Category Archives: game night

game night

Erupting on the beaches

game night

Last night Jonathan and I met up and played some games.

The original plan was to get Jonathan’s copy of Caverna and an expansion to the table.

However last night didn’t match up with life for one or two that had expressed an interest. So we used this as an opportunity to get some two player games to the table.

We started off with the 2-4 player game Isle of Trains. Yes I know not exactly a two player game.

I’d played this with Gavin four years ago. At the time I liked it so much that I added it to my collection. Since then it has not hit the table. It’s been in the bag I’ve taken to game nights several times. Each time it remained on the bench.

I have to admit I was a little disappointed playing it this time. It was over rather quickly, and I didn’t feel that I had achieved anything. Jonathan was definitely surprised at how fast the game played.

Our second game of the evening was another one I hadn’t played for a long time. This time it was the abstract game Volcano.

Volcano held up a lot better than Isle of Trains. I can truly say despite losing this time I really enjoyed the game we played.

Our final game of the evening was D-Day Dice Pocket. A portable game based on D-Day Dice that backers of the reprint on Kickstarter got given along with the main game.

This pocket game has two ways it can be played. A co-op mini version of the bigger game. And the way we played it, a push your luck game.

As a push your luck game this was such fun.

What elevates this is the use of a “The Kommandant” die and the medal cards.

The “The Kommandant” die is worth two points when scored, but locks all dice that match the symbol it is showing. Great to use early on when you have two or three axis dice to match. So you have to decide when or if you are going to use that die.

Medal cards either allow you to affect dice on your turn or interfere with an opponents turn. A great mechanic. Watching an opponent get triple points on a round and then deny them that score with a medal is great fun.

This will stay in the game bag along side the likes of Love Letter.

Games played: Isle of trains, Volcano, D-Day Dice Pocket

Monthly Meet Up February 2020

Fenland Gamers, game night

I originally hadn’t planned to attend this months meet up. Currently being economically challenged meant the resources weren’t available. Jonathan was tied up with a work commitment. So it had looked like there wouldn’t be a meet up organised this month.

Luckily Nathan took up the mantle of running and hosting this months meet up. Which I appreciated a lot.

Yesterday morning it looked like only Nathan and Gavin would be attending. So I took Nathan up on his very kind and generous offer to spot me a beverage.

I don’t find it easy accepting help, let alone letting people in close enough to know it may be needed. So when I had thanked Nathan last week for organising the meet up, and letting him know why I wasn’t doing it (something that I usually do) he kindly made the drink offer. But that was a big thing for me to have admitted the true reason and not use Nan or Mums health as an excuse. I thought Nathan deserved the truth. It hasn’t been easy writing this part of the post I’ve said more about me personally than I normally like to.

We started our evening of gaming off with a couple of games of Doodle Patchwork.

This roll and write version of Patchwork is light, quick, and surprisingly enjoyable.

Don’t get me wrong I enjoy the roll and write genre. There are three or four in my collection. But this is different. It’s more spacial than logic. You are fitting tetronome shapes into a grid trying to fill it up, and make a scoring rectangle.

It actually makes a refreshing change from the other roll and write games out there.

Second game of the evening was new group darling Las Vegas. We played a couple of games of this. Our second game roped in one of the Luxe staff who was off duty. Boy did I suck in that game. I kept getting screwed over. However the new person really got into the game, and her banter towards Nathan was very colourful and humorous when she thought she had denied Nathan a $90,000 note, only for him to get the majority back on his turn.

During our playing of Las Vegas a person came in and started talking to Nathan. Which isn’t out of the ordinary. It is his place of work. It’s his job. But there was some confusion on my part. They were actually there to find out about the club! Which to me wasn’t that obvious to start with. I gave details about when we run sessions, how many normally attend. But it hadn’t really clicked even then that this is what they were there for, and not to see Nathan. I definitely wasn’t as welcoming as I should have been. It’s not an excuse but I was a little caught off guard. My introverted self came through.

Our third and final game of the evening was Skull that pulled in two more people. So became a six player game. This was a blast to play.

Through out the evening there was plenty of banter and laughs. A very relaxed atmosphere. Probably one of, if not the most relaxed one of our sessions has been. It was very evident during the games of Skull.

This was a really fun evening. A big big thank you to Nathan for running and hosting at the Luxe.

Games played: Patchwork Doodle, Las Vegas, Skull

Deckbuilding Taverns

Fenland Gamers, game night

Banter between players is a part of game night. That friendly ribbing between players.

Part of our banter at Fenland Gamers is over the colour yellow (which we will refer to as filthy yellow) and Jonathan’s irrational liking of the colour. It’s his favourite colour to be fair. So often the banter is that when people are selecting who plays what colour normally Jonathan hides yellow up, and says there is no yellow, and then surprisingly when it comes to him selecting a colour he discovers there is yellow after all. Whilst I try and remove yellow without him seeing.

Ok you have to be there. It doesn’t read as funny.

Another source of banter when Jonathan pops out a new game that has deckbuilding as a major mechanic. It’s funny because Jonathan is not a fan of that mechanic.

That’s why playing The Taverns of Tiefenthal (TOT) with him as a learning game last Friday evening was funny.

I think games like TOT are probably the just acceptable form of a deckbuilder that Jonathan will play. And dare I say it possibly enjoy!

I have to say TOT uses deckbuilding nicely as the main mechanic. Add in the dice placement and drafting, with a fixed number of rounds and you have a nice game that gives you some interesting decisions to make each round.

I’d go as far to say you almost don’t feel that you are deckbuilding. There are opportunities to thin the deck of cards, but it’s not an aggressive strategy you could follow. There is not enough time over the limited number of rounds to do that.

Your main decisions on a round are based on the cards you draw for the tavern and the dice you are able to draft. Basically you are either generating money or mugs of beer. You then have to decide how you are going to spend what you have generated. Are you buying tavern cards with the money or upgrading your tavern. Upgrading your tavern gets you a high scoring noble card on top of a more powerful action space. Or are you buying guests with the beer generated?

It is a nice blend of mechanics and decisions. If you asked me I think I prefer this over Clank! And it is miles better than the recent Undaunted: Normandy, where I didn’t think the deckbuilding worked at all.

Our gaming finished with a couple of games of Las Vegas. Still loving this classic.

Games Played: Taverns of Tiefenthal, Las Vegas

Fenland Gamers Christmas Session

Fenland Gamers, game night

A movie and gaming, what a great way to start the holiday season and the weekend. How could it be any better? Well Netflix decided they could by dropping The Witcher (based on the books and video games) tv series.

So the morning was spent watching the first few episodes of that. I’ve not played the video games (shocking I know, and something I should put to right at some point) and I’ve never read the books. Which means I’m coming in cold to this knowing nothing of the lore, the characters etc.

It also means that I was sold entirely on this series in the run up by the promos that were released during the year. So what little excitement I had was based on those alone. There were no expectations or preconceived ideas, other than those created by the said promos.

From the three or four episodes that I’ve watched so far I’m enjoying the series a lot. I like the aesthetics of the series. The costume design, set design, tone. For me it works. Production wise, ok we weren’t going to get the massive army battles of LoTR or even AGoT. But the one major battle so far I was impressed with. It was handled well. I like the way the plot is developing, and the interchanging between each characters storylines. You know at some point they will intersect, and I want to know how, and can’t wait for it to happen, and see where that goes. That for me is the sign of good storytelling.

One thing I did think is this whole Witcher universe would make a great setting for an RPG. Guess what, one has already been done. I know nothing about it, no idea what system it’s similar too, or even how popular it is.

But the whole premise isn’t too dissimilar to a D&D campaign with the traveling from town to town killing monsters for financial reward. It’s the lore and the role of magic within the world that is obviously different. From what I can tell from the tv series, the world that The Witcher is set is very low magic. Similar to Dragonlance I suspect. What magic there is comes at a price.

I don’t think it would be too hard to put a Witcher based campaign together. There are pdf files out there by fans for the official RPG that stat out all the monsters that exist in the Witcher world. I’d be tempted to just do the D&D thing and reskin an existing D&D monster.

If you want something cool to binge watch this weekend this show is it.

Ok the big release of the weekend (Well technically mid week) Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was a movie I did have some preconceived ideas about. In the run up to it’s release the leaks, rumours and general feel for this movie was not looking good. So I naturally had set my expectations low.

I actually enjoyed the movie. It’s definitely better than The Last Jedi. Which for the record I dislike.

It’s rushed and the story is a mess because of the previous movie. The criticism that this trilogy was created with no over all arching story/plan is evident when you look at the three in a whole. The hoops that this movie has to jump through to pick up the pieces left by the train wreck that was the previous movie, have a negative impact. But I will add despite this criticism the movie is still enjoyable.

There is some great fan service in this movie. Which does add to the enjoyment.

Overall it’s an average Star Wars movie. Not the best, but not the worst.

If after watching you want to play some Star Wars board games, any of the FFG games would suffice. I’d avoid the mainstream offerings, unless it’s Looping Chewie for a younger fan. FFG also do the official RPG if that is a universe you want to explore. Plus the original 80’s RPG was reprinted last year. So you could step back in time to play a classic 80’s RPG.

After the film Jonathan and I had some time to kill before the start of the Fenland Gamers Christmas gaming session. So after getting a beverage, Jonathan cracked out a game we hadn’t played since 2016 (according to the stats app I use).

Our main game of the evening was five player Wingspan. It’s not my favourite player count for the game. I prefer the middle counts for the game. I definitely wouldn’t want to play it at six players as some online are asking for.

I managed to get a tuck engine going on the wet lands, plus a nice round end triggered bird that tucked cards based on grass land actions done by another player.

But in the end all it got me was third place.

Our final game of the evening was No Thanks! We played using the Amigo variant detailed in the rules. This basically removes the 10, 20 and 30 numbered cards from the game plus six random cards. It made the game a bit more interesting. Some how Jonathan won this also.

It was a great day. Star Wars, board gaming. Great hosts as always.

Games played: Brew crafters, Wingspan, No Thanks!

Skirmish at The Luxe!

game night

Jonathan doesn’t do dudes on a map aka miniature heavy games. So when my Kickstarter copy of Final Fantasy oops meant Tiny Epic Tactics (TET) arrived Friday morning I was keen to get it to the table.

So like all good friends I sprung the game on him when we met up at The Luxe that evening. I tried to ease my feelings of guilt by convincing myself that technically it wasn’t a miniatures game, it was a meeples game. There’s a difference, technically!

I think that TET has that table presence. It looks cool on the table. Component quality as usual for the Tiny Epic range is good. Which isn’t surprising because some of the Kickstarter stretch goals are to improve the quality of the various components. I am of the opinion that those sort of stretch goals are cop outs, and that they should be at the higher quality from the start.

The one thing I’m not a fan of are the small sized tactic and solo play cards. I’d prefer they had used the regular 63.5mm by 88mm size. But then that most likely would have meant not fitting everything into the box.

I think I enjoyed the game!

Which is a strange thing to say granted.

Unlike other skirmish/tactical miniature games that I’ve played you can’t use all of your team on a turn. Instead you get three actions to use amongst them. A unit can not repeat the same action on a turn, and if you want the unit to do a second action it basically becomes exhausted while doing that second action. Which unless you spend two health to remove the exhausted token next turn means they are out of action for a turn recovering. At the end of the following turn if the unit has not been used the token gets removed.

The make up of a team is a classic combination of melee based units, ranged attack, and magic attacks. Each game will have some variety because teams are built randomly from each archetype. And each character has a unique ability. So you will need to learn quickly how to utilise each character.

I think the use of the dice to determine range combat success, push backs or extra magic damage seemed a bit fiddly. And probably a mechanism I would remove if possible.

With the dice and not using all the units on a turn I think are the bits that take the shine off the game for me.

I won’t say how many times Jonathan and I missed triggers on our tactic cards. I don’t think we ever played one. Does that make them superfluous? I don’t know. May be remembering the triggers and getting the benefit would increase the enjoyment.

It’s great that a skirmish game can be made this small. It certainly gives that experience. But is it a good skirmish experience? At the moment I think it’s average at best at the moment.

Games played: Tiny Epic Tactics, Jaipur, Hanamikoji

Fenland Gamers December 2020 Monthly Meet Up

Fenland Gamers, game night

Last night was once again the second Wednesday of the month, and therefore time once again for the monthly meet up of the Fenland Gamers.

Our game for the evening was a five player (The Usual Suspect, Diego, Gavin, Ollie and myself) game of Wingspan with the European Expansion. Plus the Swift starter pack cards were also shuffled in.

For those not aware a slight tweak was made to the Wingspan base game. For starters it’s price was increased a little to cover the addition of the Swift starter pack that was added. This consists of ten new bird cards and four guides for new players. The guides take new players through their first four turns of the game. They even specify which of the ten new birds that the player starts with. So a very new player friendly addition to the game. I can see why they did this. With the wide appeal the game has outside of the hobby, making it easier for those new to this type of game get playing it is a great idea. Naturally this is something owners of an original version of the game can pick up from the Stonemaier website for $5 plus postage. It’s probably one of the better “promo” things for a game value wise you can pick up. You can easily pay the same for a single promo card for other games elsewhere.

So with the new expansion plus the starter pack, that’s an additional 91 cards being added to the game. Which with the 170 cards of the original game makes a grand total of 161 bird cards.

After a brief recap of the rules we started to play.

I deviated from the usual setup by dealing three bonus cards to each player to choose from.

Our end of round goals were (Round 1 – 4 going left to right in the photo below):

The round 2 goal fitted nicely with my end game bonus card that was to do,with birds that could only be played in the grasslands.

It was nice to have pulled one of the new goal tiles for this game.

I’d like to point out Gavin did get one of the OP raven cards in his opening hand. But played it into his wetland instead of grassland. Which was a minor tactical error for that card.

I think by the end of the game everyone had one of the new birds in their reserve giving them an end of round bonus of some sort. Mine was one that allowed me to discard up to five food and then put that many cards from the deck tucked under it. That alone got me 13 points.

Diego had one that put a number of rodent food tokens on his bird based on which player had the most birds with the hunting symbol. Which Ollie kept adding to his reserve. I think last round that got him 6 points. It was a nice synergy for Diego, because Ollie’s bonus card needed him to have those cards out.

Unusually for me I had only 9 eggs out for scoring. I have lots more than that usually. The decision you have to make during the last round for each action you get to take is, will this get me more points than taking the egg action and any when activated stuff that gets points? For me taking the food action could match it, plus set me up for the end of round activation as well. This is why I rarely play a bird in the final round. It rarely is worth the points it gives you, both in terms of action economy and points generated.

In the end I managed to sneak a win by 4 points. Then Ollie and Diego drew for second place, and Gavin and The Usual Suspect drew for last place. The draws surprised me. I don’t think I’ve seen a double draw like that before.

It was a fun evening, great hosts as usual. Looking forward to our holiday sessions.

United Against Dementia Charity Game Night

charity, Fenland Gamers, game night

It’s on very very rare occasions that we at Fenland Gamers charge to attend a gaming session. It’s in the clubs dna, we don’t believe in charging people to play games. As gamers our games are expensive enough, and it’s hard enough getting them to the table without having to pay to do that.

But for the second time only we ran a session that required those taking part to hand over some dosh. Like the previous time we had a really good reason. We were gaming for charity. So the money paid was really a donation to the charity we were raising money for.

The charity chosen this time was the Alzheimer’s Society who are running an Autumn Gaming event to raise money and awareness for Dementia.

There are a lot of great charities out there. And to be fair I could have gone with several that had a personal link of some kind. But this one had that personal link also. So when club member and manager of our hosting establishment asked if we would run something for this particular one, we jumped at the opportunity.

So last night was the night we chose to hold our charity gaming evening.

Our hosts for the evening were our most excellent regular hosts The Luxe Cinema.

We started off the evening with a couple of rounds of the ‘filler’ game No Thanks! while we waited for Nathan to turn up. It’s a classic, and rightly so. And the evening started off as I hope the rest of the evening would be going with me winning.

As my victory celebrations were coming to an end there was still no sign of Nathan. So we went ahead with playing Wingspan with the first expansion for the game (that had only just arrived through Jonathan’s letter box that morning).

Surprisingly Jonathan had gone a different route to the one I would have gone for a first play with an expansion like this. I would have just used the new expansion so we got to see what it had to offer. Jonathan had mixed it in with the base game. Which is fine, no problem with that at all. After all that’s how it’s designed to be used.

We did get to see some of the new birds and mechanics introduced by the new expansion. Sadly luck of the draw meant we didn’t get to see any of the new end of round scoring conditions.

It’s great to see European birds now in the game. With the new mechanics, new bonus cards and end conditions, it’s more variety for an already great game. And to be honest if you have both, something you shouldn’t be playing without, even with new players. The new overhead to learn and teach is so negligible it’s not worth even considering.


I did use the WingMate scoring app for the first time ever. Which looks beautiful and totally in keeping with the look and feel of the game. However I’m not totally sure about the flow of the app when doing the scoring. But it was a single use, and I need to play with the app more first. But as you can see from the screen grab above Jeff won. With Nathanial and Jonathan drawing for last place.

Next up saw us diving for treasure in Deep Sea Adventure. What can I say about this? I managed to walk that fine line between pushing my luck and getting the treasure back to the surface and running out of oxygen and dropping my loot to the sea bed. In other words I won.

After the underwater adventures it was time to be artisans and create some stain glass windows in Sagrada. Although I did feel like I was being punished and handicapped by my secret objective card. After all how else would you interrupt having to score the sum of the yellow dice you have in your stain glass window? That’s the card Jonathan should of had with his unnatural love of playing that colour.

But after creating our beautiful stain glass windows the scoring judged Jeff’s window to be the most awesome to behold.

Our evening of gaming for charity ended with a couple of games of Rhino Hero. That saw Jeff win the first game, and then share the victory with Jonathan for the second and final game.

We had a great evening of gaming for charity.

Thanks to Jonathan you get to see some wonderful photos below of me on my journey to becoming full unkept hobo dwarf.

Games played: No Thanks!, Wingspan (with new European expansion), Deep Sea Adventure, Rhino Hero, Sagrada

If you feel that you would like to donate to our Just Giving page to help the Alzheimer’s Society fight Dementia you can click HERE.

I’d like to end this post with a big big thank you to those that donated and played, to those that only donated, and our hosts and their staff at The Luxe Cinema. Your generosity and support was most appreciated.

November 2019 Monthly Meet-up

Fenland Gamers, game night

Life likes to throw little obstacles in our way from time to time. Although at the moment I think I could make a good argument it has decided to bunch them all together.

The one we had last night was that the delivery van screwed up delivering the new chairs and tables to our hosts The Luxe Cinema earlier in the day. Which meant that as shown in the photo below there was a single table and two chairs for customers to use. Table wise not a problem. After all we use my fold up table for our gaming sessions at The Luxe. But lack of chairs, despite there being only five of us due to play, was.

Luckily I was able to get hold of Jonathan to bring along a couple of camping chairs, and the very helpful staff were able to rustle up a third chair.

While we waited for Jonathan to arrive with the extra seating. Gavin set up for a game of Flamme Rouge.

I hadn’t played the game before, and it was one I was interested in trying. After all it got a bit of buzz when it first came out a couple of years ago.

I liked it. It’s a solid game.

The deck management side of the game is nice. I like how you need to really think about which card you are going to play. After you play the card it gets removed from the game. So you really do need to think about when you play your big movement cards and when to dump out that low movement card. Add into the mix that certain sections of the track limit the distance you can travel. And the leaders of each pack of cyclists also get to water down their decks with a low value card from the supply.

Timing that push to the finish line becomes a fine art of reading the pack, route and controlling your deck.

Our last game of the evening due to time constraints (our hosts were closing up just after 9pm) we had a game of Citadels. I think this is the first time I’ve played the game with five players. Still great fun. Jonathan managed to grab the win with a single point. Which is despite Katie doing a fantastic move to trigger the end of the game, and blocking anyone stopping her by getting the bishop. No Warlord destroying one of her districts.

It was a fun, although shorter than normal monthly meet up. A big thanks to our hosts and the amazing staff for hosting us once again.

Games Played: Flamme Rouge, Citadels

Darren and the Chocolate Factory

game night

Last night Jonathan and I met up for a game of his recently arrived Kickstarter edition of Chocolate Factory.

I’d last played the game back in February at the Alley Cat game day. Back then it was still a prototype waiting for the Kickstarter to be done.

Naturally the final components are a lot better than the prototype (which btw was pretty good quality for a prototype).

What I hadn’t appreciated back then, but was blatantly obvious to Jonathan and myself what a lot of set up is required for this game, and how much space it takes up on the table.

It’s a relatively quick game to play, basically seven rounds. It took roughly just over an hour to play.

As engine builders go, Chocolate Factory is an above average game. It’s fine.

There are pockets of down time during the game. These tend to happen during the running the factory phase. All the players do this simultaneously. So if one player gets stuck in mentat mode (sorry for the Dune reference), the other players are left hanging around waiting for that player to complete their turn.

The components are really high quality. The factory and the sliding crates is a neat novelty mechanic. The theme is fun, and unique. Not many games out there about running a chocolate factory.

But at the end of the day I don’t think there is enough here to warrant going through all the flaff of setting up (and tearing down) to get this game out on a regular basis.

Afterwards Jonathan and I started talking games, and particularly Wingspan and the “broken” Raven cards (image below nicked off bgg).

I personally thought it was a none issue. And people should stopped whining about it. It is such a situational thing, you need them very early on in the game, ideally starting hand. I don’t think I’ve seen the cards come out in the games I’ve played (granted not many, especially compared to some).

There are 170 birds if I remember correctly in the base game. And two of them are particularly good if you get them at the start, and really good if you get both. Oh come on. Plus with the new expansion adding more cards plus a take that mechanic where you can take food from another player (oh wait until some-one gets these Ravens and a take that card at the start, watch the uproar).

Is it really a problem that needs dealing with? I don’t think Stonemaier Games need to ban them. If it upsets some players remove them from the game. Simple. Maybe errata the card to as Jonathan suggested take the food token from the feeder instead of the general supply.

But as I pointed out to Jonathan there seems to be a trend these days on line with people playing a new game and declaring it broken or needing more play testing before it was published.

I tend to put this argument in the camp of “I don’t like X therefore it has to be broken, I demand you fix it”.

There have been similar grumbles about another Stonemaier game Tapestry. Particularly with certain civilizations, or they don’t like the random nature of certain aspects of the game.

I don’t mind comments of “I don’t like this much randomness in a game”, that’s fair enough. Not every game is for everyone. But to declare a game is broken, and then go on to say they “fixed it”. Just gets my heckles up.

I think from time immemorial players have house ruled games. Nothing stopping players doing that if they don’t like an aspect of a game. Heck does anyone play Monopoly properly using the actual rules?

Heck with Tapestry we hand out three civilization cards to each player to chose from. Do I shout out about it online that I “fixed” the game? No.

Some players in Wingspan draft their cards at the start. Which is fine. It adds to the play time, and is great for players that have played the game a lot, but new players are at a disadvantage. Maybe something that could be added to the rules as a variant for more experienced players. But it fixes nothing. It wasn’t broken.

Don’t get me wrong. There are games out there that are broken. Or have elements that are. It’s pretty obvious which games these are, everyone is talking about them (when they occur). But in the cases above and the trend I’m seeing it’s a handful of people. Some passionate fans of the game, that are doing it from a position of love for the game. Although some have other motives, and use it as an excuse to knock the game or publisher. But what they are really doing is expressing an opinion about an aspect of the game. Some may agree, others will not. I just think they need to rephrase their words, from “this is broken” to “I didn’t enjoy this aspect” or “I didn’t like”.

This weeks gaming

Fenland Gamers, game night

Wednesday saw the Fenland Gamers monthly meet up for October.

It was a small affair, with just 4 (including me) attending.

I don’t get our club sometimes. I may have mentioned this previously. But I’m not sure how we increase attendance to events. I’ve put surveys up asking what days would be best for for members to attend. You guessed it, even those are poorly responded to.

We try and vary when sessions are held. We aim sessions at specific games and different types of games. But we get the same disinterest each time. I flabbergasted and at a loss on how to improve participation at game sessions.

Wingspan as always was a joy to play. Really looking forward to the first expansion coming out next month. European birds, a couple of new mechanics, new bonus cards and end of round scoring tiles. So expect to see it being played lots once I get my grubby mitts on it.

We rounded off the evening with a change from the usual Love Letter: Batman. We played the Hobbit version instead. A couple of slight rule changes. But still a great fun game to end on.

Games played: Wingspan, Love Letter: The Hobbit – The Battle of the Five Armies
Wednesday Fenland Gamers we’re approached by BBC Radio Cambridgeshire if we would be available Thursday to do an interview to use in a piece about boardgaming for the mature gamer that they were doing on Friday morning.

A bit short notice, especially considering people have jobs. But I have some flexibility in my schedule. So I arranged for the interview to happen at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole.

Thursday morning saw John (FLGS owner) and Kath (who helps out at the store) and myself being interviewed about boardgames by a local BBC radio journalist on his iPhone!

So that there were some “gaming” noises going on in the background during the interview, the reporter had John rolling lots of d6 dice and Kath and I playing Connect 4 (the journalist bought a copy with him).

I hadn’t played Connect 4 since about 1988. I was back then pretty good at the game, and unbeaten. And that streak remains. I still got the skills. I won all of the games Kath and I played.

The interview took about 20 minutes. More material than they could use for the 5 minute slot they had planned.

In the end the interview went out about 9:10 on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire (you should be able to listen to it on the BBC Sounds app). It was about 3 minutes long. And concentrated on why we played games. Despite having notes written down, the reporter got who I was wrong, and said Fenland Games, but got it right in the interview itself!

It was an experience, and a little promotion for the club and my FLGS.

“You free to play some light games this evening?”

Not surprisingly I was.

So last night Jonathan and I ended up at The Luxe playing some light games.

We started off with a game of Penny Lane. Which saw my worst score for the game. I just didn’t get the engine side going. My butt was truly kicked.

Next up was the classic abstract game Santorini. We played using just the god cards from the base game, leaving the Golden Fleece expansion in the box. Each player was dealt two god cards, and selected one to use. We got some cool combos, where the god cards were opposites to each other. This is really one of those “just one more game” games. So quick and fun. After an initial run of victories, I hit a losing streak.

Our final game of the was the classic two player game Lost Cities. Jonathan hadn’t played this before. He wasn’t entirely sure about the game after the first play, but I think he had warmed to it after our second game. The actual game itself is simple, and has some interesting decisions to make. It’s the end of game scoring that seems over complicated, and takes a little getting your head around. I’ve been playing this game for years. But the app version, which does all the scoring for me! So you get lazy on that front. I also missed the little card count of the deck as we played. It helps having that info at a glance, knowing roughly how many turns you have left, and can plan cards to play based on that. But it was nice to actually play the physical version against a friend, and not just people online I’ve not met.

We shared the honours one game a piece.

Jonathan and I did have a gaming related discussion about an opinion from a friend on Stonemaier games. Which lead to a brief chat about luck of the draw within Viticulture, and how it can have a big impact on a game. So many games rely on or have as part of the game a luck element. But even if we just consider luck of the draw, lots of games rely on this to varying degrees, such as every Deckbuilder, Magic the Gathering, Tapestry, Scythe, Wingspan, London, Memoir ’44, etc, etc. The list goes on.

You either are going to love that element of luck, and the having to work around the challenge it throws up. Or you hate it, and need to find games that don’t have that element.

I don’t mind it. I like how it adds variety to games, varies the challenge from game to game. And if I get totally screwed by the cards, I accept that from time to time that will happen. I certainly don’t take it to heart and start sulking. Which some do.

Anyway that’s my not some well thought out thoughts on the subject

Jonathan and I had a great evening of gaming to end the week at The Luxe.

Games played: Penny Lane, Santorini, Lost Cities