Throughout this post I may or may not discuss things that if you are playing or plan to play Charterstone you may not wish to know. In other words SPOILER ALERT! Stop reading now, go read one of my other posts if you like, and we’ll meet up in my next post.

Our guidepost for game 7 was going to be won by whoever had the most reputation at the end of the game. So that was me out. I think in our previous games I managed to get onto the reputation track just the once. There was also a temporary rule that if you used another villagers building they got the money or resource paid to activate it.
Like the last game I managed to take an early points lead. For me success is amassing points to reach the multiple of 10 milestones. Reach 10 points that’s a bonus star, reach 20 that’s a second bonus star, and so on. Bonus stars at the end of the game mean if I complete a row I can get that bonus at the start of each game. I also at the end of the campaign get to score points for each bonus star I have. So I’m taking the long game into account. With the losers also getting to store more stuff between games, I’m building up a nice little engine I’m hoping to just collect those bonus stars, build buildings and let the others fight for first place.

In this game I built a 15 point building, opened box 43 that gave me a new persona, and a new 20 point building to build next game, and now added rules that allow players to build over existing buildings (except basic buildings). Guess my 3 point building is getting demolished next game.

Unlike previous games, I actually ended up with 4 of the minions by the end of the game. Helped by Jonathan building a building that allowed me to get a minion everytime we could chose a bonus from the friend characters we had in front of us. I do find that minions are more of a discouragement for players to use a building than encouragement. Mainly because you don’t want the other player to get the benefit of that minion for using the building with the minion on.

Jonathan at the end of the game had the most reputation, and managed to amass enough money to remove the spirit worker he had been given last game. Despite getting on the track, and for a large part of the game in the running for sharing the third place points, I still walked away with no points.

So it was left upto Jonathan to scratch off the foil from the guidepost and read out the reveal words. For being the most reputable this game Jonathan had to decide how the end of campaign scoring would be done. Would it be we all had the same end scoring, or would we each have different end scoring at the end of the campaign? Jonathan went the communist route and chose that we all had the same scoring when the moment called for it.

After end game scoring I came in last, sadly missing out on reaching the 30 point milestone for the third bonus star, and having to settle for just the 2 this time. But I am now keeping 2 minions between games, so I’m happy.

We had a great evening once again playing another fun installment in this campaign. I’m hoping that the session gave one of our group a break from the slings and arrows that life had thrown at them during the day.

Roll on Fridays gaming session, and a second play of Outlive. Yes my second hand copy of the game arrived earlier in the day. With luck and the postal service on my side (fat chance) the KS exclusives might also arrive by then.

Time flies so fast when you are running out of it. Well that’s what it feels like being 50 now. It seems like only yesterday we were holding the last monthly meetup.
Last night once again we hit the heady heights of 7 members being able to attend. So once again we split up into 2 groups.

The first group decided to become the Scooby gang and investigate a haunted house by playing Betrayal at House on the Hill. Despite liking Betrayal I wanted to play Gavin’s game that I picked up for him from the UKGE, Outlive.

On the way back from the expo I had been listening to a recent Secret Cabal podcast where they had talked about Outlive, and how much they liked it. Naturally this got me interested in playing the game. So I was keen to give the game a try. Luckily Gavin was also interested in giving his latest addition to his collection a whirl to.

It would be fair to say that I liked Outlive. For starters I love the theme, the post apocalyptic setting isn’t an over used theme like say zombies. I think I have a handful of games with that setting, ok and one that combines it with zombies.

Does the theme come through? To some extent, you do feel that you are scrambling for scarce resources to survive. It’s not super thin and could be any theme, but it’s also not super heavy.

I like the use of leaders to give each player a unique feel and starting setup.

Once out of the box this game with all the components sprawls across the table. So you will need a bit of table space. The component quality is ok, lots of small bits of cardboard for the resources. I’d have preferred thicker player boards. I do like the meeples used to represent your workers who go out scavenging for your community. Having them stand up when used during the day phase and lie down to signify resting from the night phase. Brilliant mechanic that shows which has been used, it also thematic.

Being able to get “power ups” in the form of equipment, that needs to be repaired before you can get the benefit is cool. Plus if you have 2 pieces of equipment repaired and with matching symbols you get a bonus point at the end.

The radiation mechanic, which can kill you, forces you to either have survivors in your airlock to mitigate it during the night phase, or force you to reduce radiation by either visiting a specific location first, or get lucky scavenging in one of the city locations.

I like that each of your scavenger meeples has a number on the side to indicate the number of actions you can do with it at a location. These range between 3 and 5. These numbers are also used for hunting at specific locations, and to intimate other scavengers to get resources from your competition.

There is a lot to this game, and I’ve only scratched the surface. There is a whole resource management mechanic I’ve not talked about.

It’s a fun game, I’m hoping Gavin’s wife doesn’t like it so I can pick up a bargain. If not this will be in the collection at some point.

By some coincidence the Scooby gang finished almost the same time as us. So after packing away both games, it was near the time to head our separate ways.

A great evening. Looking forward to the next.

SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! If you don’t want to read possible spoilers for game 6 of Charterstone then look away now, and come back for the next post.

I’m going to be honest, it was hard for me emotionally to take part in anything yesterday.

During the day, holding in the emotions was a real battle. Arriving home was not good. I struggled to hold it in, and was very short with mum when she was trying to tell me what she had done for me. I just wanted her to go, so I could have leaky eyes. Selfish I know. I know mum is hurting as well. But I find it hard to talk about Strider without the emotion coming out of my eyes.

Despite being a mess, I managed to pull myself together for our irregular campaign game of Charterstone.

It was game 6 for us last night. The half way point of the campaign. The guidepost had us competing to get top spot on the quota track, with a temporary rule that when you visited another persons charter to use one of their buildings you rolled the charter die, and if it match either your own or the other persons charter symbol you both got a vp point. We were also using the peril tokens for the first time, that actually did something this game also. One of the objectives required you to have 4 different coloured peril tokens, and there was also a quota track for them too.

I was out of the starting blocks on the vp track quickly. Probably a big surprise for the others. But my lead didn’t last for long before Diego steamed off into the lead. But I did manage to hold second place until the end scoring. Not getting on the prestige track does let me down. But still I’m racking up the glory points, and building buildings.

At the game end Diego, Jeff and myself shared the honours for winning the guidepost. So we let Jeff do the honours of revealing the game end surprise. This time we had to go off to a url, enter in the combined score for the game, and get ranked. If we were above average we opened one box, and if below average we opened a different one.

I liked the novelty of this. However I’m not sure what you would do in the future if you were playing Charterstone and the site wasn’t available anymore. I suppose you could house rule it at that point, or flip a coin.

As you can see from above we were as this blog posts title told you, below average. So we got to open the appropriate box, which was funny because Jonathan lost his big meeple and had it replaced with a spectral worker instead. There is a catch to having this, I think unless he removes the spectral worker by paying I want to say 9 coins he can’t claim something. My memory isn’t with me as I write this the day after, and I don’t have the rule book to hand, as that is in Wisbech and I am at the hotel the night before UKGE kicks off.

It was good getting out, and taking my mind off things. It was still hard walking into the house and not to be greeted by Strider when I got back.

Last night it was the second Wednesday of the month once again, and yes we are back to Wednesdays after that very brief dalliance with Tuesdays.

Because of the numbers that turned up we split up into 2 groups to play. Gavin, Jeff and Katie played Gavin’s recently arrived copy of Sagrada. Whilst Jonathan, Jeff’s son and myself played Majesty: For the Realm (from Jonathan’s collection).

I hadn’t played Majesty before, and after a little banter between groups directed at Gavin who also owned the game but didn’t have the nice play mat that Jonathan did, we got on building our engines in this nice little engine building game.

There are some nice little touches to this game, that although clearly a gateway game is enjoyable for more hardened gamers. The take that mechanic within the game is simple and quick, and more importantly generally doesn’t target a specific player, but all those that can’t defend against the attack. Naturally if only one player can’t defend against an attack then it might feel like they are being targeted.

The sliding trade row, with items positioned nearer the supply costing more is a nice mechanic. Similar in style to choosing a race in Small World, but instead of using coins, you use meeples from your limited supply.

You are building an engine basically with the cards you are placing in front of you. But you are also having to pay attention to the cards that other players are collecting. At the end bonuses are awarded on majority for that card type. So you are trying to maximise the coins you collect when you place a card in your tableaux, but also trying to minimise giving stuff to your opponents, while making sure you maintaining your majorities, or sneakily stealing one.

Oh the play mat was a custom one that Jonathan had made. I actually liked it, and thought apart from having a 5 value coin would be the other addition the actual game needs.

Yeah I liked this, happily play it again.

Unusually both games ended at the same time. Talk about good timing. It even meant I could get a good photo of Jeff holding the social media winners boasting card for Sagrada. Yes that means he won the game.

The groups mixed up again for the second game of the evening. This time Gavin, Jeff’s son and myself played The Flow of History, while the others played Vikings.

Let’s just say despite getting The Internet I was still first loser as Jeff calls it. But I still on a second play of this game enjoy the game. Gavin won the game, despite constant protests during the game of “I have no engine” or “I have no resources”. He did protest too much I think, and then sneakily won!

Jonathan had a few days earlier grabbed a charity shop bargain for me of this old MtG Official Encyclopedia for a whole pound of the realm. Which was very kind of him to do.

The Vikings game finished before ours, so they started playing a Rick and Morty themed game of some kind. A lucky escape for me. It’s not a game that really grabs me.

It was really great to see what for our meet ups was a very good attendance.

Last night was meant to be game 4 of Charterstone. But life predictably got in the way for one of the group. Unlike previous hiccups alternate gaming too place instead.

The substitute game hitting the table last night was Nusfjord.
Jonathan (Owner of the game) had only played the game solo, and for the first time a couple of days before. So this was a first for him as a multiplayer game, and it was the first time at all for Jeff and myself.

The decision to play Nusfjord was made late afternoon. Which meant Jeff did his homework and watched a couple of reviews online. Me? Once I was home I had tea and watched the latest episode of the relaunched Roseanne. It hadn’t even occurred to me to swot up like Jeff.

We had the usual joke of “it’s just like Agricola”, before Jonathan went over the rules.

I love the meeples they have in this game. The wooden fish, the little boat first player marker. The wood meeple is a wood meeple. In fact I like the components a lot with one exception. That’s the cardboard money tokens. Talk about letting the side down. They are minuscule. If this game ends up in my collection then these will be the first thing I’d upgrade in the game, possibly the only thing. I have spare cardboard coins from 7 Wonders, 7 Wonders Duel, and Clans of Caledonia that I could replace them with. Well you’d have spare as well if you had the cool metal coin upgrades for those games too.

I really did enjoy this game, despite coming in last. I found this game far more accessible than Feast for Odin. That was like a complete sensory overload with everything you could do. This game has 3 resources, fish, wood and coins. You can see the elements that Uwe Rosenberg likes to use in his games reused here. For me the way he’s mixed them works. I like the shares mechanic. You can issue them as an action and get money for them, you can buy other people’s shares. When you have another players shares they give you a fish for each share you have of theirs at the start of each round. The recruiting village elders to get slightly better actions that only you can take is cool. Building buildings will gain you a one off bonus, plus maybe points at the end of the game. These buildings also cover up spaces on your player board, that if empty give you negative points at the end. You also have to build boats to increase the amount of fish you bring in at the start of each round. But these boats are also worth points at the end of the game.

This isn’t a points salad type of game. Yes points are how you decide the winner. But these aren’t going to be massive scoring games. Jeff won with a score of 30 points, Jonathan got 27, and I came in last with 23. With the 3 building decks there is going to be some variety each game because not all cards are used. Plus then you will also get different combos.

I’m nearly on the edge of saying this is my favourite game of Rosenburg’s that I’ve played. Nope it is. No doubt about it. It hits the sweet spot for me. Yeah I’d happily play this again.

After we finished playing there was some general chatter, plans made for Fridays gaming, and then we disappeared off into the night.