Category Archives: game night

game night

Super Casual Friday Night Gaming

Whaaaaat?! Another Friday evening gaming session at The Luxe Cinema? No way. It’s like this is a regular thing or something!

We knew Ollie was going to be late. So Love Letter: Batman (the best version of the game beyond any doubt, and if you disagree you are wrong) hit the table to pass away the time until his arrival.

The Usual Suspect easily won the game. At times unnaturally guessing Jonathan’s card on the very first play of the round. Luckily I managed to score one token before the inevitable victory. Sadly for Jonathan he didn’t, and was left with a big fat zero points.

We’d just finished the first round of game two with the opening point going once again to the Usual Suspect, when Ollie arrived. So we dealt him in and explained the rules to him.

This second game was a game of two halves. The first half was Jonathan trailing behind on the token front and slowly catching up, then over taking everyone to reach six tokens. We then entered the second half, where Jonathan just sat there on six tokens, and I come from behind to catch up with Jonathan and snatch victory from him.

I can’t remember at which point I did the following but it just seemed the right and funny thing to do at the time. In one of the rounds Ollie played Catwoman and chose me, so he asked to see my hand. So I stretched out my right arm, and waved my hand at him. Accompanied with “there you go”. Oh did we all laugh. Sometimes being literal can be a hoot.

Our next game of the evening was Heckmeck am Bratwurmeck. Jonathan went over the rules for Ollie whilst I topped up my beverage supply.

This ended up as a two horse race between Ollie and Jonathan. Early on Ollie didn’t look like he was in the running, whilst Jonathan looked like he was going to run away with the victory. But from nowhere Ollie started amassing points, while the Usual Suspect and I tussled for last place.

Ollie Ollie timed his come back perfectly and once again Jonathan had had victory snatched from under his nose.

A pattern for the evening was starting to emerge.

Our final game of the evening was Perudo. It is my sad duty to report to the long time sufferers of this blog that I was knocked out first. Or to put it another way, I was last. The final head to head was between the Usual Suspect and Jonathan. Can you guess which way the game went? Yep Jonathan grasped defeat and gave it a big huge hug.

After a surprise evening of just light filler type games, we had a great evening of gaming at a superb host. Topped off with the customary greasy dodgy meat with lashings of chilli sauce and shredded green stuff.

Blue Moons, Tea Houses and Tree Spirits

A monthly meet up the night before one of the most commercial and manufactured nights of the year, probably wasn’t going to get many people to attend. But that’s the advantage of hindsight.

Last weekend it was looking like it was just myself and The Usual Suspect that had committed to go. Honestly I didn’t fancy an evening gaming with him. Longtime sufferers of this blog know all about The Usual Suspect by now. It wouldn’t be an enjoyable time. So I cancelled the February meet up.

Then a couple of days before the cancelled date Gavin contacted me asking if the monthly meet up had been cancelled. Which I confirmed it had. In response I was asked if I was free that night and if I wanted to meet up and play some games. Naturally I was (I have no life after all). So we made arrangements to meet up.

Our first game of the evening was Blue Moon Legends. Neither of us had played the game before. It had only been in my collection less than 6 months, when a chance to buy a second hand copy, still sealed, at a bargain price came up on Facebook. It would have been rude not to snap the game up.

The thing I liked about this game before I had got it, and was a major attraction, everything you needed for the game was in the box. It came with 8 decks, and rules to construct and draft decks from that card pool.

Gavin and I played with the recommended starting decks for learning the game.

I loved the tug of war element for attracting the dragons. And how if you win a dragon and your opponent has more than one, you move one of them to the middle before you get to add one to your side.

The hand management is interesting, and really comes into it’s own when you get down to the last remaining cards of your deck. No cards in hand or your deck is an end condition. That looks at who has the most dragons. So you could use that to your advantage to prematurely end the game and grab the win.

The two games we played had a nice back and forth between the two decks. And it never felt that there was a run away winner, with no chance of coming back into the game.

Once you get used to the turn structure, the game flows nicely. And a nice touch is the summary of the main parts of a turn on the central game board. That game board is a nice alternative to a single big play mat or two play mats. It clearly marks where the deck goes, the discard pile, leaders, etc.

The plastic minis for the contested dragons are cool.

I just love that a friend and I who fancy playing a two player card game, can pick this up and play straight away. Everything we could ever need is in there. Pre-constructed decks – check, draft – check, deck construction – check. I know especially with the constructed side, and pre-constructed decks there is a finite replay ability. But it’s still a lot of game play. The only other game I have in my collection that is really as flexible as this, and in away is similar in idea, is Epic the Card Game.

Despite Gavin winning both games, I had fun playing this.

Next up it was time to take Gavin to the tea houses and play Hanamikoji. We played 5 games of this. But then it is a quick game. Apart from the first game that Gavin won, all the rest went to a second round. This presented Gavin with a mental block he struggled to overcome. For me in the second round words like attacking and defending start popping into my head. If Gavin currently has the gheisha’s favour I’m attacking it, if I have it I’m defending it. When defending I just need to make sure I match my opponent, because ownership doesn’t change on a tie, whilst trying to get the upper hand on the ones he controls. And that’s how I’m evaluating the situation.

We finished the evenings gaming with the recently delivered Kickstarter Kodama Duo (which is also just hitting the shops now too).

This is the 2 player version of Kodama (which could play 2 iirc). Basically they have tweaked the game to make it a better 2 player experience. But if you have Kodama, you can use this with that as well.

After a false start (we were scoring incorrectly) we started growing our trees, and attracting Kodama.

I like the I split, you chose mechanic for drafting your branches each round. That’s a nice improvement. Plus the person who only got one card gets a spirit token after scoring to replace a symbol on one of their branches.

Through out our play Gavin and I were fairly evenly matched on the score front. It was only the last scoring kodama that gave me the win.

I liked the original. This is just as nice as the original. It still looks beautiful on the table. Yeah a nice 2 player only version of the game.

So that was the second Wednesday. Some 2 player games, (which let’s face it often get left on the shelf on game nights, and need opportunities like this to play them) with a great friend. And hosted as usual by our excellent hosts The Luxe Cinema.

Exhausted but fighting on!


I hope you have enjoyed the last couple of days of no posts happening. For you dear suffering readers the positive side of me being ill for a couple of days. Sadly as this post shows I’m back.

The astute amongst you will have noticed I’ve been doing posts recently about planning a RPG campaign and in a soon to be finished and published post plotting an adventure.

I thought in this first half of this post I’d share the tools/apps I’ve been using in getting ready for my first time as a GM and the Android universe.

I’m a fan of both the physical and digital versions of books. So for the digital side I use the two most popular apps for ebooks the Kindle app and iBooks. DrivethruRpg is a great source of RPG books and their digital format of choice is the watermarked pdf. I use iBooks mainly for pdfs. For me it’s the better experience for the consumption of a pdf than the Kindle app.

The advantage of the digital version of a book is it’s easier for me to create my own custom cheat sheets. I can copy and paste the information I need. Plus I find it’s easier to print a page from the ebook than photocopy a page from the physical book.

This is why PDF Expert is included here. It enables me to manipulate and extract information from a pdf. It also allows me to select pages from the original and create a separate pdf with the pertinent pages for printing, and keeping for future reference.

I’m a big fan of brainstorming apps. That’s why iThoughts (mindmaps), Outliner (outlines) and GoodNotes (general note taking with an Apple Pencil) are here. These are the apps I capture ideas and plan.

Scrivener is a writing app. It is focused on writing, but it’s a very flexible app that works round projects, which can have research notes within the project. This is where the adventure gets written. The research functionality is amazing, and being able to include or not include sections is really handy.

I’ve included MS Word here, but it could also be Pages. This is the app I use for creating my custom cheat sheets.

Finally I’ve included Pixelmator for any image manipulation that’s needed. This really is one of my favourite apps. It makes it look like a can create graphics.

I have recently found a couple of apps for creating dungeon maps randomly which I need to play with. Once I have I’ll talk about them here. I know my friend Edmund, and the GM for the D&D 5e campaign I’m playing in uses his autodesk expertise to create the maps we get to use in our sessions (which are rather good). So I’ve downloaded the iPad version of it to play with.

Finally before we get onto the dramatic retelling of last nights shenanigans FFG are looking at character creation with in Shadow of the Beanstalk (the Genesys source book for the Android universe) this week along with the taster scenario. People that pre-ordered directly from FFG are starting to receive their copies. Although not shown on this weeks sheet for new releases that Asmodee UK, one or two are saying it’s available tomorrow (Thursday). But I tend to think more likely that it will drop next week. However this wouldn’t be the first time something gets released that is not on the sheet. So basically Shadow of the Beanstalk due out any day now.

And now we rejoin Dram and the rag tag team he is currently having adventures with…

Feeling magically spent. Dram really felt like he could do with a long rest to recoup.

But considering there was still unknown threats in the rest of the unexplored castle the likely hood of that happening were very remote.

He’d have to push on through the exhaustion and use his cantrips as much as he can to back up the others. They’d just have to accept that is all he had left at the moment. No big theatrical spells to save the rests butts for the time being.

After a very brief discussion the party started to move through the rest of the castle room by room. Ace would first check any closed door, and listen for any signs of danger the other side of the door.

This started off well, Dram was hanging back, Ace was taking the risks.

Ace disappeared into one room that turned out to be a chapel only to be ambushed by three goblins. Dram in his exhausted state was happy to let the others rush in and help Ace out and nullify the goblin threat.

Once the sounds of battle stopped Dram joined the rest in the chapel. The group made their way to the far end of the chapel and the unblocked door.

Ace again repeated the drill of checking the door. Despite the gnome having already checked it. Ace could be heard mumbling under his breathe something about being better at it than the short arse.

The party piled into a small hallway. As Dram was examining a curtain over what looked like a door way. A scream of immense agony could be heard coming from the chapel. It was Nick. He had been attacked.

The others once again rushed into the chapel to help Nick. Before doing the same Dram peaked behind the curtain to make sure there would be no surprises coming from that direction.

Dram joined the fray. Surrounded by the party in the middle was a grey stone coloured serpent like creature with four tentacles surrounding its beak. It was a Grick. A Grick caught in the mouth of a dire wolf. Nick had gone all canine on it. Dram used Grull as cover as he tried to use his cantrip shocking grasp on the Grick. His hand sparked blue and just as quickly faded away. The cantrip failed to connect.

Before Dram had another chance to try again with the shocking grasp the Grick was dispatched by the rest of the party.

Back in the hall way Ace checked another door and heard voices the other side of it.

Unusual for Ace he stepped back and prepared himself to attack anything that appeared from behind the door.

Dram pushed open the door and stood back out of the way.

Suddenly a hobgoblin appeared in the door way. There was a sudden flash of metal as Ace swung in and killed it.

A whoosh of air could be heard as Sarmyar let lose an arrow through the open door into the room. Closely followed by the javelin of Grull.

The party rushed into the room, jumping over the hobgoblin corpse. In the room was a fat goblin and a seriously wounded hobgoblin. The hobgoblin was quickly killed by adventurers. But the fat goblin was sneakier than expected and disappeared off behind a curtain door. Ace gave chase. Throwing caution to the wind, not waiting for back up.

Back up (minus Nick would had decided to stay behind in the room with the hobgoblin corpses) finally caught up with Ace in a small hallway. Just as he disappeared into a room. The whelps of a wolf could be heard from the room.

As the back up bundled in to back up Ace, they were greeted with the scene of Ace standing over a badly wounded wolf, a disgruntled bugbear, the fat goblin and a seriously injured dwarf laying on the floor.

Sarmyar’ s panther attacked the fat goblin, while Grull and the gnome took on the bugbear. Once again Dram used Grull as a shield as he used his Ray of Frost cantrip to attack the badly wounded wolf.

In all the confusion that is combat, another enemy used that confusion to it’s advantage to attack the party from its hiding place. It was a female Drow.

As the wolf was killed by a particularly effective bolt of ice from Dram’s cantrip, Ace was knocked to the ground badly injured by the Drow. Before the bugbear followed its pet wolf to the next world, it took the gnome out.

It was at this point that the Drow decided to make a run for it. She grabbed a parchment off a small table in front of Dram and made for the door. However her escape was blocked off by Nick and Sarmyar. The Drow was soon surrounded by the party. Sarmyar grabbed the parchment off her, while a ropey Ace, blade to her throat tried to interrogate her. With no answers forthcoming Ace took revenge on the Drow by slitting her throat.

While this was going on Dram administered a healing potion to the downed gnome that had been given to him by Ace.

And that is where we leave our adventurers for another week.

Can I Play With Madness

It was cold walking from the car to The Luxe. A definite nip in the air. I was kinda glad I had my big boy trousers on, and not my usual cargo shorts.

There were four of us due to meet up for the evenings gaming session.

We started off our gaming for the evening with Wingspan. That’s three sessions in a row now that this has hit the table. And once again one of the players was new to the game. Which I’ve not seen as being a disadvantage when playing so far. A testament to how good the design of the game is.

All four of the end of round objectives were eggs on nest based. Which guided my choice of bonus cards at the start. It tied in with one of the objectives nicely.

My woodland habitat was in MtG/Commander terminology a care bear or group hug line. I had a couple of when activated abilities that benefited everyone by giving them a resource as well as myself.

My grasslands habitat was a nice little egg laying engine, while my wetlands was a single bird that gave me a little extra card draw.

Jonathan’s first round was very confusing to me, he had accumulated a lot of resources, had one bird in his reserve. It looked like he was going to be playing a few birds in the second round. But at that point it felt like he was behind on the engine front when comparing his board state with everyone else’s.

Through the four rounds I was either first of second on the end of round objectives. My last round was triggering my egg laying and amassing points that way. It was worth five points each time, and for a couple of activations six. However my last action was wasted because I had no more space left to lay eggs, no resources or birds in hand to play a bird. So I accumulated some resources just in case of a tie breaker was needed. It also meant I didn’t get any extra eggs when The Usual Suspect triggered his when activated ability. So I also missed out on points there.

After the dust settled and the final tally was completed, I was first loser. I had lost to The Usual Suspect by 3 points. Which was the extra eggs I missed out on. But for the want of having an extra bird in my reserve to place eggs on I would have won.

Our second and final game of the evening was Lovecraft Letter. Earlier in the day I had finally opened and sleeved my copy of the game. At that moment in time I looked at the rule book to see what was different in this version to the others I had played. Mechanically it sounded very interesting, and I thought I’d take it along with me to the evenings gaming.

I knew Jonathan wouldn’t be a big fan of the theme. It’s not his thing. Which is fair enough. When selecting games to take along to play things like this have to be taken into account.

I like what Lovecraft LoveLetter brings to the table with the sanity mechanic. It brings some new decisions to make to the game, and win conditions.

Having to make a choice between going insane or keeping your sanity during the round is nice. However as Jonathan pointed out, that choice may be taken away from you if you start off with a card that has the sanity mark on it, and then draw a similar card. You have no choice but to go insane.

The sanity check at the start of your turn if you have lost your sanity is a nice push your luck element.

The benefit of losing your sanity is that on the cards with both a sane and insane option is that you can chose to do the more powerful insane option. It’s a risk reward choice. The more cards in your discard pile with the insane symbol the more cards you have to reveal on the sanity check. But you are doing more powerful actions, potentially if you get Cthulhu win the game. However you are more likely to be knocked out of the round, and need one more insane win than a player going for sane wins.

The component quality of the game, just like the Premium edition are out of this world. I really like the poker chips used to track round wins. They have a nice weight to them.

The art is for me on the right side of none offensive. With the Lovecraft theme it can be easy for a publisher to go dark. Which if they had would have made the game less appealing to a wider audience. It’s the right side of tasteful. More importantly I didn’t feel embarrassed or uncomfortable with Jonathan playing the game with the art on the cards.

However with the over sized cards and the larger really cool presented box (made to look like a book), along with the Premium edition. I do feel that these two editions have moved away from the micro game that fits in your pocket that you pull out and play at a moments notice.

Lovecraft Loveletter was the only outstanding version of Loveletter that we hadn’t played. It’s a nice addition to the family of games. Is it good enough to knock Loveletter: Batman off the top spot as my favourite? No. But it’s in the mix with The Hobbit and Archer editions.

Afterwards there was some gaming related discussion, where Jonathan reminded me that next weekend we are at the inaugural Alley Cat Games Con at their offices in Letchworth. Which I hadn’t forgotten about, but had for some reason not clicked was next weekend. I’m growing old. But take that as a warning about what you’ll be seeing on my social media and here next weekend.

We had a great evening of games. Awesome hosts in the form of The Luxe and the amazing staff.

Flocking together!

During yesterday there was a discussion on the Wingspan Facebook group about pinks powers and when they triggered. A kind soul in the group posted the following extract from the rule book.

Jonathan responded with the following:

Which sparked a bit of friendly banter in the comments for yesterday’s post.

But let’s be honest and raw here. This is badly written, or not thought out, the rule book that is. I don’t care how well your eyesight is, you can not read the pink card from across the table. And I think it’s unreasonable to pass the responsibility of remembering on to the other players. If the player who has the ability forgets it, or misses it, tough. However I do think that a better solution would be that each player announces the action they are taking, and when they are taking any when activated abilities, and the outcome. Then the responsibility is put back on the player with the triggered ability. The other players have done their bit to help, by making sure everyone knows what they are doing. If then a player doesn’t announce their actions and when activated abilities, then I would agree with Jonathan you could assume that player is trying to cheat.

And yes there was more banter later that evening. Naturally this part of the post will spark more banter and discussion.

Last night saw five members of Fenland Gamers meet up at The Luxe to play Wingspan.

I wasn’t going to ever play at the full player count. But here we were about to play the game with five players. For the evening Ice Blast drinks were banned from the table. They drip everywhere. It’s the ice that forms on the outside. It melts and drips everywhere.

The Luxe are currently doing the branded/themed drinks for the Spider-man into the Spider-verse movie they are currently showing. Jonathan and I both had one, and I got a couple of the character toppers. I wasn’t going to get any, I knew I’d want to get them all. Katie arrived, I paid the extra to upgrade her drink, and get myself a third character topper. So from having zero, I’d got three in a single evening. Later in the evening near the end I had another drink, and got a fourth. I’m so weak willed sometimes. But now I just need the final one to finish the set.

Back to Wingspan. I was pleasantly surprised that it worked really well at the maximum player count. I’d like to say there was a lot more downtime between actions. But I try and use that productively planning my turns, adjusting plans. Plus once engines were starting to work, even on others turns you got to do stuff sometimes, like collect food, get a card. And turns are fairly quick.

In this game there was more group hug cards out. Which meant that I hardly had to do a draw card action, because I was getting enough cards from other people’s turns. Jonathan has an activated ability that gave everyone a worm token from the supply, plus The Usual Suspect also had a bird that gave people a resource.

Ollie grabbed the win by five points. But more importantly I was first loser, and beat Jonathan by a whole point.

It was a great evening. A great hosts. Let’s do it again in two weeks.

Monthly Meetup January 2019


The afternoon saw a hors d’oeuvre gaming session with my friend Nathan. Nathan is very knowledgable about video games and movies. But I might question that after recent new information came to light. Such as until Pokemon Let’s Go X (can’t remember which one he got), he hadn’t played a Pokemon game before (Go does not count). Then if you saw his films of 2018 he enjoyed Superman 4 The Quest for Peace. I think ’nuff said on that. Just knowing that is enough to make my case.

We started off with a couple of games of Keyforge. We both played new unopened decks. So we had no idea about the decks, except the houses they contained. Which meant we got the full discovery experience as we played.

We only played two games, using new decks both games. If time allowed I’m sure we would have played best of three with each deck. But this was uber casual, playing for enjoyment. Which is why the honours being shared, a game a piece seemed right.

During the second game Nathan’s partner arrived. So after I had finally won the game, I taught them Kingdomino. Nathan owns the game, but hadn’t played it, and wanted to be taught how to play.

This really was a fun way to spend a Wednesday afternoon.

The first monthly meet up for 2019. And what a meet up. Some of those that attended got to play possibly the first big game of 2019, it’s definitely the hottest game of the year so far, Wingspan, approximately 3 months early!

But first we played a five player game of Sheriff of Nottingham. I’ve not played this game for a while, but like all things gaming it has a lot of stiff competition for getting to the table.

Sheriff of Nottingham is one of those games that really is reliant on the people you are playing it with. Get the wrong bunch playing it, and the game is not a fun experience. On the other hand, get people that ham it up, buy in to the roles they are playing, and the experience is really fun.

Last night we had a great bunch playing. There was banter, well two postman at the table there was going to be. Especially at their profession. Throw in some school boy humour based around male chickens. It was a blast playing the game. I think possibly the funniest game I’ve taken part in to date. Because of that I didn’t care I was nowhere close to winning.

Afterwards we split into two groups of three to play games. Naturally this is when Jonathan, myself and James played Wingspan.

Officially Wingspan isn’t due to hit the shelves of your FLGS until March. However thanks to me being impatient and jumping on the pre-order bandwagon of getting it direct from Stonemaier Games, it hit the table last night.

This is a really really nice engine builder, that looks amazing. Any faults found with the game is really nit picking.

We played using the competitive end of round scoring. So ideally you are building your engine with one eye on the end of round scoring rule for that round. Whilst also taking into account the end of game bonus you chose.

In our game we had three completely different engines. Mine was an egg and tucking cards engine. Whilst James had a card draw engine. I don’t know what engine Jonathan had. But that illustrates the variety you can have in the engines you build. And I know with the number of birds and their abilities in the game, there is a few more engine types and then mashups that we didn’t touch.

With 170 odd bird cards in the base game (an expansion is already planned) there is a lot of variety, and you are not going to see every card in a game. It’s also going to be a few games before you’ve seen all the bonus cards. With eight end of round scoring tiles, that are double sided, that are selected at random at the start of the game, there is even a bit of variety there. So I guess in a kind of long winded fashion I’m saying there is a lot of replay ability in the game.

I really like that you start off the first round with eight actions to take that round. Then at the end of each round that number goes down by one as you use one of your action cubes to mark your position on the end of round scoring track. But even though you get to do less on subsequent rounds, the actions you take are more powerful thanks to the birds you are attracting.

It’s a hard decision to make at the start of the game about which of the starting hand of five birds you want to keep, if any. Because each bird you keep costs you one of your starting five resources.

It seemed to me reflecting back on our game, that rounds one and two are your building your engine rounds. The third round is the start to exploit your engine, and the fourth and final round is your engine doing it’s thing.

I liked the mechanic on the Barn Owl card I had that used already selected resource dice. They got re-rolled and any mouse symbols went on the card. It just simulated the hunting of this predator perfectly. Loved it, seemed very thematic. There were a couple of times when I couldn’t use the ability because there were no used dice.

And the bird tower and the resource dice, love them. Love how they are used in the game.

The rule book is easy to follow, and I love the little designer notes scattered through out it. Having the reference section separate is nice. Although the quick start rules that it has inside the cover would have been better on the back page in my opinion. They even suggest if you are learning the game as you go along (which regular readers will know is something we like to do in our game group) to use these rules. When I read that in the rule book it bought a little smile to my face.

With the card tray, supplied containers for eggs and resource tokens, set up and clearing away is pretty quick.

The game looks beautiful. The art as I’ve said previously is gorgeous and could easily be in one of those Observer bird books. Out on the table being played, the bird box dice tower, and the eggs make great table theatrics. Overall with quality of components is amazing.

My nit picking for the game is that with all the cards sleeved they barely fit in the rather nice card storage box included. In fact I had to take the automata cards out and put in a small deck box. For those interested these are the sleeves I got, Mayday Games 57.5 x 89 mm sleeves Chimera USA Premium Card Game (Pack of 50). There is a couple of millimetres gap at the top of the sleeve. But I can live with that.

There is a typo that I’m not bothered about. But there is a couple of misprinted cards, with incorrect numbers on. The correct images are available on the games FAQ, but it would be nice to be able to get replacement cards.

I’m going to also nit pick about the thin card stock for the end of round scoring track. I’d have liked it to be a bit thicker, maybe even cardboard.

And I’ll agree with Tom on The Dice Tower that the score pad is a bit plain when you look how colourful the rest of the game is.

Wingspan really does live up to the hype. It delivers in spades on it’s promises. This is one game I can’t wait to get to the table again. The bar has been set really high for the rest of the year.

As usual for this type of post a big thank you to The Luxe Cinema for hosting the evening once again. And a “you rock” to the staff on duty.

Heaven and Ale


I was feeling a little bit sick as I was getting ready for the evenings Fenland Gamers Friday meetup at The Luxe. I really did feel like not going. A multi coloured yawn felt imminent. But I battled on getting ready, which was basically putting my MtG stuff together and a couple of small box games in a bag.

At our fabulous hosts The Luxe I got everything set up for the evening. Which is basically getting our folding table out and chairs round it. I put two play mats out ready for playing MtG. This was a change from the normal routine. Which was bought on because earlier in the week a new member to the group had said they were coming along with a friend to play MtG. So that was what I was geared up for.

The start of the session came, only one person (an existing member) had turned up. I checked my phones and there were missed calls from Jonathan. He was blocked in by an ambulance and other cars with flashy lights. He’d be along as soon as he could get out of his drive way.

While waiting for people to show the two of us played a couple of games of MtG using my two standard decks, the mono blue mill and the golgari aggro mid range. The honours went one a piece.

At the end of the second game Jonathan arrived. But no one else had. Luckily he’d bought a couple of games with him. One of which was a new game. So we decided to have a learning game of Heaven and Ale. You know our approach to new games, learning on the fly.

Sometimes, depending on the publisher, the included rules are multilingual. Sadly not in this game. This was the German edition of the game, which meant Jonathan had to track down the English translation and print them out. Luckily that is the only bit of translation that the game needs, the rest of it is language independent. For non gamers, often the German version of the game is cheaper than the UK version, and is worth that little extra of visiting the bgg site for a translation (or the English rules may be on the publishers web site).

Continuing the tradition of being kind to readers of this blog, and having punished you enough already in this post, the headline for this game is I liked it.

Ok for those that are interested I’ll now go into what I liked about the game.

This is a nice tile placement game. I do like the method of getting tiles. It uses a similar mechanic to Glen More and Tokaido. You are selecting a tile space on the track, buying the tile, and placing on your player mat. Unlike the two mentioned games where the last placed player on the track takes the next move. Players take turns moving irrespective of position on the track. This variant of the mechanic is refreshing.

The price of a tile is determined where you plan to place the tile on your player mat. There is a shaded side, and a sunny side. The sunny side doubles the cost, and when a tile gets activated on it, it moves the matching resource tracker on your player mat. The shaded side does nothing to the purchase price, but when the tile gets activated it generates money.

Which means you have a nice series of decisions to make in this game. The first being the tile to select on the track. Which tile you want next, how far along the track you are prepared to travel, followed by which side of the player board will you place it.

There are two ways to activate tiles. The first is to select a scoring space, and the other surround an enclosure. The enclosure option adds up the values of surrounding tiles, which decides which enclosure tile you place there. This tile then allows you to advance your abbot token a number of spaces, and activate a number of surrounding tiles. These activations are the way you advance your resource tokens and abbot on your tracker, plus also generate income.

The one thing that isn’t great is what seems like the over complicated end game scoring. I’m not going to explain it in detail. But it involves getting your abbot as advanced as possible to determine point multiplier and a conversation ratio. That ratio is used to try and advance your least advanced resource token at the expense of your more advanced one. You want that advanced as far as possible because your last placed tokens position is the value you multiply the point multiplier with! See even that brief explanation is complicated. Imagine reading the rules and trying to work it out.

In our game I got a nice engine going, that exploited abbots sharing high value tiles. I was initially concerned that once the starting money had gone, that there would be issues getting more money. But the first couple of rounds I generated lots of money while the others struggled and ran out. Which meant that on one round they advanced around the track very quickly, leaving me to just pick up a lot of tiles. I completed two enclosures that round. The final round I scored barrels and picked up a lot of max point barrels. I think I was the only one who filled there tile spaces.

I’ve gone all fancy in the above photo to show a combo that worked well for me. When I activated that abbot on the scoring, those two four cost resources scored twice. Also that abbot being shared by two enclosures meant it would also get activated twice.

So you can guess from that above paragraphs that I smashed the game, and won. Jonathan was observing what I did during the game. So in future plays expect to see similar tactics from him, and used against me. Things will definitely be more competitive.

A great game, a nice change from the usual mechanics that hit the table.

Once again thanks to Jonathan you get the chance to see hobo Darren.

I have to admit I was disappointed that the MtG players didn’t show. I was all prepared for playing MtG, and fought through that feeling sick. It was lucky that Jonathan showed and had games with him. Otherwise the evening could have been a total washout. If you say you’re coming it’s good manors to let the organisers know if you can’t make it. As one other member did last night. We can’t cater for all eventualities, so we plan the games we bring along based on numbers and requests.

A big thanks to The Luxe for being great hosts once again.

UPDATE (5/1/19): Jonathan sent the following to me this morning:

Looking at the Heaven and Ale playthrough, I think we were playing the monks incorrectly. The monks only score adjacent tiles when ‘triggered’ by using a purple scoring disc. They do not score adjacent tiles when placing a shed; all they do is move the Brewmaster 1 step per monk activated, when a shed activates them – something we were not doing.

The joys of our style of learning a game, discovering the misplays afterwards! Plus there was no guarantee that we wouldn’t make misplays even if we had read the rules before hand.

The Boogeyman Of Boardgames

Last night saw a Christmas holidays session of the Friday Gaming at The Luxe Cinema.

Jonathan and I met up an hour earlier than the scheduled time to get a little extra gaming in. It gives us a chance to try out new games/expansions, play 2 player games (which sadly don’t get enough love). Plus because of the holidays we are able to do it, something the majority of the time we are not able to.

Jonathan had been playing games most of the afternoon. Apparently, he was being taught how to play Poker. I don’t think he specified the actual version, but I’m sure Jonathan will leave a comment letting us know.

Don’t think I’ve actually played Poker as a physical game. I think my first brush with the game was Sam Fox’s Strip Poker on the Commodore 64. Probably not going to ever go into the annuals of any record book as a classic game, nor Poker game. But it was the eighties, I was a socially awkward teenager (yeah I know nothing has changed), Sam Fox and the Page 3 girls were probably at the pinnacle of their popularity (before their slow decline to oblivion). You soon learnt how to play the game as a sad desperate young man intent on seeing the titular Ms Fox in her near birthday suit. Hey this was a tasteful, classy game, not just a cheap, quick, smutty cash-in. The fact never occurred to me at the time, why don’t you just save your time and go buy a copy of The Sun, then play a Llamasoft game instead? Since then over more recent times (I’m defining that as anytime after the year 2000) I’ve tried the odd Poker app. Which I vaguely remember as being ok, but nothing that grabbed me so much that I was hooked/addicted to playing them.

I know my brother and two cousins play Poker. And they have had poker sessions in the past. In fact in the last week one of them shared a photo/memory on Facebook of them all playing at one of these previous sessions. It was years ago when the photo was taken. But I did think why was I never invited? Probably have to refer back to my earlier confession about my social skills.

Then as I wrote this post I start to evaluate my relationship with my brother. I don’t think by any imagination you could describe us as close. I love my brother to bits. But he’s almost as big an arse as me. Ok I don’t have to be top in everything, he’s a bigger arse than me. We’re not always on the phone talking, sharing our deepest thoughts, or talking about our emotions. Our conversations when we do see each other are very superficial, with such subjects covered as I’m currently watching such and such, or have you see seen? In a way it’s sad that we are not closer and better friends to each other. All those years wasted, lost. Then I ponder how much is down to me, how much is down to my hang ups, my “issues”? Probably a lot.

Back to Jonathan, he was really enjoying his poker sessions. But I did warn him, first Poker next he’ll be playing Magic the Gathering (MtG). Which Jonathan scoffed at the thought of. Jonathan will admit he doesn’t get the attraction of games like MtG. But a lot of the skills needed for Poker are also used in games like MtG. Maybe as he continues his journey as a Poker player, he will start to appreciate the similarities and dare I say enjoy a game or two of MtG/Keyforge if he ever tries them again.

Our first game was Pickomino aka Worms with the expansion Heckmeck Extrawurm. We actually loved what the expansion added to the game. You get two new tiles, 11 and 13. That you can only claim if you get the exact number to claim, and they can’t be stolen. Then you get the five “power ups” that go on certain tiles to be claimed. You are only allowed one at a time. So if you get a second you have to chose which to keep. These can be stolen also. You also get seven worm tokens, that can be gained via the crow power up or putting aside at least two 1 dice. Once all seven are gone from the general supply you can start stealing from other players when you need to get one.

The power ups were nice. The weasel gives you a reroll each turn, the hen stops you having a tile or worm token stolen or having to put a tile in the middle on an unsuccessful roll. The yellow/golden die gives you an extra die to roll each turn, the worm means you have a guaranteed worm each turn if needed so you can score a tile. And I’ve already spoken about the crow.

It really is a nice expansion, that adds to the game, everything fits into the one box. Component quality is really good. I’m almost boarding on saying this is a must have expansion.

Plus this initial play got the misplays out of the system ready for when we played it later. Oh and I beat Jonathan.

Pocket Sub was one of two small games Jonathan bought to get the Dice Hospital promos that came with them. And Jonathan teases me about my promo buying! I’m not going to waste time and words on this game. Which should tell you all you need to know about the game. It’s nearly a candidate for that Nantucket wing of shame Jonathan has built. I’m going to go out on a limb here, and predict that this game will not remain in Jonathan’s collection for long.

With everyone now arrived Worms and its expansion found its way back to the table. I’ve already talked a lot about this game and now it’s expansion. So I’m not going to repeat myself. But Katie just destroyed us all. The rest of us were left scraps and fighting it out not to be last, or to get a single point. It was a very competitive battle at the bottom. Despite the usual suspect getting up to a familiar pattern of targeting me. It’s like I’m some sort of Boogeyman of boardgames to this person. Even if it’s not the optimal play for The Usual Suspect, nine out of ten times I will be the target for them. But I’ve spoken about this before.

Our next game for the evening was Sagrada with the new expansion. The new expansion was a Christmas present that Jonathan had been given by his family for Christmas.

This expansion increases the player count to five or six players. Which is handy because there was five of us. It adds a personal dice pool that you roll at the start of the game, and store in the provided dice wheel. This stream lines the turn to the common dice pool is one more than the number of players each turn, and you only get to draft once each turn from the common pool, and take a die from your personal supply, plus use one of the tool cards.

You also get extra cards that get added to the game. This is probably why I’d get the expansion. That extra bit of variety. It’s a shame you can’t just buy these by themselves.

It was ok as expansions go. Not sure if like Catan I’d play it with the higher player counts again. Although if I did the streamlining is definitely needed. I like the visual of the personal dice supply. But in the cold light of day I’m a bit indifferent over it. It’s not something I’d use with the base game. Maybe it will grow on me.

As the photo below shows Jeff is posing with the social media gloating card, so you can safely assume he won the game.


Two years! Has it really been that long since I’ve played Coup? We used just the basic game rules and roles. But we played with the alt art cards that I got from various Indie Board and Cards Kickstarter’s that I’ve backed. They actually have a rather nice linen finish.

Like that infamous scene from Spartacus one game started off with four of us claiming “I’m the Duke” unchallenged. At least one of us was lying.

I did have to ask The Usual Suspect not to eat his small tube of Pringles he’d just purchased while we played with my unsleeved cards. He was being a bit rough on the cards already, and I’d had to ask him to be a bit gentler with them. I really should sleeve the cards. I have thought about it recently but never got round to ordering the correct sized sleeves. They are not your regular MtG sized cards. I have a few sleeves in that size naturally. Despite politely asking them not to eat the pringles while playing with my cards they still was going to go ahead. So I had to be a bit more forceful in my insistence about not eating.

But I’m still getting used to this lack of respect to other people’s games. That’s unfair, I think it’s more lack of common sense. The club code of conduct was introduced to help with this sort of thing. It wasn’t going to be an instant cure. There were bound to be hiccups. But sometimes considering the person involved it does feel deliberate sometimes. I’d dread to think what the No Thanks! cards would look like if they’d been left unsleeved. The abuse they receive from The Usual Suspect. I wince at the thought.

The evening was wrapped up with a game of Liars Dice. Sadly “dice counting, calculate the probabilities” Jeff won, despite taking an early hit on the dice in his pot front. It was a bit unfair in the final showdown. Both Jeff and the Usual Suspect had one die left. Sadly for the Usual Suspect he doesn’t really get bluffing. So the money was always on Jeff to win the head to head. It went as predicted.

It is the holidays, it’s a time of excess, luxurious food, food that’s definitely not good for the waistline. So what harm would a little bit of dodgy meat, smothered in chilli sauce and hidden under a layer of salad do? The greasy meat and chilli sauce is like a pallet cleanser for the soul. So Jeff, Jonathan and myself made our way to our regular cut my own throat dibbler establishment and purchased our indeterminate meat.

I’m running out of platitudes to express just how great our hosts The Luxe are and how grateful we are for being allowed to play there.

A great evening of gaming, and repeated next Friday.

Fenland Gamers Christmas Meet Up 2018 – A Whole Lotta Gaming

Yesterday was the Christmas meet up for The Fenland Gamers, the first of our holiday season sessions, at the wonderful The Luxe Cinema. Whilst we played games the regular patrons of the cinema were enjoying showings of Mary Poppins Returns.

Jonathan and I had arrived a couple of hours earlier than the scheduled time to play some games together.

Our first game of this pre-meet up session was Pick-omino or as my German copy of the game calls it Heckmeck am Bratwurmeck (has English rules). My Dutch friend Janne calls it by a much simpler name Worms.

Janne is how I found out about the game. Friday Janne posted a photo on Facebook looking sad, having just lost a game by a large margin against her partner. Something she apparently never does. So being the naturally curious person I am, I asked what the game was. Janne told me. So after a quick google, I saw that it was a Reiner Knizia game. Which peaked my interest, he is after all a designer I like. My quick research gave the impression it was a press your luck style game. I was curious. Janne really enjoyed the game, Amazon had the German edition (which I knew had English rules inside) for less than £20, I had prime. The only question left was would it arrive in time for Saturdays game session?

There was some real doubt yesterday that it would arrive in time. When it is Amazon using their own delivery services instead of a third party, for some reason I’m usually the last house on the drivers route. Which means my orders usually arrive late in the evening. Imagine my surprise, and relief when the game arrived at 3:15pm. Just in time for the evenings gaming.

So after all that I suppose you would like to know about the game.

Worms (I’ll call it that from now on in this post for brevity reasons) is really fun. Knizia certainly knows how to use the push your luck element to make fun games. The production on this version is pretty good. It came with some pretty solid, nice weight to them, domino tiles and 8 wooden dice. For my tastes I’m not a big wooden dice fan, they feel too light in the hands for me. But after a roll or two I soon forgot about that.

The rules are so simple, and easy to teach. That’s such a big bonus for a game like this.

I like the fact when you reroll the remaining dice you can’t select a dice value you have already selected previously. So as you keep going the chances of you rolling values that will end your turn without scoring increases.

There is a nice take that element in the game where you can steal the top tile of a players stack of tiles if you roll the exact value of the tile.

The repercussions of pushing your luck too far or not scoring high enough to get a tile are “fun” too. End up with a failed turn, and you lose the top tile of your stack. Which returns back to the middle, and the highest valued tile (if it is not the tile you just placed back) gets flipped over, and is out of the game.

This game played really well at two players. Next more players to see how it holds up.

Jonathan and I played two games and shared the honours. This bit is for Janne if she ever reads the post. Games with a similar push your luck mechanic and dice worth looking at Zombie Dice, and Age of War. Both small games, easy to carry around to play on the go. Bigger games that use it King of Tokyo/New York, Run,Fight or Die! and Elder Sign. There is a bit more game to these, but the core mechanic is still that push your luck element.

Our second game was Kamisado Max. This was one of Jonathan’s grail games which he managed to pick up at a real bargain price.

Despite Jonathan kicking my butt on this game (twice) I really liked this abstract game. Once again like all good abstract games, it has a simple rule set that is quick to teach and learn. But that simplicity hides a deeper depth to the game than first appears.

The production on this edition of the game is stunning. Although in the less than perfect lighting of our venue it was a little hard to tell the difference between similar colours on a couple of the castles.

I liked the fact that the colour square your piece ends on determines the coloured piece your opponent must move on their turn.

Oh and the games were nice and quick.

Below can you spot the photo of Jonathan below where he knows he’s won, and my delaying tactics of taking photos isn’t working?

I could like Worms, suggest similar abstract games that folks might enjoy. But I’m going to talk about one of them in a second. If you would like me to do this on a regular basis when I talk about games in similar posts, let me know in the comments.

We finished off our early gaming session with Onitama and the newly released Way of the Wind expansion.

The expansion was a welcomed excuse to get this great abstract game back to the table. It had shockingly been over a year since I’d last played the game. Naturally we were a bit rusty on one or two of the basic rules.

With the expansion a new piece is added to the board that can be controlled by both players, along with new cards, and a modified set up.

I’m going to cut to the chase and say although I like the expansion. It brings new tactical elements and decisions to make to the game. This is not one of those must have expansions that you would say the base game has to be played with. It’s a take it or leave it expansion, that can be used to add a bit of variety to the game if you are playing the game so often you need to shake things up a little.

Jonathan and I played three games in the end before the others arrived for the official start of the evenings gaming. I edged the honours winning two games to one.

I had just finished showing Jonathan how little difference there was between Grifters: Nexus and the original version. Component wise it’s identical. When Diego arrived. As we started explaining Worms to him, others turned up. Which meant we ended up playing a 6 player game of Worms.

It surprisingly held up at that player count. The game supports upto 7 players. There was a lot more of the stealing tiles in the game we had. The down time wasn’t too bad either, with a bit of politics going on trying to encourage the current player to steal some-one else’s top tile.

Thanks to Janne I think we have another group staple here.

During Worms we had two more turn up. So we split into two groups of four to play games after the game was finished. Suffice to say Jonathan and I didn’t win the game of Worms.

In Jonathan’s group they played Dice Hospital. While the group I was in played the press your luck game Deep Sea Adventure. I’d not played the game for a long time, so I was a little rusty again on the rules. Unsurprisingly after 3 rounds I scored absolutely zero points. Which won’t come as a surprise to anyone that I didn’t win.

Our group followed up with a couple of games of Kingdomino. I actually managed to win one of these games.

The other group were nearly finished playing Dice Hospital, so we squeezed in a quick game of Love Letter: Batman (my favourite version of the game). Amazingly I managed to have the most points when it came time to end because the other group had finished with Diego getting the victory. So that goes down as a win for me too.

The evening was finished off with an eight player game of Perudo. To accommodate this number of players Jonathan had to get his copy of the game too. My copy of Liars Dice only plays six tops. Eight players all shaking plastic cups full of dice is apparently noisy. Who would have guessed? But with such a high player count the game still held up to the stress test. After the noise had died down, the bluffing called, Diego once again ended up top of the heap.

After packing away there was a bit of chatting, and stuffing faces full of popcorn by one or two.

After such a great evenings gaming there was only one way for it to be topped off. Yep dodgy meat smothered in chilli sauce, some salad thrown over it, all in the middle of a warmed up wrap.

The Luxe Cinema were once again their usual amazing selfs (despite the curve ball or two thrown by one of our members during the evening), and a big thank you for allowing us to use them as our venue for playing games. Without them we would have struggled to have a free venue to play our games. And it was very generous of them to step up and fill the void left when our previous venue closed.

Thanks to Jonathan you get a Christmas treat of some photos of me, or with me in from the evening of gaming.

Killing groots family!


Schedule conflicts, or otherwise known as life, sometimes gets in the way of things. Which meant that we had our next D&D session a week early. We will move back to a fortnightly routine again from this session. But in the mean time it means you get to read some D&D stuff earlier than usual.

And now for your reading displeasure the further dramatic retelling of Dram’s latest adventuring.

Ace went off on a supplies run while Dram and the others had breakfast. Dram had asked Ace if he could get a lump of coal for him and some bat fur. Both vital ingredients to that new spell he’d been given by the necromancer a few days ago.

After second breakfast had been polished off, and seconds and thirds followed the same way, Ace stepped back in to the inn from his little excursion. Ace had got the coal but no bat fur. Although he’d been given a hot tip for getting some.

As luck would have it Alderleaf Farm had a bat problem. Wow an excuse to see my fellow halflings thought Dram.

So after the last morsels of the fourth helping of second breakfast were polished off, Dram and the others made their way to the farm. It happened to be on the way to some other place. Dram was sure the others had said where they were going but something more interesting came up at the time that caught his attention, another plate of food.

At Alderleaf Farm his fellow halfling after exchanging pleasantries did indeed have a bat problem in her barn. And it wasn’t a euphemism either. They were real bats, in a real barn.

Ace offered to help Dram get a bat. So they both headed off to the barn.

Inside the bats were sleeping in the rafters. Too high up for Dram to get to them easily. Maybe if he cast misty steps to appear next to one, grab it, and then cast feather fall. He could get one.

While Dram was pondering over the merits of his plan, and what could be mistaken as looking up at them helplessly, Ace made his way up to get one.

Just as Ace was about to grab a bat, an arrow from nowhere struck one, killing it. The remaining two bats awoke. Saw Ace. Jumped to the wrong conclusion and attacked Ace. Ace responded by grabbing one and snapping it’s neck. The third one Dram dispatched with a magic missile. Overkill? Maybe, but it’s good to remind folks that this little guy is more than he seems.

After the little skirmish, it turned out Sarmyar had fired the arrow. Luckily there were two bats that Dram was able to clumsily skin with his little knife to get that much needed fur.

With a little spring in his step, happy he could now cast this new spell if he wanted, he joined the others outside the barn.

After getting directions, which can never be made interesting, and would explain why instead of listening Dram dug out 5 silver coins from his money pouch. By the time he’d done that they were ready to continue on with this new adventure. As they all left Dram handed the coins over to his fellow halfling.

Apparently they were heading to a place called Thundertree. Which took them by the scene of their first fight together. Oh the memories of that skirmish. Nothing like the smell of rotten horse corpses to bring them to the fore front.

A day or so later the party hit the Neverwinter River, where they decide to make their second camp before heading into their destination.

Ace decided to take a swim in the river. An evil thought for a cool practical joke went through Dram’s mind. Wouldn’t it be funny to apply a little electrical charge to the river? But Dram’s better nature got the best of him, and he resisted temptation.

While Dram was having the inner tussle, Ace had pulled Sarmyar into the river. She didn’t seem too impressed with that trick. Dram had to admit it wasn’t much of a trick. Not nearly as cool as the one he’d thought up.

Sarmyar was by the fire drying off, when a dripping wet Ace walks naked passed her.

A question entered Dram’s head, “do elves like have mating seasons?” Which was quickly followed by another question “is this what passes as sexual tension for elves?”

The next morning after breakfast the party made their way into Thundertree. As they made their way into this derelict town they passed a sign with a warning on it. It said “Danger. Plant monsters and zombies. Turn back now.” As a precaution Dram used his glass staff to cast mage armour to protect himself. You can never be too cautious.

As they all stood at the entrance to Thundertree, Ace and Grull were trying to formulate a plan. Something about checking the outer buildings first, blah, blah. There was little being decided. “That building looks interesting”, thought Dram, “and its on the outside.” So Dram went right to the building that had caught his eye. While at the same moment Grull and Ace went left!

Dram poked his head into the old building. It was an old inn. “Hey folks, matured beer might be here” he shouted. He stepped inside.

“Oops”, as Dram entered the inn, standing just inside the door way he saw four dust covered zombies. Blocking his escape was Sarmyar. So Dram did the only thing he could do. Misty Step. One moment he was standing inside the inn, the next he’s standing behind Grull in the street.

The next thing Dram sees is Grull rushing to the door and dragging Sarmyar out of the inn. She wasn’t looking in a good way, and was covered in a white powder. Dram ran over, used his healing potion on her and washed away the white powder as best he could. There was a little guilt having left Sarmyar to handle the zombies. But he would have been in the way. It was a tactical retreat, that way Sarmyar and the others could more easily fight the zombies without him blocking them. Yeah that’s why he cast Misty Step.

The zombies streamed out of the old inn attacking the gnome and the druid. The druid cast Thunderwave. It was so cute when the druid tried to be like a real magic user.

While everyone is fighting the zombies, and trying to make sure they stay down. Ace shouted something about some trees.

Trying once again to be like a real magic user the druid casts a gust of wind at a zombie.

Just to make sure nothing else was going to come out of the inn and attack them, Dram poked his head through the door and looked inside. Then the druid pushes past Dram and hides in the old inn.

While Dram was confirming no more threats were coming from the old inn. The others went to look at some bushes, that apparently they thought were moving. What weirdos.

The gnome starts going all berserk and attacking the bushes. So Dram fires off a magic missile at a couple.

For his efforts Grull shouted at him “stop dicking about and get here and help out”.

Dram felt a little hurt by that comment, and pointed out he wasn’t dicking about. He was making sure there were no more surprises coming from the inn. And who did he think cast the magic missiles?

The next thing Ace is trying to be a peace maker, and trying to talk to the bushes. But that psychotic gnome was having none of it.

Sarmyar once again collapsed to the ground. The moving bundle of twigs had put her down. Lucky for her the druid had decided to give up hiding and ran over to heal her.

In all of the excitement, and what can be only explained as combat fatigue, Ace decided to hug a tree and started talking to it. Had he need hit on the head?

But before Ace’s delusions could fully kick in the gnome turned Ace’s latest love interest into kindling.

With all the moving bushes now only good for fire wood, Grull decided to lecture us all on staying together and being more careful. “When Grull gets like this he’s no fun. All this talk is boring.” Thought Dram.

And that’s where we leave our exhausted adventurers, being told off and deciding what to do next.