It was a mini meet up this evening, a kind of pre-con aperitif so to speak. What con? The yearly Madhouse Minicon held by Madhouse UK that run a turn-based fantasy game. 

Ok due to the continuing knock on effect on my social plans from two/three weeks ago, I wasn’t going to be spending the weekend at the minicon. This weekend if the plans work out will be spent gaming with Nath.

Debbie, myself and Lucus started our evening of gaming off with Dalek Dice. I won. But still think I prefer Zombie Dice to this.

Afterwards some con attendees arrived. So while Jamie introduced them to Dalek Dice, Lucus and I played Magic the Gathering using a couple of dueling decks. In our first game Lucus was just unable to get any creatures out to defend himself or to attack. He had land,in fact enough to summon creatures. Sadly it was all swamp, and he needed water! So I was able to happily field creatures and swing away at will. 

We swapped decks. And things went much better for Lucus. He was able to get some creatures out to attack with, and even inflict damage. However by that time in the game I had enough out on the battlefield to get me another win.

I like dueling decks. Magic without the collectable element. You can just play a game with two “evenly” pre-built decks and have fun. I do enjoy the deck building side, it’s just my pocket can’t handle the full on booster collectable experience, or justify the expense because I don’t play it enough.

What was to be my final game of the evening was 7 Wonders Duel with Debbie. 

I like this game a lot. It really is a great two player game. Which is why I think this has been the third week in a row this has managed to hit the table.

This game was particularly close and came down to the last card of the third age. If Debbie had gotten to the card first we would have had to start counting victory points. Which was going to be a hard one to call. I had nearly thirty coins, would have had ten victory points from the war track. But Debbie had a lot of cards giving victory points in front of her. 

However we didn’t get to that scenerio of points counting. The last card was mine. A war card doing three attack. Which gave me the instant war victory. It doesn’t get closer than that. Well maybe winning by one victory point. 

I think out of four games now, none have come down to points. They have all been instant wins split evenly somehow between war and science. 

Still love this game. 

But that was it. I was flagging. Strider had been sick in the night, and had been in and out for over an hour before hand. I think he was feeling sick but just couldn’t be during that time. So I was really knackered. I had started to drift off earlier in the afternoon! Debbie had also decided she was going to head off. The place was starting to build up with con attendees. Not much gaming at that point, more social, renewing friendships stuff.

This last photo shows how I finished off the evening. Yep stuffing lots of questionable meat into my face!

Last night it was once more the time to celebrate the start of the weekend by playing games whilst enjoying adult beverages at the weekly FEG@TA. 

My gaming started off playing 7 Wonders Dual with Debbie while we waited for others to turn up. I won this game with a military victory. I just need a points win over Debbie and I’ve beat her using all three win conditions. But that may sound arrogant. Oh wait it is, but I will laugh the loudest if next time we play I lose big time.

As we were finishing Jamie and his son arrived. So a current favourite Qwixx hit the table. Debbie knocked it out of the park in this game, winning with an epic 98 points. That’s an amazing score. A well deserved win.

We finished Qwixx just before Jonathan and his daughter arrived. And she had only one thing on her mind, to destroy me at Bohemian Villages. Something she had been plotting all week since I beat her (and everyone else) last Friday.

So while the “grudge match” which Jamie’s son wanted in on took place, the others split off to play Pandemic the Cure.

Our game of Bohemian Villages saw mind games, plots and alliances. Mainly against me. But once more I was victorious. Do I feel big and clever beating two kids? Oh yes too right I do. What we can be sure of is Jonathan’s daughter will be plotting my downfall. 

During these two simultaneous games being played Jeff arrived. 

Niagara looks a nice game, visually attractive, especially with the moving discs simulating the flow of water and having the board on top of the game box then acting like the waterfall. I didn’t get to play, that will have to wait for another day. I instead I played another game of 7 Wonders Dual with Jamie. This time I lost to a science victory. But it was close, we were five cards from going to points, which I would have won. In our game we had some nice chaining of multiple actions to be able to build two or three wonders between us.

Our evening of gaming ended with a game of Dalek Dice. Dalek Dice was ok. It’s a more complicated push your luck style dice game along the lines of Zombie Dice. I don’t think the additional complication improves things. I prefer the simplicity of Zombie Dice, it flows better, and is more fun.

So that was another great evening of gaming, which can only be finished off one way. Yep dodgey meat in naan, salad and chilli sauce. So one or two of us headed off to the Charcoal Grill to pickup some totally unhealthy meat to take home and eat.

Same again next week…

Just a reminder that this evening is the regular weekly Fenland Gamers meet up that we have at The Angel Inn in Wisbech.

Start time is approximately 5pm, finishing roughly around 9pm-9:30pm. Followed usually by a run to a near by perveyor of dodgey meat with chilli sauce establishment to top the evening off.

So if you fancy getting out of the house for a reason other than the enjoyable pastime of collecting pokemon in Pokemon Go, playing some great games whilst enjoying a grown up beverage, followed by the optional questionable meat in a wrap. Then we’d love to see you at The Angel this evening.

This week saw another game move off my pile of shame. Finally I got the game Biblios Dice to the table.

Debbie, myself and Debbie’s Nath learnt to play Biblios Dice whilst waiting for others to turn up.

While setting the game up, just like Dead of Winter I discovered that a dice was missing! This time a black dice, which I was able to use a regular white dice I had as a substitute. But regular readers of this very niche blog will know I’ll be testing the publishers support out when I get home. 

Talking of support Fun Forge still months after raising the issue with them of the broken figure, have not replaced it. They keep saying they will post a replacement but never do. It’s become a matter of principle now that they will replace the figure. But shockingly bad customer support from them.

Anyway once we had got what the game was about, and how to play. Which was pretty quick. We had a good time playing the game.

There are some nice touches to the game. Like being forced to move your counter up each of the tracks. Otherwise at the end there is a negative points penalty. 

I like the two end game trigger conditions. In ours it was reaching the top of the Bishop track. But we also had 50% of the other condition complete as well with a player at the top of two of the other tracks. 

The bonuses on the tracks at key points a nice touch. First player to reach one bonus spot gets the biggest bonus at that spot, next player gets a smaller bonus and so on. 

Plus player order on a track mattering at the end is nice when it comes to scoring a track. Tie that in with the manipulation of the points each track scores during the game, then things get very tactical. 

I love the dice selection, and the decisions you are forced to make, because there is usually at least two or more dice you’d love to be able to choose.

Auctions and bidding although not complicated is just right for this game. And I love what may seem like harsh reprocussions for over bidding. Loosing all your money, having to reveal victory points collected and being excluded from next auction. Tough but fair.

Overall a fun game.

While we were playing Biblios Dice, Jonathan and his daughter arrived. So while waiting for me to win Biblios Dice (spoiler I did), they tried to escape the Forbidden Island with their artefacts. But being a Matt Leacock game naturally they failed big time, with the game winning.

With us all now able to play a game together we played Qwixx. Jonathan had been wanting to play this game for a while. After being destroyed by his daughter at the game (I got my lowest score so far in this game), what did Jonathan think of the game? He went straight online to add it to his Amazon basket (assuming they would have it). So that’s a big he liked it I think.

What would turn out to be our final game of the evening due to The Angel getting rather busier than normal for the time we are there, and the loud “dance” music, one of my recent favourites Bohemian Villages hit the table.

As per usual for this game a player (Debbie) forgot to collect money before rolling the dice, so lost that money. Luckily it was early on, so just one coin. But a loud cheer from Jonathan and myself burst out when it happened.

Jonathan and myself were up to our usual self offering advice to the others on their turn to try and manipulate things to teduce the scoring opportunities of each other. Trying to get Jonathan’s daughter to choose Debbie’s meeple to kick off a building I said “remember all those cheap tacky birthday presents you didn’t like she bought you” only to be corrected by Debbie and Jonathan with “what presents?” Which helped my lame attempts at manipulation. 

Gaming etiquette was ignored this evening by Debbie’s Nath when he refused to reroll a cocked dice! Blasphemy! Not sporting and soooo wrong. So although he ended up just above (spoiler) last place Debbie or fourth. It was a tainted fourth because of this. 

Jonathan’s daughter and I destroyed the others in final scoring. And I narrowly beat her by three points. Our scores were my 66 points to her 63 points. The others were in the 40’s, not even close. What was nice was when Jonathan’s daughter having been possibly coached/egged on by certain irresponsible individuals (me) at the table returned the “in your face” to her dad. Family feud gold ^__^

But Jonathan’s daughter didn’t take defeat easily and threw down the gauntlet and challenged me to another game soon, promising to crush me.

A great shorter than usual evening of gaming, followed up with the now regular large lamb donar kebab. Which is a great way to finish off any gaming evening.