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.

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.

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.

Have 2 weeks passed already? A Friday evening gaming and a monthly meetup in the same week, that’s always a good week. Jonathan had repaired the table. Which I’m very grateful for. He saved the day.

According to the Facebook event we were expecting to be a total of 3 turning up. But ended up as 7 in total. It’s a bit annoying when this happens because we generally use the information from the event page to help guide what games to take along.

We split into 2 groups. James and I played a learning game of Targi. Whilst the other 5 played Forbidden Sky. I bought Targi as a purchase of opportunity at Tabletop Gaming Live the other weekend. It had been on my radar since Zee looked at it on the Dice Tower YouTube channel earlier in the year.

Targi is a 2 player worker placement game, with some set collection thrown in. Because of the number of players playing the other game James and myself were playing on a table that was just big enough for the main board. We had to use chairs for the player tableaus.

I liked the robber mechanic used in the game. It acts as a timer for the game for starters. Once the robber has completed a circuit of the board the game ends, unless the other game end trigger happens first. The robber is also used to block actions. As the robber moves on to a space, that space is not available for selection that round by players. And finally there are 4 spaces (the corners) on the board that when the robber lands on them trigger the players having to give up resources,gold or victory points.

The whole taking turns to select actions on the outside of the board, and not being able to select a row column occupied by the other player is nice. Because you are also getting to take the tribe or goods card in the middle where your Targi intersect, you are having to try and balance between choosing actions you really want and getting the goods/tribe card in the middle you really want. Sometimes these are mutually exclusive. I love the fact you only take the actions selected at the end of the round when you remove the counter. You get to select the order things resolve. That way you get to make sure you have the resources needed to buy that tribe card.

It’s cool the middle area of the board is constantly changing as you use the goods or buy the tribe card there. Especially when the used card gets replaced by its opposite. So a tribe card gets replaced by a goods card, and vice versa.

There is no resource hogging in this game, you are not allowed more than 10 goods and 3 gold to carry over between rounds. Any excess gets returned to the general supply.

The set collection element of the tribe cards for your tableau is nice. The fact they only score on complete rows of 4 is a great touch. Either player getting 12 tribe cards in their tableau also triggers the end of the game.

You can probably tell there is a lot to this game. I haven’t covered everything, about 80% or 90% of it. It actually took longer to play than I thought it would for a 2 player game. Maybe that’s because it was our learning game. But still it was a very enjoyable game, and definitely one I’m glad to add to my collection of 2 player games. The only issue with this whole game category is they don’t get played often enough.

Oh the history books will record that James beat me by a narrower margin than I thought it would be. I think there were 4 points between us, and that’s despite him having a complete 12 card tableau to mine incomplete one of half the cards.

As luck would have it both games finished at roughly the same time.

Our second game of the evening was a members favourite, the dice bluffing game Perudo. This time I was able to bluff my way to victory.

We finished the evening off with Small Detectives. A great little find by Jonathan, and still enjoyable. I think this was the first time I’d played it at the full player count of 5. Not sure if the optimal player count is 3 and 4 for this game. 5 players meant I was being blocked a lot of the time, I saw only one tile before Jonathan correctly guessed the solution. So it worked out in his favour, he got to see enough to make a correct guess. I did suspect and was proved correct afterwards that one player (the tablebreaker) had been cheating and making a note of the suspects and weapons they’d seen on their phone. It’s a memory game, you have 6 things in total to remember. I’m not impressed by this person as you may be able to tell. Still no apology for breaking the table. Although Jonathan did make a brave attempt at defusing any tension, and the elephant in the room by making light of the table incident. Jonathan compliments me quite well, he’s a better human being than me. I still had as little to do with the tablebreaker as possible.

It was a great evening of gaming. The staff at The Luxe were super amazing as usual. Fantastic hosts.

Last night was the October monthly meet up for the Fenland Gamers at our amazingly generous hosts The Luxe Cinema.

The evening started off well. Jonathan had finally joined the Ice Blast Crew! It’s the drink of choice for the group. Jonathan and Nathan had a rare opportunity to direct the banter at me. I give as good as I get, and it’s nice for them to get this rare occasion where they have the upper hand. My turn will come again.

We split into 2 gaming groups, a group of 4 and group of 3.

Jonathan, Gavin and myself started off playing Kingdomino. I hadn’t played Kingdomino before. I know it had a bit of buzz when it came out, and it’s got an expansion and a follow up, was even nominated for an award or two. But it had not made my radar for something to play. Gavin was keen to try it, and I was happy to give it a go.

Wow. How much fun is the game? Lots. It is quick to teach, simple mechanics to grasp, and quick to play. I love the tile selection mechanic used to determine the order of choosing in the following round. It presents some nice tough decisions to make with such a simple mechanic. Do you go for that tile you really need and chose last next time? Do you hate draft to block someone else? Which could also potentially mean you get to chose last. Or do you try and get that first selection for the next round because there is a tile you really must have?

Then you have the placement mechanic working along the lines of the pub classic dominos, and being limited to a 5 x 5 grid, and getting an end game scoring bonus if your start tile is in the dead centre of a completed 5 x 5 grid.

That is literally all there is to the game, a handful of simple mechanics that seem to work so well together to create a fast, fun game.

Somehow in our 3 player game I managed to run away with the victory. But we then added a fourth player, taught the game in seconds, and we were back playing. This time I was getting less of the selections I really wanted. A few rounds I was finding hard not to be the one choosing last, because that was the only option I was left with. There was very little denial drafting going on. I thought Jonathan was running away with the game, he had large scoring areas that we had failed to prevent. Sadly those scoring areas were also ones I was going for early on also. But when it came down to the final scoring, I lost to Jonathan by 4 points. That was a lot closer than I thought it would be. So yes I was first loser.

Our second game of the evening was another new game to me, No Thanks!. Wow another simple game to learn, but so much fun. You either take the current card or pass and place a token on it. If you have no tokens in front of you, you can’t pass. So you are forced to take cards until you get some tokens. The idea is to have at the end of the game the lowest score. That’s an over simplification of the card bit, which involves collecting runs of cards, say 33,32,31,30 but you only score the lowest value of the run. So that example run would be worth 30 points. I also didn’t mention that there are 9 cards removed at the start of the game from the deck. So there may or may not be a run, and you get stuck with a high value card. Sometimes you need to take that high value card because there are just too many tokens on it, that the points it will give you out weighs the fact you need those tokens. I lost the first game we played on the tie breaker. Gavin won our second game, and I won the third and final game. And yes it was that much fun.

For me No Thanks joins the ranks of Red 7, The Mind and Love Letter: Batman that are fun little filler games that should always be in the bag. So yes this will be joining the collection real soon.

Our final game of the evening was The Resistance. 8 resistance fighters, but they had been infiltrated by 3 traitors. A fun way to have everyone playing together at the end of the evening. Luckily I was using my copy of the game that I use with students. With the mess that the Ice Blast drinks create from the ice on the outside melting, and one or two players being less than careful with game components, this worn copy of the game was the ideal one to use. And these two points are starting to become a bit of an issue on club nights. Our hobby is an expensive one, some of the games we own and play are beautifully made and expensive. So you would hope/expect those playing to show a little respect to using someone else’s game. Sadly it’s not happening. Which does make you reluctant to bring games along to play.

However back to our hunt to find those traitors to the cause, who were sabotaging our missions. Our first mission was a roaring success, despite us having to refresh our memories to the rules. Mission 2 was foiled, there was definitely a traitor in our ranks. But who? Mission 2 had 2 people from the initial mission and 2 newbies. It had to be one of the newbies. Mission 3 was a roaring success. I’d been on all 3, and I think by now the majority had been on a mission. So despite having been on 2 successful missions I was under suspicion. Mission 4 I wasn’t on, but somehow a traitor had managed to sneak on to the team and once again sabotage it. It was all down to the final mission. We thought we knew who weren’t spies. The final missions team was selected, and it was a failure. The traitors had won. when the smoke cleared, we had identified correctly 2 of the traitors. But Jonathan had done the con job of the century and managed to avoid suspicion the whole game.

After the game as we were clearing up, I was once more the brunt of banter from my good friends. This time teasing me about being a fanboy who wouldn’t sell out. So yes that time had come again real quick. Twice in the same evening. I must be getting old. I enjoy the banter, it’s good fun, nothing nasty. Although I forgot to pay Gavin back for his awful joke on Twitter the other day. It was truly awful and deserved retaliation. Ok the joke was “which spice girl can carry the most petrol?”, “Jerri Can”. See it was bad.

Then the evening went tits up once more. The frickin’ idiot who I talked about previously, broke my folding table I use for gaming. The folding table the club uses for our game nights now at The Luxe. Snapped two rivets connecting the legs to the supports that keep them in place when set up. The support collapses, is held rigged by a sliding metal ring. But no if it won’t collapse, just repeatedly force and break it. Not a word of apology, offer to fix it, or replace it. To say that I was not happy was yet again an understatement. I really don’t know what to do about the guy.

Jonathan kindly offered to take the table home and fix it. The earliest I could even start to look at repairing the table was Sunday. Which would totally screw up our planned Friday evening gaming session at The Luxe. Hopefully it is just a matter of replacing the broken rivets with screws or bolts, and that no other damage was done.

Otherwise it had been a great evening of gaming.

Last night was the fortnightly Friday evening gaming session at our now current home for gaming The Luxe Cinema.

Our first game of the evening was a learning game of Lost Cities:Rivals. I’m a big big fan of the original game Lost Cities. It has a great app (that makes me lazy on the scoring). But it’s a 2 player game only. So to hear that there was this game based on it, with an auction mechanic, that plays 2-4 players, yeah I was going to get it.

There is a surprising depth to the game once things click. But it’s a learning game so it takes a round or two for things to click, it’s expected.

On your go you either add a card to the market from the pile, or start an auction for the current cards in the market. And that’s the first big decision you have to make based on the market. Just how many or badly do you need any of the cards in the market? Do you risk adding to it, or try and get the cards with an auction? The amount of money you have, and of the others could also influence that decision, you may not even be able to afford to bid. Running out of money means until you get through the current pile of cards you just have to watch as your opponents take cards that you may need. When a pile of cards runs out, money that was spent in the auctions gets redistributed evenly amongst players. Which is a nice touch. I also,like the hate bidding to try and force up the price, and take out opponents so you have free reign of the cards. I also like that the winning bidder can also remove a single card from the market from the game. A great opportunity to deny another player a card they may need.

Amazingly Jonathan and I tied for top spot. I enjoyed the game, definitely want to play it again.

Our second game and final one of the evening was the evergreen gateway worker placement game Stone Age. I’d only played this game once before, which was nearly 3 years ago (before I started logging game plays).

I went back and read my thoughts on Stone Age from that first play. I still agree with them. Although it’s great as an entry level worker placement game, I did kinda think it was an average one on the whole. There are worker placement games I enjoy a lot more. But after our game last night I think calling it average is doing it a disservice, above average is more accurate. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still an enjoyable experience.

Our game last night was a little one sided with the real battle for first place between Jonathan and myself. Despite sitting behind the pack on the score track for most of the game, Jonathan was in striking distance of a big points rush during final scoring. Which I knew would be coming because he was going for the set collection end game bonus.

The reason for it being between Jonathan and myself was the other 2 players hadn’t played the game before, and I didn’t think my previous play really gave me an advantage, being so long ago. But being a more experienced player, and fan of the worker placement mechanic did help. Jonathan naturally was the more experienced player of the game, and he did point out key strategies of the game during explaining the rules, and during play. Also advice from both of us was given through out the game.

But that didn’t stop one player making a couple of really dumb ass moves during the game. The first was mid game on his first player turn not taking the farm, and allowing Jonathan to nab it and gain an advantage on the food front. Until the late game, that farm track is important. You need to hunt less to feed your tribe. Allowing you to gather more resources, grab more buildings etc. It also allows you to add more tribe members and yes get to do more on a turn. That was a massive move for Jonathan, and allowed him to get that extra worker.

The second dumb ass thing had me nearly rage flipping my table! I don’t think I’ve ever called another player a “twat” at the table before. But I did last night. Basically in the fading memory I have. We had a building pile down to one tile, the ass hat was first player. If Jonathan put a worker on it he’d block it to allow an extra turn or two, something he needed to allow him to get cards to complete that massive scoring set he was going for. I knew he was close. Ending the game this turn, was in my interest and give me a chance. The other two were not in the running. They hadn’t been grabbing end game bonus cards, and only had a couple. Their final points wouldn’t be too far off where they were on the score track. If they were to stand a remote chance of finishing above Jonathan they too needed it to end this turn. There was no benefit for the person to drag the game on for a couple more turns. No way they were going to get back in the running. Their first move was a worker on the final hut. During the rest of the placement stage they put another worker on a hut, and we played out our placements. Then when it came to resolving the workers, they didn’t claim the last hut! WTF! Did they just do that? This was handing the game to Jonathan. And then to justify it with “I don’t care, this is payback for D&D (dire wolf cleaning his privates jokes)” was just twattish. It really felt like they had just given Jonathan the game. We were now looking at another 2 rounds. Exactly what Jonathan needed.

Luckily Jonathan was first player and didn’t block that hut with his first worker placement. Naturally I did with my first worker. But it was a great last round for me, and also for Jonathan. I got a great end game bonus card.

As expected during end game scoring Jonathan had a 7 card set for a massive points jump, and some bonuses. I had a 4 card set, something I’d gone for as a way to try and mitigate that big points gain I knew Jonathan was getting. What I hadn’t been tracking was my bonuses. With 7 huts, and two 2 value tools and one 3 value tool my multiple bonuses really added up and shot me to the win. I ended up with 197 points. My tools bonuses gave me that win. Jonathan ended up second with 152. Without the tool bonuses I would have been a close second.

But I’ve decided I’m not going to be playing with that player again. Even before the dire wolf jokes in D&D I had the feeling that they were targeting me in games. I don’t need that agro. I never thought I’d be writing something like this, let alone thinking it. I’d like to reflect why I feel this way, and the root cause. But that’s not me, I’m a force of nature like my attack chihuahuas Nico and Loki.

Despite that little blip, it was a great evening. The Luxe and amazing staff, were fantastic hosts.