Last night saw me staying up way past my bedtime playing boardgames! Oh what a naughty stop out I was.

Ok let me explain.

Now that for the foreseeable future I have gainful employment which requires me to start at 5am (or 7am on a Sunday). As you can imagine I go to sleep around 7pm (Nico and Loki permitting!). Which coincidentally was the start time of our gaming session last night. But careful planning meant I knew I didn’t have to be up before the crack of dawn, and in fact could sleep in.

All I had to worry about was not falling asleep at the gaming table. After all with Jonathan and Jeff my opponents for the evening who knows what they would have been egged on to do by Nathan.

Our game for the evening was Tinners’ Trail. And like every learning game and first plays we do, we threw caution to the wind, ignored common sense, good practice, and read the rulebook at the table for the very first time.

Look when we read the rulebook out loud at the table, this is no Friends Reunion table reading of an old episodes script. It’s a hard thing to do. You are reading aloud, possibly paraphrasing, trying to parse what you are reading, trying to listen to the others at the table, answer questions. You get the picture. It’s like a Jim Davidson comedy routine waiting to happen.

But sometimes this is the only way we can do it. We let people know in advance it’s a learning game and all that implies. It’s why usually it’s a separate session from a regular club night (although as you know that’s not always the case). Those of us attending accept this and any other caveats.

Onto the game itself Tinners’ Trail.

Basically the game is about mining enough resources to sell, and then with that money buy victory points. And you do that over four rounds.

But it’s how you get those resources and how much they are worth that’s the interesting bit.

I decided very successful to drain Jonathan and Jeff of their opening cash and action points during round one so that I could pick up mining areas cheaply, and boost my cash balance. So I used my cards to help bluff and put my plan into action. Another element of this plan was to push up the bidding so the winner spent more. It’s that push your luck element of knowing when to drop out before getting stung paying over the odds for a rubbish plot. Which Jonathan did fall into the trap of once or twice, as did Jeff.

By the end of the first round I had no cards left. It wasn’t a drawback for the later rounds. Or it was, or should have been but I wasn’t punished for it. This is quite an aggressive thing to do that could back fire. Luckily in this instance it didn’t.

I like how the price for the two resources is determined at the start of each round by rolling three d6 dice (although they were not proper numbered d6). Which means that it could possibly be more practical focusing on mining one resource over another because it’s worth lots more.

Recently games that have a fixed number of rounds like Lost Ruins of Arnak or even Wingspan have left me feeling I’d like one or two more rounds. But Tinners’ Trail felt just the right length.

What you do get left wanting more of each round is more action points to spend so you can do more. But I also like that whole you have ten action points, here are the actions you can do and the action point cost of each. It makes you focused and trying to work out the optimum order to do them in.

I also like how resources within an area you are mining are limited. So you have to manage when the optimum time to mine them is based on their market cost.

Naturally there were one or two misplays and/or mistakes. But that’s something you accept is going to happen in a learning game. After all it’s a learning game!

But the important thing is I won. Quite comfortably in the end.

Tinners’ Trail is an enjoyable game. I’d definitely play it again. Would I be as successful next time? Who knows.

And before we finish with the last bit of the post the photo by Jonathan from the evening. I’d like to say a big big thank you to our hosts The Luxe for being so splendid.

I think if my maths is correct (and I’m sure Jonathan will confirm or point out my glaring mistake) we had 11 at last nights Friday gaming shindig. Which potentially makes it the best attended gaming session so far.

However being victims of our own success and our hosts cutting down on the available area we could set up and play in (they had cordoned off an area for their Christmas tree and seasonal decorations) things were a little cramped around our two tables. Luckily we didn’t need the third table up as that would have been an issue.

We settled on two gaming tables of a group of five and a group of six.

Jeff, Nathaniel, Rachel, Marcin and myself made up one table. So whilst the others played some game or other on their table, we played King of Tokyo Dark Edition.

I love the art in this new edition of the game. But then again I liked the art of the original version. Although obviously the colour palette used in the all new art work is darker.

The new wickedness mechanic is an interesting addition. It adds a new way to power up during the game. I didn’t manage to get one of the new wickedness tiles. But the ones Rachel and Nathaniel got looked like pretty cool bonuses to have.

The components in this edition live truly up to the deluxe description. The lightning bolt shape of the energy cube, the shaped tokens, the embossed box.

It’s a really nice edition of the game, and it’s still fun to play. But you have to like take that games, the Yahtzee mechanic, and player elimination.

In our game Marcin managed to get a points victory by hitting that magic number of 20.

Our second game of the evening was a learning game of Vampire the Masquerade Vendetta. And I mean learning game as in a live table reading of the rulebook as we set up and tried learning the game.

Vendetta is at its heart an area control game. But with a twist! Each player gets a random vampire clan that has a unique deck. And although everyone starts off with the same two named cards. What they actually do is different for each player. Then at the start of each of the three game rounds you draw two cards from your deck, select one to keep and one to put at the bottom of your deck. So slowly over the rounds your hand size gets bigger giving you more options each round.

There is however a catch! In each round you don’t get to play all your cards. You are always left with one card in hand. Which is cool as it means your opponents aren’t sure exactly which cards you have played. Especially if you also played cards face down on your turn. The bluffing you can do in this game is incredible.

I love all this. But also how you build up a picture of what cards your opponents have, but you never have a complete picture as there is always that new card you have no idea about.

I think a player aid would have been useful for players to remind them of the round structure. But that’s a minor quibble.

As you can see I ended up Prince of the City.

Breaking from the new normal of finishing the post off with some of Jonathan’s photos from the evening (I’m not sure he took any) I’ll finish with an update on the progress made on the three challenges I set my self.

UPDATE 22/11/21: The natural order has been restored! Plus there is a great comment from Jonathan on this post too.

Our second monthly meet-up since club gaming sessions started back up happened last night.

Earlier it looked in doubt whether Jonathan or I could make it! For me it was dependent on whether mum felt up to dog sitting. She had been looking after them for most of the day while I was at work. Oh yeah I have a part time job that I started this week.

Luckily things worked out for both of us to be able to attend. Unusually for me I was the last one to arrive at The Luxe. Despite being on time. I’d been caught up with phone calls with family and friends, plus catching up with a neighbour after delivering a parcel that had been left with mum for them. So I wasn’t late, just not my usual early self.

There were 5 at the table and it was decided to play Wingspan “fully loaded” (all the expansions). I know Jonathan and I had both said we’d never play Wingspan at its full player count again. But here we were setting up for 5 players.

After a rules rundown for Colin who hadn’t played the game before, we started play.

I’d forgotten how long a max player count of Wingspan can take. I think including setup (which is pretty quick), rules explanation, the total time playing was a tad over 3 hours.

To be fair it didn’t seem that long.

But it’s funny to think it was only the previous Friday that we did a 4 player Civilization A New Dawn game in less time than this fully loaded 5 player game of Wingspan. I think Tapestry was around this play time as well. However Jonathan won’t play those games. The theme, and type of game aren’t ones he enjoys. And the duration of last nights game I suspect pushed the limits for Jonathan.

It certainly did for me, but for other reasons. I’d told mum I’d only be a couple hours! So I did have to apologise when I got home. The saving grace was she could have an easy day to day and not get up early.

The final scores are below. As you can see it was a very comprehensive win for Diego. And done in such style by achieving the holy grail of our two achievements for playing Wingspan of filling up all the spaces on the player board. But not only that Diego got the other achievement as well of getting a score over a hundred. And I think this was also the first physical game to break that barrier. So bravo Diego.

And finally we finish with Jonathan’s photos of the evening.

It was a great evening of gaming, great banter, great fun, with great hosts.

Friday evening once again saw The Luxe hosting The Fenland Gamers. Once again the evening was well attended. In fact if there hadn’t been a couple of last minute dropouts due to life stuff, we would have been up to three tables and our best ever attended session.

Before hand I had put a call out for interest in playing Civilization A New Dawn (CAND) with the Terra Incognita (TI) expansion. It would be tight but it should be playable in the time we usually have for a game night.

As normal I got to The Luxe ahead of time to get the tables set up, and because it was a “big” game I was playing start setting up the board.

Luckily I have organised my copy of CAND so that everything each player needs (other than choosing a civilization) is in one bag. It speeds things up both setting up and tearing down.

As a group we decided to choose our civilisations randomly from new ones in the TI expansion.

Then it was time to go over the rules. It wasn’t the best explanation, I was rusty (nearly 3 years since I last played it) and combat was left until one of us needed to do it.

TI changes things up pretty drastically for CAND. From setting up the board, introduction of fortresses and the objective cards related to them, exploring, districts, armies and combat, unique civilisation focus cards, new event dial, extended focus bar and government tiles. Oh and nearly forgot a fifth player (which should only be used with the expansion).

I enjoyed CAND. It did give that civ like experience in a streamlined game. And I really loved the focus track. However! With the addition of TI CAND gets taken to a new level for me. Spoiler alert, I won’t be playing CAND without the expansion. Yes it’s that good.

The unique civilisation focus cards make each civilisation feel even more unique than they already are. I love the growing map from exploration (something I forgot in game I could do). Fortresses were interesting. I liked that controlling them were victory conditions that if you lost control meant you lost that victory point. Which is the opposite to the other victory conditions, which once gained you don’t lose. So the fortresses become ways to deny an opponent from winning.

I liked the addition of armies and the tweaks to combat. It just felt better. It’s certainly an improvement. A big improvement. The government tiles are a nice addition, allowing a focus card with one on to be activated earlier but act as if it was one or two spaces more advanced depending on the tile. Districts is another great addition and can be very powerful when activated.

Naturally the event dial has changed to cater for the additions to the game. I also like how now when the appropriate space is reached on the event dial wonders get a trade token placed on them. This acts as a reduction to the cost of buying the wonder. When a second trade token will be placed on a wonder all tokens are removed off the wonder and it is discarded, and the one underneath revealed. I love how this means the wonder trade row does not remain static and stale.

As you can see from the photo above (I played red) I was cut off from everyone else. My path blocked by a fortress and a city-state. I failed on two or three attempts to capture the fortress (bad die rolls). My wagons couldn’t get passed the city-state. You can see why I’m kicking myself after the fact about forgetting to explore.

However despite not achieving a single objective and coming last I still had an enjoyable game. Jeff won. His civilisation ability would have been perfect for where I was on the board.

As is now the new normal for these club posts I end with a couple of photos taken by Jonathan.

Looking forward to our monthly meet up this coming Wednesday.

Two weeks has just flown by. Last night saw another club night of gaming on a Friday evening at our fantastic hosts The Luxe Cinema.

Once again the evening was well attended. And that’s despite life forcing two attendees to stay away until they are clean again! So instead of 10 attending we had 8.

I’d spent the afternoon combining the Oceania expansion for Wingspan into my copy of the game, in the hope it might get to the table in the evening.

However I’d forgotten Gavin had wanted to try Dune Imperium which I also had with me. So that once more hit the table. I’m not complaining I love the game. I got to try another leader Helena Richese, which was forced on me because Julie took Duke Leto this time. I do think the next couple of club nights I’ll be leaving the game at home, unless someone asks me to bring it along.

You can see below who played what in this game.

I really liked Helena and her on going ability as it changed drastically how I played the game. Basically I didn’t have to worry about those spaces unless I wanted the mentat. It took the pressure off taking them before anyone else. The signet ring ability was also pretty cool. For me I was pretty restrained in using it to hate remove a card to deny the others. I only did that once to remove a card that when purchased pushed the player up one spot on all the influence tracks.

Like our game of Vampire the Masquerade Rivals, Gavin’s deck hated him! Which tainted his experience a little I think. It’s fair to say that Gavin didn’t enjoy Dune Imperium. Part of that was having to play cards with the relevant symbol on to go to a space. Often there would be a space he’d want to go to but not have the card to do it. I don’t see that as an issue. I’ve experienced it. I had it in the previous games, and I had it in this one. However I looked at what I could do, and tried to use those to set up a big future turn.

I was pretty chuffed that I got both Jessica cards and got to play them together. They combo nicely.

This game went to the last conflict round. Up for grabs were two influence track positions for the winner. This was crucial to my plan. Diego and I were neck and neck. I’d got two intrigue cards that would get me victory points. However I failed on one of them because I was short by 1 persuasion to buy one of the spice must flow cards. That would have nabbed me 2 victory points if I’d had enough!

I did have enough spice to buy the other victory point though.

The crucial part of my plan? Oh that was to win the combat, jump up two spaces on the Fremen influence track and take the Fremen alliance from Diego. Basically forcing a 2 point swing. Diego would lose a point and I’d gain one. That’s how things unfolded. My forces stormed to victory on the combat phase. And the victory was even more sweet having pulled off this point steal.

Whilst basking in the glow of victory we decided to play For Sale.

I hadn’t played For Sale before. So after a quick run through of the rules from Gavin, bidding commenced.

There really isn’t much to the game.

However I enjoyed the bidding round. I like the choices you have to make. Like when to drop out, or do you try and force the price up to drain your opponents of money? I did deliberately start the bidding high on one occasion to drain the others of money. I think that worked this game as I was able to pick up the two highest value cards.

The purchase round was also fun. I liked the playing of cards blind then all revealing at the same time. I think it was easy for me to get the two highest value cards. All I had to do was save the two highest cards for those rounds. I also through away my lowest cards when there was no 0 cost card to get.

Obviously this time these tactics worked for me as I won.

I liked the game. It’s relatively quick to play and teach. Has some decision making to make. It’s fun. A nice filler game.

I finish this post about a great evening gaming (any evening when I win the games I play is great) with a picture of the other table and some photos taken by Jonathan. I’m sure Jonathan will be kind to us and leave a comment sharing which games they played.

Last night saw the first monthly meet up since global stuff kicked off.

It was looking like the trend set by the fortnightly Friday sessions of being well attended was going to continue. However we ended up with half the numbers expected turning up. Life changes plans, and the assumption was it had indeed changed the plans of those unable to attend.

However it can not be said we did not give a socially suitable amount of time for them to arrive before starting to play Dune Imperium.

I know it’s hitting the table a lot at the moment. However Marcin (a new member) had wanted to try the game as it was on his list of games to get. And who am I to disappoint?

So after a run through of the rules, the battle for Arrakis commenced.

Once again I played Duke Leto. I like the powers of the character, that discount makes a big difference. It allowed me on round three to get the extra agent and the seat on the high council. Jonathan likes playing Paul.

In this game despite having the solari to get the extra agent and on the high council in the first round I didn’t get the cards to do either in the second round. So that round ended up being a setup round.

I was also pretty slow in getting started on the score track. However I made up for that and soon caught up.

I did manage to get some good extra card draw going during the game. So I was pleased with that.

In one of the stage 3 conflict rounds near the end I did play an intrigue card to help Jonathan win the conflict against Marcin, and get me third place. It didn’t matter at that point if Jonathan got two victory points. But it did if Marcin got them as he would have been a point away from victory.

Our game nearly had me winning in round 9 but I couldn’t scrape out that extra victory point to do so. Which meant for the majority of the last round there was a three way tie for first place until Marcin bought a Spice Must Flow Card in his reveal stage to get the winning point.

In that final round I managed to avoid Jonathan stealing a victory point from me, and failed to return the favour. Which felt good to deny him that. Would have been better to have flipped his plan on him and to have won. That would have been a sweet sweet victory. But sadly in this reality it never happened.

It was another fun evening of gaming. Looking forward to the next club night. And a big big thank you to our hosts for the evening The Luxe cinema.