It was a long day yesterday. It started off making the journey over to my FLGS The Hobbit Hole to pick up my pre-order of the final ever Duel Deck for MtG, Elves vs Inventors. This according to all the reviews I’ve seen wasn’t a great last hurrah for the product range. I was just getting it to not even add to my little collection of Duel Decks, but to harvest it for cards, particularly elves. The rest of my pre-order were the four new ready for prime time FNM Challenger Decks. These decks currently at present market values represent great value for money. The Hazoret Aggro with it’s copy of Hazoret and Chandra currently is amazing value. Both cards at time of writing were clocking in at £20+ a copy.

My intention is to also break up these decks and use the cards elsewhere. But first I want to play some games with them.

Whilst at my FLGS my pusher of cardboard and plastic known as the store owner John showed me the promo cards for the store championship being held the next day and for the open house the following weekend. Both elf cards. At the store championship a full art steal leaf champion, and the open house will have a full art Llanowar Elves. Both look rather cool. Yeah I want these for my Elf Commander deck. So I signed up for the store championship. I’m going to use one of the Challenger Decks to see how these do against more serious players (I’m lead to believe one of the stores regular FNM players is an ex pro player). Let’s put WotC claims to the test.

After my visit to my FLGS it was a rush back to Wisbech and The White Lion to meet up with Jeff and play War of the Ring. This was the second time I’ve played the game (the first time was the later part of 2016), so I needed a brief rules refresher. Once again I played as the free people of Middle Earth. Once again I got my butt kicked. I’m pretty sure that Jeff was taking it easy of me. I need to play this more often and look into tactics a bit more if I’m to progress at this game and be more of a challenge to Jeff.

We had a little time to kill between my shameful defence of Middle Earth and an evening gaming session. So Jeff kindly agreed to play some Magic using the new Challenger decks. I’m not going to say much about these games here, but save my thoughts until after the store championship when I will give my thoughts on the decks.

Six thirty came, Jonathan and Nathaniel arrived and Istanbul fully loaded with all the expansions and the kebab shop promo hit the table. Shockingly this is another game, although a favourite of ours that hadn’t hit the table since late 2016 also. That is the problem with having so many games between us. So many good ones there is never enough time to play them all. Apparently partners, families, work all want a piece of our time.

Jeff won our game of Istanbul, and the important part is Jonathan didn’t score more highly than me, we finished equal second. Friendly rivalry is always good.

It had been a long day, and a brain burning one too. So Jeff and I said our good byes and left the other two to play a Rick and Morty game of some description. Besides despite having a sandwich and chips for lunch at the hotel I was hungry and tired.

I love days like this.

It was a weird weekend for gaming. No Friday session, we’ve gone from a weekly one to every 2 weeks now.

I managed to get to the Saturday afternoon session. Which was good as I was hosting it! And then as you will later read not able to get to the Gloomhaven session on Sunday.

Saturday afternoon saw Jeff, Diego, Nathanial and myself playing a couple of games. The first game we played was at the request of Jeff, Imperial Settlers. I really like Imperial Settlers. It’s just getting it to the table. The modern gamers biggest dilemma after “should I back that kickstarter”? and “why didn’t I buy that game when it was in stock?”

I think this was probably the most aggressive of the handful of times that I have played Imperial Settlers. There was plenty of razing of others buildings going on.

I am glad to report that Jeff enjoyed his game of Imperial Settlers. Which I’m glad of, because I don’t think I will have a problem finding players for the next time I want to get it to the table. That next time I want to get one of the expansions mixed in. I have them all, and yet not played with any of them!

Oh Diego took the honours with this game.

Our second and final game for the afternoon was Diego’s copy of Raiders of the North Sea. I have to admit this has been one I’ve wanted to try for a long time.

This is a worker placement game with a vikings theme. Does it capture that theme? I think as well as a worker placement game could. The worker placement is a little unique to others that I have played. You place a worker and do that action, then remove an existing worker (not the one the one you have just placed) to take a second action. Some of the action spaces can only be used with certain colour workers, and these get unlocked as you plunder foreign lands. I like this way of worker placement. It creates some interesting decisions about which action you take and then leaving it for some-one else to also take on their turn. But then again the action you want to take by removing a worker may not have the right coloured worker on it for your next turn. But you really really need to do that action. Then you add in about what actions you are leaving open for an opponent to take. Love it.

You have a little engine building going on with the recruiting of vikings to your raiding party. The Viking cards have a dual use. They can be played for an action on the card or added to your crew with a crew ability. To be able to go out raiding you need to meet the criteria of the place you are going to pillage. Some of the vikings reduced this cost, or gave you a raiding bonus depending on the space raiding.

I thought the production values for the game were good. Loved the meeples and resource tokens. And the metal coins (not sure if these were an upgrade that Diego added) were really nice and thematic with the Celtic/Viking lettering and symbols.

Despite Jeff getting into the halls of Valhalla before the rest of us, I enjoyed the game and would definitely play this again.

When I got home, Strider seemed to be struggling with his back legs. He has had this before in the past. The last time about 5 months ago. It means basically he struggles to stand up, and when he is standing up, falls down very easily. Which means I have to be there to pick him up when he goes down and lift him up to his feet in the first place.

Sunday Strider was worse. So I let the guys know I had to stay and look after Strider. The day was spent trying to make sure that when Strider went down he was picked up and was not getting too stressed. I even took his food and drink to him on his bed, and held it while he ate and drank.

Luckily yesterday he started to make a recovery during the day. Then mid evening once I was home and had aided him into the house from Nan’s, he was back to normal. Mum seems to think that it is down to her massaging Striders back legs during the day. I don’t see how it didn’t hurt. But was it the thing that speeded up the recovery? I don’t know the jury is out for me. But I’m glad my best friend is better. Don’t tell the 2 little terrors I said that.

Some Netflix viewing recommendations

From time to time recently I’ve recommended various shows and films on streaming services like Netflix or Amazon Prime. I think once I recommended a movie in the cinema. This tagged on section is back with some great stuff on Netflix.

My first two recommendations are for your binge watching pleasure.

I love the Netflix Marvel shows. So when a new one hits the service I binge watch it with as few breaks of possible. So I’ve normally finished by the following days lunchtime. So which of the Netflix Marvel lineup warranted this binging this time? Jessica Jones Season 2. I like how this season breaks away from your typical comic book villain trope. This isn’t your run of the mill superhero stuff. The themes are also a bit hard to deal with especially season 1. But just watch this, it’s great.

My other binge watch recommendation is Ghost Wars. This is a bit of a weird one. A person who sees ghosts, the dead coming coming back as ghosts and attacking the living, a secretive research lab, the sins of the past coming back, there is a lot going on in this series. I’m not sure how they will take it to a second season, or even if it would work. I hope they don’t make one, and leave this as the enjoyable watch that it is.

The final two recommendations are a couple of movies that have gone straight to Netflix. Which seems to be the present day version of straight to video. However these two movies have higher production values than the usual low budget fair that makes it way to the public. Mainly because these were biggish budget productions that the studios got cold feet about releasing on the big screen. Although I do know that Annihilation did get a very limited cinema release in the US and one other country.

Seeing as I’m already talking about Annihilation I might as well continue doing so. This is based on the book of the same title. It does deviate from the book a bit. But despite that annoying deviation it’s still a watchable movie. If you liked Arrival, Contact, even Interstellar then I think you will enjoy this.

The final recommendation is the really stylish looking Mute. I found it a little predictable in spots. But overall it’s a watchable movie that touches on some dark subject matter. The Bladerunner-esq vision of Berlin was fantastic and refreshing.

The one thing that I hate about the winter we have had so far is that being on the East coast we haven’t had any really snow for nearly 8 years now. By real snow I mean snow that closes roads and gets you days off work. Oh other parts of the country are getting that sort of snow heaven, but not us on the protect desolate wind swept East. So when it started snowing yesterday morning I wasn’t holding out much hope for it sticking around.

Oh yeah before I start SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!! I’m going to be discussing our second game of Gloomhaven. I’ll try and not spoil too much. But there is always the chance that I will put my foot in my mouth and ruin things for those that want to play the game and avoid spoilers. So I’m saying now, if that is you, stop reading NOW! And come back for my next post when it appears, or go off and read some of my old ramblings.

Right off we go then..

I braved the snow storm (I don’t know how I typed that really, because that is so inaccurate) to get to Justin’s so that our band of adventurers could continue their journey in the Gloomhaven universe. If you remember our heroes had entered the Black Barrow and met some resistance. Which we overcame. Being fool hardy we decided to travel deeper into the barrow, into the Barrow Lair!

Upon entering the lair we were greeted by 4 Bandit Archers, who were using a couple of traps to protect them from us just rushing in and kicking several shades of brown stuff out of them. Before the mission I pulled an objective that said I had to either cause a trap to go off, or disarm a trap. The only other option I had was another objective that wanted me to finish the mission with a low health. I hate those ones, they are particularly bad for a magic user like Glamdalf. So I had no option really but to take the trap based objective and hope that we ran into some traps. Luckily there were these 2 right in front of me. There was talk from the others of using abilities to draw the archers into the traps and set them off. I did not want that. These it turns out were stun traps. Probably the safest ones I could trigger and not take damage from. The combat went easily our way, indeed my fellow adventurers did pull an archer into one of the traps. There was one left, I had to manoeuvre Glamdalf so that she would trigger the trap and allow me to complete my objective. Charlie was looking at disarming the trap on his turn. Luckily I had priority, and ran into the trap, setting it off. Mission complete, now we just needed to beat the scenario for me to get the reward.

While the majority of us were resting, Charlie’s character decided to run into the next room. She was left alone briefly to face the Bandit Commander and 2 Bandit Archers. The Commander was a beefy enemy to take on with 40 health points. Plus it’s first special ability meant it jump to an unopened door and open it. I should point out, only the Commander could open these doors. Obviously there was not going to be anything good in these locked rooms. Like all fantasy dungeon crawling RPG tropes, most likely lots more monsters. The Commanders other special ability allowed them to spawn an elite living bones. Our mission objective was to kill the Commander Boss and all revealed enemies. This had the potential to snowball out of control very fast.

We were keeping on top of things, got rid of the 2 archers, made some damage on the Commander, when he pulled his first special ability. Rats. Well not rats to fight, what we were getting was a room with 3 living corpses in. Luckily the Commander was blocking them from getting out.

But a couple of turns later, his second special pops up. We had a room full of living corpses hiding behind the Commander, we’d been trading blows with him, and now we were getting an elite living bones joining the party. Things were still manageable. Possibly. Then the Commander pulled his special again, a second door open. 3 more living corpses about to come into play. Oh and there was a treasure chest in the new room.

We needed to kill this mission off quick, but not before we grabbed the treasure chest. Which I did, and I was rewarded with 10 gold for my troubles. The problem was I was running out of cards in my hand, and discard pile. I’d already pulled Glamdalf’s party trick of returning the cards in the lost pile to my hand. I was on a very short clock before my character would become exhausted and be out of the mission.

It was going to be very very close, but it would be possible for the last couple of creatures to be killed before I would become exhausted. Justin was being very very helpful at this point. Suspiciously so even. But the play worked out, and we completed the mission before I became exhausted. Just. Then our secret mission objectives were revealed and Justin had the one that said there must be no exhausted characters. I can’t remember what Edmund had for his. But Charlie had one that said he couldn’t pick up any coins, which he naturally completed. He got 2 ticks on his character sheet for that.

After selecting our next destination, and completing a city event, buying some equipment (that gold sure burns a hole in your pocket), we packed away the game.

There was enough time after all that fighting for us to play Escape the Dark Castle, a new game that Justin had received in the week.

Escape the Dark Castle is a co-op adventure game. Each player takes turns in reading the top chapter card from a 15 card deck that represents you all adventuring through the castle before taking on a big bad boss. Some of these chapter cards will have to be tackled by the person reading the card, whilst others will involve the whole party.

So what did I think of the game? Once we sorted out how to play the game. Which was about half way through (that’s the draw backs of learning as you play!), I can see this being challenging. And to be fair it was a pleasurable experience. In fact the game play almost reminds me a bit of the One Deck Dungeon game. Although I do have some concerns about the production side of things.

The chapter cards are pretty large, and the quality of them, especially the black backs reminds me of London Second Edition, and the problems that they had. I would want to sleeve these cards. But where I’d source the sleeves I don’t know. I fear that the backs of these cards will mark easily, and I could swear that one was already showing signs of wear! The quality of the dice wasn’t great either. They were a nice large size. But the ink on them was already looking very tired and rubbed off.

There are a lot of chapter cards, so there would seem a lot of replay ability. Which I like. 6 or 7 end level bosses. So once again a little variety there also. Add in the item deck, and the random draw from that. No two games should be the same.

But the biggest drawback for me for the game, even more than the production issues has to be the art. I’m not a fan of it at all. In this day and age there is no excuse for this art at all. It reminds me of a GCSE art project, or art from of the 80’s role playing video game hint books I used to get. I just don’t like it. I think the art is nearly enough to put me off playing the game again. The experience of reading the chapter card, and overcoming the challenge revealed, just gets ruined by the drab, amateurish drawings.

Nice game. Crap art.

After defeating the castles big boss, it was time to go home. Outside it was raining, and all the snow was melting away. I was right not to get my hopes up for a snow day.

Yesterday Justin, Nathanial and I met up at The White Lion to play Scythe with the latest expansion The Wind Gambit.

The Wind Gambit adds two things to the already awesome Scythe game. Did I say that I absolutely love Scythe. It was my game of 2016, came in at the number 1 spot in my Top 100 last year. So yeah I kinda like the game. Anyway, this new expansion brings in these awesome airships, and alternate ways to end the game with resolutions.

Naturally even though Nathanial was playing Scythe for the first time, I didn’t think that adding in both of the new modules made the game harder to learn, so we included them. The only thing I did not use was the two factions from the Invaders from Afar expansion. I thought that the little extra those added were potentially a step too far for a newbie to the game.

A first for playing Scythe for me was allowing players to select their faction. Usually we do it randomly. But I wanted to play my favourite faction Rusviet Union. Ok I have a thing for Olga and Changa!! Who wouldn’t want a pet tiger? Yes I know I love dogs and Gunter has the wolf Nacht. But I’m a fen boy, born and bred and we are known as the fen tigers. Plus I love the power of Rusviet Union of being able to repeat actions. After selecting our faction, we did go random in selecting our player mats. I got the innovative player mat.

Justin randomly selected the two cards we were to use for the airships. You can see in the photo below which two that were pulled. Then Justin randomly selected the resolution for the game. As you can also see in the photo below he pulled the Doomsday Clock.

Wow, what a difference the Doomsday Clock made to the game. 20 turns and that’s it. 20 turns is a quick game, you have to hit the ground running. My game plan for this game was to push up my popularity to the highest scoring area, grab as much land as possible, and maybe get a couple of objectives. First thing first get that river walk going, then get my commander to the factory, use the airship to drop off workers around the map. Hopefully hold onto the factory, and maybe use the airship to tie down some of my opponents forces. I did manage to get 3 objectives, and a factory card. I think I was the only one to get a factory card. Justin did manage to get 3 objectives also. And on his last go grab the factory from me, but in doing so he pushed himself into the lowest scoring bracket. My last turn managed to compensate for losing those 3 lands that the factory would have given me.

In the end I did win, but it was fairly close between Justin and myself, a five point gap I think. Nathanial got 23 points which for a first play and in such a quick game wasn’t bad.

I’m going to have to remember that if I want a game of Scythe but not much time to play it, then this Doomsday Clock is an ideal resolution to use. I think that Rusviet is an ideal faction to play with this resolution, because you can ramp very quickly. The airships were such fun to play with, and look amazing on the game board itself. I can’t wait to get this to the table again and play one of the other resolutions. Yeah this expansion is a great addition to the game, and freshens things up I think for anyone thinking the game was getting a little stale after playing it a lot. Which isn’t me at the moment. But I do like what it brings to the table.