Category Archives: Game day

My Precious Sunday!

Game day, magic, MtG

This weekend has been a busy weekend for your FLGS. It’s been yet another MtG prerelease weekend. These are happening a lot more often these days as WotC push out more and more product in their blatant attempt to lighten your pockets and bank accounts.

But it doesn’t take away from the fact that a MtG prerelease is a valuable source of income for the LGS.

There has been a lot of buzz and online chatter about this latest set The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth for one reason or the other.

The main one that affects this weekend and sales of the very expensive Collectors Boosters is the one of one card The One Ring hidden in one of them. In the run up to this weekend various individuals and businesses put a “bounty” on the card. Last I heard before Friday was one MtG retailer offering over one million dollars to the lucky individual who pulled it (within one month of the prerelease).

Guess what’s been selling like hot cakes this weekend?

My local FLGS sold out of their stock of the Collectors Boosters, and barely sold any draft boosters.

I don’t know if other stores had the same. But it’d sure be interesting to find out.

I wasn’t going to attend any prerelease events. But I did manage to score a couple of prerelease kits and the new starter kit, and held my own prerelease event this afternoon with Dave.

I’m a big Lord of the Rings fan.

Funny enough it was my other passion in the early Eighties and the home computer boom that introduced me to Tolkien and Middle-Earth.

Thanks to the software house Melbourne House who did The Hobbit adventure game, and it’s follow up The Lord of the Rings Part 1. Both coming with copies of their respective books. I was introduced to hobbits, elves, and dwarves.

I ended up reading the books to help me solve the many puzzles and situations I would come across.

During this time I got to see The Lord of the Rings animated movie on vhs. Yes the video revolution was great for geeks like me. The animated movie was only part one. Part two was never made. The movie ended just after Helms Deep if I remember correctly. It’s also of interested that during its making they started running out of money, so they used an animation technique called rotoscoping. Which was basically filming actors in orc outfits and colouring over them! It does give the movie a unique look and feel.

I have such fond memories in the mid Eighties sitting in a large beanbag in my spare room rays of light coming through the window, reading my leather bound, gold leaf lettering on the cover edition of The Lord of Rings.

My first RPG that I played was the Middle-Earth Role Playing game whilst I was studying for my HND down in Brighton.

Then whilst married getting the thirteen cd edition of the BBC radio play production of the book. Wow such an amazing production. Apart from Tom Bombadil they got the book captured perfectly. I soon added the BBCs production of The Hobbit. You can just close your eyes and imagine you are there. I even have both on Audible.

I could go on. But that’d bore you. I think you could say I’m a big fan just not one that can quote chapter and verse from the books or lore.

Dave and I had a blast building our decks to play after cracking open our prerelease kit boosters and participation packs. This was a first for Dave as he was getting to experience his first sealed game.

I love that excitement, anticipation of cracking open a booster. Nothing quite like it in gaming. It’s so addictive.

I went green/white aka Selesnya, whilst Dave went Red/Black with a splash of blue aka Grixis.

I went with cards that generated food tokens and did things with them. I surprised myself with the synergy. If this had been a proper prerelease I’d have never been that lucky with my cards.

There is some amazing art on these cards. I dare to say WotC and the artists they used have taken things to another level.

And it felt so thematic playing the cards. I’ve not felt that with MtG in a long time. Granted I’ve not played a set since that awful Strixhaven set. But playing the cards was such a joy.

The Starter Kit decks also got a couple of plays. They too were fun. There was a nice balance to them.

I had a great afternoon playing some MtG with a friend. As a Fathers Day goes the only way I could top this if I had spent the time with Nathan. But he called me which is all I need.

A hot Sunday afternoon

Game day

A very hot Sunday afternoon saw my friend Jamie and myself meeting up to play some board games.

We started off with a two player game of After Us. You can read a rather long winded not saying much post about it here. We had fun. Despite leading on the points front for the majority of the game, Jamie caught up and overtook me to get the win.

After my apes had their butt kicked it was time to start climbing in the Himalayas by playing Trek 12: Himalaya.

Obviously I like roll and writes. I do have a few in the collection (22 at the last count according the tags I’ve added to games in bgstat). So a while back when I saw a review for it on YouTube (and for the life of me I can’t remember which channel it was I saw it on) I was intrigued. Especially by the theme (we’ll come back to that in a mo). So when I saw it for sale at UKGE with the expansion I finally caved and bought both the base game and it’s expansion.

Now folks who know me longer than I have been blogging about board games will remember that originally this very blog was an outdoors blog! (The posts are no longer on here) I love being in the outdoors, backpacking, sleeping in the middle of nowhere with great views, being up high on the UK mountains. I’ve taken that love of hiking to holidays in the Swiss Alps and French Pyrenees.

Heck I got Strider from a family holiday to the Brecon Beacons, and picking him up when he was ready to leave his mum was my first wild camp.

I love the outdoors.

Why am I not doing this stuff now? Well life got in the way. As it does now. I don’t want the day to arrive when I can do multi day trips again, or go do my dream trip of visiting New Zealand. (I’m getting a bit emotional as I type this next bit) As that means mum is no longer with me.

So you can see the mountaineering theme of Trek 12: Himalaya really appealed to me.

We started off playing the trek mode for the game. This is basically picking one of the three included maps and playing the game using the core rules. As per the rule book suggestions we used the Dunai sheet (see photo below) for this first learning game.

Each round the two dice are rolled and each player chooses one of the following to do with the result:

  • Use the higher of the two values
  • Use the lower of the two values
  • Use the difference between the two values
  • Use the sum of the two values
  • Use the product of the two values

However there is a catch. There’s always a catch. You can only do each of the above a max of four times during the game. So you have to really think about when you use each of the above.

You are also restricted on the max value you can write in a circle. A regular circle is considered to be normal terrain so the max value that can be written in it is 12. Difficult terrain (with a thicker boarder) can only have a max value of 6. If you have to write a value higher than the max the space can hold you draw a sad face instead! Each sad face at the end of the game is worth minus three points.

You start off being able to place the first number you have anywhere on the map. After that each number has to be added to an empty space adjacent to a space already containing a number.

In Trek 12: Himalaya you are scoring points based on chains of numbers (ie 3,4,5,6) and groups of numbers (ie a group of 2’s).

Any number not part of a chain or group at the end of the game is orphaned and gets a sad face.

We enjoyed our initial game so much we played the campaign or expedition mode as it is know.

This adds assist cards to the game that you can claim by having a group of 0’s,1’s, or 2’s. You are allowed a max of three of these at a time. Any you don’t use during a game can be traded for points at the end.

These assist cards are useful as they can give you an extra addition to perform, allow you to put a number anywhere on the map, plus other useful powers.

There are also challenge envelopes that get unlocked at the end of a game before starting the next one if the condition has been met to open it. From the two that I’ve opened so far they have added more assist cards, a fourth map pad, and guides (they increase the power of certain things).

Expedition games are played over three maps, and the victor is the player with the most reputation points. In our game that was Jamie right up to the last game. He had gotten points from both the first two maps whilst I had zero. Then I smashed the last, most difficult map and got a shed load of points to grab the win.

We really liked Trek 12: Himalaya. We played four games back to back.

On the roll and write difficulty level scale it is not even close to being as difficult as a Three Sisters or Hadrians Wall. The rules are very simple. It’s the decisions that you have to make that make it so enjoyable.

I was kind of reminded a bit of Rolling Japan/America when it came to placing the numbers on the sheet. I got that vibe from it.

However you are trying to get those chains and groups, and it gets more and more difficult as your options start to run out on how you get that number you need.

Having the three maps (or more once unlocked) makes the trek mode enjoyable as you can tailor the difficulty of the game you want to play. With the expedition mode that looks to have so much replay ability as you unlock the extras and try and beat previous scores. Plus it doesn’t wear out it’s welcome. The games were fairly quick, so you can do an expedition easily in an evening and not have it hanging around.

I don’t do solo modes of games. So I can’t comment on how it plays solo.

But I do love this game.

Our final game of the afternoon was Three Dragon Ante.

We used the Iron Clay poker chips that I picked up at UKGE for this instead of the cardboard chips that come with the game. They are nice. Feel really great in the hand.

Before I write lots about Three Dragon Ante I want to play this with more than two players.

But we had fun playing it despite an initial misplay. There are some interesting decisions to make during the game.

Plus I won.

I had a great afternoon gaming with Jamie. It was just what I needed on such a scorching weekend.

A Post UKGE Gaming Session

Game day

On Friday whilst at the UKGE, after hearing my plans to only do two days of the expo, Ben invited me to join him and Diego Sunday afternoon to play games.

It was an invite I accepted and said I would see if Jeff was free. Which he was.

So come Sunday afternoon I was at Ben’s abode playing games with Ben,Jeff, Diego and Charlene.

Well not entirely true, the first game I played was with Jeff and Ben only as we waited for the other two to arrive.

That first game was Vivarium. It was a brand new game for all three of us.

Vivarium is played over seven rounds, where you get two turns to draft a card. These cards count towards contracts that you have that will score points at the end of the game, or are more contracts. There is a small majority thing going on at the end of each round based on a tile shown at the start of each round. The winner gets the tile and scores it at the end of the game. During the round the tile gives you some bonus if you draft a card type indicated on the tile.

It was a fun little game. Pretty themeless. It had an interesting tie breaker mechanic that the player that was later in the turn winning the tie. The drafting mechanic using domino like tiles was interesting.

I think that this would be a nice little filler game.

With everyone present we played the deluxe 20th Anniversary edition of Amun-Re. I even had chance to sleeve it that morning without having to buy any new sleeves at the expo.

I love the new art used in the new edition of the game. I also like the quality of life improvements such as larger text on the game board, regular 63mm x 88mm cards instead of those smaller cards. The paper of the rulebook is similar to that used by Stonemaier games for the Wingspan rulebook. The new double pyramid models and bricks are nicer. You could argue that the 3D temple is too large. But I do like it.

When you add in some of the modules new to this edition like we did the table presence goes up with these cool 3D models on the board.

Yes we used the idols module which with our player count added two idols to the board. With the Pharaoh module also added the bidding phase became a bit more cut throat, particularly the two spaces with the idols on. We also had the promo cards shuffled in as they didn’t change the game play.

I enjoyed what the modules bought to the game. But I could easily play without them.

Our third and final game of the day was After Us.

The art looks amazing on this game. It’s the same artist as the new edition of Amun-Re, Vincent Dutrait.

This was an interesting experience.

If I said the game felt chaotic it’d be an understatement. It mainly felt this way because of the simultaneous game play when activating your tribe. I enjoyed the playing four cards and placing them in any order so that you could complete boxes by joining two half boxes on the edges of the cards. You only got to activate complete boxes for their ability. Which could be gaining resources, or trading resources for a benefit.

Although this is a deck-builder, I didn’t feel like I was playing a deck-builder. I think that was due to the chaotic nature of the game.

I did like that any purchased cards went on top of your deck. But you could only purchase one card per round.

Because of the simultaneous nature of the rounds the game played pretty quickly. But that might also have been helped by the tile in play that allowed you to buy five victory points for five batteries. I don’t think I’d play with that tile next time to see if the game feels different.

I think at the moment the jury is out on this game. It needs more plays.

For me this was a perfect way to finish off the UKGE weekend. Playing some of our purchases with friends. Thanks Ben for hosting. And thanks everyone for your company and making the afternoon.

The Remaining Two Days of the Long Weekend

Game day

The remaining two days of the English (there wasn’t a bank holiday in Scotland) long weekend were spent gaming.

Sunday saw Marcin and I playing War of the Ring card game.

It was a game he’d wanted to try. And I don’t need much of an excuse to get the game (or any game really) to the table.

Unlike my first game with Nathan where we played The Fellowship scenario. Marcin and I played the two player duel scenario. I do want to try the full four player experience. But I think that playing it as two players and managing two decks each is too clunky.

Marcin played the forces of Sauron, whilst I played the Free people.

Sundays Gaming

It took us nearly three hours to play our game. But it was fun. I love the depth this game has. Those decisions you have to make with your cards. Whether to play, discard or eliminate. It’s tough. Each decision doesn’t just impact your current play and battlegrounds but future turns and the options (ie cards) you have available.

There is an expansion coming out that apparently adds solo and co-op to the game. But shouldn’t these have been in the core game from day one? If that is all the expansion adds then I won’t be getting it. I want more cards. Maybe official scenarios for the remaining two books.

However I bet you are all wondering who won our game. Well it was a win for Sauron once again. Which is a long winded way of saying Marcin.

Bank Holiday Monday saw Marcin playing host again but this time to Jeff, Diego, Dave, and myself.

Our first game of the afternoon was Libertalia Winds of Galecrest.

A poor scoring first round for me gave Dave enough of a cushion for the rest of the game to comfortably get the win.

Our second and final game was Amun-re by Reiner Knizia.

Although out in 2003 a game I’d never played before.

I really liked the game.

Bank Holiday Monday Gaming

The auction mechanic is fun. Particularly when you hit the second era and the plots come up for auction again. The competition to win an auction becomes more cut throat as the plots now have (or should have) pyramids on them also. Which makes them more valuable to get for end game scoring, especially those with two pyramids on.

I could see this in my collection.

Despite the odd rule mistake, which does taint the win, Dave claimed victory for a clean sweep of wins for the afternoon.

I can’t say a big enough thank you to Marcin for hosting the two days gaming. And I didn’t even steal the cute dog he was dog sitting either.

This sounds like a broken record but this has been three great days of gaming with friends that I’ve really enjoyed. A perfect long weekend.

Dragons on the Iron Throne

Game day, game of thrones

After a week of doing nothing gaming wise and silence on here I finally have something to write about!

There was no gaming Friday night. However half term did get a good start with a game of A Game of Thrones the boardgame second edition on Saturday afternoon.

Dave (Stark), Jeff (Targaryen), Jonas (Arryn), and myself (Baratheon) gathered together to fight for control of Westeros and to sit on the Iron Throne. That left Greyjoy, Lannister, Martell, and Tyrell becoming vassal houses.

Our battlefield was the base game plus the Mother of Dragons expansion and the awesome playmat (below).

We also used the Tides of Battle deck during combat.

Usually I’d use either the A Feast for Crows or the A Dance With Dragons expansions for the relevant player count. They can still be used with the Mother of Dragons expansion. But not in the same way. However I love how the Mother of Dragons turns the unused houses into vassal houses that are controlled by the players.

Control of those vassal houses can change each round. So you are in that difficult position when using them of trying to use them for your own tactical advantage. But not leaving them in a state that if controlled by someone else they can hurt your plans.

You can watch our game condensed down to a thirty odd second video below.

I decided to look at the history books of my game plays that is the bgstat app, and I have never won a game of AGoT! Never!

And yet I love the game.

I get to play with my friends. I love the banter, dealing and backstabbing. And that’s before I even start on the other aspects of the gameplay/mechanics that I love.

Our game only went five rounds before Jeff and his dragons won.

A great afternoon gaming. A great way to start the half term.

Sunday Afternoon Gaming is Back!

Game day

The plan was is Clack could make it we’d play three player Scythe. Otherwise Dave and I would play Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game and War of the Ring the card game.

However I wouldn’t know until Dave got there which plan we’d be doing. So I had no idea how many tables to get out or which game to set up. I hate not being able to get the setting up done in advance of folks turning up.

It looked like it was plan B. It’d be Dave and myself gaming.

We started off with Star Wars the deckbuilding game.

Dave was the “good guys” as he described them from the movies in their white armour, aka the Empire. Whilst I was the rebels. We used the suggested first/learning game setup from the rule book, with the optional rule allowing you to bribe neutral cards from the Galaxy row and place them in the discard pile and not your deck. The victor would be the first person to defeat three bases of the opponent.

Our first game was over relatively quickly with the rebels rushing the empire bases to get the win.

We enjoyed that first game so much that we wanted to play again.

Our second game we used the Whole Galaxy rules which basically means you are using all ten base cards. You are also playing the first to four bases defeated. It’s described in the rule book as the way the game was intended to be played.

It was another rebel victory.

Our remaining games were with the secret base rules. This is where apart from the starting base you choose four other bases and the rest go back in the box unseen. So your opponent has no idea what bases you have chosen.

I like this version of the rules. It gives you moments in the game where when you have to select your next base you regret not having one of those you put back in the box as it would be better for where the current game is.

We played three games using the secret base rules which saw an empire comeback to level the score at 2-2. Luckily the decider was won by the rebels.

So we spent the afternoon playing Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game with the War of the Ring Card Game not getting a look in.

Yes we both thought the game was that much fun that we were happy just playing that.

There are some nice touches to this deckbuilder that make it standout. Some I’m only coming across for the first time, others I am familiar with.

I think the first most obvious difference is the galaxy row or trade row. Only being able to buy your own faction cards or neutral ones is huge, and can be annoying if the cards hate you and it is full of the other sides cards! But the fact that you can attack the other sides cards in the galaxy row to remove them, and get a benefit for doing so is a nice touch.

Then there is the force and the tug of war that can be. The benefit of having the force with you is that some cards require you to have the force to trigger a more powerful benefit. For instance Darth Vader does even more damage if the empire has the force.

I like the bases and the benefits they give you either as you reveal them or as an on going ability.

There were some turns were I was getting some nice synergies/combos and drawing extra cards, getting cards for free and into play straight away.

It’s not a big thing but having the two coloured cubes to track attack and resources during your turn is really handy. It does stop you losing track and miscounting, well greatly reduces it.

Then you get fanboy moments as characters like Luke and co appear in the galaxy row and you hope that your opponent doesn’t track them before you get a chance to buy them.

The game itself has characters from the original trilogy and Rogue One. Although there are some notable characters missing. In one game I was just missing Luke to complete having the whole gang.

I really like the game. I think when I introduce Nathan to it so will he and I’ll be buying a copy for him.

Two copies does allow you play a 2v2 game for which you have to download the rules from the FFG website.

Look the bottom line is if you like deckbuilders, especially the aggressive ones like Star Realms then you will like Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game.

Coronation Gaming

Game day

Friday it had looked like I wouldn’t be able to make the planned days gaming round Diego’s on Monday.

I had shared my car woes on the Messenger group set up to plan the days gaming, and that I was not able to make it.

From that posting Charlene and Jeff both very kindly offered to give me a lift.

Both very generous offers that considering neither lived near me and would have to go out of their way to pick me up, I felt I had to turn down.

If a friend needed my help I’d go out of my way to help them. But ask for help? I can’t. It’s very hard for me to ask for help or to even accept it. Call it a personality flaw. But that’s me.

In the end Jeff direct messaged me saying he’d pick me up at 10am, and I could show him where Diego lived.

I was less of a detour for Jeff than Charlene. So there was a little less guilt accepting the generous offer.

The morning of the bank holiday celebrating our newly crowned sovereign King Charles III Jeff was a little early. Luckily I was ready.

Our days gaming started with a game of Terra Mystica.

I’d never played this before, and like one of my students hadn’t done the homework assigned to us by Diego of watching a how to play video.

Terra Mystica – who was which faction

I enjoyed the game and would like to play it again to explore the options more.

It struck me as very much a game where you have to play to the strength of your faction.

With the dragon lords I was playing I think I could have been a bit more aggressive in my expansionism. I was very aware of my limited power tokens (if that is what they are called). But my issues were during the early stages of being too expanding and running out of power tokens, and also generating enough workers. In the last couple of rounds I had the problem of having lots of power tokens and not nearly enough workers to use the tokens with.

I did spend most of the game trailing far behind on the scoring track, but a late surge of points during the final scoring from the priest tracks got me enough to draw last place with Diego.

Jeff and Ben shared the victory. Apparently there is no tie breaker in this game!

Our next game was Cat in the Box. Which Diego just romped away with the victory. Apart from the last round he was scoring over five points a round. It should be noted that Ben scored zero points the whole game.

Our third and final game of the day was Red Rising.

Ben won this game also. However as a five player game it played a lot quicker than I thought it would.

I had four cards I was holding onto from my initial hand as they allowed me to use them as either any named character or colour during the end scoring. I thought these will be really useful. Did I get any other cards that they could be used with? No. didn’t see any come out either.

I also spent a few rounds trying to get a third red card, which never showed up. And I couldn’t get to the one in one of the columns. That stopped me getting a cool combo that would have netted me over five helium in two turns.

Ben took the victory in this game while I was denied the first loser position by a couple of points. Diego took that honour.

I had a great day gaming with amazingly kind and generous friends.

There was only one way to finish off such a great day. Buying Mum a Chinese take away to celebrate her birthday (which just so happened to be the same day as this one off bank holiday). Yes I left Mum at home looking after the mutts on her birthday.

Epic Game Night!

Game day, game night

Friday I had an awesome, nay EPIC afternoon and evening gaming.

Ben was hosting at his home in Kings Lynn. Which meant I had an excuse to pop in to see my friends and ex-colleagues at the Tesco Express I used to work at.

I miss working with them so much.

Charlene was at Ben’s when I got there.

We played a two player edition of Blokus whilst Ben set up Nidavellir.

I hadn’t played Blokus before and it had been on my list of games to try.

As a quick two player game I liked it a lot. We rattled out two games whilst Ben was setting up. Both of which I won.

Plus we played a family game called Blockness with Charlene’s daughter, and Ben’s daughter. I’d never heard of it, and it wasn’t listed on bgg!

Think a child friendly version of Tokyo Highway but without the dexterity element themed around the Loch Ness monster!

Ben’s daughter won whilst also smack talking her aunty.

Then it was on to a 3 player game of Nidavellir.

This was an interesting game I’d never played before. The main mechanics being set collection and bidding.

The game sees you bidding on each of three lots of cards to see who chooses first from that lot. You are also trying to upgrade the coins you are using for the bids to higher values as they obviously give you a better chance of picking first. But also are worth more points at the end as you add up the total of your coins to add to your score.

I quite enjoyed the game. Would definitely play again. Not sure about the long setup time.

We finished off the afternoons gaming with a 4 player game of Cat in the Box.

Another fun new to me trick taking game, which I sadly lost on the tiebreaker.

The main event of Fridays gaming was a four player (Ben, Marcin, Diego, and myself) all in epic variant of Dune Imperium.

Which basically means Dune Imperium with both expansions (Rise of Ix and Immortality) plus the epic variant rules (playing to 12 victory points, starting with an intrigue card, no conflict 1 card, 5 troops in the garrison). The epic variant rules setup can be found in the Rise of Ix expansion rule book.

Who played which leader

Yeah I played “Princess” Yuna Moritani once again. I guess I like her ability a lot. I should branch out and try a new leader next time.

For much of the game Ben was in the lead on the victory track.

He did like buying the Spice Must Flow cards to get a victory point for doing so. He got three that way. An interesting strategy.

To be fair Ben was doing amazing considering he had one less agent than the rest of us.

I even bought 3 tech tiles. I think this was the most I’ve bought in a game. Plus I bought both dreadnoughts. Another first.

Only one of us didn’t use their family atomics to reset the trade row. I did it to try and get a card that would help with the one I had that allowed me to graft a card from the trade row to it, then trash it afterwards. I was looking for solutions, which I luckily found.

This game went the full 10 rounds. Which had Ben leading for most of it, hitting the game end trigger of 12 points, and then getting a thirteenth.

However I managed to get a point off him, that was short lived for me as Marcin took a point off me. A point that helped Marcin grab the victory.

As you can see from the final scores below this was a pretty close game. It’s one of the things I love about the game.

This was also a very cut throat, competitive game. I’d expect no less from four hardened gamers.

I still don’t get why Marcin hates, that’s probably too strong a word, dislikes the intrigue cards that give a couple of victory points during the end game scoring. I agree that’s a massive amount of points in a game like Dune Imperium where the scores are so close. But I see that as a form of end game tension and a way to grab victory from defeat.

A great Fridays game with great friends.

Father Son Gaming Easter Holidays Edition #2

father son gaming, Game day, game night

Our morning started off with us learning War of the Ring the card game.

We played the two player Fellowship of the Ring scenario. It’s slightly less complicated rules wise. Only uses paths and battlegrounds that cover the first book, and the battlegrounds are not chosen at random but played in order. The decks are also constructed differently, taking out certain cards from the factions, or missing a faction altogether.

After a slow start as we learnt the rules as we played we soon got into the swing of things.

Oh Nath played the part of the Fellowship, while I played the Nazgûl.

It was interesting that early on I had card advantage, was drawing more cards. But that flipped in the later stages to Nath having the card advantage.

It’s certainly a very nice game, with interesting choices to be made every turn. Which starts with which card to discard and which to play. As you can’t play a card without discarding one.

Then you have to decide to whether play the card to a path, battleground or into reserve.

As the forces of darkness I was cycling through my deck a lot, and I didn’t take advantage of certain card abilities to thin out my opponents cards.

I’m pretty sure we had rules errors whilst playing. But who cares? we had fun.

Somehow my Nazgûl won by a single point.

After visiting the game shop in Basingstoke (I left with War machine, Iron Heart, and Green Goblin scenario pack, and got Nath a MtG Challenger deck) we saw the new Super Mario Bros movie.

Wow I’ve not laughed like that during a movie in a long time. It’s a great movie. Although I may be biased as a Mario fan.

Obviously my age means I got to play Mario back in the day when he was just Jump Man and not the main attraction, just a supporting act.

My first real Mario game though was Super Mario Land on the GameBoy. Yeah I missed the main Mario games on the NES/SNES because I didn’t own either. I loved the original Mario Golf on the GameBoy too.

At the time as you know from my Doom posts I was on a pc mainly playing stuff there. The GameBoy was my “console” at the time. For some reason I love portable gaming systems.

I’m currently reading a book about Super Mario Bros 2. I find these sort of books about our gaming history interesting and add to my enjoyment of the game in question. And yes I will be going back and playing the game once the Doom project is finished.

Back to the movie. There is so much fan service here and it’s a delight as you spot the Easter eggs such as the NES console, or Punchout being mentioned.

I loved the humour, and was laughing a lot during the movie.

This was the perfect Mario movie! It did exactly what the games do, bring a smile to the face.

Certain scenes made me want to play a Mario game. A weaker soul going into Game afterwards would have caved and bought another Mario game. However I did play Mario Kart 8 later in the evening to get the “craving” out of my system.

Later in the evening Nath and I played a couple of games of MtG with him using his new deck. We shared the honours.

Father Son Gaming Easter Holidays Edition

father son gaming, Game day, game night

An uneventful drive down saw me arrive mid afternoon at Nathan’s.

Yep it’s holiday time and a chance to spend a couple of days with my son.

We played a couple of games of MtG using two of the Pioneer Challenger decks (Gruul Stompy vs Mono Red Burn).

Nathan started off playing mono red. A simpler deck I thought for refreshing your memory on how to play. However getting mana screwed certainly slowed the deck down, and allowed me to stomp to victory unchallenged.

After the first game we swapped decks. Despite eventually losing playing red, I did a lot better. Hitting land drops, getting creatures out, just not doing damage quick enough. With both of us having a good presence on the battlefield, one of us was waiting until they could get the edge in the impending reckoning. That was until Nath was able to board wipe my forces and swing in unchallenged for the win.

This morning Nathan and I played a game of Deep Sea Adventure with the die expansion, and two promo meeples!

I like what the die brings to the game. That chance to move three times the value of the second die is a huge attraction for using it. Plus gives a glimmer of hope when trying to get back up to the surface, however slim.

Although the side that gets its value from the number of players sharing the direction you are moving is less helpful in a two player game.

And yes the dice tray is pointless and will just get stored in a box somewhere and never used.

I did win our game by being the only one managing to get treasure to the surface.

We followed up our underwater adventures with some more MtG. This time we used the game night kit decks.

I have to say the elf deck is most certainly an elf deck. It ramps quickly, it gets lots of elves out, you get value from having lots of elves out. It’s fun to play. But not sure it is being on the opposite side from it.

I like playing MtG this way. Grabbing a deck or two and just playing a game or two.

After Nathan had his driving test. Which he sadly failed. We went and saw the new Dungeon and Dragons Honour Among Thieves movie.

It was very enjoyable.

Some of the sfx could have been better (especially the halflings). I think the mix of humour was just right. It had its hulk smash moment taken straight from the first Avengers movie.

I think the performances were fine. Plus the odd guest appearance.

Have I said how bad the halflings were? They were pretty awful.

The story isn’t the greatest, but very standard D&D fare for sure.

I (a D&D player) enjoyed the movie as did Nath (a non-D&D player). So it has that sweet spot of appealing to both types.