Category Archives: Game day

Myths and trains

Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night

Friday morning was the last morning of my visit with Nathan.

Usually I get a whole morning with him before setting off after lunch. But this time I had to leave before lunch so I was back in time for a Teams call.

Leaving earlier meant I was back in time to attend the Fenland Gamers club night. But more importantly able to try Cyclades.

It’s been on my wish list for yonks. I even backed the Kickstarter for the second edition (granted at the $1 level to get me access to the backerkit) last year.

So what did I think of Cyclades?

I enjoyed it.

I liked the bidding mechanic for the gods and your place in turn order for taking your turn. Which then determined where you were next round in the bidding order.

But did I like it enough to buy the second edition?

Now that is a tough question.

I have Kemet (first edition plus expansions), Cry Havoc, and Scythe. Those three were good enough to fight off Inis taking one of their spots. And I did like Inis just not as much as the others.

And I think Cyclades is falling into that same situation. I like it but enough to get rid of one of the three already mentioned? If you asked me to play one of them right now, I think I’d still go with one of the three over Cyclades.

So it looks like I’ll leave it to Ben to buy the new edition of Cyclades and play that when it arrives (Q4 of this year?)

Saturday saw Jeff and myself meet up to try the 18xx roll and write Arabella. Which had arrived that morning.

I’d only heard about Arabella days earlier via a tweet on X/Twitter. It intrigued me. However nowhere seemed to be selling it. Unless I wanted to import it. Luckily there was a copy in the UK going on the bgg marketplace. Which I snapped up.

When it arrived it was still in shrink.

When I read the rulebook I thought wow this is going to be on the heavier side of roll and writes.

There was one hiccup to playing Arabella. When I told Jeff it was an 18xx inspired game he was apprehensive about it. He is not a fan of 18xx games.

I’d never played an 18xx game before. So this was going to be a way for me to dip my toe in to the 18xx water.

For this first game I went against the advice of the rulebook and didn’t use the AI to add a third player. I want to be able to just focus on the game and not have the overhead and distraction of running the AI.

It is interesting that there are no setup adjustments for player count. Well not if you discount the placement of cubes during setup.

Arabella didn’t disappoint.

It is on the heavier side of the roll and writes.

I really enjoyed it and surprisingly so did Jeff.

It had the feel of an 18xx but not the drawback(s) according to him. Particularly the share side.

We both agreed the wooden dice are ok, but would it have hurt to use plastic ones?

The rulebook is ok. Slight grammar errors. Plus it was not clear that the white dice are your starting dice. But I’m giving a little leeway as the designers are east European I believe, and it could just be a translation issue.

The game does start slow as you start to build your railway, but boy does it ramp towards the end.

Arabella is also a very mathy game! Especially when running your trains or calculating the share dividends.

I definitely need to play this with more players. I think it’s going to be a very different experience.

We followed up with a game of one of Jeff’s Christmas presents Star Trek Away Missions.

This is a fun two player Star Trek game. I played the Federation with a ST:TNG crew, whilst Jeff played the Borg.

It was the intro scenario we played.

So basically I needed to complete at least five mission cards over the three rounds to get my objective points at the end.

This is a skirmish like game or shares some of the mechanics. Players take turns activating a character in their squad/team. The game that comes to kind with that activating mechanic is Star Wars Imperial Assault or Last Days.

There is hand management as well to consider not only for your mission cards, but also for m

Because the game is played over three rounds it is very quick.

I liked it and would play again.

Did you cheat?

father son gaming, Game day

Not much gaming got done on our last full day together.

We played two new games that I wanted to try with Nathan. Those being High Score and Viva Java the coffee game the dice game.

I’m not going to go into much detail about them here. I’ll save my discussion about them for my game dev posts.

Nathan won High Score. Although I think he may have manipulated the dice once or twice!

Viva Java I won.

After the games I finished off our tea of roast lamb. The gravy was amazing. And I thought the lamb went really well with my 5 or 6 bean stew that I made. Sadly a combo Nathan did not get to enjoy as he doesn’t like beans.

Our lunch has been curry wurst a German street food I belief. Basically it’s bratwurst with a curry sauce, with some chips. The origins of the curry sauce recipe goes back to after the Second World War where legend goes a German lady was challenged by a US soldier to come up with a recipe/sauce using ketchup.

After tea was spent watching season one of Reacher. Which Nathan hadn’t seen before, followed by the start of season one of Jack Ryan.

It was a chill day with my son. Just what I needed.

I’ll do anything for money but I won’t do that!

father son gaming, Game day

My first full day with Nathan saw a favourite of his (and mine) Star Wars Outer Rim with the Unfinished Business expansion hit the table.

I think the last couple of visits we’ve not managed to get Outer Rim to the table. So it was nice to get this to the table again.

Nathan started setting it up. And by that I mean he put the outer rim segments together before asking me to finish off the setup.

Setup and tear down is a doddle for me. I have seperate deck boxes for the various decks, baggies for the tokens and standees.

Nathan chose Boba Fett (again, as a Renowned Smuggler) and I went with Doctor Aphra (Living Legend).

Through out the game I felt Nathan had the credit advantage, and he did manage to upgrade his ship twice. Whilst for the whole game I never upgraded my ship.

Play was interrupted for a roast chicken thigh and Yorkshire pudding tea.

After the food break I seemed to edge ahead by completing two of my three ambition objectives before Nathan had completed one of his. But a late surge from Nathan meant we were both racing to complete our final objective and win the game.

Sadly a good dice roll by Nathan on a final job I needed to complete to get me the funds to trigger my final objective denied me that one more turn I needed, as he finished his final objective on his next turn after I completed the job.

It was a fun afternoon and evening spent with Nathan in the Outer Rim.

Meet the maker!

expansions, Game day

Another Friday write off.

However thanks to Dave Saturday was saved.

We met up at the community centre to play Dune Imperium Uprising.

Yes it was a two player game. So we used the Dire Wolf app to act as the second player. It’s a quicker and easier to run version of the House Hagal deck. And also why there are no photos in this post.

Naturally we played with the optional CHOAM module. I can’t see why you wouldn’t. It adds no overhead to the game play. Just a little to the setup. Which is shuffling the contract tiles, and adding four cards to the Imperium deck.

We also carried over the house atomics token as a house rule.

Usually I like to make a note of our leaders and share them here. But I forgot to do that yesterday.

Our rival that the House Hagal deck was driving was Rabban Harkonnen. He was one of the recommended streamlined leaders. Which means in a two player game the players have less to do running the rival. Something I thought was ideal for our first play.

This was only the second time I’ve played a two player game of Dune Imperium. It’s fine with the House Hagal “third player”. But I’d much prefer real players.

Also during setup each player gets a random objective card (a new addition to the game which I’ll talk about later).

Playing Uprising had a feeling of both being familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

The flow of the game, of a turn, were the familiar bits. That hasn’t changed at all.

The game board had that dual feeling of looking familiar but not. The board spaces have had a major overhaul. Water is even harder to get. There are more spaces on the board that require two influence in a particular faction before they can be used. Plus the cost of using one or two of the spaces has gone up or been added. Naturally the benefits have been adjusted/tweaked on some, or even changed totally to support some of the additions to the game. We also have

The mentat has gone. It has been replaced by being able to recall an agent from one of your other spaces on the board.

Other board changes I like are the space for buying the swordsman (aka third agent) once a player has bought a swordsman it then becomes slightly cheaper for all the other players. I think of this as a little catch up mechanism. They also tweaked the high council space. Once you have claimed your seat at the table you can now revisit the space on subsequent turns and get a benefit instead (I forget what it is exactly). I like this as it’s turned a space that once visited is then dead on the board to one that can be useful later on.

I like the addition of the makers/worms, and the shield wall. Having a worm (in your forces) in a combat that you win gains you double benefits. I also like that the shield wall negates their use in combat until it has been destroyed.

I also felt it was harder to gain influence with the various factions because there were less cards with their icons on. Those cards were a premium and ones I tried to but to increase my chances of using those spaces.

The spies are an interesting new addition. They also seem very powerful allowing you to use a space regardless of if an opponents agent is on it. Or you can draw a card.

Although I didn’t get or complete any CHOAM contracts (Dave did) which cost me a victory point at the end for an end game scoring on an intrigue card. I did like their addition.

The objectives and completing them by matching symbols on combat cards you win gains you a victory point is a nice new source of rare victory points. Well the first time. But after that pairs of combat cards with matching symbols gain you a victory point. So combat becomes a way to gain additional victory points, and a way to deny opponents. Obviously knowing that you need to win a combat to deny an opponent that cards symbol adds new tension to combat.

Overall I loved the new bits that Uprising adds to the game.

I want to play the game a few more times before adding in the expansions or using some of the base game cards. That’s a nice thing about Uprising that the expansions can be used with it.

Sadly Dave beat me by a point in the end.

It looks like my only gaming for December was this session with Dave. A big thank you to Dave.

Third time lucky

Game day

The original plan for today was to play a four player game of Memoir 44. But for reasons (I say reasons because we have no idea why the fourth player never turned up) we only had three players.

Luckily I had decided to grab a back up plan for such a situation. Which we decided to go with.

So instead of Memoir we set up to play Apiary.

Below are the faction and hive mats that each of us used.

  • Utel – The Log (Jeff)
  • Iber – The Warre (John)
  • Carpa – The Langstroth (me)

I actually planted seed cards! The first game I’ve managed to plant any and I do four.

I completed my hive mat, and a frame. Plus upgraded my faction tile.

I think I explored twice during the game, and did one retrieval. After I got a tile that allowed me to retrieve a worker and activate a farm every time I did a research action I was researching a lot. It was getting me a seed card and victory points.

There was a moment early on when I did hate buy a tile to stop Jeff having it. If he’d been allowed to get it, along with his faction ability he’d have gotten two basic resources of his choice every explore action on top of everything else.

I triggered the end of the game, and below is how the scores stood after all the smoke had cleared.

Final scores

I have to say if Jeff or John had those scores in my previous two games they would have won. And Jeff did so much better than I did in my first play.

I’m just taken aback by how high my score was. Especially considering my first two plays.

A great afternoon though despite our original plan falling through.

A Very Tired Gaming Session!

Game day

Sunday was a work day.

Which was going well right up until the moment my head came into contact with some fibreglass sheeting at force as I stood up. You can see the results of said impact in the photos below.

Lots of paper work for the shift leader and additional plasters to stop bleeding later the shift ended.

Ouch!

After the shift I had arranged with Ben and his wife Allie to play new arrival Grail Cup.

Very tired I arrived at their house having never had a chance earlier in the day to read the rules. A flaw in my plan. I never really had a break during the 9 hour shift.

Although this was a minor hurdle to overcome, luckily the rulebook is very quick to pick up and learn from.

The thing that attracted me to Grail Cup was that it shared the card drafting mechanic from Citadels by Bruno Faidutti. Which isn’t a surprise because he designed Grail Cup too.

The art for Grail Cup is by the awesome John Kovalic. He of Munchkin and Dork Tower fame.

Grail Cup

We played a couple of three player games and a four player game. The main difference being the number of cards you get to play in a round. In the three player game you get to play two cards and four players or more just one card.

Otherwise each round starts with players drafting the card from the ones available they wish to play that round to move their standee along the race track.

Then the second half of the round has players playing their card and carrying out the instructions on the card.

First player to get their standee to the finish line wins.

This is light, and quick to play. Which I love. It’s easily a game a family could play together.

I like the addition of the dragon that can be moved by players to slow or stop other players in their tracks. The clover spaces with the random clover token that can be either a really useful boost or a boon that has a negative effect. The farm spaces get you rolling a die that can see first player change. Or a bonus of some kind.

Deciding starting positions on the board is based on the card you draw during setup. The person furthest back becomes first player.

I think that we played three games back to back shows how much we enjoyed it.

Next up Ben introduced me to his hard to get, not released over here yet Oink Games new game Tiger & Dragon.

Tiger & Dragon

I want a play or two more of this game.

I enjoyed playing it.

But by the time we started playing tiredness and the head injury were starting to take their toll.

I don’t think I was getting as much out of the game as I could.

As an Oink game this is not one of their famous small box games. But that hasn’t got in the way of it being highly sorted after in the West.

I can see why. It is a nice game. One that may end up in my collection when it becomes more easily available.

I had an enjoyable couple of hours with friends that kindly hosted. Hopefully we can do this on a semi regular basis.

Bad Guys two, Good guys nil

Big Game Saturdays, Game day

I think one of my gaming highlights of the year has to be the annual gaming day that Jeff hosts to celebrate another year going round the sun. For the record the other is going to the UKGE.

This year like the previous one saw Memoir 44 hit the table with an overlord map.

Our first conflict from World War 2 saw the British forces of Montgomery’s 8th Army go up against the German forces of Rommel’s African Corp at Alam Haifa.

Dave (German General/Commander), Diego, and Katie (a friend and colleague of Jeff’s) were the German forces aka the bad guys.

Whilst Jonas (British General/Commander), Gavin, and myself were the British forces aka the good guys.

Wait Jeff wasn’t playing? I hear you say. Kind of. Whilst we were engaged in bloody conflict he was finishing off the curries for lunch. Then at opportune moments in the cooking process joining us to “consult” with the German forces. Which is a fancy way to say he offered advice to Katie because she hadn’t played Memoir 44 before.

There was lots of good natured banter, lots aimed at me. But when your own side are cheering on your opposite number on the battlefield. I rely on one of my favourite quotes.

“Again, right in the ears, straight to the feelings.” Wil Wheaton Big Bang Theory

Sadly for my “team mates” my opposite number with the aid of outside advice, great cards from her Commander, and really good dice rolls, was kicking the butt of the units under my control.

My team mates were getting what they had been calling for earlier in the game. What’s the say “be careful for what you wish for”?

It was getting so dire Jonas our Commander had to move some tank units to my sector to shore up our forces.

Around midday play was interrupted for lunch. Which was a welcome relief from the whooping we were getting.

Lunch was a selection of four home made curries by Jeff. These are always a delicious treat that everyone attending looks forward to.

Fully fed, the German forces went against history and pulled off the inevitable a points victory.

Game two for the day saw a change in the conflict to the from the North African theatre to the Pacific theatre of war. It also saw a personnel change as well.

With the food all consumed Jeff was able to join in the action replacing Katie who had to leave.

That meant that the American forces aka the good guys at Guadalcanal were being represented by Dave, Jeff (General/Commander), and Diego.

Which meant the Japanese forces aka the bad guys were unchanged from the first game members and role wise.

There was a Sudden Death victory condition for the Japanese. All we had to do was get a unit to an exit marker and leave the area of play through it.

Early on I got a behind enemy lines card that allowed me to make a dash for that exit marker. I was three hexes from the exit marker. A great distraction for the opposition forcing them to attempt to stop the unit. They had one turn to stop the unit or lose in spectacular fashion.

Luckily despite a little shenanigans from Jonas weakening the American attacks to take out my unit. They did indeed stop my lone unit. But it did divert their attention and force them to burn up some cards.

We were in a strong position I was getting control of my sector whilst Jonas and Gavin inched forward in theirs.

We were getting some great cards, and dice rolls. Whilst the opposite was true for the American forces.

Points wise we were inching closer to victory. Although it was pretty close still.

And then Jonas played one two knockout combo. He started with an arial bombardment to clear the exit space, followed by a behind enemy lines card allowing his unit to make a dash for the space and grab the win.

After our glorious victory defying history once more, we chewed the fat whilst enjoying Jeff’s salty tears over the manner of the win.

This was a great day. They always are. Great food, great company. An amazing way to celebrate Jeff getting a year older. I’m lucky he invited me. A big thank you to Jeff for being such an incredible host.

Another cunning plan with an old favourite…

I did pick up from Gavin his Dicemasters stuff (which was originally mine before we did some wheeling and dealing a few years back). And Jeff very generously gave me what bits of Dicemasters he had.

I really liked Dicemasters back when it came out. But sadly Wizkids really fumbled the ball with it. Which is a shame it’s a great game.

However I had been thinking recently I’d like to get back playing it, especially with Nathan. I think he’d like it.

I know it’s a “dead” game. But that just means we can use what I have, and anything I can get cheaply to build “teams” and play. It doesn’t mean we can’t play it or have fun.

What I do need to do is try and remember how to play the game again!

Well, how could you have waited so long?

Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night

Friday was once again a Fenland Gamers club night.

I got a chance to play Outlive with its expansion for the first time in about five long years.

When I last played Outlive in 2018 the expansion was a mere twinkle in the games designers eyes.

Marcin got me picking the expansion up for him at UKGE this year for him. So I most definitely hadn’t played the game with the expansion.

I was keen to play the game again.

It was great playing this post apocalyptic worker placement game after such a long time.

I came last, so not even first loser. But I did some cool stuff. I had fun.

After a morning taking Mum to get her new glasses adjusted, and installing a new Wi-Fi router (could have done without that small expense) I picked up a handy game or two to play with Dave as I left the house to meet him.

Which is why we ended up continuing the trend started by Outlive the evening before by playing Eminent Domain.

Eminent Domain is another game that last got played in 2018.

I do like Eminent Domain. But this deckbuilder does not get nearly as much play as it deserves, as the gap between plays proves.

We did waste a bit of time setting up. Working out what cards were what. And for me refreshing my failing memory with the rules, as Dave playing the game for the first time learnt them. But that’s the drawback of picking up a game that I hadn’t played in a long long time.

After narrowly losing to Dave I introduced him to the roll and write genre with Trek 12: Himalaya.

This is a fun introductory roll and write I think with just enough challenge to keep more experienced players engaged.

I did managed to summit our first mountain, narrowly failed the second mountain by 2 points, and was not close on the third and final mountain.

With me getting points for the first two mountains, and Dave claiming points for the third. We ended the expedition a draw.

However I had other reasons for introducing Dave to roll and writes. The next ones I want to play with him are Three Sisters and Motor City. Yep we will be going from the safe paddling pool where Dave has just dipped his toes in the water to dropping him in the deep end!

Splish, splash!

‘T was in the darkest depths of Mordor

Game day, LCG, Lord of the Rings, LoTR, star wars

I spent a very enjoyable few hours today round Jeff’s playing LoTR themed games punctuated with a delicious bowl of chicken and mushroom curry.

We started our gaming with War of the Ring the card game.

Jeff played the free peoples of Middle Earth. Whilst for a change for me from the last couple of plays I’ve had I was the minions of Sauron.

Mordor won in the end by a narrow couple of points.

Jeff was a little unsure of the game and thought he needed a few more plays to decide. But he thought it had potential.

Our second game after a break for lunch (the chicken and mushroom curry washed down with coffee) was LoTR the living card game revised core.

We played the introductory scenario seeing as it was Jeff’s first time with the game.

Luckily Jeff had done some homework and had watched a couple of YouTube how to play videos. So no teaching required.

Jeff chose the starter decks for our play and went elves, leaving me dwarves.

I’ve already written about this introductory scenario so I’m not going to repeat myself here.

Suffice to say the combined might of the dwarves and elves won.

Unsurprisingly Jeff really liked LoTR LCG. I had a strong suspicion he might. After all Jeff loves Arkham Horror LCG and they are similar mechanically.

Which reminds me the previous evening John and I met up and played Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

John played Obi Wan, whilst I went with Ashoka against Ventress. We played at the padawan difficulty (3 missions).

Even though the game was brutal against us and beat us (we needed another two turns minimum to win) Jonathan enjoyed this implementation of the pandemic engine.

I have had two gaming sessions with two of my oldest and closest gaming friends. Who these days I don’t get to game with as often as I’d like. So to get to spend quality time with them sharing great games was a Summer highlight.

Two venture in to the taiga

Expeditions, Game day

Yesterday I had to cancel the planned D&D session so I could look after mum. Friday night whilst I was at game night mum fell over and banged her head on the sideboard. I wanted her to rest, and make sure there was no concussion.

So yesterday evening I messaged Ben to see if he was free to play Expeditions this afternoon depending on mum and how she was feeling.

This morning after a gentle start to the day I checked on mum to make sure she was ok. Her head was still a little sore. Which was expected. But otherwise seemed ok

I’m still blown by just how quick the game is to setup.

Luckily no teaching the game was required as Ben had already watched the Watch it played video a couple of times.

So this is how our champions and mechs matched up.

  • Olga & Changa with Odin’s Wrath – me
  • Anna & Wojtek with Highlander – Ben

I’ll do the tl;dr first I enjoyed Expeditions as a two player game.

Obviously it felt a little different to the game Friday. Mainly because the board was less congested with mechs there was no blocking of spaces. Which on the odd occasion is done deliberately, but most likely by accident.

It was funny because Ben and myself didn’t have to do a refresh action until right before the end of the game was triggered. In fact the more powerful all three actions turn after the refresh was our final turn. As my three actions allowed me to get enough corruption tokens, and claim my fourth and final glory token.

How did we play so long before having to do the refresh? Tile and card abilities. They allowed me and Ben to stay out cycling our activated cards back to our hands more or less as regularly as we wanted without skipping a turn. Granted we don’t get that more powerful turn. But being able to get an action plus a recycle was more useful.

Once I triggered the end of the game and the final scores calculated I snuck in a victory.

Our final scores

We followed up our game of Expeditions with a game of Lakshadweep. This Indian boardgame had an interesting eco inspired theme. However it is pretty paper thin.

The art is very functional and children bookish. Which sums up the level it’s aimed at I think.

The game itself is very Carcassonne inspired with its tile drafting and placing on a combined area.

It felt very Carcassonne light.

The game wasn’t unpleasant but I’d rather play Carcassonne.

I had a great afternoon with a good friend. Who kindly listened to me unload about the mornings family missives. You don’t want to know.