Category Archives: game night

game night

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.

Friday Night Dice

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night

A little while ago after seeing photos of Istanbul the dice game I wasn’t sure about it. Jonathan also had doubts, not sure what sparked those. But we both agreed that we’d wait to see some reviews first before deciding whether to buy it or not.

What I hadn’t remembered at the time was I’d already pre-ordered it! So imagine my surprise when Meeples Corner told me it was ready to be sent.

The game arrived mid week. Which after messaging Jonathan was going to definitely be hitting the table on Friday. The bigger question was would the expansion for Nations the dice game arrive in time?

Come Friday the evening the answer was sadly no. Yodel tracking was not informative as to where it was. It had left the Newton Abbot depot Thursday morning , and hadn’t been tracked since!

Which brings us nicely to last night and the two games Jonathan, Diego, Edmund and myself played.

As you might have guessed from the big clue earlier our first game of the evening was Istanbul the dice game.

History and records will show that I did indeed win this game.

In the past few years there have been dice versions of more substantial, complicated games. Roll for the Galaxy (Race for the Galaxy), Nations the dice game (Nations), Biblios dice (Biblios) etc. And these lighter, streamlined games have not only captured the feel of the bigger brother, but in some cases been preferred. Or that’s how some reviewers have spoken about these games. Although I can’t really speak about this because I don’t have the big brother version of those games, and have not played them. But I do enjoy the dice versions of those bigger games. I think this will be the first time I’ve played both the big brother and the dice version.

This is a nice game. There is an engine building mechanic, buying tiles that give you a boost, such as get 3 coins at the start of your turn, or get a gem that allows you to reroll dice at the start of your turn, or get an extra die to roll each turn. Without getting the tiles you won’t stand a chance of winning.

You have a large luck element to the game with having just the single dice roll each turn (unless you have a gem to spend to allow you to reroll). But despite that you are never stuck for an action to perform on your turn. One of those actions being able to get a gem.

Does it capture the spirit of the original game? I think it does. The collecting rubies, which you get by buying them, or swapping resources for, is there.

It’s a nice, quick, light game. For me not as good as it’s big brother. But that was always going to be a hard act to follow. The price is really good at £23. I think I’d happily play this with none gamers. Something I’d not do with the big brother (especially with all its expansions added in which is my preferred way to play it).

Our second and final game of the evening was London. Which after the dust had settled, money counted, poverty adjusted, saw Diego claim the victory.

It was a great evening gaming with great friends, at a great location.

November 2017 Monthly Meetup

Fenland Gamers, game night

Last night was the second Wednesday of the month once again. Which is the day the founding fathers of Fenland Gamers chose to meet up on a monthly basis.

With Clans of Caledonia (CoC) having just arrived the weekend before (finally), this was the perfect opportunity to get the game to the table.

Overall I really liked CoC. I liked the mechanics that make the game. For instance I like the variable setup. 4 double sided map boards, 8 clans, 9 starting goods tiles, 8 end of round scoring tiles, 8 port bonuses. That’s a lot of variety right there in the setup.

I liked how the prices of commodities could go up or down on the market board. It could be very tactical buying something you know another player will be going for just so that they have to pay more for the goods. Or even selling so that the price goes down and they get less money when they sell.

The end of round scoring is nice, especially when it will be different each round and game. It gives you a mini goal to try and achieve during that current round.

Another nice touch was the neighbour action that you can take when you expand into a space next to another players pieces. Once you have paid the cost of placing your piece, you can then at a discount buy up to 3 items (merchants allowing) of the goods provided by the other players pieces. So if you expanded next to a players sheep, then you could buy wool. This could be a nice way to reduce the cost of an item that you need to complete a contract.

The four port bonuses in each of the four corners of the game map were a nice way to get a one off in game bonus if you could get near to them.

The clan tiles, and the starting tiles give that sense of variable player abilities, and that each player is different. Which I like a lot.

Sadly there are some negatives to CoC. The general consensus round the table is that the game is too small. A 50% increase in size and I think it would have been alright. Look at the close up I took of the letters that are printed on each side of the boards to allow them to be arranged in the correct order on the table.

Look fine don’t they? But they are so small it’s really hard to see that they are there let alone read them. And I have 20/20 vision, I don’t need glasses.

Plus there was a little confusion over the iconography especially on the player board with the processed goods.

Jonathan and Diego thought that the end game scoring was unnecessarily complicated. Especially the farm scoring. And I kinda agree with them. Although I can see why it’s there I think to reward those players that expand a lot over the board.

I have to say that the actual production quality is pretty good, and the metal coins are really nice. I believe made by the same place that makes the coins for Stonemaier Games. They have a really nice weight to them and are stackable.

Diego won by 2 points. Jonathan was that close to winning. A misplay in the final round may have cost him the game. While I was easily in last place.

A great evening learning a new game with great friends. And a big thank you to the White Lion for hosting the evening.

Salty mcsalty 

game night

Last night was our last gaming session with Dave and Liz before they go off and do something the majority of us dream doing, but so so few do. Plus they are young enough to do it. And that is go travelling for a year (or just over) in exotic parts of the world.

For this final game session we played Cry Havoc. This is the third in the territory control, action selection style game that we have played. Liz does like this type of game. Would she like Cry Havoc?

It had been nearly a year since I had played the game, plus I hadn’t had time to refresh my memory to the rules (ie watch the Watched It Played! video). This was also a first for me, because this was the first time I had played the game at the full compliment of 4 players.

One thing I did do for this game after my first play was to print out the blog posts off the Portal website that gave tactics advice for each of the 4 factions.

It was interesting with the Troggs in play. Because you still start off with the tokens spread around the board. So when the other factions start to expand out to grab crystals and territory, all of a sudden the Troggs go from having 3 units out to having lots when the tiles are revealed. I thought the ability of the troggs to build traps was also pretty powerful, especially in removing attacking factions before a battle took place. Justin played the Troggs, and he had built up a pretty well defended territory that had 9 points of crystals on it. I think if I hadn’t been doing battle with him on another territory for 5 crystals then he might have been able to fend off the attack from Liz. Mind you if he had defeated me and Liz in that final round victory would have been his.

With the right tactic cards in hand it’s possible to turn what looks like a losing position into victory (as long as you don’t misplay it that is). There is a nice card that reverses the resolution set. So killing units is first, then taking prisoners and finally the majority for control. As long as the other player doesn’t cotton on, you can work it so that you only need one on the majority for control, and kill off or take prisoner the difference.

I made a little mistake in the penultimate round in my battle with Justin for that 5 point crystal when I misunderstood the prisoner phase of the battle, it was take one unit prisoner, not take one for each unit I had on the prisoner phase. Which meant I gave the victory to Justin and had to retreat. In the end it worked out in my favour I think, because I returned just as strong in the final round to take the region. But still I felt a little salty on that. Which I think Justin did once or twice on the final round. Liz commented that this was the most competitive she had seen us both. Things were getting real!

The final shake up of the game after final scoring saw myself taking the victory, while Liz rushed in and took second. Justin having had 15 points taken from him in that final round, came in third. Up until that point he had been threatening to win the game. Then in last place with a respectable score of 33 (iirc) was Dave.

Cry Havoc is yet another one of those games that really deserves to see more time at the table. Yeah nearly a year later I still enjoy this game. When I let Inis go I made the right decision. Don’t get me wrong I liked Inis. It’s just, and I think I said this at the time, I had 3 other similar games that I would play before Inis. Scythe, Kemet and Cry Havoc are better games in my opinion, and given the choice I’d play them over Inis every time. I’m looking forward to the new expansion for Cry Havoc, have I played the base game enough to warrant getting the expansion? No. Will that stop me getting the expansion? No.

It was a great evening of gaming. Everyone loved Cry Havoc. For Dave and Liz they will be off on their travels in the next few days, so I wish them a safe journey, and hope they have lots of fun experiences. Justin and I, well we will be revisiting Cry Havoc along with Kemet and Scythe I’m sure in the pretty near future.

The Horrors of All Hallows’ Eve

Fenland Gamers, game night

Last night was meant to see Zombicide hitting the table, and a group of us playing a scenario using the “not” Big Bang Theory survivors. But considering it was only going to be myself and Edmund, I thought that taking hauling all my Zombicide stuff to The White Lion for the two of us was a bit much. So I let Edmund know we would be playing something else instead seeing it was just the two of us. Which he was happy with. So instead of Zombicide I took along Run,Fight or Die!, London (Second Edition) and Sub Terra.

I left the choice of what to play up to Edmund. After explaining a little about Run,Fight or Die! Edmund chose Sub Terra.

During setup we went with the Kickstarter exclusive Out of Time card (which really isn’t all that, or worth going “damn I must have that”), and we chose one of the exclusive Kickstarter start and exit tiles. Which seemed more appropriately coloured for the day.

Edmund chose his two characters to play with, which were the Bodyguard and the Leader, while I went with the Diver and Medic. Naturally were playing on the normal setting for the game, and not one of the two harder settings.

In our game it just worked out that my Diver and Edmund’s Bodyguard were together exploring the cave at one end, with a Horror tracking them through the darkness. While the Medic and Leader went off exploring in the opposite direction.

Edmund and I managed to get the Diver and Leader out of the cave. The medic fell unconscious to yet another cave-in, and was left for dead. I think he got hit by 3 during the game. The Bodyguard was left on the far side of the cave complex by the Diver to find his own way back to the others. But in the end the Bodyguard was consumed by the horrors hidden in the darkness.

So the big question is, what did I think of the game? There was a lot of baggage for this game to over come. Since it’s arrival last week the bad taste that ITB have left with their poor handling of this Kickstarter, I’ve found it extremely hard to muster up any enthusiasm to get this game to the table. If Edmund hadn’t chosen the game I don’t think I would have seen this hitting the table for a long time. But I’m glad it did. It’s a nice game. It is a nice co-op game. I like that you can adjust the difficulty.

I have to say that the Horror tokens are a big let down, although better than the purple things used in the retail version. These wouldn’t have been so bad if they had the white claw marks on them so they look like the token in the rule book and photos. During our game we were joking about how scary these black tokens were, with a heavy amount of sarcasm in our voices. You are not going to see any halloween fancy dress of this Horror next year that’s for sure. I like the caver meeples. They look cool, and I have to say that I preferred them to the optional plastic minis I could have got with this Kickstarter. The actual quality of the other game components is pretty good. I particularly like the feel of the life tokens that are used. They feel nice in the hand.

I wish though that I could say that the quality control of the game was amazing. But when a game is released with a missing tile, and an extra of another, misprinted rules booklet in one of the expansions, and a tile holder that has some tabs incorrectly cut, you have to ask what happened?

I got the deluxe version of the game, which came with a box that is enormous, and totally unnecessary. If the core game box was made an little bit deeper then the graphic novel, designers diary, and the components of the three expansions would have fitted in a single much smaller box.

It didn’t take long to pick up the rules of the game, and get into the swing of a turn. It’s not an overly complicated game. I like that you don’t know exactly where the exit is, and that it could be anyone of the last 6 tiles. So you know you are getting close to finding the exit, but not exactly when. It’s a bit like this with the hazard deck. You know that the times up card is at the bottom of the deck, but even so it comes at you as a surprise. You go from “we have plenty of time, we’ve got half the deck left”, to “OMG! we’re out of time”. I then like how the game isn’t instantly over at that point. But instead you carry on, obviously  not drawing from the hazard deck. But instead at the end of each round, each character not on the exit tile, whether conscious or not, rolls their dice to see if they survive. Roll less than 4, and the horrors in the dark drag them to their oblivion.

I liked the homing mechanic of the Horror, and it’s gradual drawing closer to the cavers. However in our game with it homing in on the Bodyguard/Diver pairing, we never really felt any impending doom. And I think that is probably the biggest problem I have with the game after this first play. It could be that this was made worse with the Bodyguard being one of the cavers, and around to just remove the Horror if and when it actually looked like it was going to be a threat.

Overall it’s a good game, worth another play at least.

My Experience With CardKingdom.com

The tail end of last week I decided after hearing how good Card Kingdom were from the likes of The Command Zone/Game Knights, Magic the Amatuering and Tolarian College. So I went on to their site and ordered one or two cards for the commander deck I’m putting together. There was an option for 2/3 day shipping, ok it was $16, but I thought hey let’s test this service out. Best case scenario they arrive Saturday, worse case Monday.

And I was impressed, within 45 minutes my order had been processed and was shipped. I even had a shipping number in the confirming email.

Naturally I used the UPS app to track where my order was. It actually did hit the UK on Saturday but not soon enough to get delivered to me. That’s ok I thought, when I get home Monday I will have these cool cards waiting for me.

Monday comes, UPS tells me the cards are out for delivery. I get home, nothing. Ok, where are they? I check the app they had been dropped off at a nearby pick point. WTF?!!!!!!!

I was soon onto Card Kingdom complaining and asking for refund on my postage. I had paid for a service and not got it. There is no way I would have something delivered to a third party.

For the record I have all my post delivered to my Nan’s next door to mine. Why? She is there 24/7, along with my Mum who is looking after her. So I know that there is some-one there always to take my deliveries in. Now Nan sits something like 3 or 4 feet from the front door on her sofa. Usually Strider my collie is chilling out lying right next to the front door. It’s his spot. Loki is a nannies boy, and is usually found curled up under the blankets with Nan, while Nico is also probably on the sofa with her too, if not on one of the other chairs. Nico and Loki are chihuahuas. The street we live in is an unadopted road, with a very bumpy surface. It’s also a dead end, one way in, one way out (the same way you came in). Anytime a vehicle of any kind comes down the road, one of the little terrors, if not both is at the window looking out. If a person knocks on the door, well you can imagine the noise they make. Add to this that Mum has two dogs of her own that also are pretty hot on when some-one is at the door, and equally as vocal as mine.

So when the Card Kingdom support person told me that the reason my order had been left at the pick up point was because the UPS person had tried to deliver to my address (Nan’s) and there was no one there, I got a bit salty and called bullshit. I fed back to the support person a slightly shorter version of the above explaining why that UPS person had not made an attempt to deliver my order. There is no way in hell anyone tried delivering to my Nan’s on Monday from UPS. Why it was then left at the pick up point, when I have never said that was something I wanted them to do is a mystery to me. They should have made an attempt to redeliver the order to me.

I was getting very frustrated, and salty. It was looking like the earliest I would be able to pick up my order from that UPS pickup point was late Saturday or on Sunday. It is the wrong week for something like this to happen. Luckily I was able to wrangle a small window when I could pick up the order yesterday.

But you would not believe how salty I was feeling towards UPS.

In the meantime Card Kingdom I thought was refunding the postage to my PayPal account, were in fact refunding it as a credit with them on my next order. But the support person cancelled that and sent it to my PayPal instead.

BUT! Over night they got back to me and refunded the whole order to compensate me for all the hassle. WOW!! I was not expecting that, I was more than happy with the postage refund. I know Card Kingdom can’t control what UPS do. But they can feed that back to UPS that they were unhappy with the service they got from UPS. I know I will be. Card Kingdom has gone above and beyond what I was expecting. I’m certainly going to be ordering more from them. And I have an order all ready to go, I’m just waiting for things to cool down this week before I press the trigger on it.

The hype you hear in these podcasts that they sponsor is for real folks.

Friday Evening Gaming Half Term Edition

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night

The last day of half term started off with Edmund, and Jonathan being regaled with my tales of woe about the Sub Terra kickstarter. I have to say the publisher ITB have left a very bad taste in the mouth, making me less than enthusiastic about the game. There is no way I will ever back or buy one of their games again. In the meantime all I want is for them to fix the mistakes and missing items in my copy of the game. Then I need to decide if I want to keep the game or sell it on. 

After hearing my tales of deceit, poor quality control, broken promises and general inability to organise a piss up at a brewery we switched to lying and bluffing playing the classic Perudo aka Liars Dice. Which thinking about it is the game that best describes ITB.

While we were partaking in this battle of wits, Diego arrived. By the time he had purchased his usual beverage, Edmund was on the brink of being eliminated. 

It was just Jonathan and I, and three dice between us. In the end I was proven to be the biggest liar and bluffer.

For a city I hate, I sure like London (Second Edition). This time we were playing with the full player count. And with the help of Edmund a correction to a major misplay from the first play last weekend.

The rules correction did impact how many times we ran our cities, well for Jonathan and I. It added another element to consider, hand size. Last weekend we hadn’t been adding in poverty for each card in our hand when running our cities. It did make us run our cities less.

London held up well with the maximum player count. I liked it as a two player game and at the full count. There aren’t many games that can do this.

Edmund won the game after having to go to a tie breaker with Diego. More importantly I was third. Only four points behind them.

And that was our Friday evening of gaming. 

Look over there

game night

Not over here!

Last night I introduced Liz, Dave and Justin to Kemet.

Why would I introduce to newish gamers a game like Kemet? Liz loves Scythe, her enjoyment of Dead of Winter was some what lacking, and apparently she did not enjoy Eldritch Horror. There was a theme developing here. Co-op games, and potentially games that use dice were not ones Liz enjoyed. So this is why I went with Kemet.


Like Scythe each player has a board that they select their actions from. Unlike Scythe the player boards are identical, where in Scythe you do have the same actions but they are combined differently. For example your produce action may have enlist paired with it, while another player may have build paired with their produce action. You do have a little resource management as you manage your prayer points, which is kind of similar to managing your bolster popularity in Scythe. There is some hand management with the divine intervention cards and battle cards. Although the combat system has more in common with A Game of Thrones.

Naturally Kemet is much much more aggressive to play than Scythe. Combat plays a much bigger role in the game. As does politics! When some-one is about to win the game with their 8th victory point, as I was, then the others ganged up to deny me by taking back some of the temporary victory points I had. First up in the gang of three to do this was Justin who reclaimed his level 4 pyramid, but forgot to leave a soldier behind on the temple he had taken his forces from. So my response was to move into the temple that was just vacated and get the point back. Next up Dave. He teleported in to the temple and won the ensuing battle. With the permanent victory point and the temporary one, that put Dave on to 8 points and able to claim the win at the end of the round. That put Liz into a difficult position. I was sitting on 7 points, her plan had been to move into my city and take my level 4 red pyramid. But if she didn’t stop Dave he would win. Liz wasn’t sure she could beat Dave in battle if she teleported into the temple. I gave her some advice with the divine intervention cards she had, plus the right battle card, she didn’t need to win, just kill all of his troops. With the cards in hand there was no way Dave could stop Liz killing them all. So that is what Liz did. She jumped into the temple, lost the battle, and killed all of Dave’s forces. Dave lost the temporary victory point.

Here’s the cunning part of this plan. While Liz used her last movement action to stop Dave it meant she couldn’t move in and take my pyramid. This also meant that no one was now able to attack me because all movement actions had been taken by everyone. So for my last action of the game I upgraded my blue pyramid from level 3 to level 4. Bang the last victory point that I needed to get to 8 and no one could stop me. I had won! That distraction of “look over there, if you don’t do something they will win” and “what me? nothing to see here, I’m I can’t win I’m on 7 points” worked a charm.

Liz liked the game, as did the others. Next Tuesday it’s A Game of Thrones!!