked me as well. It shouldn’t have but it did. Especially considering I’m the one that suggested it in the first place!
Last week I posted on our clubs discord server asking if anyone was up for a virtual gaming session, giving a day and time for when it would happen. But there was no response. So I assumed there was no interest.
Fortunately I happened to be on the clubs discord server at the right time last night as two others turned up to play!
After some brief chatting, exchanging lists of board game apps that each of us owned, and finding some games that we all had, we settled on our first game to play.
That first game was Tokaido. I like the game a lot. It’s a beautiful, peaceful, game. Somehow Jonathan won the first game, whilst Oli won the second game.
Our second game of the evening was Love Letter.
I wasn’t sure about this app. I love the game. But could this app capture the whole play experience?
I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t a bad attempt at capturing the game.
Mechanically the app is spot on. It’s Love Letter. The interface took a little getting used to. But that was a quick learning curve. I liked that when setting up an online game you can adjust the number of points needed to win. And you can switch on or off the stars that appear on a card telling you how many of that card you have seen.
I liked the banter it has where you can cause a speech bubble to appear that hurls an insult or praise. And we did that from time to time through out our game. But we were also exchanging banter via our discord chat channel. That helped a lot in the attempt to capture the tabletop experience. Maybe if we used voice it might have helped to get even closer to the tabletop experience.
For the record I had a comfortable victory.
After that win, we called it a day for the virtual games evening. It was a fun time. I’ll have to suggest doing another soon.
A couple of days ago playing Wingspan with Jonathan we hit a first for me in the game. We achieved something that I had not done in the few games I’ve played of Wingspan both physical or digital.
Firstly we drew for first place on all of the end of round objectives.
Secondly, same game, Jonathan and I drew on points after the end of game scoring had been completed.
The app gave Jonathan the win on a tie breaker which was who had the most resources left. He had 1, I had none. Robbed. It should have been left at a draw.
That contested win means Jonathan has the advantage with our current game score line being 3-4 to Jonathan.
I think the Diptic collage below sums up the last couple of days fairly well.
I managed to get into the beta for the A Game of Thrones (AGoT) board game app. So I need to work through the tutorial now, and then get some games in.
I like the physical game a lot. So I’m pretty keen to try this digital version. The hope is once it’s out of beta that I can convince some of my friends to get it and we get a game or two in.
But like my physical collection, my digital board game collection has the same problem. Too many games too little time!
I could play against random strangers online. But I don’t get much enjoyment out of that. For me if I play online I like playing with friends.
Sadly even with app gaming being the only real way to game with friends during this pandemic. After a brief flurry of interest, it died off pretty quickly.
It’s a pity.
But engagement within our gaming group online seems to match that of attendance of gaming sessions. Pretty low.
I started a Discord server for the group so that members wouldn’t get spammed on Facebook from the club page, and/or miss posts. Facebook does seem to have a knack of being inconsistent in what it shows on peoples timelines.
The other positive for Discord for me is that with separate chat areas set up for different gaming interests, members can filter out the stuff they are not interested in. Not to mention the voice functionality it offers whilst gaming.
However the engagement on Discord is just as low.
My latest attempt to help improve things is to try running games of Mastermind (which died off pretty quickly), and the latest attempt a game of Chess.
I’ve not played Chess in decades. And even then I wasn’t very good at it. But we’ll see how it goes.
