Category Archives: game night

game night

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!!

We survived!

game night


Saturday evening Justin,Liz,Dave and myself attempted to survive the harsh cold zombie apocalypse as depicted in The Dead of Winter.

Earlier in the day I finally punched out the tokens etc for the expansion/stand alone game The Dead of Winter: The Long Night, and integrated in some of the modules to the core game. Considering that Dave and Liz were both new to the Dead of Winter universe, I thought it best not to use the Raxxon and Bandits modules. I didn’t think that the improvements module or the other additions added so much that it would make it overwhelming to a new player.

I did like that the Long Night added thick cardboard versions of the locations. I much prefer this compared to thin cardboard almost paper like ones in the core game.

The location decks were generated the suggested random way when combining the new cards into the core game of shuffling the cards for each location and dealing twenty out to make the location deck.

The main objective we selected for the game was the above one from the Long Night. You don’t think about it at the time of selecting, but when you start to put the zombies out on the board, 18 zombies basically means every space outside the colony is full. Adding or moving anyone to the colony would mean that unless you have also killed some zombies at the colony they would be over run and survivors would die. Not having anyone at the colony did have the benefit that we would not have to find food for them.

So with more characters, more crossroads cards, more crisis’s, just more of everything, I think that the variety added is massive.

Starting out, outside of the colony was weird. But it allowed us to search for items early without first having to move to the location and roll for exposure. But we couldn’t sit tight forever. We would have to move into the colony at some point and start taking care of that zombie infestation.

We soon started to find survivors and having to find food for them, because they get added to the colony. Which in turn meant we had to start chipping away at the zombie horde at the doors.

Time was running out. 5 turns is not a lot of time. By turn three arrived we had not really achieved much. Ok averted a couple of crisis’s. But the population at the colony had crept up. If we could kill enough zombies, taking into account the number we would have to add at the end of the round before checking for the win condition, we would be able to win the game. We couldn’t fail the current crisis, that would add a further 9 zombies if we failed that. But we could afford to fail the feeding the colony. So we started killing zombies. First using abilities that didn’t require rolling for exposure. They are the best kills. Then some more risky ones that we passed the exposure rolls with flying colours.

We’d done it, we had met the main objective win condition. Although it turns out that there was no betrayer (although I think Liz’s suspicions that Justin was a traitor were justified based on a couple of actions/decisions he made during the game). Sadly no-one achieved their personal objective.

Next time I’ll add in the bandits module.

Guildsmen 

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night

Remember my post about my students enthusiasm for Magic since being introduced to the game? They are even emailing me (at work) telling me about their new purchases.

After spending most of the day tucked up on the sofa sipping lemsip and having snoozes, fighting the symptoms of man flu, I dragged myself off my sickbed to play Guilds of London. Maybe we should have played Pandemic instead the way I was feeling.

Guilds of London was lasted played by Jonathan and myself in June 2016. Basically just after last years expo where we both bought the game (my copy was signed by the designer Tony Boydell, while Jonathan forgot to get his signed). Like Covert (and many others in our collections) Guilds of London has been kept away from the table by the cult of the new, and other great games. Which is a shame because this too is a really good game. It’s not a game for new players to the hobby, or those that like lighter games. Which is also a factor that kept it away from the table.

Naturally with with just two players we used the two player setup for the game. And after refreshing our faded memories about the rules, I took an early lead.

There was a major struggle for control for the Church of St Lawrence Jewry. 4 points and four cards were at stake. After three attempts to resolve it, we were still tied. The fourth time it went to Jonathan. But not long afterwards realised that the third tie I should have claimed it because I had a guildmaster adjacent to the tile.

It was not until the final three rounds that Jonathan caught up score wise and over took me to get the win.

Guilds of London is still a great game, with still its main problem being decoding the meaning of the cards. It should have had four player aids instead of just the two. 

After the game Jonathan and I chatted, but I wasn’t feel too good. Playing the game had taken it out of me. I was getting hot, and the effects of the lemsip were wearing off. 

A great evening gaming, but it nearly killed me!

Fenland Gamers Monthly Meetup October 2017

Fenland Gamers, game night

These monthly meetups come around fast. This month Jonathan, Debbie, Katie and myself met up at The White Lion to play some games.

Before hand I had looked at my collection and was once more indecisive about what to take along. I think the only game I was positive about taking along was Red7. It didn’t help my indecisiveness that I wasn’t really sure if Debbie was coming along or not. She had asked where the meetup was taking place, but hadn’t really said “yes I’m coming”, or if her partner was coming along also.

I thought I would take along Lunarchitects. But could I find it? Sad thing was it was in a place I had dismissed it from being because I thought it was another game!

Jonathan was already at The White Lion when I got there, and Katie arrived seconds after I did. I bought out Red7 as a quick game we could play while waiting for others to show up. While teaching Katie how to play, Debbie arrived. So we dealt her in, and went over the rules again with her. After a couple of games of the basic game (which I won), we stepped it up to the advanced rules. Which Katie went on to win. I do like the fact that you have these two modes of play, plus optional rules you can mix in. So you can quickly teach the game using the basic rules, or just use the basic rules if you have a five minute gap to fill. Then you can kick in the advanced rules, or if you are experienced players just jump straight in with the advanced rules. That’s some nice flexibility.

We followed Red7 up with Sagrada. Which was new to both Debbie and Katie. So Jonathan and I taught them the art of making a stained glass window with dice!


Jonathan and I both mucked up and couldn’t complete our windows, and we both used up our tokens on the available tools. Whilst Katie and Debbie both completed their windows, and had tokens left over. If you are picking up that Debbie and Katie owned Jonathan and myself at this game, then you are right, they did. In fact they drew on the score, so it had to go to the tie breakers. Which gave Katie the win.

Another great evening of gaming.

Winning the arms race

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night

Somehow Jonathan, Edmund, and myself managed to fight our way through the trials and tribulations of life to get to the White Lion last night to play games.

One of the hardest things to do for a game night is deciding before hand what to take along to possibly play. Too many games competing for attention. Thanks to the “I’m going” option of the Facebook event for the evening it helps narrow the options down. But it’s still a hard decision. You have to cater for those going (taking into account their likes and dislikes) and potentially for anyone else that turns up.

In the end, after minutes of indecisiveness, I grabbed Tiny Epic Quest, The Manhattan Project, Love Letter: Batman and Red 7.

Our first game of the evening was the classic worker placement game The Manhattan Project. 

When I recorded that we were playing the game in the boardgame stats app it showed as a first play! So it has been around two years since Jonathan and I last played the game. That’s so shameful. A great game like The Manhattan Project deserves to be played more regularly. But with so many games between us, and new stuff coming in, it’s so hard to get everything to the table.

With there being such a long gap since our long play we were having to refresh our memories of the rules, whilst explaining the rules to Edmund. 

I have the expansion for the game, which is modula (you only play with the bits you want to). The bit we have played with is the Nations module, which are some cards that make each player unique, giving them an ability that only they can use. I combine the expansion Nation cards with the cards from the Nations mini expansion.

Jonathan had forgotten about testing bombs, which he remembered after I tested mine. But at that point it was too late he’d screwed his game plan up. I was the first to test a bomb, therefore picking up 8 whole points. There was some pressure from Edmund but I’d got a good engine going on my player board that meant I was mostly just doing actions on my board and not the main one.

I managed to grab the win. But Edmund and I had ran way ahead on the points front. 

We really are blessed with some great worker placement games in our collections. It’d be fair to say we enjoy that mechanic. We must try harder getting them to the table. But it won’t be easy.

Our second and final game of the evening was a learning game of Red 7.

I’d picked this up at the Expo. Since it’s release a couple of years ago now it’s had really good buzz. 

Having now played the game I can see why. At first it seems so simple. 49 cards, split between 7 colours each numbered between 1 to 7. Each colour is associated with a rule, for example for Red the rule is highest value wins. Each player starts with a hand of 7 cards, and a face up card in front of them called their pallete. On your turn you can play a card to your pallete, to the canvas (like a discard pile) to change the rule. Or do both. The only condition is you have to be winning at the end of your turn or you are out.

This is a real thinker. It’s great fun playing it in the basic mode, or the advanced. Basic mode is a single round game. Advanced is first to a point total based on number of players. With 3 players it was 35 points. The advanced mode sees cards being removed and kept to one side to track points. The winner of a round scores the cards that meets the winning criteria. They go under that players player reference. So removed from the game. Which adds another level of strategy you have to consider. Plus it’s possible to draw cards in the advanced mode. It’s so much fun in advanced mode. It gets even more thinky! 

Plus we didn’t use the optional rule that brings into play the icons on the odd numbered cards!

Oh Edmund rocked this game and won the basic game and the advanced one.

This was a fun game. Lived up to the hype. Will definitely be hitting the table again.

A great evening gaming again, with great people. Cliched I know. But it’s true.

Same time next week?