Wednesday morning saw me visiting Diego’s Pad once again to play VtM Rivals.
It was a chance to try out the changes I made to my blue deck. Diego was also trying out his first built Rivals deck.
Below are our two leaders for the mornings games.
Our leaders
Our first game was a victory for Diego by knocking out my last vampire in my coterie. I’d shuffled my deck too well and wasn’t hitting the newly added reaction cards. Or when I did it was too late. I also remember running dangerously low on my prestige in this game too. Which meant I also wasn’t hitting any of my prestige generating cards.
Game two ended in an agenda points win for Diego.
Something I was unable to stop.
In this game I failed to control the streets, so there was a build up of citizens and vagrants.
The game did last a lot longer. The control side was working really well. The reaction cards were impactful.
I did mill Diego! And for a couple of rounds had Diego down to zero or one card in hand. Having two copies of mental block out meant a lot of pain for Diego.
I’m happier the deck is working a lot better.
Ok here is the bit folks really want to see, the new deck list.
Blue V2.0
Leader, Haven, and Agenda
Agenda – Death is Only the Beginning
Haven – Eternal Life Mortuary
Leader – Annika (Hecata)
Vampire Deck
Faith Gray (Tremere)
Lorenzo Murik (Tremere)
Anjali the Samedi (Hecata)
Bianca Giovanni (Hecata)
Kristin (Hecata)
Nathaniel (Hecata)
Library
Second Tradition: The Domain (Action Ongoing)
Sleep of the Damned (Ritual) x 2
The Shakedown (Action) x 3
Clairvoyance (Action) x 2
Blood Makes Noise (Ritual)
Truth of Blood (Ritual)
Mental Block (Unhosted Action Ongoing) x 3
Tenebrous Avatar (Reaction) x 3
Fortify the Inner Facade (Reaction) x 3
Defense of the Sacred Haven (Ritual) x 2
Grave Robbing (Action) x 3
Early Grave (Action) x 2
Seek Knowledge (Ritual) x 2
Fourth Tradition: The Accounting (Action) x 3
Flesh of Marble (Reaction Special) x 2
Spirit’s Touch (Action) x 2
Hardened Flesh (Reaction)
The Mighty Fall (Attack/Reaction) x 2
Slap in the Face (Reaction) x 2
Thoughts
So approximately a third of the deck are reaction cards! That’s a pretty big commitment.
With me milling Diego in game two I want to try this deck with the Disheveled Shelves agenda.
I’m also thinking maybe cutting back the rituals and adding in the wraith cards!
I still need rituals to increase the havens secrecy. But I’m not really getting the opportunity or deciding to play them. Which means the vampire slots might be open to consideration also.
It’s been one of my days off and I managed to get a day of gaming in!
This morning I was over to Diego’s Pad as it is identified on the bgstat app play VtM Rivals. I’ll cover this in another post. I want to go over deck changes and this isn’t the post for that.
Then this afternoon Jonathan and myself met up at our local Costa to play games.
It’s been a long time since Jonathan and I have held one of these.
It’s been a while (not as long as the gap between now and our last Costa gaming) since I’ve had a chance to play a game or two with Jonathan.
It’s the price we’ve paid since we had the influx of new members to the club night.
I’m not complaining. I think it’s amazing and wonderful that we have so many people now attending meets, even arranging their own sessions.
New friendships have formed.
New gaming rivalries.
It’s gotten easier to get various games to the table.
But the side effect is that we don’t get to play games together as often as we used to.
On a side note I’m now wondering how or when the next stage of the club happens. By that I mean we get even more members coming along! Or even how we achieve that. Will it be a slow gradual growth or like this time a more dramatic increase over a short period? I can’t wait to see which.
After purchasing our over priced beverages we played a game of the roll and write I got from Jonathan The Castles of Burgundy: The Dice Game.
Apart from a rules gaff on bonus points per completed area. The light to mid weight roll and write was fun as a two player game.
It’s foot print, and simplicity to some of my other roll and writes makes it a great game to put in the bag for these sort of sessions.
Our second game of the afternoon was Onitama with the “new” Shadow and Light expansion.
We both really liked the Shadow and Light expansion. It bought a nice hidden movement element to the game.
Plus this main way to play the expansion (there is another way you can play Onitama) was quick to setup and understand the rule changes. It helps these are summarised inside the two game screens.
You have an extra decision to make on a turn about whether you move the ninja or not. Plus extra tracking of the ninja on the smaller board. But it doesn’t actually add another to the time to take a turn.
I think our main and only criticism of this expansion is that the screens could have been a bit taller. A criticism I’ve seen elsewhere. I feel the box size of the expansion had more to govern the size of them than the actual practical use of them.
The results of our Costa Gaming
I’ve had a blast playing with my friends today. Long over due.
The last time, in fact the only time, I got Battlestar Galactica (BSG) the boardgame to the table was back in 2017.
So it was long overdue a return to the table.
The driving force for getting BSG to the table this time was a request by Colin on the Fenland Gamer discord server that he’d like to try the game.
I have a copy, it’s on my big game challenge, so I setup an event to play BSG along with the Pegasus expansion.
In the run up to last Saturday (our chosen day of play) I sleeved the cards in the game, and purchased a 3ft by 3ft starfield art neoprene playmat.
Obviously I wanted to protect my copy of BSG (you should Google how much this out of print game goes for), and these were the measures I’ve put in place to do that. The playmat will also be used with Xia and Star Wars Outer Rim. The starfield pattern will be a great back drop to those games, plus protect the game boards.
Whilst setting up before the others arrived I got distracted by a full English breakfast for my lunch. But still I had the majority of the setup done before players started arriving.
I had been expecting seven of us in total to be playing. Which would mean we would be playing with the Cylon Leader variant of the game. However as with all things in life, stuff happens, and seven became five.
The plan for this game with the Pegasus expansion was never to use the New Caprica part of the expansion. I may play a game of BSG with it at some future point in time. However the majority of the games will be with just the Pegasus side of things. Which doesn’t add too much more to the game overhead wise. You get more of everything else. More choice.
So which characters did we choose? We went with the following:
Colin – ‘Chief’ Galen Tyrol
Marcin – Gaius Baltar (President) cylon
Syringa – Karl ’Helo’ Agathon cylon
Diego – Kara ’Starbuck’ Thrace / Lee ’Apollo’ Adama
Me – Helena Cain (Admiral)
Setup complete it was time to try and get Galactica to Kobold and throw a cylon or two into the airlock.
Galactica was soon surrounded by cylon basestars, raiders, and heavy raiders, whilst avoiding ever escalating crisis.
Apparently wanting to use my characters once per game ability of doing a blind jump (as long as the distance travelled is six or less) to escape an early cylon attack marked me out as a cylon!
Gaius wasn’t using his Quorum cards, so I instigated an election and had Helo installed as President instead.
Gaius took this loss of power badly and plotted away to regain it.
In the meantime as revenge Gaius tried to unsuccessfully remove Cain as Admiral. Whilst Cain returned the favour of failing to force Gaius out of the airlock.
However once the second loyalty cards had been dealt out, Gaius used his once per game ability to look at every players loyalty. He knew who the cylons were.
With that knowledge Gaius advised Cain to throw Starbuck out the airlock. To be fair Starbuck had been acting suspiciously. The vote did not go well for Starbuck, who took a walk in to space without a space suit.
Sadly Starbuck was not a cylon, and moral took a hit onboard Galactica.
Apollo stepped up to try and fill the shoes left by Starbuck.
After Apollo got Cain thrown in the brig. Helo took over command of the fleet.
But Helo had a short spell in command before Apollo wrestled command away from him. Followed by grabbing the Presidency. Were we seeing the start of a new dictatorship.
A missed guided dictatorship that still had cylons sabotaging things. And to cap to things off cylons had boarded Galactica wrecking havoc.
Eventually Helo and Gaius (just confirming what Cain had been telling them ever since being tricked into killing Starbuck) revealed themselves as cylons to finish off the downfall of Galactica.
It was close, Galactica only had to make its final jump to Kobold to win. But the cylons managed to ware down the ships resources to secure a cylon victory.
We had a blast. Lots of banter.
I really mustn’t leave it so long between plays.
However before it does get back to the table Xia and The Thing need some loving.
The expected call about the job never happened. So I assumed I hadn’t got it. Best prepare for the worst. It did take the shine off such a great afternoons gaming.
Yesterday the planets finally aligned so Diego and I were able to get the latest Vampire the Masquerade Rivals expansion Shadows and Shrouds to the table.
I was so glad we were able to do this. I have plans to build my first Rivals deck around Hecata and their torpor shenanigans.
But before I do that I really needed to play the precon deck as it comes in the expansion. Get an idea of how the clan plays, what sort of tricks they have up their sleeve.
Remember these two games were two player. So where the deck might be “weak” in a head to head game, it might be stronger when played in a three or four player game.
I went with Annika as my leader in the first game. If my memory doesn’t fail me the advice for new players playing the core precon decks is to use the six cost blood potency vampire as the leader. So that’s the advice I went with for my first play of the Hecata deck.
Now I will state for the record I had no idea what cards were in the library deck. I was playing blind!
All I knew going into these games was the Hecata deck made use of the new wraith mechanic. More on that later. Plus you wanted vampires in torpor.
Looking at Annika’s ability I was assuming there were going to be a few rituals in the deck.
However during our first game I spent more than an action or two drawing cards, or playing action cards such as Grave Robbing to draw cards hoping to get a ritual. I didn’t draw a single one.
An inspection of the deck revealed it had five ritual cards out of the forty that make up the library.
Our leaders for the two games
With two other vampires (Nathaniel and Bianca Giovanni) interacting with rituals in some way. You start to get the impression that having rituals out is an important part of the deck. Although there are a couple of action cards that do things with rituals that seem token gestures to that plan.
So I would expect to be hitting rituals a bit more reliably than I was. Especially when one of them (Summon Spirit) is one of the very few ways for a player to make wraiths in the deck.
I didn’t make any wraiths in this game. Although I did use the leader ability to burn the odd mortal in the street.
I lost the game due to having no more vampires left in my coterie. I’d spent too much time looking for rituals and making sure I had vampires in torpor. Leaving myself open to having pretty weak vampires left in my coterie that could be easily taken out.
For our second I changed my leader to Zahara.
I still didn’t hit a ritual until late in the game.
Although I did get Zahara cycling through torpor nicely to generate wraiths. The Haven Eternal Life Mortuary’s Leader Ability was really handy for doing this. A nice little synergy.
Agendas and Havens for the two games
Diego won with an agenda points victory.
In all the Hecata precon has three strategies it uses. Although thematic, I think it could have been more focused on say just two of them.
Having vampires in torpor with the torpor ability is cool. Getting extra value from them during the torpor/mend step is nice. At the moment it’s just a matter of building decks around the current torpor abilities. So I see decks that splash the odd Hecata vampire to supplement their main strategy.
Wraiths are an interesting addition. I’d like more ways to create them. But having a combo of cards that burn mortals, do something based on number of burned mortals, and create wraiths, the amount of initial cards is probably about right. Plus I like how this mechanic now makes burning a mortal by another player a harder decision for that player. They may need to heal badly, but do they really want to fuel these cards?
I’d also like to see more wraith abilities. At the moment they boost the stats of the vampire they are attached to. I’d like to see some that punish the attacking player. But the surprise element is cool.
To be fair to the deck with the number of action cards for combat I don’t think I was aggressive enough with the deck. I did like the reaction cards like Flesh of Marble that increase the defense of the vampire and change aggregated damage to physical damage.
I need to look at the other cards available but I think we might be seeing the start of a “blue” control style deck in Rivals. Spirit’s Touch interacting with another players library, or Clairvoyance looking at their hand. Mental Block looks fun and stops a player playing a card from their deck. All “blue” type things to do to another player. And I have been known to play blue type decks in the past.
Overall a fun deck, just not overly suitable for the two player head to head format.
Saturday saw the long overdue return of A Game of Thrones the boardgame second edition (that’s a mouthful to say) to the table.
The impetus to get it back was to play it with the third and largest expansion for the game Mother of Dragons.
I bought the expansion early on during the big global event if memory does not fail me on this. For sure it was during said event.
So at some point I was going to want to play this again.
To help encourage getting it back to the table I did add it to two of the gaming challenges I set up at the start of the year.
So a couple of months back I setup an event on the Fenland Gamers discord server. I had three players (including myself) able to commit to playing the game. With a fourth unsure.
We needed four players to be able to use the new map of Essos and House Targaryen. Which is one of the major attractions of the expansion.
In the days, even weeks before I did try getting the playmat for the game. Sadly there were none in stock, those on eBay that looked affordable had a massive (£70+ postage!). Even a couple of pleas on a Facebook gaming group went unanswered.
On the day the unsure sadly was not able to make it. But as I was getting that news and about to start putting away the extra map and Targaryen pieces in walked Jimmy and an unexpected Nathaniel. We had a fourth.
A brief note on setting up before the players arrived. Which you know I like to do. For this game I setup as much as I could before everyone arrived. However which houses were controlled by players and which were to become vassal houses couldn’t be done until everyone had arrived. Luckily everything a player needed for each house was bagged, decks ready. So once selected all they had to do was grab everything for that house. Then it was just a matter of getting the components needed for each vassal house from the houses components.
Whilst waiting for Jeff to arrive we started choosing our houses for the game.
I went first and chose Targaryen. I wanted this house in the game, the only way to guarantee it was to choose it myself.
Here are how the houses ended up being chosen.
Stark – Jimmy
Baratheon – Nathanial
Targaryen – Me
Tyrell – Jeff
The vassal houses were: Lannister, Greyjoy, Martell, Arryn.
Oh we were also using the Tides of War deck in combat.
Then battle commenced.
Despite repeated warnings throughout the game about Jeff and how he was clocking up strongholds and castles in the name of House Tyrell. Jimmy and Nathaniel kept attacking me whilst leaving Jeff mostly alone.
Then the moment came when I declared Jeff had won the next round. By then there was nothing they could do. They tried in vein to delay the inevitable. But their efforts were futile.
It was interesting that even at the moment I had declared Jeff’s impending victory he too had not fully seen it.
If only someone had warned them earlier!
All I did was sit back and watch events unfold as predicted, whilst inflicting a final bit of humiliation to Nathaniel as payback for the constant naval attacks by capturing the Baratheon castle.
I’m a fan of the earlier two expansions A Feast for Crows (four players) and A Dance with Dragons (six players). But for me Mother of Dragons beats them hands down.
The vassal system introduced adds a new additional tactical element to the game from choosing which house to take control of, to how you are going to use them that turn. Granted it adds considerably to the play time (there are rules handling if a player has to leave during a game, they also become a vassal!) The vassal system replaces the neutral force tokens of the base game, and I really do prefer it.
I liked House Targaryen and the dragons. Although it does add a rather big target to your back. I think Nathaniel and Jimmy were too focused on my threat with the dragons enabling Jeff to exploit that distraction. But they were cool to play and have their alternative win condition. Plus their specific Westeros deck did seem to encourage a bit of wheeling and dealing with the other houses.
The Iron Bank cards were interesting, although Jeff was the only one who bought one. I think more plays are required before I can make my mind up over these.
I like that you can use the other expansions house cards with this one. So if you only play Mother of Dragons they are not just collecting dust. Plus for now another reason to get the game back to the table!
Mother of Dragons will be my preference when it comes to playing A Game of Thrones. Unless time is tight and the player count matches up the other expansions won’t get a full outing.
I had a blast and can’t wait to revisit Westeros to get my revenge and recapture the Iron Throne.
It was supposed to be the next Group 2 D&D session today. However due to that thing the government is in denial about and would rather you forget about, we were once again going to be down by 50% of the group.
So I suggested we play a three player game of Star Wars Outer Rim instead.
I knew that the other two had never played the game before. But that didn’t stop me adding in the Unfinished Business expansion.
After all it added more cards to the various decks that the game uses. More characters to play as. Favours (not used) and Ambitions. Plus Core World end tiles allowing the Galaxy to be crossed.
I was going to just use the extra cards and core worlds but after watching a review by Luke Hector I decided to use the Ambition cards as well. The logic being they would give new players a focus on what to do on their turns and for the game.
Here are the characters and Ambition cards selected.
Jyn Erso – Living Legend (Me)
Han Solo – Renowned Smuggler (Shane)
Maz Kanata – Crime Lord (Anthony)
We were playing first to eight fame points plus complete their ambition card.
After an early but brief lead on the fame points. I was trailing on that front until a late surge towards the end which put me in front again.
I was the last to upgrade their ship.
As for the new stuff. I liked the ambition cards, especially how they gave a direction/focus.
The core worlds certainly aided in making the outer rim smaller, and quicker to navigate from one end to the other.
In the end we ended our game not because of a winner but due to running out of time.
Although Shane and myself both had two ambition tokens on our cards, I had nine fame to his eight. So I claimed the victory. Another half hour or two turns I’d have won normally.
So for the last time (“thank feck for that” I hear you say) I’ll be saying the following.
SPOILER ALERT! The following post contains spoilers for the Rise of Fenris campaign for Scythe. If you haven’t played the expansion and wish to avoid any spoilers you may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.
I wasn’t expecting Ben for this final showdown. Having checked in with him afterwards he has been having a rough time health wise. I know I speak for all of us that know Ben and don’t, that we wish him a speedy recovery. He has been missed during our campaign, and we all look forward to when we can game with him again.
Now onto the bit everyone who has been following this has been waiting for.
Episode 8 – The Final Episode – TESLA’S MADNESS
So here we are episode 8, the final episode of the Rise of Fenris campaign. The only episode that counts in deciding the winner of the campaign.
With our failure to rescue (or is it recapture in the case of the Fenris faction?) Tesla in the previous episode, this episode had the title of Tesla’s Madness.
This meant that the Tesla mini started on the Factory space and would move around the board based on a die roll and a Mad Tesla tile, attacking anyone he moved into the same space as. Tesla would be the last to take a turn. So in our game between Shane (last) and Jeff(first). Jeff was given the duty of controlling Tesla.
I will say it was confusing in the rules when it referred to using the blue and orange dice with Tesla. The dice aren’t coloured that way. They were black and brown! Then it clicked with Jeff the rules were referring to the colour of the numerals on the dice! Why?
The rules allowed players to chose their player mats this episode. Naturally the combo restrictions for Rusviet and Crimea applied. The order of choice was based on total wealth at the start of this episode. Which meant Jeff chose first, then Shane, and finally myself. Here is our final faction and player mat setup.
Vesna & Voltan/Industrial (Cyan) – Jeff
Rusviet Union/Patriotic (Red) – Shane
Fenris/Militant (Orange) – Me
Once again we were given the option to use the Wind Gambit expansion, and the Backup Plan/Doomsday Clock resolution tiles. So naturally we were going to have in play the airships. However I went with this being the “classic” end of game condition. Besides we also had the defeat Tesla end game condition.
Airship rules and structure bonus for the game.
Jeff started off the game with a bit of shock and awe, using a factory card and an infrastructure mod he completed one of his objective cards and had a star out on the triumph track. Plus had an encounter!
The first actions of Shane and myself were not as impressive. Although I did thanks to my infrastructure mod have a mech out on turn one unlocking my leap ability.
I was definitely aiming to have Rasputin out and roaming the board putting out those influence tokens right from the start.
Tesla roaming around the board threatened to attack on several occasions. But I was the first to take Tesla on and win. I did have death ray at that point plus the mod that could add +2 to my attack.
I did take an early lead getting stars out but kinda ran out of gas towards the end for doing that. Jeff was getting close to ending the game, so I was hoping that either Tesla would get him off the factory tile or I could get to him and kick him off. However Tesla was unable to defeat him (twice) and I was unable to get there in time.
Our final Triumph Track
Although Shane got more stars out than me, and was threatening to end the game. I did feel he was not “aggressive” enough with my beloved faction. He did seem penned in to his home area for much of the game. He could have had a factory card and control of more tiles.
Jeff had chosen two Vesna mech abilities to do with lakes. The first allowed him to teleport between lakes. The second gave him +1 for each location he controlled that was a lake. Add in the fact he had control of the Factory at the end, the territory he controlled gave him the victory. He got 48 odd points from this. It basically accounts for the point difference between us.
Our final scores for episode 8
So congratulations to Jeff on his victory and on winning the campaign.
I hope Jeff enjoyed his chicken dinner. Obviously Shane and I didn’t get a one.
Thoughts on Rise of Fenris
We had a blast playing this campaign. Some great twists and turns.
The great thing is we can now use the expansion as modules to a regular game, as well as getting two more factions. Add in the modular board, the two unofficial variants (in the complete rulebook) and wow talk about variability and replay ability.
For example the triumph track now can be the “classic” no change, or you could use either the war or peace tracks, or have it totally random using the tiles from Tesla!
You can focus more on conflict or down grade it’s importance. Basically tailor the game to the style of play you enjoy the most, or feel like on the day.
And then there is the Desolation module that’s adds a co-op mode to the game.
Plus you can replay the campaign. Ok you won’t have the surprise element to the campaign as it unfolds. But that doesn’t matter. It might change how you approach each episode.
You don’t have to play the campaign to start with and can just use it as modules for the game. But why wouldn’t you play the campaign first?
This is an amazing expansion that offers fantastic value for money.
I might even say this may be my favourite and the best expansion for Scythe. Don’t get me wrong, I really like the other expansions. Especially the Wind Gambit and what it adds to the game. But Rise of Fenris just blows them away.
At the start of the week I got a chance to spend a couple of days with my son Nathan.
Naturally we got some gaming in while I was visiting.
Our first game was an introduction to roll/flip and writes for Nathan with Cartographers.
I set up the game using the play mat for it, the two skills mini expansions, and the ambush mini expansion.
The benefit of the mini expansions is more variety when playing, particularly with the ambush cards.
The skills mini expansions was the first time playing with them. They add an extra thing you can do each season, such as draw a 1×1 square and fill it with a particular terrain type. The skills have a cost, and you can only use one of them per season. I like what this brings to the game. It’s an extra decision to make during a season, it’s not a big overhead at all.
Cartographers
Our second game was Libertalia Winds of Galecrest.
I know Nath really liked the game as he asked to play it again straight away after finishing our first game. The second game we used the stormy tiles.
Libertalia Winds of Galecrest
Another roll and write hit the table next, Dungeons, Dice & Danger.
This was new to both of us. We used the novice Annoyed Animals map.
Dungeons, Dice & Danger and The Cousin’s War 2nd Edition
I really liked this. I think Nath did as well, and might be keen to try one of the other maps.
Our final game of the day was The Cousin’s War (Second Edition). This was the first time playing the game since I bought it three (?) years ago at the UK Games Expo.
We experienced both types of plays you can have with this game. Our first game was over in 5 minutes (maximum) after one round. With the second game going to 30 mins and all 5 rounds.
Who Won What
Our last game of my visit was to introduce Nathan to one of the more complicated roll and writes out there, the combotastic (can you guess what it is yet?)… Three Sisters. Just for the lols I added in the mini weather expansion as well.
Nathan agreed this had a lot more going on than the other roll/flip and writes we had played.
I really do like when an expansions adds very little complication to a game mechanic wise. I like how it makes use of the last die left on the rondel to select an additional minor rule for the next round.
Three Sisters Result
Movies watched with Nathan:
Dune (2021)
Jurassic World
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
I still had to slum it on the coffee front. But at least I got to cook for Nath. I tried to impart recipes to him. But he had no interest. However he did like my chicken noodle soup, and my sweet and sour chicken.
I know it’s not as if this blog has a huge readership that I can afford to have some go away and read something else. But I have to say the following. I don’t want to spoil the Rise of Fenris campaign for anyone.
SPOILER ALERT! The following post contains spoilers for the Rise of Fenris campaign for Scythe. If you haven’t played the expansion and wish to avoid any spoilers you may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.
Right if you are still here and read previous posts in this campaign log,I think it’s a log, you know what’s coming up next.
It was unlikely that Ben was going to turn up. His major life event was having complications. So I set up for three players but had Ben’s stuff to hand if he felt able to come along.
Sadly
Episode 7
The special setup rules for this episode saw the twelfth encounter token being used. This went on the factory space.
We also used the side of the Triumph Track not used in episode 2. Which meant this time it was…
This also meant we could have Rivals in this game too!
Setting up rivals was simple you “…declare “rivals” by placing 1 or more of your stars on other players’ home bases. You may place up to 4 of your stars this way, and you may place multiple stars on the same home base. All players do this simultaneously.”
I placed 2 stars on both Jeff and Shane’s home bases. Sharing the “love”.
This meant while Jeff and Shane had one of my stars on their home base they were a rival. Which also meant if I defeated them in combat I’d not only place one of those stars on the triumph but also get $5. The draw back for me was I could only place these stars on the triumph track by winning a combat.
Our goals were to win the game or find Tesla.
To find Tesla one player had to collect five encounter tokens (the number required changes with the player count).
The question I had was if I the Fenris player found Tesla did that mean he had been recaptured?
Our faction/player board match ups for this episode were as follows after randomly drawing the player boards.
Vesna & Voltan/Mechanical (Cyan) – Jeff
Rusviet Union/Innovative (Red) – Shane
Fenris/Patriotic (Orange) – Me
Once again we were given the option to use the Wind Gambit expansion, and the Backup Plan resolution tile. So naturally they were going to be in play.
Airship Rules, structure bonus, and resolution tile used in episode 7
Opening turns saw us utilising our infrastructure mods to get that initial boost. I obviously unlocked my mech leap ability, and built my windmill, and doubled my initial produce action. Followed by an early recruit to get me three combat cards.
Naturally I wanted to get a good hand of combat cards to go with the soon to be unlocked death ray (ULAH!).
I did get the eight combat cards star on the Triumph track, and was now ready to start being aggressive and winning those combats.
Whilst I was doing all this slowly Jeff and Shane were getting encounter tokens.
I needed to start moving and getting rid of those influence tokens.
Slowly I started placing them around the board to try and slow down the other two. Whilst doing so I was able to win a combat or two and gather an encounter token or two.
Then I got my dream encounter card. I had just won a combat against Shane, and got $5 for my spoils. So I had the money (I did anyway) to pay for the option to copy an opponent’s faction ability for the rest of the game. This was in addition to my own.
As you can see I did a short Instagram video of my reaction to getting the Rusviet faction ability.
How how I miss this ability. It was time to abuse the move action to get out my remaining influence tokens.
If I hadn’t tied up four of my stars for rivals and combat I had got to the point where I had five stars out, and a possibility to get a sixth out without combat. However I had no option but to build up some bolster points to attack the weakest of my opponents to get that final star out.
With a 5 value combat card in hand, I got a single bolster point more than Shane. It was all I needed. Getting to this point had been costly. I had lost a combat against both of them. I had been hoping to keep their stars on the Triumph track to a lower count.
The end of the game was triggered. Then that Backup Plan resolution tile bit me in the butt. I hadn’t won. However that extra round enabled Shane and Jeff to knock me off two tiles and reduce my final score.
However I earnt enough to buy a mod at the end. Which was the important bit.
Final scores for episode 7
I also had three wild card stars to use on the triumph log. So I was able to complete more columns and rows putting me in a good end of game position for episode 8.
Ok Jeff has been winning the battles (well most of them) but the war/campaign is won at the end of episode 8.
Tesla wasn’t found. So we still got to open the last box, revealing a rather cool Tesla mini. But boy is he pissed apparently that we didn’t.
I can’t wait until our final game and find out what Tesla brings to the game.
SPOILER ALERT! The following post contains spoilers for the Rise of Fenris campaign for Scythe. If you haven’t played the expansion and wish to avoid any spoilers you may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.
Ben messaged me saying he was not up to joining us today. I called him to check he was ok. But his life event is taking it out of him at the moment.
You know the drill by now. I get there early and set up.
Episode 5
I setup the changes for episode 5 which saw box D being placed on the Factory. An amazing bit of theatre. Then some influence tokens were placed on each tunnel and on each of the three land territories adjacent to the Factory. These would be worth -$1 for each one collected at the end of the game.
Our faction/player board match ups for episode 5 were as follows after randomly drawing the player boards. (I remembered to record them this session.)
Vesna & Voltan/Industrial (Cyan) – Jeff
Nordic Kingdoms/Militant (Blue) – Shane
Rusviet Union/Engineering (Red) – Me
We were allowed the Wind Gambit expansion again so airships were back on the map. This episode we went with the Backup Plan resolution tile. I’ve never played with this resolution tile. It looked interesting with its extra turn if the player triggering the end of the game does not have the highest score.
The two airship tiles drawn were Bombard and Reap. Reap was going to be especially useful for ramping up production.
My beloved Rusviet were having to use the alternative Township mech tile this game.
True to form I made a dash to the Factory, whilst the other two did their “going to complete achievements and get points thing”!
Getting to the Factory got me two influence tokens for my efforts. Aka -$2 at the end of the episode. Was it worth it?
However once there I got to open the mysterious box D.
Inside the box was an Annihilator mini that I had to fight. Victory would trigger the end of the game. Defeat, a major set back and humiliation.
I rolled the two dice.
Double 3.
I had a total combat score of 17.
The Annihilator had a base power of 3, plus the total of the top 3 cards from the combat deck. Well that’s what the expansion rule book said. However the complete rule book said it was the top 4. After a quick debate I went to the Scythe FAQ. It was indeed the top 4 cards. Bugger. There was a misprint in the expansion rule book.
Any card 4 or less and I win. I drew the fourth card, it was a 3. I had defeated the Annihilator and triggered the end of the game.
Sadly I hadn’t won.
So there was one more round. Which saw Shane steal the Factory from me and reduce my score even more. Jeff was the run away victor.
Episode 5 Final Scores
My reward for defeating the Annihilator was to get to play a new faction Fenris, lead by Rasputin.
Episode 6
After moving to another part of the community centre (there was a booking that evening, and they needed to setup where we were). We commenced with episode 6 considering the previous episode had been over so quickly.
Our faction/player board match ups for episode 6 were as follows after randomly drawing the player boards.
Vesna & Voltan/Innovative (Cyan) – Jeff
Nordic Kingdoms/Industrial (Blue) – Shane
Fenris/Agricultural (Orange) – Me
The Wind Gambit was still in play, and we decided to stay with the Backup Plan resolution tile. Our airship tiles for this episode were Negotiate and Toll.
There were no special rules this episode. It was to be just a “normal” game of Scythe!
It was so odd playing without the Rusviet faction ability. How do others do it?
The Annihilator mech has such a War of the Worlds Martian vibe.
I need a sound board app to play that ulah next episode.
No river walk needed with the Annihilator mech, it gets leap! Plus a really cool mech ability called Death Ray! ULAH!
Death Ray is sooooo cool. It allows you to play as many combat cards as you want in combat as long as they are all the same value. So amassing combat cards is a necessary thing to do. Which I did.
One drawback of Fenris is it starts with -$16! However Rasputin (the Fenris Commander) gets to place one influence token on the tile he moves to. Plus one more on an unoccupied tile. These are great fun as they mean -$1 to an opponent if they land on a tile with one on.
I did trigger the end of the game. And I won by a single point much to Jeff’s annoyance. That one point was the influence token he had to take! Plus there was extra salt in his fresh wounds because he might have won if he’d remembered to collect the oil resource at the start of his turns.
Episode 6 Final Scores
Afterwards players were given the chance to swap faction. I decided to stay with Rasputin and Fenris. It was a hard decision. Jeff decided to keep the “broken“ Vesna faction. But Shane couldn’t wait to abandon the Nordic faction, who let’s remember had fought tooth and nail for him in this campaign. Shane wanted to take my beloved Rusviet.
I’m so looking forward to the penultimate episode, episode 7.
