Or at least for the time being. Who knows where work shifts will take me in the future?
Yes last night was a Fenland Gamers club night, and I was able to attend.
It’s that time of year when folks are on holiday or tied up with Summer plans/events of some kind. So to have seven people turn up for club night wasn’t bad.
Seven isn’t a bad number to have. It means a split of three and four over two tables. Only Marcin and myself had games with us. Which naturally meant we wouldn’t be playing a game together.
On the plus side Jonathan and I did get to play together. I do miss playing games with Jonathan. Sadly Jonathan is still going through his gaming doldrums.
Jonathan, Chris, and myself played an all in game of Parks using the new play mat I picked up at UKGE. It’s a nice play mat, which I never knew existed. I only found out about it when Charlene told me a stand had them at the expo.
Parks is a lovely game. It has a depth that isn’t at first apparent. Which I like. Plus it looks gorgeous, with some amazing art and meeples.
My tour of the US national parks won me the game.
The final game for our table was Dandelions.
After losing to Chris who said he had no idea what he was doing (that stings) Jonathan and I headed off to our respective homes.
I stopped off at Asda and picked up a ribeye steak along with some other bits. I had reasoned I could get a kebab (which I do enjoy) or have a good steak for about the same money.
I’m really into steak at the moment. I like mine simply seasoned with salt, pepper, and garlic powder, with fried onion. None of those various sauces. I like the taste of steak, and don’t want to hide it with a sauce.
So yes I cooked the steak when I got home.
It ended a fun evening of gaming perfectly. Plus it was great to share a game or two with Jonathan again.
July has finally got off to a start on the gaming side.
Due to the aborted return to the hills I was able to join Marcin, Diego, and later Antony on Friday evening to play some games.
We started off with Otys. A post apocalyptic themed game. Marcin really likes that theme. It’s just a shame that the theme does not come through on this euro. The theme could be anything.
You are trying to build a little “engine” so that when you take an action that action becomes more powerful whether it’s by upgrading the action itself or increasing the bonus at the actions position.
Other wise you are collecting resources to try and complete contracts that give you points, or pay for some actions.
It was an enjoyable experience. You got to manipulate things in various ways.
Obviously there was plenty of banter during the game (and the rest of the evening).
It was even more satisfying that I denied Marcin a win by snatching the victory for myself.
Our next game was Diego’s copy of Kohaku. Anthony had joined us by then to join in. I do like this tile drafting game. Despite not getting a single turtle tile (worth 5 points), they always came out for the others, I won beating Diego by a single point.
Our final game of the evening was Courtisans.
Yeah I like Courtisans a lot. It gets very tactical trying to complete your secret goals whilst trying to screw over everyone else.
Luckily I came out on top and claimed victory.
It was a clean sweep for me. A good night at the gaming table.
Saturday saw Charlene and myself meeting up to play The White Castle.
I remember when The White Castle came out that it had a lot of buzz. It’s why I picked it up at this years UKGE months after that initial buzz had died down.
It is a very pretty game, with a nice table presence. The round tracker is enormous. Probably leaning on the overkill, too large side of things.
I have to admit I was left a little underwhelmed after playing the game. It felt too short.
Charlene thought that the sweet spot for her for this game was three players. Although she said Ben liked it at four players.
I’m not sure it’s a two player game. I need to try it at the higher player counts.
Oh Charlene won.
Next we played Targi. I hadn’t played this two player worker placement game since October 2018. Then that was against Jonathan at The Luxe.
It is an enjoyable game. Sadly it’s downside is that it is two player. And although every gamer has a few two player games in their collection they rarely get to the table. Which is a shame because there are some great two player games. Targi being one of them.
Charlene won this game too.
Our final game of Saturday afternoon was Dandelions.
In my previous post I gave my impressions of the two-player starter set from FFG for Star Wars Unlimited.
So continuing on from that post I’m going to share my thoughts on playing Star Wars Unlimited using the two starter decks included in the starter set.
Both Diego and myself have played other competitive collectible and living card games such as Magic the Gathering, Android Netrunner (not sure if Diego has played this) and Vampire the Masquerade Rivals.
Obviously for this starter set to be playable by two-players as its name suggests, it has to come with two preconstructed decks that can be played straight out of the box. You’ll find the deck lists for both decks at the end of the post.
Every deck built for Star Wars Unlimited has to have a leader and base. They determine the cards you can play in your deck. You can play out of faction cards but there is an extra cost in doing so.
In this two-player starter the two leaders you get are Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.
I love that the art for both is from the duel between them on Cloud City at the end of Empire.
I’ve not looked at all the cards in the decks. But there is one that ties in with this called “I am your father”.
Even the way the card works (above) is so thematic. Love it.
Luke’s base is the Aministrator’s Tower, and Vader’s is the Commander Center. Both 30 health, and add a third faction symbol.
Luke’s BaseVader’s BaseThe two bases
Obviously the game shares mechanics common to all ccgs. Such as exhausting cards (tapping in mtg), units coming in exhausted (summoning sickness), spending resources to play cards. You get the idea.
So coming from a ccg background it was very easy to pick up the game.
I did like that you draw two cards at the end of the round, and may play a card from hand face down to be used as a resource.
This for me this is a major difference to other games I’ve played. It also introduces a hard decision because once a card has been played face down as a resource there is no getting it back. Which card becomes a resource? Which do you hold on to? If you don’t play a resource it delays when your leader can come out, it limits what cards can be played. It has such big implications. Especially early on.
I also like the back and forth of actions. And the gamble of passing. On your turn you can pass, waiting to see what your opponent does. However if your opponent seizes the initiative, or passes also. That’s it the round has ended. Even if you wanted to do more! That’s the gamble.
Diego and I played a game with each deck.
The decks seem fairly evenly matched. Our first game was pretty close.
Although our second game was more one sided. But that was more down to the draw of cards. You get games like that. You just have to put the game behind you, and move on to the next one.
I liked playing Star Wars Unlimited with these decks. They were fun to play. Great decks to play casually with a friend over the kitchen table.
I’ll definitely buy the next sets two-player starter set. Hopefully they too will be as balanced.
Finally here are the two deck lists for the decks.
Deck list for both decks
It should be noted there are some cards in this starter set that are only available in the starter set, or in the op kit promo kits.
Last night I got to play the two-player starter set for Star Wars Unlimited with Diego.
I have some mixed thoughts about the whole experience.
Let me just say up front I really like the game.
However I do have some issues with the quality of this product.
First up is the flimsy very thin card tokens included for tracking damage, first player, etc. That’s my issue they are so flimsy. I hate them. If you intend to get into the game you will want to upgrade these as a priority. Maybe that’s what the aim was. To “encourage” you to buy the GameGenic acrylic tokens. That’s if you can find anywhere that has them.
I was also very disappointed with the quality of the cards themselves. They too are very thin. You will be sleeving the cards. You have to. These are boarding on unusable. This means that opening boosters will be a bitter sweet experience. On one hand I’ll be excited about opening the packs, and the cards I pull. On the other repulsed by the poor quality of the card stock used.
The two folded paper playmats were as expected quality wise. I like they have the play areas on them. Plus act as a player aid with setup, what you can do on a turn, end of a round summary, plus keyword summary. All very handy for learning the game, and teaching it.
The quick start/learn to play booklet is nice and does the job well. We hardly had to refer to it.
The two cardboard deck boxes a nice touch that don’t need assembling. They are large enough to hold the cards sleeved.
Overall I think value wise this is a great starter set. However quality wise of the cards and tokens it feels cheap and that FFG are cutting corners to cut costs and maximise profit.
In another post I’ll talk more about the play experience of Star Wars Unlimited using this two-player starter set.
After having three days off where I got to game with Jonathan. Which was the first time in a longtime. Plus attend a Fenland Gamers club night (something that is a rarity these days). At which I got to game with more friends I hadn’t played with in a while (hello Ben).
Games that saw the table in these two sessions were Dandelions, Can’t Stop, Senso: Battle for Japan, Macao, Ship Captain Crew, and Sea Salt & Pepper. Plus two games that Ben owned No Mercy, and Come Sail Away!
It was back to work and a pretty full on four days that were quite frankly draining. Especially after one shift I didn’t have any real recovery time because of union meetings I had to attend. I actually ended up having a snooze in the car between the last union meeting and the start of my shift.
The knock on effect was I was too tired to write anything about the gaming I mentioned above. Or get to mention that it came to light Jonathan has been playing trick taking games wrongly for a very long time. Basically the mistake was playing a trump card when you could follow suit. You have to follow suit. If you can’t then you can play a trump card (if you have any) or “dump” a card from another suit.
As I write this life update I have two much needed days off. Followed by a day back at work. Followed by four days off. What am I going to do in those days off? It’s not long enough to visit Nathan and give mum time to recover! Yes mum needs recovery time after I go away. I’ve factored it for UKGE for example. Apparently looking after Nico and Loki the two attack chihuahuas can be very taxing.
I’m in the process of buying a small dice masters collection. Which will help with the cube building. More on this once it happens.
Until the next big expansion for Marvel Champions Age of Apocalypse comes out (tomorrow/next week?) I now have a complete set of cards. I ordered the final three hero packs that I needed (Venom, Gamora, and Drax) that arrived at the start of the week. The nice thing about getting these older hero packs is the fact you don’t have to pay full price for them. They get nice reductions.
I just need to get the game to the table, get a storage solution, and sleeve the thousands of cards!
Having Tuesday as a dead game night at the moment is killing me. It was really cool that on a Tuesday those of us that liked ccg/tcg/lcg type games had a regular evening where we could play these style of games. I need to be more proactive in my efforts to find somewhere.
Oh I did get a quick chance yesterday to play around with my fire starting kit! I need to start playing around with this more. Get more confident in using it, and develop my fire starting skills.
So yesterday using a piece of fat wood (resin rich pine wood) I created some tinder to start a fire with. Then using a fero rod and striker to create sparks managed to get the tinder to light. This little exercise did not involve me building this into a roaring fire. Its aim was to get the tinder going. I followed this up with using the fero rod and striker to start a tinder wick. Which started first strike! Wow that was impressive.
My final little play with fire for the afternoon was to start a trangia burner with the fero rod and striker. Which worked really well. Why hadn’t I done this back when I was doing all the meth stove reviews?
My Kelly Kettle Trekker also arrived. Looks a lovely bit of kit. Although the pot and lid look too small to be of any practical use. I can’t see them being used at all, and replaced by one of my titanium pots.
Hopefully I’ll get to try out the Kelly Kettle on one of my days off. Who knows I might even film my initial efforts with it!
Last night three very good friends joined me in playing some games at our usual location of the Wisbech St Mary Sports and Social Club.
Earlier in the day I had started a six bean chili of my own creation. My chilli paste I used was a combination of ancho, pasilla, guajillo, and kashmiri chillis. All mild chillis. I’m going for taste over heat. So I want that chilli warmth that you get after having a mouthful but not so much that it hides any flavour.
The night before the beans (a combination of haricot, butter, pinto, black turtle, cannellini, and kidney beans) were soaked in a water that had salt and baking powder dissolved in it.
The peppers I used in my “Mexican” mirapoix were Tesco Finest sweet ramiro peppers. Plus I added a can of La Costena Chipotles Peppers In Adobo Sauce, some chopped up Tesco vine ripened tomatoes I had that needed using up, and finally some whole chestnut mushrooms.
This concoction was then put in a low oven for four hours or more. I took it out just before I left. I finished it off with the juice of one lime.
I took a little of the chili with me to get a second opinion or two.
That’s how much I was happy with the results of this “experiment”. Folks don’t get to try my cooking unless I’m happy with it. I’m not a confident cook and rarely share my efforts with others.
I’m very much a seat of pants cook. No two times I cook something will be the same. I vary some element or two.
Chili and soup are great for riffing!
I think for me and maybe to the horror of Texans and a lot of folks I like bean chili over a meat based one. My six bean chili is vegan!
Gavin and Diego liked the chili. Although Diego did say it was sweet. Marcin “liked” it, however he said it was spicy! He doesn’t do spicy. There was a big clue that it’s a chili!
Our first game of the evening was Wyrmspan. Like Apiary, and Expeditions, or any new game, this was just another play in the new game tour of players trying it.
I’m not complaining as I get to play a game I enjoy playing.
For the first time ever in a game we had a three way draw for first place. Diego, Marcin, and myself all got exactly the same number of points! Sadly the tie breaker of number of dragons on display gave Diego the victory.
After Gavin left we had time to play Can’t Stop.
This has become a favourite “filler” game. It’s light, very quick to teach, and fun.
Unlike Wyrmspan where Diego won on a technicality this was a clear win for him. Due mainly to Marcin and myself being unable to stop!
This was a great evening. Much banter and laughs. So great to see Gavin again. This sort of evening just sums up what gaming for me is.
So last night I got to play some games with Diego. Ben wasn’t able to make it, so no Dune Imperium Uprising. But I have started a cunning plan to get the game to the table. Which is basically creating an event to play the game on the clubs discord server at the start of March. Why then? Part 2 of the Denis Villeneuve take on the Dune books comes out at the cinema that weekend. We’ll see if there are any takers.
Our first game of the evening saw the return of the push your luck dice game Zombie Dice. Which we played with Diego’s daughter. It’s been a long long time since I last got the game to the table. According to the bgstat app 6 years and 11 months.
We followed up with one of his daughter’s favourite games about dragons and jewels. I didn’t record this game in the bgstat app. But I won. Making up for Diego’s two Zombie Dice victories.
Once Diego’s daughter had gone to bed we played Parks with the first expansion Nightfall.
Nightfall adds “…new Park Cards featuring new rewards and all new artwork from the Fifty-Nine Parks Print Series, including the 17 parks not represented in the base game. … new Year Cards and Bonus Scoring opportunities, and … new Camping mechanic.”
What I like about the expansion is more parks (more cards is always cool) and new mechanics that don’t add to the overhead of playing the game. But do add to the choices you have to make.
In this game the camera was a much more fought over item, swapping possession several times.
The new year cards with the end game scoring were a big improvement. My initial card gave me 2 points for every 3 resources I had at the end of the game. These worked so much better than the core games year cards.
Loved the camp sites. Some great abilities that I really wanted to activate. Particularly the ones that gave me lots of resources.
In the end after our year of hiking I managed to get the victory by a point.
Our final game of the evening was Sea Salt and Paper.
When this game first arrived I was taken aback by the diminutive size of the box. It is so tiny. It is pocket size. No chance of sleeving these cards unless you rehome them.
The cards in this game look beautiful.
Plus once you get used to the iconography you can start to really enjoy the simplicity of the game play. It really is an enjoyable card game.
As the photo below shows Diego won this game. I do like it when a game has a social media winners card.
After a week of no gaming and adjusting to the work routine again (it’s amazing how having a week off throws you out) Diego and myself met up on Friday to play some games.
There were others invited but they had life going on to prevent them from joining us.
We started off with a learning game of Parks.
Parks had not even been on my radar of games to buy. But over Christmas an opportunity came up to buy a copy so I did.
I have to say production value wise Parks knocks it out of the park! This is Stonemaier level of production quality. A great insert, trays you take out to hold the resources. Wooden pieces. And the cutest animal tokens ever. Each a different animal.
Parks
I love the art on the cards. The game looks beautiful on the table.
During setup and our dramatic reading of the rules I was thinking how are we ever going to buy park cards or do anything in the four rounds, or seasons as they are called in the game? The action track or whatever it was called seemed too short. But it does grow by one space at the start of the subsequent rounds.
One of my tactical mistakes of the game was letting Diego keep the camera for a large part of the game. It was basically giving him free points.
We both got a lot more done in the game than I thought we would. It was very quick to learn, and play. We both really liked the game. And yes sooner than later the expansions will be popping through my letter box.
Oh Diego won.
Our second game was a new push your luck dice game called Can’t Stop that I got.
Can’t Stop
What a fun dice game. It worked at our player count. And I can’t wait to play at the higher player counts. I’ll write a bit more in my research post for my cyberpunk game project, because this game was bought for that.
But the history books will reflect that I won the game.
Our final game of the evening was Terraforming Mars the dice game.
I thought this worked well as a two player game.
It did initially feel like a learning game as I’d only played the game once before.
Terraforming Mars the Dice Game
We soon picked up the iconography on the cards.
It felt like an awful long time in the game from the initial production that I did a production run. I’m not sure if that was a good or bad thing. I’m also undecided if it’s a good thing to do frequent/regular production runs in the game. More plays will help with this tactical decision.
Like Can’t Stop I’ll be talking about Terraforming Mars the dice game in the research post.
Sadly it’s no longer John Carter of Mars, but Diego of Mars as he won.
It was great to be sharing these games with Diego. I had a fun evening.
Friday morning was the last morning of my visit with Nathan.
Usually I get a whole morning with him before setting off after lunch. But this time I had to leave before lunch so I was back in time for a Teams call.
Leaving earlier meant I was back in time to attend the Fenland Gamers club night. But more importantly able to try Cyclades.
It’s been on my wish list for yonks. I even backed the Kickstarter for the second edition (granted at the $1 level to get me access to the backerkit) last year.
So what did I think of Cyclades?
I enjoyed it.
I liked the bidding mechanic for the gods and your place in turn order for taking your turn. Which then determined where you were next round in the bidding order.
But did I like it enough to buy the second edition?
Now that is a tough question.
I have Kemet (first edition plus expansions), Cry Havoc, and Scythe. Those three were good enough to fight off Inis taking one of their spots. And I did like Inis just not as much as the others.
And I think Cyclades is falling into that same situation. I like it but enough to get rid of one of the three already mentioned? If you asked me to play one of them right now, I think I’d still go with one of the three over Cyclades.
So it looks like I’ll leave it to Ben to buy the new edition of Cyclades and play that when it arrives (Q4 of this year?)
Saturday saw Jeff and myself meet up to try the 18xx roll and write Arabella. Which had arrived that morning.
I’d only heard about Arabella days earlier via a tweet on X/Twitter. It intrigued me. However nowhere seemed to be selling it. Unless I wanted to import it. Luckily there was a copy in the UK going on the bgg marketplace. Which I snapped up.
When it arrived it was still in shrink.
When I read the rulebook I thought wow this is going to be on the heavier side of roll and writes.
There was one hiccup to playing Arabella. When I told Jeff it was an 18xx inspired game he was apprehensive about it. He is not a fan of 18xx games.
I’d never played an 18xx game before. So this was going to be a way for me to dip my toe in to the 18xx water.
For this first game I went against the advice of the rulebook and didn’t use the AI to add a third player. I want to be able to just focus on the game and not have the overhead and distraction of running the AI.
It is interesting that there are no setup adjustments for player count. Well not if you discount the placement of cubes during setup.
Arabella didn’t disappoint.
It is on the heavier side of the roll and writes.
I really enjoyed it and surprisingly so did Jeff.
It had the feel of an 18xx but not the drawback(s) according to him. Particularly the share side.
We both agreed the wooden dice are ok, but would it have hurt to use plastic ones?
The rulebook is ok. Slight grammar errors. Plus it was not clear that the white dice are your starting dice. But I’m giving a little leeway as the designers are east European I believe, and it could just be a translation issue.
The game does start slow as you start to build your railway, but boy does it ramp towards the end.
Arabella is also a very mathy game! Especially when running your trains or calculating the share dividends.
I definitely need to play this with more players. I think it’s going to be a very different experience.
We followed up with a game of one of Jeff’s Christmas presents Star Trek Away Missions.
This is a fun two player Star Trek game. I played the Federation with a ST:TNG crew, whilst Jeff played the Borg.
It was the intro scenario we played.
So basically I needed to complete at least five mission cards over the three rounds to get my objective points at the end.
This is a skirmish like game or shares some of the mechanics. Players take turns activating a character in their squad/team. The game that comes to kind with that activating mechanic is Star Wars Imperial Assault or Last Days.
There is hand management as well to consider not only for your mission cards, but also for m
Because the game is played over three rounds it is very quick.
Despite reports of artic conditions, and that ever mythical snow down South. I made it safely to Nathan’s. Mum needn’t have worried. But she wouldn’t be a mum if she didn’t worry. Even when their eldest is so advanced in years.
We played a couple of games during the evening.
The first an all in game of 7 Wonders Dual.
It was rather cramped on the table. But that didn’t stop us from playing.
We were pretty rusty on the rules, particularly for the two expansions. So we were frequently referring to the two rule books.
I had decided to go all in on a science win. Whilst mid game Nathan had found out that a senate victory was possible and was going for that, along with a possible military victory as a back up.
In fact Nathan could have won with the senate victory if he hadn’t moved one of his cubes. Instead I got a science win after Nathan miss remembered the win condition. He thought it was seven symbols, when it was in fact six.
Later after some sleeving of the cards in the LoTR LCG Fellowship of the Ring saga I taught Nathan a card game from my early years called Trumps. It’s also known as Knock Out Whist I believe.
I spent a lot of time playing this game as a teenager.
Whilst at secondary school we used to play it during tutorials. Officially we weren’t meant to be playing it. But our tutor group was a bit on the rebellious side. Led by our tutor!
I also played it a lot with my dad’s aunt, Aunt Joan. It was most likely her that taught me the game. Which I then took to the classroom.
As a two player game it’s ok. It’s quick. I even used the dogs life rule for Nathan after he failed to take a trick on one of the early rounds. I shouldn’t have done that as he then got the win. On the penultimate round we both got a trick each. So we cut the deck to see who won. Sadly for me that went Nathan’s way. So he chose trumps for the final round of one card.
Afterwards I continued sleeving cards and getting the recommended player decks constructed ready for us to play the game.
