Category Archives: game night

game night

Zombie Riders of Dystopian Pern

Fenland Gamers, game night

The nice thing about being Mr No Life, with no commitments is that when an impromptu gaming session is arranged you are free to partake. 

This was the case Sunday morning when Jonathan put a request up on the Fenland Gamers Facebook page asking who was free to play games that afternoon.

Our afternoons gaming started off with the fantasy themed worker placement game Simurgh. Or as I call it Dragonriders of Pern the boardgame. Which as an interesting (depends on your perspective) side note I’m listening to as my current audible book on my way to work and back.

I like worker placement games, and Simurgh is a really good example of the genre.

There’s a bit of setup, and the game takes up a lot of room.

Being able to decide the duration of the game is a nice touch. For our first play we naturally chose the short game option. Which was triggering the end game with either four objective tiles out or eight tiles in our chronicles.

Oh the choices you have to make while playing. Some really delicious ones. When and how many workers, and which ones to recall. Managing workers on the tiles in the wildes. Too many workers on a tile it gets moved to the chronicles and the game. No workers on it, yep goes to the chronicles.

You have resource management to look after. We had only fifteen slots to store our resources. Over flow and having to return the excess was an issue.

You have hand management to consider of your tiles. When do you play a tile to the wildes? Which one do you trash to make you? 

There is so much going on, it’s mind blowing fun.

When the main complaint about the game is the size of the player board needs to be bigger. Then you know that the game itself is a pretty solid game. The rule book is ok, although wording could be more consistent in places. 

Yeah I like this game a lot. Looking forward to playing it on its advanced Dragonlord setting, and getting its expansion.

For the record books, history and whoever Jonathan won by one point. It was a very close game.

Our next game was new arrival Hit Z Road.

The first thing that strikes you about Hit Z Road is it’s beautiful. The graphic style of a kind of fifties post apocalyptic fallout scavenged world just looks amazing. It looks and feels like they really did scavenge the bits together to make the game. 

The bidding phase of a round is a trap waiting for seasoned gamers to fall into. Waiting for them to over spend to get first player advantage and first choice of route to take. Eating up valuable and scarce resources.

The combat is light, simple and relies on resources to fuel it. Like spending bullet tokens to get dice to attack zombies from a distance before having to engage them in melee combat. Which you can escape by spending fuel tokens. The dice you roll in melee is decided by how many survivors you have. But extra damage can be done by spending adrenaline tokens when the appropriate dice faces appear.

This is a really nice light zombie game that plays quickly. Love it. And thanks to Jonathan and his survivors getting eaten by zombies I won,

We finished off the afternoons gaming with Grifters.

Set in the same Dsystopian universe as Resistance and Coup this new card game just sent out to backers is a nice card game with a cool mechanic.

That mechanic being a cool down period after playing cards. So you play a powerful card for its effect or combo of cards to complete one of the available criminal contracts they then are lost to you as the go through your HQ (the cool down).

This isn’t up to The Manhattan Project Chain Reaction level of card games. But it’s still pretty good.

It was a game I wasn’t sure how it’d work or play when reading the rules, but once you start playing it did click into place, and made sense.

And future history books will record that I beat Jonathan.

A great afternoon gaming. Thanks Jonathan for organising.

FEG@TA 2Sep16

FEG@TA, Fenland Gamers, game night

Last night saw the latest of the Friday night gatherings to play board games at The Angel. 

Our evening started off with a game of Thiefs Market. A game Jonathan had been wanting to try since getting his Kickstarter copy a couple weeks back.

I narrowly beat Debbie by two points to steal second place. The picture above tells you got to gloat on social media by winning.

Our next game before Debbie had to go was my game for the month of August The Manhattan Project Chain Reaction. Once Debbie had got the hand of playing the game again, she was able to beat Jonathan into last place, whilst I took the honours and glory that comes with winning.

After Debbie left Jonathan and I talked games. But more importantly about a project Jonathan was thinking of working on. 

We followed that up by end the evening with the now traditional kebab.

A great shortish gaming session.

Bank Holiday Gaming At My FLGS

chatteris warlords, game night, star realms

When I arrived at The Hobbit Hole my FLGS, a game of Spartacus was in progress. 

So I introduced Brian (a fellow gamer at Chatteris Warlords and here) to The Manhattan Project: Chain Reaction. 

The first game Brian did well scoring a bomb worth five points. But the cards were being really kind to me. Extremely kind. I played sixteen cards in one of my early turns. I love turns like that. You are playing combos, drawing cards, and hopefully getting resources! With the card gods smiling on me I naturally went on to win the game with a personal best score of thirteen.

Our next game saw the card gods abandon me, and I fell behind in the race to get resources and build bombs. Brian just had that little edge over me. But I did have a massive turn that saw me catch up and get ahead on the uranium front. Plus I’d used up all my cards, and was drawing five new cards. A position I was happy with, because I was hoping it would give me the engineers and scientists I’d need for buying a game winning bomb.

Yep Brian didn’t know it he was on his last turn, a uranium short, and with everything to do if he was to win. And Brian played his hand perfectly. He got the one uranium he needed, and had the labour he needed to complete his bomb to grab the win. 

I really really love it when the game is that close. 

Brain and I followed up our couple of games of Chain Reaction with Star Realms. But it was Star Realms with the new United expansions.

Because of the share size of the trade deck with all the other expansions mixed in (just over three hundred cards I roughly calculated)  I took the top third and shuffled in the new cards. That would make sure we hit some of the new cards. 

Our first game was over pretty quickly, very few new cards were bought. No missions were completed. But I’d been scraping a lot, and getting some nice attacks in. It felt like if you blinked you’d missed the game. But what you wouldn’t have missed is my win.

Our second game was much more epic. We were trading blows. We bought, and used the new cards. The Faction Pairs – oh wow does that make comboing interesting. The maths working out attack, money, or even card discards etc is insane. 

The new Heroes are expensive but that balances out their power nicely. CEO Shaner won me the game. It triggered enough additional authority to keep me in the game, buying me enough time to complete my three missions and grab the win.

When I won, it was close. Brian was on less than ten points, and I was less than twenty. I think less than fifteen. It could have gone either way with the right card draw.

It was funny we didn’t see any old Heroes or any events in either game. We also didn’t play gambits either. But maybe that was for the best. You can get some insane starts and purchases if the stars align just right for you.

I loved playing the new cards. The missions were cool. They have added new life to a game that for me anyway having played so many games, wasn’t screaming for a fresh injection of life. But I’ll happily play with them. Although I’d probably just play core set to teach a new player before throwing them in the deep end with the works. But I’m still loving this game so much.

After our games Brian had to return back to family life and the real world. Which meant I could watch the game of Spartacus. I’d not played the game before, and found it was interesting. Although I’m not sure it’s a game I’d place high up on my “to play” list. 

After a brief chat with John, plans made, which will be revealed later in the week, it was time for me to head back to my Wolfpack and watching The Big Bang Theory for the umpteenth time. It’s one of those shows I can watch and watch.

FEG@TA 26Aug16

FEG@TA, Fenland Gamers, game night

It’s been a busy week and not much gaming going on. Hence the lack of posts this week. Plus I’ve also not had much to say. Which is unusual for me I know.

Anyway last night saw Jeff, Debbie and myself at The Angel for FEG@TA. The first at its new starting time of 6pm (last weeks didn’t happen because of holidays and such, or in other words I was the only one who could make it!) 

Earlier in the week Jeff and I had planned to play Tanks. But with “Calamity” Debbie (and she will kill me for just thinking that nickname up, but the poor girl has had a recent run of bad luck, which hopefully had come to an end) also coming along, Tanks was out, and our first game of the evening in. 

Since arriving (a couple of weeks back now) Jonathan and I have wanted to get our Kickstarter copies of Thiefs Market to the table. However life, the universe, and the usual unexpected things that life throws at you stopped us gathering with enough people to do so. 

So here I was, sitting at a table with two other people wanting to play games. We had met the minimum player count for the game. 

While setting up, we had the first player discussion to see which of us had most recently stolen something. Frankly I was so disappointed by the two goodie two shoes I was playing with. Obviously I am that Han Solo lovable rogue type, and the least trustworthy one at the table. So I took the first player token. 

After explains the rules as best I could, our band of thieves was ready to start splitting our ill gotten spoils, gaining notoriety, and trying to become the King of Thieves.

I have to say I enjoyed the game a lot. I love the first phase of a round where you are splitting the spoils (which are the rolled dice). That decision which dice and how many do you take, or do you steal from another player? I love the I’ll want x dice but if I take that many will I be too attractive to the other players that they will steal from me? This is a great mechanic. At one point I had a card that if I was stolen from I gained a notoriety point. So getting the first player token, then taking everything as the first player at the start of the splitting phase, forced the other players to steal from me and trigger that ability.

The buying cards phase is basically your engine building stage of the game. There is a lot of iconography. But the player aids break the symbols down, plus each card is explained on the rules sheet for further clarification if needed. And while you are learning the game things aren’t slowed down too much decoding them. The use of the cards as a means of giving the game an end and a clock is clever. So when you start being able to buy from the last deck you know that the game doesn’t have too many turns left.

During our game I thought Jeff was going to be the run away winner. But final scoring had the gap between his winning score and my second place score a lot closer than I thought it’d be. He had won by four points in the end.

For me the only main draw back is that this game is a minimum three players. I know why, I don’t think it will work with two. But it does mean to play with Nath, who I think will like this game, we will need to find a third player. 

I can see that the iconography may be a problem. But I think the player aids and the rule sheet mitigate this rather well. I also like that the player aids also summarise the setup, which to be fair isn’t complicated.

One thing I do like about TMG games or the ones I have that include it, like Harbour, is the social media winner card. Wisely TMG include one in this game. It just adds that fun bit at the end, celebrating the glorious victory. Or in this games case stolen victory!

I think this is a perfect game for FEG@TA and could be a regular.

So with Jeff crowned King of Thieves we moved on to clearing out dungeons in Welcome to the Dungeon.

I’d played Welcome to the Dungeon once before. Which longtime readers will recall was a two player game with Jamie. I wasn’t too impressed with it as a two player game at the time, and if my poor memory hasn’t failed me (and I can’t be arsed to go back and read what I exactly wrote) I thought it would be better with a higher player count.

Well our play through last night confirmed my suspicion. This game is far more enjoyable with even just the one extra player (plays two to four). It even improved the two player side once a player had been eliminated. 

Another game that has the potential of being a FEG@TA regular. Plus there is an expansion coming out later this year also.

Oh Jeff won this also by not scoring a single point. Despite Debbie and I both scoring a point each after successfully defeating the dungeon. Sadly we both failed to defeat the dungeon twice also.

Debbie had to go after Welcome to the Dungeon. So I introduced Jeff to the joys of building nuclear bombs in The Manhattan Project:Chain Reaction.

You know how I feel about this game. I’m not going to waste your time with more glowing platitudes about this game. All you need to know is that I won breaking Jeffs winning streak for the evening.

A great evenings gaming (that was finished off with that meaty pig out of a kebab). I’m planning to take Thiefs Market and The Manhattan Project: Chain Reaction to The Hobbit Hole (my FLGS) this coming Bank Holiday Monday. So if you’d like to try the games hit me up there. I’ll also have the new Star Realms United expansions with me.

There she blows

Fenland Gamers, game night


Last night Jonathan and I meetup to do some good old fashioned whaling, when his latest addition to his game collection New Bedford hit the table.

New Bedford as you may have guessed deals with the highly emotive and controversial subject of whaling.

But does it glorify whaling? I don't think it does. In fact I would say that although its a major source of scoring points. The majority of the game is all about worker placement, building up the town of New Bedford, and gathering resources. With the whaling itself an end product, an ends to a means. In fact and I'd love to test this theory, you could almost remove the whaling phase and not miss it from the game. I certainly don't feel that the game glorifies whaling in anyway. Especially when it is set in the mid 1800s.

Overall this is a nice game as worker placement games go. There are some nice things about the game. The components themselves are lovely. I love the Meeple whale used to track the rounds. The Meeple ships look nice, although the publisher could have used easier colours to distinguish between for the base of the boats. The large ships wheel as the first player marker is lovely.

It's just a shame that from what Jonathan described Dice Hate Me didn't put as much effort into quality control on the expansion, oh and missing out a tile from the main game for solo play!

Having played New Bedford I can now see what Dice Hate Me were trying to do with the game Nantucket. New Bedford feels like a game, is a pleasurable experience. Whilst Nantucket isn't. I particularly think that this is evident in the whaling phases of the two games. Within New Bedford, it comes across as thematic, part of the game. Pulling cardboard chits out of a bag, felt like you were whaling (minus harpoon). If you drew out a sea tile, it felt like your nets were coming up empty. Whilst the cardboard coin tossing of Nantucket just felt horrid.

A bit like Harbour if you use another players building on their side of town. Then you have to pay them a dollar to use it. In out game that wasn't a bad exchange for the gain five dollars tile that Jonathan had. Pay one, get four back. However I did manage to build up a nice engine that allowed me to send out ships using half the resources needed. So to go the max distance out that usually would require six food, I only needed three. Plus I had a powerful tile that allowed me to land three right whales for free.

I think for replayability this game will need the expansion with the extra tiles. Plus the rule book could be clearer in some parts.

This isn't a great worker placement game, but an average one. You'll have a nice time playing it. I'd definitely play again if someone said “hey lets play…”. Would I go out of my way and ask to? Nope.

Jonathan ended up winning our first play of the game. But only by three points. Which was basically the extra points he earnt from a couple of bonus tiles that he had on his side of the town.

We finished off our evenings gaming with me teaching Jonathan 7 Wonders Duel. Jonathan had wanted to try the game. I guess after reading me harping on about it so much since getting it.

We used the wonders as suggested by the rule book for a first time playing the game. It seemed the right thing to do considering this was Jonathan's first game.

While I was going for the science win, Jonathan was going for the military. Neither one of us was able to complete our chosen path to victory so it ended up going to a points victory. But who would win that? Luckily for me, it was me!

But still for a first game Jonathan did get a respectable fifty points.

Overall I think Johathan was pleasantly surprised he enjoyed the game. Especially considering he's not. Fan of 7 Wonders.

After some gaming related chatter, we said our farewells.

Learning Starcraft 

chatteris warlords, game night

Last night at the Chatteris Warlords weekly meet up Bob bought along his recently acquired copy of Starcraft the boardgame. A copy that was in amazing condition, and purchased at an unbelievably cheap price. Go google the game, and see how much this game goes for normally. I can tell you Bob didn't pay anything near to those prices.

My water damaged box, and the odd damaged card (due to a previous owner storing the cards by holding them together with elastic bands, the elastic had attached itself to the odd card), copy of Starcraft the boardgame has been sitting on my pile of shame ever since I got it. And yes I paid more for this copy than Bob did his, and I thought I was getting a bargain at the time!

I did have the odd game with me, such as Thiefs Market, The Manhattan Project: Chain Reaction. But they had been left in the car because earlier in the day on the Chatteris Warlords club page on Facebook, Bob had posted he was bringing along the game, and wanted to know who was up for playing it.

Five players were soon gathered together to play Starcraft. None of us had played the game before. So this was a learn as we play game.

Ben had already pushed two tables together for gaming when he arrived. But as we went through the setup process of the game, it soon became clear this was not big enough. We needed a third table. So pulling apart the two tables and slotting a third in the middle, we just about had enough space to play. Wow this is a big game!

No sooner had we finished setting up, than the last member of the clubs committee turned up, so the regular committee meeting was held. This meant we had to pause so Ben and Bob (who hold positions of power on the committee) could take part in the meeting. Usually these meetings are a wham, bam, thank you mam, type affair. But this time it decided to drag itself out. I have to admit it's interruption to game play as the meeting dragged on was starting to get to me. If the meeting had dragged on for ten minutes longer than it had I would have dropped out of the game.

We started playing again. Working our way through the stages of a turn. The player on my right was getting on my tits. He wasn't giving the game it's full attention, instead more bothered about his feckin Pokemon Go stuff. For fecks sake play the game or feck off I thought. He was slowing the game down.

This was a learning game. I thought I had only one resource, compared to the others. Which meant I wasn't going to be able to build anything on my turn until I conquered another planet to get them. So this meant I issued a move order to attack Ben's forces. Something I wouldn't have done when it turned out minutes later that we had a default pool of resources we could call upon. So with altered plans I built a new transport ship or whatever they are called, and moved to another unoccupied planet.

It was handy that Ben and I had a fight over a planet, because it meant we learnt the rules for battles. Which aren't really that complicated. Well that's how they seemed last night.

It was obvious that we were not going to finish the game. This is another one of those games that will take hours to play, not something for a club night. This game needs a Saturday session like the one I organised recently for A Game of Thrones the boardgame to do it justice.

We completed a second round of the game. I think on the banked victory points I had won with eight. The others were in the three,four point region. But I'm sure that if we had played longer I wouldn't have held onto that lead. I have to admit I was getting very frustrated with the player on my right during this second round. Him and his bloody phone and Pokemon Go. then his friend came over and chatted to him, distracting him further. He saw my Instagram likes popping up on my screen. Oh I was getting more likes than him for my picture, what's my ID on Instagram? Oh feck off I wanted to say, but begrudgedly through gritted teeth I gave my ID.

From the play through we had. And it was a learning game. So I can forgive Jamie on my left for needing to ask multiple times the same question. That doesn't slow the game down too much, and is great for banter at his expense. Although I don't think Bob will forgive Jamie for breaking one of the miniatures off its stand. I won't forgive the ignorant player on my right. However I disgress. From this limited play, I can tell I like this game, and definitely want to get a session going to play the game all the way to the end. Now all I need to do is try and find a time and place to get that game in.

 

Winter Is Coming

Fenland Gamers, game night, game of thrones, Uncategorized

Here is a short time lapse of my first time playing A Game of Thrones the boardgame with Jeff, Ben and Jonathan.


In all I think we played our four player game in little over two hours. Surprisingly quicker than I thought it would be. 

In the end Jeff won taking the required seven castles, whilst I had been knocked back into last place. Yes I was in the lead early on before the others ganged up on me. 

I was surprised how little conflict went on in our game. I seemed to be the main aggressor. Something I paid for in the long run. 

I enjoyed this first play a lot, this will definitely be coming back to the table.

My only complaint about this game and the up and coming Iron Throne game (based on Cosmic Encounter) is the minimum number of players is three. So unless I can find a third volunteer when I visit Nath, neither would see the table. And I know that Nath would enjoy this game.

If you are able to get the players together this is a nice game to bring to the table.

There once was a man from Nantucket…

FEG@TA, Fenland Gamers, game night


Last night saw the weekly FEG@TA back on track after last weeks was cancelled.

The FEG@TA last night was only attended by Jonathan and myself. So what resulted was a pleasant evening of two player gaming, whilst the loud music and alcholic fuelled buffoonery raged around us.

Our first game of the evening was the two player worker placement game with a whaling theme Nantucket. Jonathan had got this for $3 as an add on to the game New Bedford (also about whaling) on Kickstarter.

For those that are already thinking tl;dr here’s the spoiler on what I thought of this game, it’s a pile of shit. It’s a stinker. It really is. 

The rules could be written better. Some bits were unclear. A player aid with the scoring for the whaling coin toss phase of the game would have been a great and much needed addition.

And now I mention it the coin toss mechanic used for the whaling phase, I hated. With cardboard chits for the coins this just doesn’t work. It feels so unsatisfying. 

Oh those cardboard coins! Whose bright idea was it to give the head side of the coin the image of a whales tale? Then two silver coins add up to one copper coin! Since when has copper been worth more than silver.

This is barely a game. I can’t think of one thing about the game I like. Maybe Jonathan and I are missing something. But this was not a pleasant experience for either of us. At $3 I think Jonathan was over charged. Oh Jonathan won this game.

Our second game had to be good to pick us up after such a start to the evening. So out came our current darling game The Manhattan Project Chain Reaction. I romped home with an easy win against Jonathan. It nearly was a whitewash and would have been if he hadn’t managed to finally score a bomb card just as I loaded up a bomb to take me to the game ending ten points. The cards just hadn’t been with Jonathan in this game. In one go I played 13 cards! Now that’s combotastic.

We followed this up with another crowd pleaser The Great Heartland Hauling Co. which we played using the expansion that comes with the game. The expansion basically gave you the chance to get upgrades/abilities. I grabbed two of the three that were on offer. One allowed me to move diagonally, the other allowed me to stay put by paying a dollar. Jonathan managed to nab the one that added an extra move space to a fuel card if you wanted to. But only after I had taken the other two.

I went on to use the staying put ability to great use irking Jonathan by tieing up one or two high value tiles. If I’d started doing that earlier and haf a bit of luck on the card draw to get the necessary cards I think that tactic of frustration could have won me the game.

In the end I was left with a lorry load of goods that flattered the victory Jonathan had.

I liked the addition of this expansion. It added a new element to the game that changed things up a little, while not taking away from the main game play.

Our last game of the evening was Valley of the Kings. Jonathan doesn’t do deck builders normally. But there was enough in this game that he enjoyed the experience. And that was despite me romping home to a comfortable win.

So despite Nantucket we had a fun evening playing games, with the spoils of victory split evenly between us.

Mutant boss rant

father son gaming, game night, news, rant


So as I continue to explore these fancy picture layouts in LiveCollage that barely show anything unless you zoom in. I might talk about last nights gaming with Nath.

So Nath and I played one game last night and that was Run Fight or Die. 

Despite looking like at several points in our game that he’d be over run with zombies. Each time Nath managed to pull the cat out of the bag and survive. More than once being able to wipe out a completely over crowded zone of zombies. 

While I seemed to be in more control of the waves of zombies moving through the zones in front of me. So much so that I was able to get attacks in on the mutant boss once he had appeared.

In fact the mutant boss appeared very early on in the game. He was our very first location that got drawn in the game!

By the time the mutant boss was sent packing to lick his wounds until his next appearance, Nath had gained a follower. 

As we pushed our luck, found loot, went to new locations and handled new events. Somehow I ended up with a zombie swarm in my zone one I couldn’t take out and deal with three runners sitting in my zone 2. Which ever way I crunched the numbers I was taking damage. In fact enough damage to kill me. Nath had won by surviving longer than me.

The mutant boss figure does look amazing on the table. And adds that something extra to the game that the large cardboard disk doesn’t. It’s a lot more ominous having that large plastic mutant boss figure starring at you from behind the waves of zombies working their way through your three zones. Constantly reminding you during your turn that if you don’t deal with him, some extra bad stuff is going to happen to you. I like my mutant boss!

News and rants

Finally Duncan of trapped North of the border pointed me in the direction of a bgg video from GenCon where CMoN talk briefly about a Zombicide app coming out next year. Basically other than saying they are working on an app there are no other details. I’m hoping its Zombicide and not Zombicide: Black Plague. I like my zombies modern, in modern settings, as they should be. None of this fantasy zombie stuff. That’s just plain and simple wrong. Sadly I fear it will be the later, because original Zombicide has been pushed to the back and being ignored by CMoN. Z:BP is Zombicide 2.0 and by golly you are going to play a fantasy theme if you like it or not! Personally I’d love to see an upgrade kit for original Zombicide accepting the range attack rule update (house rule post), and the improved player boards. That’s all it needs. Doesn’t need a completely new version releasing. Just give us that CMoN.

You can view the bgg video here.

While I’m talking CMoN apparently CMoN are really nice people, salt of the earth, all that shit, according to Rob Oren of Dice Tower fame. They might be “nice” to him, but CMoN leave a lot to desire as a company and the way they treat the customers, especially Kickstarter backers. 

Rob has a point about the free stuff culture he witnessed. Some are just in this for the swag.

In some ways I have some common ground with Rob. I don’t go round asking for stuff, I buy my stuff. When I went to the UK Games Expo, I never mentioned once I wrote a blog to anyone. Not even to Tom and Sam when I bumped into them. 

I don’t write reviews, my readership isn’t nearly large enough to interest a publisher. While it would be nice to get a game I wanted free from time to time, I’m very very happy not to have that pressure of having to review the game, and have the review up in a certain time period, etc. Oh plus I don’t write reviews! If you are reading this blog regularly you know that already.

I like the freedom I have here to rant and rage, but also praise. But also to write bits about gaming I enjoy reading, that it seems very few out there do. Most are into reviewing. That’s not me I like personality, and my little niche.

There are other areas of common ground also but I’m not going to go over them. I’m bored of this now! Plus I suspect you are also. 

Hopefully this little rant won’t irk Rob too much I don’t want him to “bury me” also!

You can watch Rob’s rant here.

PS sorry for this long out of control post!

Father son gaming – making memories

father son gaming, game night, Uncategorized


I look forward to my visits with Nath. They are not nearly as often or as long as I’d like. Oh they are way too brief.

Despite being a young man now, and taller than me by a good four or five inches. Nath will always be my little boy.

I have plenty of memories of him as a little one. From the time he threw up on me and laughed afterwards when he was but a baby, or when he read to his mum and me for the first time, or our walks up Welsh and English mountains, or swimming in swimming holes in the Brecon Beacons, to us watching the whole of Prison Break together one Summer.

But how much does Nath remember of those times? Does he see them as good times? 

I love video games, I grew up playing them. As I aged and grew, so did video games, we grew up together. Not surprisingly Nath too is into video games. And for a while on our visits we’d play a couple of Nath’s favourite games, FIFA and Call of Duty. Two games I hardly play. So I was nothing more than a more random opponent for Nath to beat up on.

But I wanted our time together to be a higher quality. And that’s how I got back into playing board games after an obligatory long gap. I started getting games that played well for two players that would both interest Nath and myself.

Last night after making that first Vlog (I’m sorry if you watched it for stealing three minutes of your life you won’t ever get back), doing that washing up and cooking tea, we sat down and played some games.

We started off with 7 Wonders Duels. The first game went to me when I grabbed a military win. After recording the victory in the app I use to track my plays, I decided to try out the apps social media sharing abilities. So the world at large got to hear of my win.

We played a second game. This time I was trying for a science win, but also doing well on the military front. Nath had been building up a mass of blue victory point cards. If it got to victory points I’d have no chance. It was all down to the third age. Nath managed to block my science path to victory. It was down to the military route for me. But that too proved to be another dead end when Nath got rid of what was to be the last military card. It was down to counting victory points. Nath had a massive 41 points on blue alone. I had nothing to answer back with. In the end my final score was less than this opening score for Nath. I was well and truly schooled.

Our next game was The Manhattan Project Chain Reaction. Time to teach Nath how to build an atomic bomb! This is such a quick and easy game to teach, and quick to pick up. Nath played this game abit more aggressively than my previous opponents. Instead of drawing cards when he had the cards that allowed you to draw more cards, he mostly used their other ability to force me to discard cards instead. An interesting tactical decision that paid off. Nath won both games we played. The second game he destroyed me. I had scored a three point bomb, and I only made it to 4.5 points thanks to my uranium! 

Our third and final game that we played was Odin’s Ravens. Once again a fairly simple game to teach, and easy to learn. Our first game I won. But it was like my game with Jonathan at the weekend, if I hadn’t won that turn, Nath would have on his next turn. Our second game Nath romped home with some great plays of his Loki cards. I was at best 3/4 of the way home, at least two turns card wise from finishing.

Our limited time together on visits is I feel of a higher quality now, more social. I’m hoping these visits and our time together playing games are giving new memories. So that in years to come Nath will look back on our time together as adults with fondness, and remembering the time he played 15 cards in one go to wipe out my health and get the win with a smile as he does the same to his own kid.