Category Archives: game night

game night

Unexpected win

game night

With all the Strider worry I have at the moment I needed a couple of hours distraction. So I put a shout out to some friends to join me at The White Lion to get Eminent Domain back to the table. I had only played it once previously nearly 3 years ago with Nath. Back then we both had enjoyed this sci-fi themed deck builder, so it was way way over due a return to the table. The observant amongst you will have noticed the theme and mechanic are Jonathan’s top hated themes and mechanics. Which is why I didn’t ask him to join me in playing the game. Jonathan is a good friend, and probably if I’d said why would have come along and played. But I’m not into using guilt trips with friends to get them to play stuff they wouldn’t enjoy. It wasn’t until Jeff arrived with his son that he knew what was going on with Strider.

Eminent Domain is a nice deck builder. I’d say that the theme is a bit weak, and could easily be say a trading in the Mediterranean, or some other suitable one. With the promo cards from the Microcasm version of the game, we used the scenario cards to give each of us a unique starting deck, and a suggested game plan based on that starting deck.

I liked the use of these scenario cards. Anything that makes you feel a bit unique is always a nice touch. I had no research in my deck, Jeff did. Jeff’s son had no Politics cards, but was being pushed towards trade and production. And he managed to get an impressive amount of influence tokens that way. Jeff went the war/research route, while I initially went war/colonise, I ended up just colonising. On reflection at the end I probably could have thinned out the warfare cards in my deck.

However I did near the end follow Jeff on a research role that grabbed me 2 points that would during the end scoring tie me with him. During most of the game I felt I was behind on points, Jeff was matching me on flipping planets, plus he had who knew how many points from his many research cards. His son had a pile of influence tokens. But I’d been grabbing and colonising highish point planets. Had I grabbed enough?

For some reason I grabbed 4 ships with warfare, I had no plans for them. They were there just in case I could flip a planet with them. I knew I had to trigger the end of the game. Yeah I could have done with a few more turns to score more. But Jeff had 2 planets he was about to conquer if given a couple more turns. With a final turn I was gambling he would only be able to get one of them. A gamble that payed off. More than I expected.

After totting up our final scores, Jeff and I were level for first place. The tie breaker was the most resources and ships. Neither of us had any resources but I had more ships! I had won on the tie breaker.

I had a great evening playing a game that really needs more table time (don’t they all?) with a good friend and his pretty amazing son. It was just what I needed.

An unexpected phone call

game night

I’m enjoying my new Fridays. I’m home an hour earlier than I used to be. Which is real nice. But last night that extra hour was put to good use by having a bbq. Over my cheeseburger I was watching the season finale of The Big Bang Theory season 11. I was well into The Flash when Jonathan phoned asking if I wanted to meet up and try his latest arrival Azul. I jumped at the chance to try a game I was keen to try and also to be playing it with a good friend.

When Azul came out last year there was a lot of buzz around the game. So it had made the radar of both Jonathan and myself. We have been known to enjoy the odd abstract game or two. There are one or two in our collections. I had asked another friend Scott to bring his copy to the expo at the end of the month for both of us to try. However an opportunity (one that I missed) came up for Jonathan to get a copy. That copy arrived mid week, and hence the phone call last night.

As usual at The White Lion we started off having a little chat semi board game related over our pints of Thatchers, before learning how to play Azul.

I really liked the production values for the game. The plastic pieces have a nice feel to them. The player boards and factory circles are cardboard, but really great quality. Love the colourful design of the pieces. I can see why people joked online about playing the game with starbursts, they do kind of come to mind when looking at the pieces.

Like Santorini and Onitama the actual mechanics are fairly simple. But this simplicity hides what is actually a deep strategic game. There are some really nice decisions to make during the game, such as do you take a particular tile to screw over your opponent and miss a scoring opportunity for yourself? Or do you take a tile now to set up a future high scoring round or do you go for a score this round that won’t be as high.

And this played really well as a 2 player game, and is from reports also fun at its higher player counts. Which I’d like to try it at. Also the game played surprisingly quickly too. Which is nice. I find this just adds to the one more game syndrome. Before you know it you have ended up playing the game a lot more times in that session than planned.

Jonathan won our initial game. But our second game I smashed him. And it all turned on one decision that he made during the game to screw me over instead of furthering his own plans. That next turn I scored all five lines in some nice combos, while Jonathan had crippled his own scoring. Which set me up nicely to continue scoring big and get the win.

Guess what? I liked this game a lot. Yeah I’ll be picking up a copy at some point sooner than later.

After our games we finished off our beverages with more chat about life the universe and everything. It’s a shame we didn’t record these because I think especially this end one would have been interesting to folks.

BBQ, playing a a great game with a friend, great conversation, does the start to a weekend get better than this?

May 2018 Fenland Gamers Monthly Meetup

Fenland Gamers, game night

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.

Big Lizards and Elves Rule The Planet

Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night, magic, MtG

Today instead of the planned games of Brawl we ended up playing Commander. This meant I could try out the new decks. First up for my testing was Elf Tribal. Dale played with the Plunder the Graves precon. Whilst our opponents had a snake themed deck, and the Heavenly Inferno precon.

Surprisingly there were no board wipes played during this first game, and unbeknown to me this would be a trend for the days games of Commander. with no board wipes my Elves were able to run rampant, build up a big board state and just win.

The second Commander game saw my Dragon Tribal getting an outing. So Dale played my Dinosaur Tribal deck, whilst once again we were up against the snakes deck and the Guided by Nature precon this time. So basically big creatures against 2 decks that were going wide. There was a kind of early board wipe when I bought on to the battlefield my Deathbringer Regent, that destroys all other creatures if there are 5 or more other creatures on the battlefield. Which at the time I played him there was. After that for some reason the Dinosaur deck refused to play ball for Dale and gave him nothing. While I was just allowed to get lots and lots of dragons on the board. Mainly in the form of 3/3 cat dragon tokens (through Wasitora, Nekoru Queen), and 6/6 red dragons with Utvara Hellkite. And that is the one that was making things insane for me. I think my killing blow to Dale if it was real would have been a Dale looking up at the sky, and not seeing the sun. Mainly because due to the share number of dragons flying in they blocked out the sky.

After playing my now standard legal black aggro deck against Dale and a new deck he had created (I won that game). I played Commander again. This time I played the Dinosaur tribal deck, and it worked for me. I got Huatli, Warrior Poet out early, and from there each turn I was getting a 3/3 green dinosaur token with tramp. I was getting other dinosaurs out, including my Commander. Once again unchecked and no board wipes my board state was too powerful.

My fourth and final Commander game for the day was with my Elf Tribal and with the reoccurring theme of the day of no board wipes hit it’s grove and just laid waste to my opponents. I have to admit during the games I did have a tinge of guilt at times, usually when I had such overwhelming forces and was just about to unleash total destruction on them.

Afterwards Dale and I played some games of Standard using the new Challenger decks. Sadly the Approach deck didn’t do too well this time against the Hazoret one.

I don’t feel that my Commander decks are that good. It’s just with no board wipes and not kept in check they were allowed to do their thing. The tribal element was working well. Which reminds me, I need to revisit my Dinosaur Tribal deck and try and squeeze in these new tribal cards I have. So a Dinosaur Tribal v3 deck is on the cards.

In the evening it was the monthly meet up for the Fenland Gamers. Our first game of the evening was Snow Tails. This was a new game to us all apart from Gavin who owned it, and had played it once.

This is basically a husky sledge racing game in the style of Formula D, but with out the dice rolling. That part has been replaced by cards.

A nice twist to the game format is that crossing the finish line first does not mean you have automatically won. What counts is how far past the finish line you finish. So unless you crash out of the race by taking on too much damage, then you still have a chance of winning.

Managing your sledge with the cards so you determine it’s speed and whether it pulls to the left and right is at times tricky. Especially when you have to negotiate obstacles and corners. Plus there are various check points on the track that if you are going to fast through them mean you take on damage.


And I do like the damage mechanic of this game. You have a hand of 5 cards. When you play 1 or 2 cards on your turn you then draw back up to 5 cards. But if you take damage you draw a damage card instead that reduces the number of cards you have to play with, and stays in your hand. They can’t be removed from your hand. So when you take a fifth bit of damage that’s it you have crashed out of the game.

This is a nice game which I found although similar to Formula D, was also different enough to be a refreshing take on the genre. In our game only 2 players finished the game. Jeff, Gavin and myself crashed out of the game.

Our second and final game of the night was Roll for the Galaxy. Like a couple of recent games I’ve played at meet ups this was another game that hasn’t been to the table since October 2016. So I was a bit rusty on the rules, and don’t think I did a good job of explaining the rules. I do like this game, but I don’t think I’ve won a game yet. Which is my way of saying I didn’t win, that honour was taken by Jeff.

After all this I gaming it was time for home and some hunting for highlights of Liverpools victory over City.

Fishing

Fenland Gamers, game night

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.

Much ado about nothing, an uneventful week of gaming

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night, magic, MtG

Well the week has been spent coughing, and generally feeling crap and sorry for myself. There has been no gaming during the week apart from games of MtG with Dale and the students. Which meant I got the chance to play the latest Strictly Better MtG deck I bought (and had arrived during half term) Blue’s Clues. It was kinda funny to start with because I’d forgotten the aim of the deck. I looked through the cards that made up the deck. Wait, no creatures! Then I read the text on Sphinx’s Tutelage, Fleeting Memories and Startled Awake. Oh it’s mill. But no creatures! Although it does generate an 8/8 Octopus token when Crush of Tentacles is cast for its surge cost. Which did come out in two or three games. It even won a game for me. Which did feel odd winning a game by inflicting damage with a creature in a deck with no creatures!

The deck or more specifically Sphinx’s Tutelage love mono colour decks. The milling damage can easily be 6 or more cards each time you draw a card. I love the combo of Sphinx’s Tutelage and Fleeting Memories. Sacrifice a clue, mill 3 cards, then as you draw the card mill again.

This blue mill deck continues the run of fun decks to play from Dev. Although my students and Dale seem to hate it. I am finding I’m learning a lot about deckbuilding from Dev and his decks. Plus I’m getting to experience different styles of deck.

Yesterday WotC put up for the world to see the deck lists that make up the soon (April) to be released Challenger decks. I have to admit I like the look of them. I do like the look of the HAZORET AGGRO deck. With the Chandra, Torch of Defiance in the deck you are getting some value in the deck. I think currently that’s like a £25 – £30 card. Ok that price is likely to drop once the deck hits the street. But still that’s the cost of deck in the one card, everything else is gravy. So yeah I’ll be buying this and the other 3 Challenger decks. Will I keep them whole or break them up? I’m not sure yet. I’d definitely like a second Chandra in my red aggro deck. I do think by publishing the deck lists WotC have shown that in this case that they have listened, and shown this “new” product the respect it needed.

Last night was the weekly Friday Night Gaming for Fenland Gamers, and the first I’ve attended in about a month. We started off playing Mint Delivery.

I started off so well in the game with a massive misplay. That put me a turn behind. Still I did manage to get a nice little scoring route going that in the end didn’t win me the game, but did mean I shared second place with Edmund. Jonathan drove away with first place. It’s still a nice little pick up and deliver game. Maybe next time we’ll play with one of the advanced variants.

Our second game of the evening was London (Second Edition). I do like this card engine builder. So far in the games I’ve played I’ve managed to grab Westminster so I get to control the end of the game. Not sure how I’d get on if I didn’t get that borough. I hope I don’t ever get to find out. I just love having control over my card draw and not having to waste a turn drawing 3 cards. Edmund won our game, and once again I came in second place.

Earlier in the day I set up some future gaming events. It started off with wanting to organise a Twilight Imperium session so I could play the game with the new 25th Anniversary playmat that I had just taken delivery of at lunchtime. The Open Gaming on the 28/4 is the weekend before I turn 50 (yeah I’m ancient) and also International Tabletop Day. So is a double celebration. Which means there will be cake at this session. Now I just need to set up something to get Kemet and Cry Havoc back to the table so I can play them with the expansions I got for them recently.

Here are the sessions I’ve setup. You can find out more details on the events section of the Fenland Gamers Facebook page.

  • 13/3 – Monthly Meetup
  • 17/3 – An Afternoon of Gaming
  • 24/3 – MtG Commander
  • 14/4 – Twilight Imperium 4
  • 28/4 – Open Gaming

Journey Starts

Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night

STOP BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER THERE MAY BE SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE GAMES GLOOMHAVEN AND CHARTERSTONE. WHILST I WILL TRY AND TALK ABOUT THESE GAMES WITHOUT RUINING TOO MUCH. THERE MAY BE A CHANCE I MAY SOMETHING THAT MAY OR MAY NOT SPOIL THE GAMES FOR YOU IF YOU ARE INTENDING TO PLAY THEM. IF THAT IS THE CASE THEN THIS IS NOT THE POST FOR YOU. GO AWAY ENJOY LIFE, PLAY SOME GAMES, DRINK SOME GREAT COFFEE, EAT CAKE, AND WE’LL SEE YOU IN THE NEXT BLOG POST.

It’s just been one of those weeks. Which is lucky for readers of this blog because it has meant I haven’t been able to write any posts that share my boring life with you.

Last Sunday was the start of what basically is going to be a very very long campaign set in the Gloomhaven universe. Which is a long winded way of saying that Justin, Edmund, Charlie and myself started playing Gloomhaven.

Oh and if you are planning to play the game, please be warned SPOILER ALERT!!! Possibly.

I chose the spellweaver as my character because none of the others went for a character with spell casting abilities. The others went for the brute, tinkerer and I think the last one chosen was the human scoundrel. I named my character Glamdalf. Wait for it…

Naturally Glamdalf has a personal objective, that I’m not going to share on here in case the other party members get so bored that they read this post. When Glamdalf achieves this super secret personal objective I believe I will have to say good bye to her as she retires from the game. Or more likely goes off in search of further adventures down a different path to mine. While I get stuck breaking in a noob while facing who knows what horrors.

We were dumped straight into the action with scenario 1 – Black Barrow. We are in the Corpsewood, just out side of Gloomhaven. I can’t remember why, but we had ended up in a barrow full of thieves, and we were going to clear it out!

With some great team work, we completed the scenario, which also allowed me to complete my battle objective (See above). Playing the spellweaver was great fun. I love casting the spells, using the invisible cloak, being able to pull back spells from the lost pile. A very cool character. I’m looking forward to seeing how Glamdalf grows, and what more powerful spells she learns.

For me Gloomhaven is yes a dungeon crawler, but it’s also like a RPG campaign without the role-playing element. Dare I say best of both worlds? We’re back in Gloomhaven in 2 weeks time. I’m looking forward to it.

Tuesday saw the arrival of the cards I ordered to make three pauper decks that Strictly Better MTG brewed and shared on his YouTube Channel. The decks I built from these cards were UG Elves, and from his 5 Standard Pauper Decks for $5 Each! video UB Control and Mono Black Aggro. The Elves were great fun to play. I quite liked the Black Aggro, but the Control deck I’m not too sure about. But still they were pauper decks so not that expensive to put together, and can be used like the battle decks etc for some casual play. What did annoy me is that I got caught by the post office for the tax on these cards, which I don’t mind paying. The bit I do mind paying is the £8 part of it that is the Royal Mail “handling fee”. Talk about taking the piss for doing sweet fa. We thought that the banks were a bunch of thieving gits with their bank charges. I think there needs to be some investigation into the Royal Mail and other couriers about these rip off handling fees they are charging. It’s down and out robbery.

Last night saw the start of my second legacy style game, but with a shorter campaign of just 12 plays ahead of us, Charterstone.

Oh and just like for Gloomhaven – SPOILER ALERT!!!

The intrepid heroes for this campaign were Diego, Jeff, Jonathan and once again myself (naturally seeing as it’s my game). Like a forgetful person who has forgotten something, I forgot my phone to take photos from the first play. Luckily Jonathan was able to take some and share them with me. Hence the photographic evidence below.

At the moment Charterstone is a legacy worker placement game. Very much with the worker placement mechanics of place a worker, or retrieve all of your workers as your options on a turn. Just like The Manhattan Project , which for the life of us Jonathan and I both couldn’t remember the name of last night when we noticed this similarity. It was siting on the edge of our tongues, we both knew the game. But no matter how hard we tried couldn’t say the name. Luckily at the end of the game it came to me!

There are some nice touches to this as a legacy game. I like how that instead of ripping up cards any discarded cards are placed in an archive box. Which if you buy the recharge pack so you can play the game again using the reverse side of the game board, allows you to know which cards you have to replace. I like how the rules unravel as you work through the initial cards building up the rule book.

Turns were fairly quick in the game. Mind you there were a limited number of options. But this may slow down when there becomes more to do each turn.

We enjoyed our first game of Charterstone. There are other bits I liked about the game. For example the art style. But I’ll look at these in future posts as I cover our game plays.

So there you have it, what you missed by me not posting since Saturday. I hope it was worth the wait.

Friday Night, Saturday

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night

Number 30. That’s the number on the tin for my eager enthusiast copy of Mint Delivery. This is a limited edition (50 copies only) early copy of the follow up to Mint Works. I went for this backer level because I’m impatient and couldn’t wait until March/April time to get the game. I will get a final production copy of the game also. But it’s great to have this early copy. It beats making a print and play copy of the game. I’m hoping the final tin is a little deeper so everything fits in. So why am I talking about this now? Well the game arrived between Christmas and the New Year, and has the honour of being the first game I played in 2018 that isn’t Magic the Gathering.

Last night Diego, Chris, Jonathan and myself played a learning game of Mint Delivery. It was the basic game, in the rules sheet there are rules for more advanced variants of the game. The map set up will be the same each time, which is why they are able to produce a playmat for the game. A playmat does seem to move away from the original ethos of these games. And this is me playmat addict saying this, but I don’t think it’s necessary for this game.


With the way the game is setup the variability, and thus the replay ability for this game comes from the contracts you complete and their random placement on the board, and the ability and obstacles in the advanced variants. Like Mint Works, this excels at giving you a taster of the main mechanic it is based on in a reasonably short time period. This is a fun, quick, pick up and deliver game. I think it took us about 20 – 25 minutes to play. I liked it, Jonathan said he liked it more than Mint Works. So I don’t think we’ll have a problem getting this to the table to play again.

The rest of the evening I spent facing one of my own decks, while testing another one against it. My blue control deck which illustrates an infinite loop was destroying me last night as I put my take on Death and Taxes up against it. I just wasn’t hitting the land drops last night. Sometimes this just happens, not much you can do about it. Just hope the cards are kinder to you next game.

I wasn’t feeling too well, so after 3 or 4 games I left for the evening. I think the heat of the room we were in was making me ill. I don’t do heat. I’m a cold weather person.

I had a lazy start to Saturday. I was going to go to the Magic Open House at my FLGS. But rushing around so I could be back in time to play Civilization:A New Dawn didn’t grab me.


Diego, Jeff and myself pitted our fledgling empires against each other. It was interesting to compare this 3 player game against the 2 player one. There was hardly any combat in the game. Although it was through combat that I grabbed the final objective I needed to trigger the end of the game, and after the final turns of Jeff and Diego were taken, victory. Jeff was close to being able to grab victory in his last turn of the game, but unluckily was short by 2 points in his last combat to being able to achieve that. Jeff had admitted afterwards he’d been too focused on Diego and what Diego was doing, and ignored me. Which allowed me to sneak in under the radar. Mind you at the time I wasn’t aware of that. Yeah I liked this at 3 players. Less aggressive (Or this game was) than the 2 player first play I had with Justin. But still good fun.

Oh my copy of Tao Long arrived this morning. I backed this on Kickstarter, and got the deluxe addition, with the four seasons expansion and 4 player expansion add-ons. I have to say the production quality of the game is really good. Now I have to arrange to get it to the table. I think an abstract game session is in order. An excuse to get other great abstract games to the table also.

‘Twas the Friday and Saturday before Christmas

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night, magic, MtG, Uncategorized

It’s a dangerous thing this internet. Especially that YouTube thingy bob. I’m innocently watching these Magic the Gathering deck tech videos and suddenly “oh that card would be good in …[insert name of a deck I’m building at the moment here]” pops into my tiny easily influenced mind.

That’s why Soul Warden and Kor Firewalker (above) are on their way to me. Kor Firewalker is a sideboard card for the death and taxes deck I’m building, and it’s there just for a students burn deck. Soul Warden might make it into the deck but could see use in the planned angel deck. I’m looking forward to completing the death and taxes deck and seeing how it fairs against my students decks. Which reminds me I need to put up the revised Dino deck list.

Last night was the last Friday Meetup of the year. Before others arrived John and met up to squeeze in a play of The Pillars of the Earth.

I had never played the game before. So I wanted to see what all the fuss was. Why was it demanding so much money when it was out of print?

Yes since the game originally came out mechanics have evolved, there are some really great worker placement games that have come out during that time also.

Building the cathedral is a nice piece of theatre. It has that wow factor when completed at the end. Pulling out the master builders from a bag to determine action selection order, with the added factor of if you come out early it costs you money to take advantage of the fact, a nice touch.

It’s a good game. I enjoyed playing it (yep I won). But having played it I’d not have payed the stupid money it was going for when it was out of print. I’d happily play it again. Will I go out of my way to buy a copy for the collection? No. Having it in Jonathan’s collection is good enough for me.

We also got the latest (Kickstarter only I believe) expansion for Flash Point, Tragic Events to the table. I liked what these cards bought to the game. But need to play the game in expert mode a couple more times to make a more informed conversation about them. This was after all the first time the game had hit the table in over 2 years. And that last time we played was the novice game not the expert.

Our final,game of the evening was the classic gateway game Ticket to Ride. I rocked the game this time. I completed my initial two tickets, and just went unopposed taking the 6 carriage routes on the map. Racking up 15 points each time I did one. Naturally I triggered the end game, plus was able to get my last two carriages out for a final 2 points. This was a surprisingly easy victory.

Yesterday an amazing deal appeared on Amazon for the 2 player starter set for Star Wars: Destiny. It was being sold for half price! So I alerted Dale, bought the 2 copies I wanted (so I had a playset) , then alerted a couple of friends on Facebook a bargain Christmas gift was to be grabbed. As a couple of store owners pointed out on a UK Destiny page, this price was cheaper than they could get it for! One store owner had bought 10 copies to sell in his shop.

Naturally today it’s back to full price. But I have my 2 copies sitting on my stairs.

Our game group has been discussing on and off starting a rpg of some sort. I have Paranoia sitting upstairs, Edmund has recently got the D & D 5th Edition beginners box set. But no decision has been made to what system to use, let alone setting, and who is playing etc. Which brings me nicely to the just released Genesys system from FFG. Which is meant to be a generic system that can be used with any theme/setting. They give examples/ideas of five example themes/genres in the core book, like sci-fi or modern. Although I don’t play Netrunner any more the world of Android still interests me. I’d love to play a rpg set in it. My only fear about spending time building up the world for a campaign is that FFG release a module for this that is Android. I know with the art books for the last four or so sets of Magic the Gathering and the pdfs you can download from the Wizards site you can run a D & D campaign set in the Magic universe. But with those two sources it shouldn’t be hard to set a campaign using the Genesys system there either. Although I’d like to “play” in that universe, and the differing settings, I’m not sure the others in the play group would be that keen. I’m also thinking about the Star Wars rpg (a reprint of the original one is due out by the end of January – I have that pre-ordered) and the Middle Earth rpg. But first we need to start playing!

Council of Nations

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night, magic, Magic League, MtG

Wow no posts for 3 days, you all must have been hoping I’d given up blogging. Sadly I haven’t. I was truth be told just being lazy.

Friday evening saw Jonathan and myself meeting up at The White Lion Hotel to play some games.

Our first game was a recent addition to Jonathan’s collection Council of Four . This was a foreign version of the game, which meant two things. Jonathan had gone online and printed out the translated English rules (in colour), and that he got it a lot cheaper than the English version over hear. I think Jonathan said around the 8 or 9 euros mark, compared to (I want to say) over £20. So a massive saving. And the game is language independent. Which means it really doesn’t matter if you get the non-English language version.

I think my main issues with this game are production issues. The assistant tokens for instance (see close up below) look awful. The art work could be much bigger, and less white space. I also had an issue with the black permit cards. They look more brown. Especially when they actually have a black border, that is black! Not only that the black meeples were also not very black. The graphic design could have done with a little bit of tweaking on the use of the arrow symbol. The same arrow icon was used in several spots for different things. Ideally there should have been a different symbol or type of arrow used to symbolise it’s different meaning.

The actual game itself isn’t bad. It was fun, I liked that you can combo emporiums, which can be very powerful. Build an emporium in a city next to one you already have an emporium in you get that connected cities bonus too, and repeat until you come to the end of your chain of connected cities. I had a very effective “engine” going that gave me money, points, and cards every time I built a connecting emporium.

I won our game. It was close. I had that combo engine going, while Jonathan was being more targeted in where he was building his emporiums and collecting bonuses for building in cities of the same colour. It did look like I was running away with the game. But after taking into account bonuses earned during the game, and the odd end game bonus, the game result was much closer than both of us were expecting.

And that is one other thing I like about this game, that we both had different plans in place for scoring, and I can see the possibility of one or more other ways to. And that’s a nice thing to have.

I’d play this again. Would I ask to play it again? Maybe not. It’s a good game, just not a great game.

Our second and final game of the evening was an old favourite, Nations the Dice Game. This game soon went out of print after it came out a couple years back. I had bought mine just after I think it was my first UKGE, after hearing the buzz about it at the expo. When I heard that Stronghold Games had picked up the rights to the game, and not only were they reprinting the game, they were also going to be publishing an expansion for it, I was excited. At the time of the news breaking I did ask Stronghold via social media if the expansion would be compatible with the original printing, and was assured that it was.

Which brings us to Friday night. I had the new expansion Unrest and the perfect excuse to get the base game back to the table.

This expansion adds a new die to the game, that makes rolling for resources a bit riskier, but has a bigger pay off. There is also a new reroll token, new nation boards, bonus tiles, pass bonuses, and more progress tiles.

The new nation boards actually fix an issue I had with the original game. In the original game it made no difference which nation you chose because they were all basically the same. Everyone got the same starting dice and tokens. Now with the new boards it matters which one you chose, and also which side. You get that feeling of uniqueness.

Ok the game is still over really quickly. But the added bonus tile that gives you a second thing to aim for other than just the famine and war bonus, is a nice addition. Plus passing now also gives you a little something, unless you are the last to pass.

I like this expansion, I don’t think I’d play the game without it. Even with new players. It adds stuff to the game, but not that much. Fixes a couple of problems. Yep glad I bought this expansion.

You know how this will end. A big thank you to The White Lion for allowing us to play there Friday evening.

Saturday was the final day of our Ixalan league. Unstable and life meant this last MtG meet up before Christmas was attended by five of us. I played 6 games, two best of three, and came away with a 1-5 record overall. These weren’t quick wins. They went to the long game. Which for 5 of the games saw my deck bettered. After I handed out the three prize packs for most wins, most plays, and most friendly player, and some packs were bought off me, I was left with 3 packs. I consoled myself with those 3 packs and was rewarded with the following card:
This is my third Huatli, Warrior Poet planeswalker. So nearly a play set. But is it good enough to break into my R/G Dino deck? I do like that ability to generate 3/3 dino tokens. Maybe in the sideboard?

Yep another thank you to Fenrock for hosting our MtG league.

Our next planned league will be at the end of January once Rivals for Ixalan has come out. But there will be one or two one off events before then. Keep an eye on the events page for Fenland Gamers to find out when they are announced.