Category Archives: Game day

My Dominaria Prerelease Experience

Game day, magic, MtG

This is going to be a long post I’m afraid. It’s been written over the course of today, hence why it is posted much later than usual for me. So you have been warned.

My day started cracking open a box of boosters, and the 2 Planeswalker decks.

The reports/reviews I’d seen before today were not brilliant for these 2 decks. But they are the only source for the 2 Planeswalkers cards they have, plus 2 or 3 cards included in the deck. From the stuff I’d seen apparently the Chandra deck is the stronger of the 2 if played against each other. With the arrival of Challenger decks I’m trying to think what the point of these decks are. If a new/returning player wants a deck they can use at FNM then they need the Challenger decks. Mainly because the Challenger decks are competitive and will allow the player to win one or two games. It’s not fun for a new player to keep losing game after game, especially with a new deck they have just bought. For that casual kitchen table game at home or round a friends I’d still use the Challenger decks. As I’ve already pointed out the 2 Planeswalker decks are not evenly matched (just like the last ever duel decks I’ve heard, I’ve not played mine, just harvested them for cards). So one person isn’t going to have a good experience. WotC should kill off these Planeswalker decks or improve them and make them balanced against each other, or competitive at FNM. Choose one WotC I’m happy with either. Just stop producing a mediocre product that looks even worse when compared with the new Challenger decks.

Anyway here are the contents of each of the Planeswalker decks and the pulls I got from the 2 boosters I got in each box.


As you may have guessed with the 2 buy-a-box promos, there are 2 booster boxes in my possession, and as I write this only one unopened one.


I’m going to do a separate post with my highlights from my pulls for the booster box. But from just the lands, sagas, foils, Planeswalkers, the odd artifact, and legendary creatures that I pulled and scanned in. Using the pricing based on CardKingdom prices within the Decked app, I’m in profit at the moment. Most of that is in about 7 cards!

The second box I’ve decided to open slowly over the next few days, a couple of packs at a time. I was going to use it for another league for our gaming group. But then I thought “nah, I’m not getting any support for the other Magic events I tried organising. Why bother?”

What did I pull in my Prerelease kit? Well I wasn’t as lucky as my student who was attending his first Prerelease who got a foil Karn promo in his kit. So I was chuffed that he got such a good (and expensive) card. But these were my 2 promo cards that I got.

Here is the deck I built from my pulls to play with:
Counts : 40 main

Creatures:13

1 Champion of the Flame
2 Corrosive Ooze
1 Ghitu Chronicler
1 Keldon Warcaller
1 Llanowar Scout
1 Orcish Vandal
1 Voltaic Servant
1 Llanowar Envoy
1 Baloth Gorger
1 Territorial Allosaurus
1 Pardic Wanderer
1 Primordial Wurm

Spells:11

1 Shivan Fire
1 Short Sword
1 Sorcerer’s Wand
1 Warlord’s Fury
1 Broken Bond
1 Pierce the Sky
1 Shield of the Realm
1 Song of Freyalise
1 Grow from the Ashes
1 Wizard’s Lightning
1 Wild Onslaught

Lands:16

9 Forest
7 Mountain

I kinda had to go red/green. I had hardly any creatures in the other colours. Certainly not enough to keep me alive long enough to even remotely stand a chance of winning.

How did I do with the deck at Prerelease?

Well it was a packed Prerelease event today with 25 keen participants taking part. So a few more than the Rivals of Ixalan one I attended. With a win/loss record of 1-3 (0-2,0-2,1-2,2-1) I came 20th.


Not a great record this time. But I did the best I could in the time given to build the 40 card deck from the cards I pulled, Naturally with no clock ticking, and time to read everything I could put possibly a better deck together. More importantly I had fun playing Magic.

More Epic Space Battles

Fenland Gamers, Game day

I’m going to start this post off with a clip from the most pointless sequel ever The Huntsman Winter’s War.


It’s that last few seconds where evil Queen played by Charlize Theron leans over and almost whispers “and you thought it was just a Game”. I’d like to pretend I’m a mine of movie clips and quotes for all occasions , but sadly I’m not. I just happened to be watching this first thing over my coffee and chocolate chip brioche, and thought “oh how appropriate, that sums up TI:4”.

We were due to start playing at 10:30. So to cut down on the prep and let us start playing as quickly as possible I got to The White Lion early to set up. The official FFG 20th anniversary 3ft by 3ft playmat looks awesome.

Despite starting at 10:28 to go through the selecting of races, setting up the tiles of our galaxy, placing initial forces, choosing our initial secret objective and other game play set up steps, which did include a brief how to play for our new player, the process still took 40 minutes. A very brief break for the usual refreshments, bodily movements, and nicotine hits for those that needed them, then saw our empires start competing for glory and power.


For a long time the game was fairly peaceful, no battles. Just some trading, swapping promissory notes, etc. Our galactic empires expanded, planets grabbed, borders established. But the expansionist ambitions of Jeff with his 2 war suns was starting to become a big threat on the board. Somehow I managed to grab Mecatol Rex and hold on to it. If only I’d been able to pull off the same stunt with my home worlds against Jeff. The fall of my home planets gave Jeff 2 of the 3 final victory points he needed to grab the win when it came to claiming the open objectives. A completed secret objective was the third.

So since getting Twilight Imperium 4th Edition last year, this is the third time I’ve played it. Which isn’t bad considering the share scale of the game. But the more important fact is Jeff has won all 3 games. Although I seem to be improving because I got a score of 7 this time. My highest score so far.

We had a great day playing TI:4, and what I still find amazing is despite it taking a long time to play, it just doesn’t seem that long, and time flies. It like you start playing in the morning and then the next thing you know it’s the evening. Time travel folks.

Can’t wait to play Xia next and then to organise the next session for TI:4.

Big Lizards and Elves Rule The Planet

Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night, magic, MtG

Today instead of the planned games of Brawl we ended up playing Commander. This meant I could try out the new decks. First up for my testing was Elf Tribal. Dale played with the Plunder the Graves precon. Whilst our opponents had a snake themed deck, and the Heavenly Inferno precon.

Surprisingly there were no board wipes played during this first game, and unbeknown to me this would be a trend for the days games of Commander. with no board wipes my Elves were able to run rampant, build up a big board state and just win.

The second Commander game saw my Dragon Tribal getting an outing. So Dale played my Dinosaur Tribal deck, whilst once again we were up against the snakes deck and the Guided by Nature precon this time. So basically big creatures against 2 decks that were going wide. There was a kind of early board wipe when I bought on to the battlefield my Deathbringer Regent, that destroys all other creatures if there are 5 or more other creatures on the battlefield. Which at the time I played him there was. After that for some reason the Dinosaur deck refused to play ball for Dale and gave him nothing. While I was just allowed to get lots and lots of dragons on the board. Mainly in the form of 3/3 cat dragon tokens (through Wasitora, Nekoru Queen), and 6/6 red dragons with Utvara Hellkite. And that is the one that was making things insane for me. I think my killing blow to Dale if it was real would have been a Dale looking up at the sky, and not seeing the sun. Mainly because due to the share number of dragons flying in they blocked out the sky.

After playing my now standard legal black aggro deck against Dale and a new deck he had created (I won that game). I played Commander again. This time I played the Dinosaur tribal deck, and it worked for me. I got Huatli, Warrior Poet out early, and from there each turn I was getting a 3/3 green dinosaur token with tramp. I was getting other dinosaurs out, including my Commander. Once again unchecked and no board wipes my board state was too powerful.

My fourth and final Commander game for the day was with my Elf Tribal and with the reoccurring theme of the day of no board wipes hit it’s grove and just laid waste to my opponents. I have to admit during the games I did have a tinge of guilt at times, usually when I had such overwhelming forces and was just about to unleash total destruction on them.

Afterwards Dale and I played some games of Standard using the new Challenger decks. Sadly the Approach deck didn’t do too well this time against the Hazoret one.

I don’t feel that my Commander decks are that good. It’s just with no board wipes and not kept in check they were allowed to do their thing. The tribal element was working well. Which reminds me, I need to revisit my Dinosaur Tribal deck and try and squeeze in these new tribal cards I have. So a Dinosaur Tribal v3 deck is on the cards.

In the evening it was the monthly meet up for the Fenland Gamers. Our first game of the evening was Snow Tails. This was a new game to us all apart from Gavin who owned it, and had played it once.

This is basically a husky sledge racing game in the style of Formula D, but with out the dice rolling. That part has been replaced by cards.

A nice twist to the game format is that crossing the finish line first does not mean you have automatically won. What counts is how far past the finish line you finish. So unless you crash out of the race by taking on too much damage, then you still have a chance of winning.

Managing your sledge with the cards so you determine it’s speed and whether it pulls to the left and right is at times tricky. Especially when you have to negotiate obstacles and corners. Plus there are various check points on the track that if you are going to fast through them mean you take on damage.


And I do like the damage mechanic of this game. You have a hand of 5 cards. When you play 1 or 2 cards on your turn you then draw back up to 5 cards. But if you take damage you draw a damage card instead that reduces the number of cards you have to play with, and stays in your hand. They can’t be removed from your hand. So when you take a fifth bit of damage that’s it you have crashed out of the game.

This is a nice game which I found although similar to Formula D, was also different enough to be a refreshing take on the genre. In our game only 2 players finished the game. Jeff, Gavin and myself crashed out of the game.

Our second and final game of the night was Roll for the Galaxy. Like a couple of recent games I’ve played at meet ups this was another game that hasn’t been to the table since October 2016. So I was a bit rusty on the rules, and don’t think I did a good job of explaining the rules. I do like this game, but I don’t think I’ve won a game yet. Which is my way of saying I didn’t win, that honour was taken by Jeff.

After all this I gaming it was time for home and some hunting for highlights of Liverpools victory over City.

The Hobbit Hole MtG Rivals of Ixalan Store Championship

Game day, magic, MtG

Saturday was the Rivals of Ixalan Store Championship for my FLGS. In my previous post I wrote how I’d been tempted to enter because of the promo full art Steel Leaf Champion for participating. I’d also said I was going to use the tournament to test the new Challenger decks from WotC.

For the tournament I went with the Vehicle Rush deck, which after some very quick research in the morning was meant to be the stronger, more rounded of the four decks. Ok so I’ll go with that. Not played an artifact heavy deck before. So this was going to be a bit of a learning curve for me. Should I have stayed with a deck type I’m used to playing? Only time would tell.

Round 1 and I was up against the fabled Merfolk deck of Rob. John had spoken of this deck in hushed tones on Friday. Game 1 and I nearly took a win. Rob was down to 4 health, before his Ghalti and Merfolk did their job and steam rolled me. Our game 2 and once more Ghalti and those Merfolk just road all over me with me doing hardly if any damage.

I did get Rob to take a look at my mono black aggro deck, that is one card away from being standard legal. Swapping the 2 duress out to the sideboard and putting 2 Vraska’s contempt from the sideboard into the main deck was his main bit of advice. Rob also suggested looking at Kitesail Freebooter. Which I have considered in the past for this deck. I might put it in the sideboard to replace the non-standard legal cards. Otherwise he thought it wasn’t bad. I’ll take that from a much more experienced player.

Round 2 for me was a buy! So I was able to chill, take some photos for this post, watch a game or two.

Round 3 I was up against a player called Ben. In our first game, I did some damage, but he was beefing up creatures with cartouches left right and centre and there wasn’t much I could do about it. I was soon killed off. Our second game for me was a total train wreck. I was totally mana flooded. I had an initial had of one artifact creature and 6 lands, which I should have mulliganed. But I thought I’d risk it, surely I’d hit none lands for a few turns. But no it was land after land. Nothing I could do but lose.

The fourth and final round of the tournament had me up against a player called Dean. He was playing a dinosaur deck. I was a turn away from grabbing a win, when he played Ghalti, gave it haste and stole the victory. Not a great start. But then I bounced back and took our next game. It was down to the third and final game as the decider. Dean was getting land, but was not able to play much! I’d love to know what he had in his hand. But it meant I was able to do the unthinkable and win again and get a legit victory for the tournament.

At the end of the day my record for the tournament was 2-2, putting me in 6th place out of 9. Which meant I got a Top 8 deck box, the full art Steel Leaf Champion, and a participation booster pack of my choice (although Iconic Masters and Masters 25 were not included). I went with an Oath of the Gatewatch booster, but there was nothing in it of interest so like another player I gave those cards to a young lad who had taken part.

Why is Steel Leaf Champion my main prize and the reason I attended? A 3 cost, 5/4 elf that can’t be blocked by creatures with a power of 2 or less. That’s a powerful card. Which with the reprinted Llanowar Elf could be a turn 2 play. So you are hitting your opponent turn 3 for 5 damage. It can’t be easily taken out with lightning strikes or abrades. I’d have to look at other cards in Dominaria, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a few decks built around this. I’m certainly going to be doing that. It’s something to look for in sealed events.

Ok let’s talk about these Challenger decks then. So I’ve played them against each other, and in a tournament that wouldn’t be too dissimilar to a FNM.

So Challenger decks are in WotC’s own words “intended to be playable and competitive right out of the box”.

In the rather attractive cardboard boxes you get standard legal 60 card deck, with a 15 card sideboard, plus a countdown life counter die.

So who is the target audience for these decks? I’d say new and returning players that want a deck that they can buy and play straight away at a FNM, and overtime up grade and make their own. And as WotC have said maybe win a game or two.

I know that at current card prices certain Challenger decks will sell a lot faster than others. That’s going to be mainly because for experienced players those decks represent a cheaper way to get their hands on copies of certain cards. So I’m hoping that WotC are doing a massive print run to keep these decks in stock for the intended audience to buy and play with.

I have to say playing these decks against each other was fun. In our limited number of games they seemed fairly balanced against each other. So I can see these being great for casual play also.

After the store championship today against competitive Magic players, I think the deck did as intended. For a precon it held it’s own. I won some games, lost more, but some of those games were fairly close also.

There is one fault with these decks. If the intended audience is the new and returning players, where are the tokens to go with these decks? This Vehicle Rush deck generates energy and 1/1 thopter tokens. So why weren’t these included? WotC give you the tokens needed with Commander decks. I’d argue that new players wouldn’t have the necessary tokens, and very likely nor would the returning player.

I’d definitely recommend these decks. They are fun to play, and give a solid basis to make the deck yours.

Been a long time since I rock n rolled

Fenland Gamers, Game day

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.

Aaah Grasshopper

Game day

My formative tv years were the 70’s and 80’s. I grew up watching “classics” like Kung Fu, The Water Margins, and Monkey, among many others.

But you are probably thinking wtf has this got to do with board games? Today I was meant to be playing Mechs vs Minions with Diego at our usual gaming hang out. However there was a little hiccup in the plan. Yep where we planned to play wasn’t actually open because of the bank holiday. So we had to go to an alternate venue to play. Naturally the new place Wetherspoons isn’t ideal for Mechs and Minions. So I had quickly nipped back home, and picked up a selection of 2 player games more suitable for a pub environment.

Yes I know I still haven’t established a link, bare with me.

Out of the selection of games I’d taken along we went with my kickstarter deluxe copy of Tao Long: The Way of The Dragon. Yes I was finally getting the game to the table. Within the game there are several modes to the game play. There is a novice/rookie mode called Grasshopper, then an intermediate mode called Monk, followed by the Master mode, and then finally a “The Chosen One” mode. As you advance the more sophisticated the game play gets, until you get to the The Chosen One Level.


Which as the screenshot above shows from the rules is pretty intense.

But it’s that rookie grasshopper mode that is my link to the opening sentence. Who from my generation would not think of that classic series and the flashbacks to the monetary and Caine’s journey to enlightenment? Or even the British comedians who did comedy skits based on those scenes on 70’s tv?

But back to the game. The components in this edition of the game, and the neoprene board are fantastic, and despite a simplicity stunning. And for being in essence an abstract game really generates an oriental feel to the game. I like Tsuro, but for me this is going to be my duelling dragons game of choice. It has that aerial battle feel, but with more strategy involved.

The strategy comes in the form of the Ba Gau part of the board where you select the action you want to take. There is some hard decision making going on here. You want/have to take a move, but if you do it leaves your opponent open to attack you, or manoeuvre into a more favourable position. This is surprisingly deep considering how simple a mechanic it is. But in Master mode it gets even deeper and more complicated! But we didn’t play at that level today.

If you rethemed this game as light cycles, it could be the light cycle arena from Tron (a movie I love) or a board game of snake (That old Nokia game).

We played the following map layouts: The Field, The Valley, The Gorge, The Torus, and The Cave.

Naturally our first game was The Field while we got used to the rules, flow of a turn, and discovered a couple of misplays. We then worked our way through the map layouts introducing new game elements such as portals and obstacles. We hit The Torus and it’s much smaller play area last and played about 4 games with that layout. Out of 8 games I won just 1. Yes Diego royally kicked my butt at this game. The only break in our games was when we stopped to consume out burger and chips for lunch. Hey it’s the safest thing they do at spoons. Very little for them to get wrong.

Despite that thrashing from Diego I enjoyed playing the game. It joins a handful (if that) of great abstract games I have in my collection now. I think Tao Long will make it in the bag for games to take to UKGE to hopefully play.

I did have my revenge on Diego afterwards by boring him with how I don’t get these youtubers and what kids see in them. Plus other ramblings of some-one who has seen better years. But still a great day gaming with a great friend, who will make a fantastic dad when his daughter arrives at the end of the month.

Ancient Civilisations and Plunder

Fenland Gamers, Game day

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.

It’s Clobbering Time

Fenland Gamers, Game day, magic, MtG

I know it’s been rather quiet on here lately. Well I am a firm believer of if you haven’t got anything to say then don’t say anything. Which really will surprise friends, family and work colleagues, because I talk a lot of crap. However you already know about the man flu, and life events that took out a couple of weeks of play. Then as everyone knows the weather last week kind of killed things off.

Surprisingly I did play some Magic last week.

As the photo above shows although not perfect we have at least enough room in my classroom to play Magic during breaks.

Sunday saw our party of brave adventurers return once more to the world of Gloomhaven. Oh SPOILER ALERT!!

The plan from our previous time in the Gloomhaven universe was to help out the local law enforcement and bring down a local crime lord. A local crime lord that we had already done the bidding of, by murdering some Inox caravan raiders. Just to teach them a lesson on behalf of the crime lord. Yeah our hands were dirty from that. Reflecting back on it, that mission if you remember didn’t sit well with me. Our mission was to infiltrate a warehouse in Gloomhaven owned by the crime lord. Sadly this mission was denied to us. Between our times in the Gloomhaven universe, Justin had visited his brother and they had started a new campaign, with new characters. Although they hadn’t started off with the intent of doing our planned mission. They ended up doing it anyway. I was a bit salty about this.

I have to admit I’m not a big fan of this mechanic that the designer built in to Gloomhaven. I think almost to a point that it may actually ruin the game for me. Or more specifically this play of the game. I still enjoy the game, and the mechanics. But I don’t like that missions etc can be denied from me. We had decided we were going to do the warehouse mission, but we can’t now. We won’t get to see the end of that story arc, or experience that mission and atone for our acts of murder. I know there is the argument, that “oh, we went along to the warehouse and found that it had been already raided”. But I don’t like that.

After a little debate and ruling out some watery options because we didn’t meet the mission requirement, our party settled on visiting the Windswept Highlands.

This new mission was heavily pushed by Charlie. Possibly because it offered the chance for him to make inroads on his characters objective for the campaign. We were on look out for some ingredients for an alchemist. All we had to do was visit the plateaus of the windswept highlands, fight against strong winds battering us around those plateaus. Oh and the small matter of defeating the indigenous monsters, such as sleeping spitting drakes, and the sun and wind demons. The spitting drakes would wake up if attacked or we were next to them.

There were also 3 treasure tokens we had to get to to open up 3 doors. The third and final treasure token when collected would open the door that would allow us to get to the exit point and victory. Naturally opening a door would not reveal anything good. My suspicion was more monsters.

If that wasn’t hard enough if one of us ended up exhausted then that was it mission over. The only plus point was if we got exhausted on the exit point we were ok.

My mission objective was to be the first person to kill a monster. Sadly this was not going to happen. Because of a road event, and not being able to clear a blocked path of a rock fall we started off this mission with 2 cards in our discard pile. Obviously this was to show how exhausting clearing heavy boulders away was. Not exactly a good way to encourage us to do the right thing in the future, putting us at a disadvantage before we even start killing stuff.

I got separated from the others when I opened the first door and then had a battle with two wind demons. Whilst the others went off to try and open the other 2 doors. Sadly the overwhelming odds of lots of sun and wind demons, plus the sleeping spitting drakes proved too much for the party. Despite the others in the party achieving their individual mission goals, it was all to no avail. Despite being a big bruising brute that likes to rush in and clobber things, Edmunds character took too much damage from the superior numbers. His character became exhausted and that was all she wrote. The mission was over and we had failed. None of the completed personal mission objectives mattered.

The wind mechanic introduced was interesting. At the end of each round our characters if able to would move 1 hex on the board left, up, right and down depending on the turn. It meant you had to think about where you finished your turn, because if you finish in the wrong place you could end up blown into a trap or worse blown into a space next to a sleeping spitting drake. I felt it did capture that being battered by gusts of strong wind.

Our first defeat. I’m sure that we will experience many more throughout the campaign. But still I was hoping we would of had a longer winning streak before suffering our first loss. I know how an Arsenal fan feels now.

Also over the weekend I was looking at some mono red land hate cards to put into this mono red Commander deck I am building. That Boiling Seas is awfully lonely at the moment and needs some friends. The nice thing about this land hate is that it slows and cripples my opponents, while leaving me mana rich. I’m waiting for Blood Moon to hopefully drop a little in price once Masters 25 hits FLGS this month. I’m not sure really who my Commander for the deck will be. I may play it with a different Commander each time to see which one is best.

Right hopefully now all the other events are out of the way and normal service has been resolved.

Gloomhaven – Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

Game day

Once more the merry band of adventurers gathered one Sunday afternoon to head off to seek fame and fortune. Oh yeah, there may be spoilers ahead. So if you want to avoid them please head off and read some of my other posts, or something more interesting elsewhere (which is more likely).

Our band of brothers and sisters had decided to help the merchant make an “example” of some caravan raiders. We arrived at the Inox Encampment in the Dagger Forest where these caravan raiders were camped.

My secret objective for this scenario was simple kill three or less enemies. I could do that I thought. I’ll just deliver the finishing blow to an enemy once one of the others had done all the work. I’ll sit back then, do some damage, heal the others, and hopefully stay alive long enough to see the end of the mission.

To get our reward from the merchant all we had to do was kill 20 Inox. Yeah we were making that sort of “example”. Would the metaphorical 30 pieces of silver we would receive upon completing the mission be enough to ease our conscience?


Charlie and Justin went to the left and took on the Inox guards and archers that side. While Edmund and myself went right to deal with the threat that side. We had started our mission with 3 damage already. So my first action was to heal myself with a healing potion. I think my Glamdalf is the weakest health wise of the party. So I needed to make sure I was able to survive a hit or two.

I did manage to kill an Inox guard, went invisible with my invisibility cloak, hid behind our Inox brawler that was Edmunds character. I can’t imagine how that big brute felt killing his own kind for money. But picking up the extra money left behind by their fallen corpses must of made it easier. While we were ducking and diving, stabbing and slashing. Justin was busy letting Charlie take the slings and arrows thrown at them on the left. Which eventually left to Charlie becoming exhausted and out of this mission, midway through.

If we were going to succeed I needed to abandon my secret objective and step up and get my magic ridden hands even bloodier than they were. By the time the body count had reached the target needed to set an “example” to these caravan raiding Inox I had killed 5. But more importantly I was just short of reaching enough experience Glamdalf to get to level 2 and those 2 spells I could add in.

On return to Gloomhaven we got into a bar fight that pushed me over the line to get my hands on those level 2 spell parchments. Now we have to decide if we are going to do more dirty work for this merchant. Or help the city watch take down this apparently up to no good merchant.

Through out this hack and slash mission I definitely was managing my cards better. At no point did I feel that I was going to be exhausted or getting close to that point. So Iflix was a lot happier with that side of things.

This mission was very much a kill everything in sight. No emphasise on exploring, or getting a particular item. I have to admit this mission kind of reminded me of the US Cavalry and the American Indians. Were we really the good guys in this? I think morally it was ambiguous at best. Were we the cavalry riding into that native village, killing anything that moved? Am I reading too much into this mission, or am I right to feel a little uncomfortable with it?

Netflix/Amazon Prime Recommendations


Netflix and Amazon knocked it out of the park this weekend with two new releases. You want a great cyberpunk sci-fi series to watch? Go watch the amazing Altered Carbon. Want a gritty, suspenseful mystery, that leads you down several plot dead ends before the big reveal then watch Absentia.

I really enjoyed both of these series. Very different, but also very similar in many ways to. Just watch both you won’t regret it.

First Boss Fight – Gloomhaven

Fenland Gamers, Game day

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.