Category Archives: game night

game night

December Monthly Meet up 2018

Fenland Gamers, game night


Insert my favourite cliche about time flying here. Otherwise let’s get to talking about last nights monthly meet up for Fenland Gamers. That once again was hosted by The Luxe Cinema.

I arrived as usual slightly early to get the gaming area set up. During the banter with the staff I checked on numbers for today’s afternoon Wreck-it Ralph 2 showing. There were zero bookings. I soon remedied that by booking my favourite seat in the cinema. If all goes to plan it will be like having my own private showing of the movie. Sadly a similar plan for Aquaman is unlikely to happen. The showing in Friday I was looking at had 5 people booked. Not only that my favourite seat was gone!

Gavin arrived first with his delivery of the Kickstarter edition of Dice Hospital for Jonathan, and an unexpected gift for me. Gavin had gotten a large, heavy metal D20 die that had been just sitting on his bosses desk, and asked if he could have it. The response was in the positive, and here it was, now in my possession. I instantly imagined Edmund’s table if it was made from sapian wood shedding a tear with the thought of this die. And that’s before my table breaker dice have arrived. They are due any day now.

Our first game of the evening was a game we usually end the evening with, and that was Liars Dice/Perudo. Gavin hadn’t played before and was keen to learn.

We didn’t really have any other 5 player games with us. Unusually I was the only one who had bought games, except for Gavin’s delivery.

Gavin was curious to try Keyforge. So while Gavin was learning that, the others had a 3 player learning game of Dice Hospital (using Gavin’s copy of the game). After Gavin lost 3 keys to 1, he shared his opinion of the game. It would be fair to sum that up as “meh” or it was ok. Gavin wasn’t knocked over by the game. But by his own admission Gavin isn’t a big lcg/ccg player, he doesn’t have that ability to see combos, or as I paraphrase his words “look at cards and think oh that card will go well in such and such deck”. The positive thing that comes out of this, is it has saved Gavin money. He was going to potentially buy a starter set. Now he knows not to.

After the Keyforge experience, Gavin wanted to learn/try Azul. So that’s what we did. I narrowly won the game. But this was a much more positive experience for Gavin, despite getting maximum negative points on one round.


While waiting for the Dice Hospital game to finish we chewed the fat, discussing games and the quality of the components for Dice Hospital.

I have to say overall the component quality is pretty good. The cardboard tiles are a good thickness, the meeples look fragile but cool. The plastic ambulances look impressive on the table, although the detail, finish isn’t fantastic. They have a weight to them, but easily with the finish could easily have been done on a 3D printer. I know they are used for holding the dice, but really they are a bit of table top theatrics with no real game play impact (something I believe will change in an expansion).

The score trackers for the players although cardboard versions of syringes, and fit thematically. They did let the side down. With all the other pimped out stuff added to the game, I’m surprised these weren’t also.

The card stock of the cards had a nice linen like finish, but shockingly thin. Definitely will need sleeving.

But it’s little details like the last 2 things that for me let the side down. You’ve already pimped everything else out. Why not go that little extra? Maybe Alley Cat Games should employ me as consultant.

The next thing I suppose for me is to play the game. Which I’m sure I will get the chance to do with Jonathan real soon.

A big big thank you to our hosts for once again being totally amazing. And another great club meet up.

A light evening of gaming

Fenland Gamers, game night

I say this every time but 2 weeks already? Numbers for the evenings gaming was a nice even 4. Once again the evening was hosted by The Luxe Cinema and it’s wonderful staff.

Our evening of light gaming started off with a couple of games of Kingdomino. What more can I say about this game? Not a bloody lot. Our first play of it saw a first with Jonathan and myself sharing the honours with exactly the same score. The second game was won by new member Syringa. Which goes to show how easy this game is to pick up. Learn in first game, then wipe the floor with them in the second.

Sagrada followed to the table next. A game we hadn’t played in a while. So it was good we could get it to the table again. It clicked at the start of the game that basically Sagrada is Rolling America but with dice, instead of writing down the numbers. Nathanial walked away with the honours for this game.


Now the draw back of writing a blog, and taking photos to use on it is Jonathan can spot mistakes. After the above was shared across social media Jonathan noticed something I hadn’t I had a die placed illegally. Luckily when I corrected the scores to take it into account, instead of Jonathan beating me by a point it was 2 points. It made no difference to Nathanial winning, he was in front by a large margin.

We finished off the evening with a few games of No Thanks! I think everyone won at least one game of this.

Basically last night although not “heavy” games, they were still fun and enjoyable. There were laughs, and banter. A perfectly enjoyable gaming session. What’s more we get to do it all again in Wednesday at the monthly meetup.

Once again a big thank you to the amazing staff at The Luxe and the cinema for letting us use its facilities.

Farming and Forging

game night

Yesterday saw some gaming taking place.

It started off with a lunchtime game of Keyforge with the two decks I traded for (Bellandini, the Ranger of Whistlecorner and HRH Threeteen, the Bizzarre Distiller). The honours were shared one game each. And we did the whole swap decks after the first game thing. So we both got to play both decks. They actually felt pretty balanced against each other. I liked the archive mechanic one of the decks had.

Like all good tcg/lcg games there has to the odd card that it’s not entirely clear how to interrupt it’s text. One such card is Bait and Switch. It’s ambiguous text can be interrupted as meaning you steal 1 ember, then if they still have more steal another. Or it can be read that you keep stealing ember until your opponent no longer has more ember than you.

After some investigation while I wrote this post, the intent is it keeps repeating, so it’s the later interruption that is correct.

But despite that uncertainty about the cards text, I like this card a lot. It’s one of those cards you’d like a couple more of in your deck. It’s a control card that’s ideal to stop that key being forged, and give you a boost to your own ember production, possibly into a forging opportunity yourself. It’s why shadows and dis are fastly becoming my favourite houses in Keyforge. I must keep an eye out for a deck that has both plus maybe brobnar or logos. I’m probably leaning more to logos as the third house in hopes of getting my favourite art on the cards at the moment Wild Wormhole (I’d love the playmat of this art, sadly it’s only available as the top prize in the current organised play kits).

In the evening Jonathan and I met up to surprisingly to play some games.

Our first game of the evening was Reykholt, which was the latest addition to Jonathan’s collection of Uwe Rosenberg games. I think, and I may be wrong on this (I’m sure Jonathan will correct me in the comments if I am), Rosenberg’s latest game, and an early copy thanks to one or two retailers bringing copies over from Essen.

So Reykholt boils down to being a fun light worker placement game that takes place over seven rounds.

Each round you get 3 actions to select, which range from building greenhouses to grow crops, seeding a crop, harvesting crops, getting certain veg types (which can be used for seeding or in the tourism stage to advance) or even destroying greenhouses to advance on the tourism track. The tourism track is how you determine the winner of the game. The player who is furthest along it wins.

So during your turn you are having to balance between getting the veg required to enable you to advance along the tourism track, growing more veg for current and future rounds, and getting greenhouses to enable you to grow more.

Despite being a light worker placement game, there are still interesting decisions to make. The round counter and limited number of actions keep the pressure on, and make you focused. I also like that you can always advance at least one position on the tourism track and gain the resources that new position has. These resources under normal circumstances for that position are the cost to move onto that space. You are also limited to doing this once per turn. But used wisely it can be used to give you the resources to advance on maybe even during the current turn, but most likely on a future one.

I did use the greenhouse destruction to great affect in the later rounds to advance me along the tourism track, to spots where I had the required resources to advance. Plus I had a blindingly good first turn that advanced me 4 or more places on the tourism track.

The history books will show that I beat Jonathan. But despite that I did enjoy the game, and would like to try it at the higher player counts.


Our second game of the evening was Keyforge.

This was Jonathan suffering a style of game he doesn’t enjoy as a way of making up for me having to play a game of his! Which wasn’t really necessary because I’m happy playing most games (except dire Rick and Morty themed games which is all of them).

This was a learning game, so after the earlier experience I used the same decks again. Yes they are a bit more advanced than the starter learning decks. But as I pointed out earlier in this post I thought they were pretty well balanced against each other.

I actually lost this game down to a massive mistake by me. We were both at two forged keys, I had six ember and ready to forge on my turn. Jonathan played a card that stopped me forging a key, by basically making me skip the forge key step. Jonathan then got to six ember himself. I just needed to name the right house, capture an ember from Jonathan, and then forge the key on my next turn. But I called the wrong house, l played two cards from hand, went to activate the creature to capture the ember, and I couldn’t. It was the wrong house. I couldn’t stop Jonathan from winning. It was such a doh! moment.

So history will record that as a win for Jonathan.

I had a great evening gaming. And a great lunchtime session too.

By royal decree

D&D, game night, RPG


Somehow I missed being in the crowd for the royal visit to Wisbech on Tuesday. Despite having a holiday home not an hour away in Sandringham, we rarely see them or get invites. But us serfs of Wisbech on Tuesday were spoilt by having Charles and Camilla visiting.

Frankly I wish they would visit more often. Since the announcement last week of the impending visit the town has actually seen a police presence on the streets. The teen cycle gang that has been terrorising the centre of the town the last few weeks has been finally tackled by the folks in blue at the weekend. The stone steps and path by St Peters Church and the museum has been cleaned. Coincidence? Apparently the homeless in Wisbech had disappeared for the day. Large sections of the town centre (including car parks) were restricted access. Wisbech for a day only, had become some sort of utopia. Just once I wish the royals got to see the real town, and not some sanitised version that papers over the cracks and flaws.

For weeks (at least a couple) locals have been terrorised by that teen gang. Complaints seemingly falling on the deaf ears of the police. And now as I pointed out all of a sudden the man power has been found to do something about the gang! Let’s see if this high police presence and conviction to tackle the gang continues after the visit.

Wow where did that soap box rant come from? Not exactly the best start to a blog post about D&D.

Ok, time for the dramatic retelling of the latest adventures of Dram and that motley crew. Who if you remember were just about to fight 12 zombies after the necromancer Ace was talking to just disappeared. Shit was about to get real…
Grull rushed in swinging axe at the nearest zombies, that little gnome managed to take out a zombie all by himself. So while the others were going hand to hand with the undead, Dram started firing off one of his cantrips, Ray of Frost at the zombies.

All of a sudden a skeletal hand appears from nowhere and grabs Dram. It squeezes hard around Dram’s chest, getting ever tighter and pushing the air out of his lungs. As suddenly as it appears, the skeletal hand disappeared. Severely winded, it took a moment or two for Dram to get his breathe back. Then realising he was vulnerable Dram decided he needed to relocate quickly. So he quickly cast Misty Step.

One moment Dram was near Sarmyar and Nick who were fighting zombies the next he was gone. The others didn’t see Dram reappear out of sight at the side of the tent. Before he could decide what to do next, black magic missiles hit the others.

“Lay prone, weapons down, and we can talk”, boomed a voice.

Still reeling from that skeletal hand attack, and the casting of his own spell, Dram decided to crawl into the tent and hide. Inside the tent Dram saw a wooden chest. “Look at the craftsmanship on that chest. Like wow.” Thought Dram.

Once again the voice boomed it’s command.

Deciding the only way to appreciate such fine wood work was to sit on it and rest, Dram sat on the chest.

“Can I get up yet?” Shouted Dram.

The next thing Dram heard was Ace’s voice “drop your weapons and give up.”

Suddenly two zombies appeared in the door way and just stood there. Followed by that booming voice once again issuing a command, “leave or he dies”.

“That doesn’t sound good” thought Dram, followed by “I wonder who will die?”

The zombies moved aside and let Dram out of the tent as he made his way to leave. Right next to the necromancer was Ace just standing there not moving. As Dram went passed the necromancer he tipped his hat and complimented him on his magical skills. Dram could have learnt a lot from him he thought.

After joining the others of the group outside the walls of the ruined tower, Dram noticed Grull was missing. ‘Oh well he’ll turn up, something that big never stays lost for long.” thought Dram.

As if from nowhere the necromancer appeared next to Dram and says “if you ever want to join the dark side” and handed Dram a small bone tube.

Before anyone notices Ace also disappears. Maybe Ace and Grull have gone ahead. So Dram and the rest of the group head off back to Phandalin. The depleted group decide to make camp at a previous camping spot.

After setting up camp Dram and Sarmyar took the first watch. This gave Dram the opportunity to examine that small bone tube he’d been given. Wow it was a scroll of Darkness. Dram couldn’t wait to copy that spell into his spellbook back in Phandalin.

The rest of the watch went relatively quietly. That is until Grull suddenly appeared and ran up and grabbed Dram. Sweeping him off his feet, and in a vice like grip, Dram’s natural instinct was to grab Grull and cast Shocking Grasp.

The electric shock got Grull to let go of Dram.

Grull angrily asked “Why did you not fight?” Dram then spent the next few minutes explaining to Grull in little words what happened to him during the recent battle with the necromancer and his zombies. Grull seemed happy with the events and reason it appeared Dram had done nothing in the skirmish.

Nick and the gnome were still sleeping through all of this. They must have been really tired from the days excitement. They even missed Ace trying to convince Grull to drink perfume! Which he goes and does anyway, well a watered down perfume.

Once the hilarity was over. The rest of the night passed away without any incidents. After breakfast the group continued their journey to Phandalin. The following two days of traveling were pretty uneventful, and saw everyone arrive back in good time for the evening meal.

Dram was feeling particularly generous and bought a meal for himself, Grull and the gnome. Do you know how the gnome repaid that act of kindness? By boring Dram to death with a story of how he had come to meet up with this rag tag band of adventurers. Talk about snooze fest. Dram was gobsmacked that Grull was finding the story interesting. Dram was struggling to stay awake. This gnome just didn’t know how to tell a story. ‘Blah blah, betrayed, blah, blah killed son”. So Dram made an excuse needing go to the toilet, and disappeared up to his room.

Back in the room, Dram copied the Darkness spell from the scroll to his spellbook. Dram had only just finished this intricate activity there was a knock on the door. When Dram answered, there was Ace who handed him a healing potion. It was the potion that Dram had paid for before their little visit to see the banshee, and get their butt kicked.

And so dear reader, well done for making it through that dramatic retelling of Dram’s latest escapades. Join us next time when Dram will once more astound you with his magical powers, and reviews of the funniest eating establishments.

Mugtastic

Fenland Gamers, game night

Wow 3 new members last night came along for the first time. And it was great to meet them and share a game or two. Now we need to find a way to get more people to come along to the sessions. We seem to get between 4 – 8 people coming along each time. It would be nice to see this grow.

While waiting for all those that we knew/thought were coming along we cracked out Kingdomino. Yeah what can I say? I surprisingly won the game. I thought another player was going to be the walk away winner, but they screwed up the 10 point bonus at the end, which gave me the win.

While James and I played Keyforge. James wanted to try it (I was more than happy to go along with this). The others played Sheriff of Nottingham. We started off learning the basics with the introductory decks in the starter set. I lost that game. We followed up playing with 2 of the unique decks (Mrs “Slingshot” Badscout v Andromeda “Silverfish” Beligus), and I managed to steal the win in that game by playing Key Charge (which for the cost of an ember allowed me to forge a key at the current cost).

Then our third and final game with (A.X. Obserkorg of the Awkward Region v Yorkferou, Factory Protector) saw James back with the glory of victory as he easily won, using my own trick from the previous game!

But the games were fun and I think James is now considering getting a couple of decks for him to play with his partner.

We were all back together playing as a single group for our remaining games of the evening. The first of which was a couple of games of No Thanks! What more can I say about this game? It’s just a great filler game, quick to teach, fun to play. (In fact I’d go as far as to say this should be in every ones game bag. If you are looking for a stocking filler/family game, to play over the hols, this is a no brainer. Stuff it I’d happily recommend any of this evenings games for the holidays and family time. Well not Keyforge but that’s only because it’s a 2 player game.) Didn’t come close to winning either of the 2 games we played. I think this was the first time I’ve played it with 6 players. Surprisingly it still worked at that player count. Sometimes games at their maximum player count aren’t fun or at their best stretched to their limit. Which is also true sometimes at their lowest player counts also. But No Thanks! held up well.

The evening was finished off with a game of Perudo/Liars Dice. Yeah if you are going to get a version of this game the Richard Garfield 30th Anniversary Edition of Liars Dice is worth the extra for the play mat. It also confuses the odd player that reads the bid the wrong way. Any little advantage helps. Sadly not enough for me to win. Jonathan managed to do that.

Also at last nights meet up we had a couple of mugs with the Fenland Gamers logo on display for members to see.

There were two designs. One with a big all round logo, and one with a smaller logo on one side.

My friend Sam produced these using the supplied image from me. I think these turned out pretty amazing. What’s even more incredible is that Sam is only charging a fiver for them plus postage.

The link to Sam was provided on the clubs Facebook page for members to order their own if they want one. I hope that Sam gets some orders from our members. They’d make the perfect gift for that impending gift exchanging event next month.

Once again I have to say a really big thank you to our hosts for the evening The Luxe Cinema and the amazing on duty staff.

The magic behind the wizard

D&D, game night, RPG

Welcome to the second D&D post. The last one took a while to write, but now we are all up to date on the adventures of Dram and the large folks these posts should be quicker to write.

Naturally when I retell the events of the adventuring that week they will be told from the ground level that is the world that Dram occupies.

But who is Dram?

Dram is a halfling wizard. Think miniature Gandalf. Hence the colour scheme I painted the miniature I found for him.

Dram’s mouth gets him into so much trouble on his wanderlust over the Forgotten Realm. That’s despite the sage advice his pop often repeated to him “engage your brain before opening your mouth” as he was growing up.

Dram from an early age found a love for reading, particularly manuscripts and scrolls. Which luckily the village elder had many of. They told stories of fantastical creatures, and wild and dangerous places full of interesting things.

Then one day a wounded wizard stumbled into the village. The village druid patched up the wizard, and a place was found for him to recover. The days following the villagers dressed the wounds, fed and watered the wizard. It was during this time that Dram while helping his father and mother take their turn looking after the wizard stumbled across the wizards belongings. Which had these strange books and scrolls that he hadn’t seen the likes of before.

This interest in the spell books and scrolls hadn’t gone unnoticed by the wizard in his weakened state. While recuperating the wizard started to teach Dram how to read the magical incantations. It wasn’t long before Dram was able to make a stick create light. He was a natural.

Fully healed the wizard was ready to leave and continue on his journey. But before doing so he spoke to Dram and his parents. He wanted Dram to go with him and continue his studies to become a wizard.

Dram was still too young to go on a wanderlust. But technically this wasn’t one he argued to his parents, he was going off to school, not find adventure. Dram’s parents reluctantly agreed.

Years later a letter was delivered to Dram. It was from his friend Targi. It was fortuitous in it’s arrival. Dram was just about to have his studies cut short due to his mouth getting him into trouble once or twice. It might have been more but who was counting? Oh the senior wizards, that’s who.

Dram decided to head off on his travels looking for adventure and his friend Targi. They needed to talk.

Which is how Dram ended up in Neverwinter, and bumping into the motley crew he’s ended up helping and saving on the odd occasion. They’d be helpless without him.

His current spellbook is…

Before I get onto the latest of Dram’s journal entries. Thought I’d include pictures of pilfering Ace. Naturally outside of the game I can refer to Ace as that, but inside the game Dram currently has no idea.

Now on to the latest adventuring…
It was weird. Dram didn’t know how to exactly explain it. One moment he’s chatting away and then the next he felt all different. He couldn’t quiet put his finger on it. Dram felt like if he tried he could remember more, even last longer trading magical blows with another wizard. Was the staff causing this? No. Dram would have noticed that when he examined the it, wouldn’t he? He started mumbling words he’d never used before.

After the conversation had finished with the nun lady Dram headed back to the inn for a late brunch, while the others went off and did their thing. “Weird”, thought Dram, “why wouldn’t they want to eat now and do other stuff afterwards?”

Back at the shrine, everyone had done their “thing”, and Grull wanted to see this banshee. Which kind of sounded interesting. Dram hadn’t seen one of them before. “Besides without me Grull is bound to get into all sorts of trouble, I better go with him” was the thought process that flashed through Dram’s mind before chirping in that he was going.

After getting directions we all set off to see this banshee.

We set up camp in a familiar spot, and Sarmyar and Dram took first watch. As luck would have it a dire wolf and some wolf friends of it’s turned up. The dire wolf was standing right behind Dram, while the wolves were trying to wake up the rest of the party. Dram decided to show the dire wolf a cool party trick called witch bolt. Which it didn’t seem to pleased about. But luckily it took that frustration out on Sarmyar’s pet panther.

“AGAIN! I’ve done all the work!” exclaimed Dram as Sarmyar finished off the dire wolf.

“Good grief that gnome is sleeping through all this excitement, and there are wolves standing right over him!” Grull and Ace rush over to help the paladin, who wasn’t asleep. But out for the count.

While that was going on Dram turns his attention to the last wolf and mumbles some new words and casts a scorching ray. Which drops dead as it tries to run away.

After the excitement, everyone tries to get some rest in before morning.

The next morning Grull and Dram come to a deal, Dram will make breakfast for Grull, if Grull makes a nice dire wolf blanket. So while Dram is cooking, Grull is skinning and tanning away. Ace smelt the food, and tried begging some free breakfast. So Dram threw him some ol’ jerky.

Over breakfast Grull started hallucinating that he could talk to the panther. Not just the panther but to all animals. Dram replayed the previous nights excitement back in his head. He didn’t remember seeing Grull get hit over the head at any point. “Strange Grull is going completely bonkers. I must keep an eye on him”, thought Dram.

As luck would have it a cart came along that was going our way. It was nice to not have to walk and be able to just relax and take in the scenery as we went along.

The party was dropped off at some ruins that apparently was our stop. It was evening but everyone else thought it would be a good idea to go see this banshee. Even more remarkable we found her woodland lair and she was in. Ace did all the talking with Grull chipping in. Dram thought Ace likes to think he’s a ladies man, and his charm would even work on a banshee. Dram thought it was pretty cool seeing this dead elf hovering there, he could see right through her.

Ace gave her the comb that he’d been given to use with the banshee. But Dram had drifted off now and was bored. “If the banshee wasn’t going to do anything cool like attack Ace, why were we hanging around?”, he thought.

After the banshee disappeared we headed back to the ruined town and made camp. That was uneventful too. This trip was starting to get boring.

The next morning fully rested, the gang headed South.

Late afternoon, early evening the party arrived at a tower. Upon closer inspection from afar 12 zombies came out and started to gather round a human and the tent he was stepping out of.

“Obviously this guy is up-to no good”, and instantly before the others could react, Dram had cast his Scorching Ray and hit the human.

“How is he still standing?” Thought a puzzled Dram. “He should be frazzled.” But he wasn’t, it turns out he was a “fellow” wizard but of that awful necromancy school. Dram don’t trust him. 12 zombies isn’t innocent and self defence.

Ace once again started to try and sweet talk the wizard. Ace is standing next to the wizard trying to bargain for something. When suddenly the wizard disappears and Ace is surrounded by zombies. Dram knew it. You can never trust those necromancers.

And that is where our adventure finished until the next instalment.

Monthly Meetup – November 2018

Fenland Gamers, game night

These meetups come around real quick. Once again our fantastic hosts for the evening were the totally awesome The Luxe Cinema, and it’s amazing staff.

Somehow we managed to squeeze 8 people round the table to play some games. Naturally we split up into 2 groups of 4 for reasons.

Our group of 4 had started off playing 7 Wonders, whilst the other group played Tiny Epic Galaxies.

Not to sound like a broken record but I’ve not played 7 Wonders in 2 years! A new member to the group had said they’d wanted to try the game along with the next game we played. Did I need any better excuse than this to get the game back to the table? Nope.

We were a little cramped on table space. But it didn’t stop us building our empires and wonders.

Myself and the new member dominated the military side of things. Jeff had developed a science community that gave him a massive point injection at the end. But not enough to deny our new member from grabbing the well earned victory.

Next up on the want to try list was a current favourite Azul.

Azul when I’m playing it will always be a 5 round game. I did warn everyone that is my tactic at the start. I like that ticking clock, the pressure it puts on everyone, the focus. It also means I’m not having to worry about when the game will end, or whose ending it.

I thought I’d won. But the end game bonuses when added in gave Jeff the victory.

While we played Azul the other group of players played Deep Sea Adventure. I like this light push your luck game. And so did a couple of that group, who after playing were online ordering their own copies!

Our group finished the evening off with the now out of print Love Letter: Batman (you won’t believe the silly prices the licensed themed copies of the game go for now). While the others played some Rick and Morty card game (can you tell I’m not a fan of the show or the games?).

Jeff once again claimed victory for the game, with myself coming in last. But we had a blast playing the game.

As we packed away, evidence was taken to show that I had been trusted with Diego’s Kickstarter copy of Robin Hood and His Merry Men. Must remember to take it with me next time I see Diego.

But a great evening game, fantastic hosts. A big thank you to The Luxe Cinema and the staff there.

Return to the Iron Throne

game night

Yesterday evening I got the chance to play A Game of Thrones: The Board game (Second Edition) again. The last time the game had been to the table was just over a year ago. And if my fading memory isn’t letting me down, my three opponents yesterday were also my opponents that time too.

This time I was the Starks, Liz was the Greyjoys, Dave was the Lannister’s while Justin was the Baratheons.

What was unusual for this play for me was I think this was the first time in a long time that I’ve played just the core game. With 4 players I usually play with the A Feast of Crows expansion. So it felt a bit weird starting off with so few resources and no objectives.

The draw back of playing this way with just the core game was if Liz and I spent all our time fighting over land in the North, then Dave and Justin would be free to run rampant in the South racing each other to get the 7 strongholds/castles. So early on Liz and I made a truce not to fight over the lands to the North, and came to a compromise splitting up of the lands. Thus we were able to turn our attentions towards the South.

I’m not going to apologise for this photo being the wrong way up. It was taken so that I could ask Liz her intentions without letting those of the South aware of potential troop movements.

Liz managed to attract the vengeful wrath of Justin when she invaded and captured one of his castles down on the southern tip of the kingdom. The next turn he committed to recapturing his lost castle. After that, when we failed to repel the wildlings, Liz was the one selected as the loser to get the worst of the punishments for failing by Justin (who held the Iron Throne).

I would have captured the Bartheons home stronghold a turn earlier than I did if Dave hadn’t played a card in our combat that meant he could remove a command token of mine. Which siding with Justin, removed the amassed forces I was going to invade with from that turn. But the next turn I did manage to invade and capture the Bartheons home stronghold. Thus inflicting on Justin the indignity of being the only player to lose their home stronghold. Even after this I still managed to avoid the wrath of his forces, which were still intent on extracting revenge on Liz.

This was a pretty close game really, towards the end I think anyone of us could have won the game. On what was going to be the penultimate turn if I had been able to grab one more stronghold/castle I would have been victorious. I was capturing two castles/strongholds that turn, but there was no way I could work it that I got that elusive third. That was my shot at seizing victory gone. I knew the next round I’d lose 2 castles/strongholds to the Lannisters and Baratheons. Luckily I knew I would be able as a final act of defiance steal from under the nose of Justin one of his unguarded castles as he took one from me.

The final turn of the game saw Justin lose 2 castles and gain 1. While Liz gained 2 castles, and could have gotten 3 if she had not rushed issuing her orders and getting a couple the wrong way round. However she did lose 1 castle to Dave in a surprise attack by him. I lost 2 castles and gained 1. Dave lost a castle to Liz, but gained 2.

In the end Dave marched his Lannister forces to victory and the Iron Throne. Trampling over Liz’s forces to do so meant that his victory might be short lived after they got home.

It was a fun evening with great company, and a great way to end the weekend.

Tides of bees!

Fenland Gamers, game night

The fortnightly gaming meetup started off differently for Jonathan and myself this time. We had been swapping messages discussing games and numbers for the evening. Which turned to whether we would be going for a kebab afterwards. I hadn’t had a kebab in a long time, and fancied having one again.

But Jonathan had been craving a pint and food at Spoons for most of the day. I pointed out that by the time we’d finished gaming he’d be competing for table space with people that would be jacked up alcohol, or just about starting on their night of alcoholic debauchery. Not the greatest atmosphere for enjoying a quiet pint and food.

So I suggested I was up for the Spoons thing, how about eating before we started gaming? 15 minutes later we were sitting at a table, food ordered, drinks in front of us and chatting away about life, the universe and gaming.

I did think my food was a little on the cold side, maybe not as hot as it could have been. Possibly a timing issue bringing my plate of food together. I think a couple of items had been waiting for the wings to be ready. Ok I admit it, I do like the wings that Spoons do. I could easily eat just a plate of them.

At The Luxe we got setup ready for our evenings gaming. We just needed to wait for the official start time, and those to turn up that said they were coming. While we waited Jonathan showed me the latest prototype of his Sherlock Holmes reskin (trolling him there) of The Streets of Commonville. I forget what he calls it. But it has those muted colours that suggest Victorian Britain and the setting of the Holmes stories. It’s nice theming. We discussed mechanics, particularly the dice rolling. I suggested he looks at games like Age of War, Bang the Dice Game and Elder Sign for their approach, and even Run,Fight or Die!. But I can see why he’s gone for a more Pandemic the Cure approach. It is his favourite Pandemic I believe.

After the brainstorming I taught John the quick drafting card game Tides of Time.

I really thought I’d played this game before with Jonathan, but I hadn’t. Drafting isn’t one of Jonathan’s favourite mechanics. But this is a quick game, with a slight twist to the drafting. The game is literally over before Jonathan realises he doesn’t like drafting!

For me this was a welcome return of the game to the table. Last time I had played this was before I’d started tracking my game plays. It is a very nice 2 player game. Like many games deserves more table time. But like so many games it’s competing for that limited time. Adding to the difficulty of getting to the table is the fact it’s a 2 player game, and those gaming opportunities are even rarer.

Although as I write this and think of my 2 player games that don’t get nearly as much love as they deserve, I’m rather happy with the fact I think I have a pretty strong 2 player game collection.

By the time we’d finished playing, no one else had turned up. We’d seen a message from one person letting us know they were ill. But there was no sign of the father and son we were expecting. I know life throws things in the way, plans change. But it is annoying when this happens. Part of our earlier discussion was about what games to bring along that were for the appropriate player counts, and audience. This information really does influence what we take with us for people to play. If we’d known it was just going to be Jonathan and myself we would have bought different games.


Our next game was a 2 player game of Waggle Dance. A game new to both of us, and only recently added to Jonathan’s collection. This is basically a gateway worker/dice placement game.

The dice are cute with a bee representing the number 1. On the whole the components are reasonable quality. Although both Jonathan and I think a playmat would be nice for the game.

Waggle Dance plays nice at 2 players, it uses 12 dice from one of the unused colours to occupy 3 random spots on each of the actions that can be selected.

The flow of the game is nice, as is resolving the various actions in the same order each turn during the night phase. It means you have to think about that order so that you have the resources in place to be able to take a later action in the same turn.

The Queen bee cards are the only way to mitigate dice rolls. The only way to get the cards is by putting a die on one of the spots for the action that gets a card. The cards do more than mitigate die rolls. They allow you to get honeycomb tiles, eggs, resolve a honeycomb tile with differing dice, etc.

The cards are pretty important. Jonathan took an early lead on having 2 more dice in his pool, and therefore able to do more on a turn. But I got cards from turn 1. I think it started off with a single die allocated. But after getting a free tile with it, I was allocating 2 dice each turn. The abilities I was drawing negated the advantage of the extra dice, or gave me the advantage. Jonathan started getting cards pretty late in the game, and too late.

The game uses that action selection based on the values of the dice you roll mechanic. Similar to Marco Polo (but not quite) and Covert. I quite like this mechanic, and because it’s not used a lot (well in the majority of games I own and play) it’s refreshing.

I won our game. But it could have gone in Jonathan’s favour. The cards gave me the edge, along with a couple of times Jonathan messed up his turn.

During our game Justin popped in to say hi, so there was a short intermission while we chatted and I hooked his son on Ice Blast drinks. It was great catching up with Justin.

Despite the low turn out this time. We still had a great evening gaming. And once more a big thank you to The Luxe for being our amazing hosts.

Forests and Deserts

game night

Last night was a rare chance to play the 2 player game Targi and a learning game of Spirits of the Forest with Jonathan.

We started off with Targi.

I’d love to see a playmat for Targi, it’s crying out for one.

Still like it a lot. Jonathan didn’t like the fact gold coins were very scarce. But still enjoyed the game. The coins thing didn’t bother me.

Naturally I did better this time. The game ended due to the thief doing a complete circuit of the board. But I did get 11 tribe cards in my tableau. Which was enough for me to get the win.


At last I got my Kickstarter deluxe edition of Spirits of the Forest to the table.

The production value of the deluxe version is stellar. Instead of gem stones in the retail version you get these lovely large patterned plastic stones. The tokens and tiles are lovely thick wood. It’s just a really lovely produced game.

This is one of those abstract games you can teach in minutes, but takes a while to master. And once we feel we’ve reached that point, there are expansions in the box!

You are basically trying to get a majority in each of the 9 spirits, plus the 3 power source symbols. Fail to collect a tile of one of the spirits and you lose 3 points.

I like being able to reserve tiles with your stones. But it doesn’t guarantee you get it. An opposing player can remove one of their stones from the game and return your stone to you and claim the tile you wanted. That’s a nice touch,

Jonathan won both the games we played. But it was great fun playing. Yeah we’ll be playing this again. Be interesting to see how it plays with more players.

Once again as ever our thanks and appreciation to The Luxe Cinema for allowing us to game there.

P.S. Jonathan took some photos of me in gaming action, so naturally I’m sharing them with you.