Category Archives: game night

game night

Pandemic Legacy Season One Finale

Fenland Gamers, game night, pandemic, pandemic legacy season 1

Monday saw the Gang of Four get together to attempt to get a win for the final month of December. Would it take both attempts? Would we even got a win? Our track record hasn't been that great so far, the game really has been owning us.

With the board setup, the three remaining objectives out, and looking at only having to complete two out of the three, we might just stand a chance of ending the game on a high.

Debbie read the mission brief for December. Our current objectives were all of a sudden the old torn up objectives. We now had two new objectives, one of them we had to find a stock pile of the CoDa virus hidden in all places Atlanta. Wow a final curve ball.

Debbie had swapped out her character for the virologist. Which with mine meant we had the characters good at curing the faded and vaccinate the faded cities. And that was to be our main task.

We focused a lot on locating that hidden stock pile. We were getting close. But we got washed away with tides of pandemics. The game had smacked us down once more, reminding us who the boss is.

With the board reset, this was it our final chance of going out with a win.

Debbie and I divided the globe for dealing with the faded, and vaccinating the cities. Matt and Jonathan were to control the virus outbreaks, AND find the stockpile.

Naturally Debbie and I helped out where we could. We found the stockpile. Phew one objective down. Plus we had found a cure. That helped take the pressure off. But we were burning through the player deck.

We had a win in sight. But did we have enough time? There were five cards left in the player deck! Debbie would be able to do her part of the plan to win. That accounted for two of the final five cards. Then it would be Matts turn, another two cards gone. If I couldn't do my part of the plan we'd lost. But I executed our plan to perfection. I vaccinated our final city to grab the win. It doesn't get closer than that.

We totalled up our score for our play through and ended up with a final score of 448. Not in the lowest bracket, so a little relief there.

Final thoughts…

So first up we got twenty plays out of this game. So for a £45 play through once legacy game, I think we got our monies worth out of the game. I know some suggest you can then use your final board and play the game as a regular pandemic, but with that personal touch. But I'm not sure I'd do that. I might give it a try.

For us we thought it was a bit on the mean side. Several times with victory in sight we managed to snatch a defeat.

Loved the story element of the game, and the new bits they threw in like the faded, vaccinations and searching. And the little faded figures, oh they are sooo cool. I thought the little vaccine pills looked like amber ants eggs. Not sure about the road blocks, we didn't really use these, the quarantine tokens I liked. The different building types were a nice touch.

I have to admit when I had to tear up my first card in the game I was a bit hesitant about it. But by the end I quite enjoyed it.

Overall I loved the whole experience of the game. It really worked. The plot twists, even when my character turned out to be a traitor and was gone from the game, were cool. Our issue as the graph above shows was the getting together to play.

I can't wait until Season Two, and see where the story takes us.

 

Rolling Dice on a Friday Evening

Fenland Gamers, game night

August will see me hopefully back in full time employment! Assuming everything between now and then goes to plan.

Which means I was spreading the good news to my fellow fenland gamers at the weekly Friday Evening gaming sessions at The Angel Inn.

If Debbie had arrived earlier we would have had a first play of New York 1901. However Jo and I were just about to pack it away as she arrived because there would not have been enough time to play it before Jonathan was due to turn up.

Instead we ended up playing the classic Age of War. Debbie took an early lead, that was soon closed and over taken by Jo. For me it was another chance for the dice to continue showing their contempt and hate for me that they started on Wednesday at the monthly meetup. The dice even gave me a glimmer of hope of at least not coming last, but firmly shut that door in my face. Of course Jonathan and Jamie arrived just in time to help rub salt in the wound of being last.

We followed up my glorious defeat with a five player game of Forbidden Island. Yes we know it's four players maximum, something we “stumbled” upon half way through the game as it was kicking our collective butts. Now Jonathan had bought this game at the expo after being told off by his eldest daughter for having traded his previous copy away. I had a copy sitting in my pile of shame. So despite having been defeated by another Matt Leacock game, we did get three of the four treasures before the helicopter landing spot sunk. Plus it's one more game removed from my pile of shame.

Our final game of the evening was a new game to me from Dice Hate Me (and at the the moment they certainly do) called The Great Heartland Hauling Co. I really liked this pick up and delivery game.

You move your lorry either by spending cash, which in reality you want to avoid doing because this is also your victory points. Or by using any fuel cards in your hand. The nice touch is you can't mix and match cash and fuel cards to move. Plus fuel cards range in value from one to three. You have to move as the first thing you do. So if you don't have fuel cards it's going to cost you points. However you may not have enough fuel cards to get to where you want to go, so you may have to spend cash instead. But if you were going to sell, will you be making a loss because you spent cash to get there? Some lovely decisions to me made.

Then there is the buying and selling goods. To buy goods you need a card of that good you want to buy. And the reverse is true to sell it. However if the good isn't a “native” good to the location you are buying at the cost of buy a good goes up by one. So to say buy three pork/pigs you would need three pork/pig cards or if it is none native the most you would be able to buy would be two at the cost of four pork/pig cards. The reason for this is the max hand size you can have is five cards. In fact you will always have five cards, because at the end of your turn you draw back up to five cards.

Luckily selling isn't handicapped by the “native” rule of buying. If there is a market for your good at the location, you may sell as many goods as you have in stock and cards for. Add the money to your score and start plotting your next delivery.

Once some-one hits thirty points, the other players get one more turn and its game over. Any left over goods you have are negative points and get taken off, and the player left with the highest score wins. Which in our case was Debbie. But the good thing is I didn't come last in our game.

So with the great evening of gaming over. Jonathan and I grabbed a kebab from down Norfolk Street before saying our farewells. I then went off to scoff my kebab in my car before seeing the enjoyable new X-Men movie at The Luxe, and take the mickey out of Nath there for his tv appearance earlier in the week.

Overall a great end to a good week.

 

June’s Monthly Fenland Gamers Meetup

Fenland Gamers, game night

It's been a real busy week, which has meant I'm behind in my rabblings about my rock n roll gaming life.

I'd missed Tuesday's gaming session at Chatteris. I'd made the call that I needed to spend the time finishing off my lesson for the following days one hour micro teach I was doing as part of an interview I'd had for a job of a localish college. The previous micro teach had been a bit of a flop because of the setup process of the software we were using for the lesson. But I'd been given a second bite of the cherry thanks to impressing enough during the interview I had. I didn't want to muck up this second chance.

Wednesday was the monthly meetup of the Fenland Gamers. I was feeling pretty good because I felt I had done a pretty good micro teach that morning. The extra prep had paid off.

The monthly meet was really well attended. We even had cookies from my official cake maker Doreen to devour while playing. And yes they were every bit as good as her scrumptious cakes. One day I hope Doreen comes along with Sam to get the standing ovation from the club she deserves. Oh and to try some cool games.

Because of the great turn out we split into two groups to play games.

In our group we started off playing King of Tokyo with the power up expansion. One of the bits of news, in fact the only bit from the UK Expo I heard about so far was the new fifth anniversary edition coming out of King of Tokyo. It's getting a make over of the art work, removing two monsters to make way for two new new ones. One of the new ones is the going to be the Space Penguin, which currently is very elusive and expensive to get, mainly due to having been a promo at events. So that market is gone. The card art is changing, including the back of card art, so no backwards compatibility with the current edition. Well on the cards you buy in game that is. However there are plans to release card sleeves so any promo cards you have can be used with the new edition. Plus there is talk of an “upgrade” kit of the new monsters that current owners can buy also. Iello also said that the upcoming King of New York Power Up expansion will have power up cards for both King of New York and the new edition of King of Tokyo. Which I think is a clever move. It gets the power up cards for the new monsters out there quickly, so people can play with the power up expansion. Which lets face it adds to the game greatly. The final improvement is that the rules have also been made easier to understand!

Back to our play of the game, Gavin managed to knock out Sam and myself at the same time. Leaving himself and Katie to fight it out for the title of King of Tokyo. I was cheering on Katie to revenge me.

Katie and Gavin traded blows, until Katie took a much deserved points victory that Gavin was unable to stop.

While we had been knocking several shades of excrement out of each other, and causing incalculable damage and deaths to Tokyo (who honestly would want to be King of the left over rubble?) the other group were teaching Ticket to Ride.

The gaming groups stayed the same. Our group went empire building with Nations the Dice Game, whilst the other group decided to try and save the world from four killer diseases in Pandemic the Cure.

I got my butt truly kicked at Nations. My dice really did hate me. I rolled hardly anything I could use. My very first action of the game was a reroll. As everyone else was building up their civilisation, getting extra and swapping dice, I was struggling to do anything. Katie totally ruled the game and took an early lead that the others struggled to keep in touch with. I wasn't even in the running.

Yeah I was last, with Sam coming in third and chuckling that she had beat me. Gavin got closer to Katie than I expected but she still romped home to victory.

Another great evening of gaming, amazing cookies, and great banter (I know the girls Debbie and Jo enjoyed Sam delivering me my come uppance on the banter side).

 

Pandemic Legacy November play through

Fenland Gamers, game night, pandemic, pandemic legacy season 1

You have been warned…

As the Rock would say if he was in our play group “Finally we get back to Pandemic Legacy. Finally we are attempting to beat the month of November!”

Yes you may be detecting a little frustration with our recent lack of plays. With the finish line in sight I'm hoping our final session doesn't get strung out.

But let's be positive about this we did manage to get together to take on November.

The months briefing fore told of our imminent demise.

That was it, no new surprises, we didn't need to scratch off the card provided because we had already opened the two required boxes in previous games.

We had three objectives to complete, one of which was the mandatory find three cures, with either destroy two military bases, vaccinate six cities, or build three vaccination centres (iirc).

In the players deck we had three one time use cards that allowed the avoiding of an epidemic card, at the cost of raising the riot level of any chosen city.

With Debbie doing the initial infections, she somehow managed to get a lot of faded on the board. I, I mean we, may have given Debbie a little grief over this.

I started off with one of the one time use cards. Which after a brief discussion was used, so that when we hit the next epidemic card we'd have a bigger pool of cards to cycle through so it wouldn't be so potent.

With an early vaccination centre built, I was picking up vaccines to try and clear up some of the faded so they didn't outbreak.

Matt destroyed the two military bases giving us that objective early. We cured a disease or two, vaccinated six cities, even built the three vaccination factories, whilst also finding the third cure.

We did use a second one off card, which Matt wasn't too keen on, and boy was he adiment that he wouldn't use the third and final one that he had in his possession. Maybe we will be thanking him when we play December for his stubbornness.

Finally and I'm not sure why we have waited so long in playing this, but we pulled the nuclear option and used an unfunded event we had that removed a city from the game forever, it also removed any virus counters and faded on it too.

There were a couple of minor misplays, yeah you'd think we'd be experts by now. But boy did it feel good to have a win back on the record books.

One more month to go and then for the time being our adventures together in the world of Pandemic will come to an end.

 

An Impromptu Gaming Night

Fenland Gamers, game night

We were once more going to be a man down for our Pandemic Legacy session on Wednesday, so we decided to turn it into an open gaming session to the members of The Fenland Gamers (which you can join for FREE either on the Facebook page or the clubs website).

Our evenings gaming started off with us playing 51st State Complete Master Set. Yes the theme isn't on Jonathan's top 1000 themes to play. But I thought he might like the mechanics.

After going over the rules from the excellent and humourous cheat sheet, we started playing. The game started off slow, maybe because we were all learning the game. No one was building much, or getting victory points. Jonathan was the first to score a point, and he held the lead right upto the end of the game to get (spoiler) the win. In fact I was the last to start scoring. However I did make a late dash to grab second place.

I think roughly the game took about one and half hours for us to play with four players. Which surprised me because from podcasts I'd heard talking about the game they were saying it played quicker than Imperial Settlers.

In this game there was very little razing other players buildings, I was the only one who did it, and that was a too late attempt to slow Jonathan's scoring engine. So were we not being aggressive enough?

It did seem to take a few rounds to get any sort of engine going. I made a lot of deals to bring in resources.

I do need to check the rules again, because none of us got shields. And we didn't spot any cards that gave us one either. So unless an expansion (included in the box) gave them, we were a bit confused how we got them. That also goes for the bulldozer token.

I do like Imperial Settlers (wish I could play it more often), so unsurprisingly I enjoyed playing 51st State. I liked the extra option when building of discarding a building already built of the same type, along with a brick. It allowed the more expensive to build building to be built more easily. A fact I remembered too late in the game. I like the different levels of raze cost of buildings based on position on the player board.

The components, art work, are fantastic. I feel it's very thematic. Love the humour in the rules.

After playing in a post apocalyptic world there is only one thing to do, play test a an aphid apocalypse based game for Jonathan! Jonathan and his design partner Rebecca are working on a co-operative pandemic influenced kids game set in the Ladybug Lunch (a previous kids card game of theirs) universe. But in this world instead of diseases you are trying to stop aphids taking over the flowers in your garden.

This was as a said a play test. A first in the UK. The game was over very very quickly. Jonathan was under the opinion that it was too hard for a kids game. My suggestion was to have a double sided board, a hard and easy side. It will be interesting to see if Jonathan and Rebecca run with that idea.

Our final game of the evening was Love Letter Batman, which I won, leaving Jonathan as the only one in the game that didn't score a point. Yes I had to point that out.

A great evening of gaming, I hope this got you interested in coming along to one of our gaming sessions.

 

Wacky Races

Fenland Gamers, formula d, game night
It was the end of the month. Which meant it was time for the second race in our inaugural Formula D League. In our first race Katie ran away with the victory, while Jonathan did not finish.
In a cunning plan, which I'm sure he'd been plotting since his going out in flames in the first race, Jonathan suggested a “handicapping” for starting order. Which saw Jonathan in pole position, Jo in second, myself in third, and Katie in last place. Basically the reverse order of the results from the previous race.
So even with the head start and an initial lead where it looked like Katie was getting a strong hold on last place, and a little smack talk from me. Somehow and I'm still not sure how even as I write this, Katie was in the lead, and pulling away. I think we lost it on the corners.
As Katie casually raced around the track admiring the sights and sounds of Singapore, Jonathan and I had a little tussle for second and third place, which in the end he ended up winning comfortably. Finally limping across the finish line and taking home the “Driving Miss Daisy” cup for last place was Jo.
That's back to back victories for Katie, a first time finish for Jonathan. I don't think anyone is going to touch Katie for taking the honours of champion at the end of our next race, however there's everything to play for, for the other podium places for the rest of us.

We ended the evening by introducing Katie to Bohemian Villages. Jonathan and I really should stop trying to play the “meta” game and using Jedi mind tricks on others to try and get a tactical advantage, and concentrate on playing. Katie kicked our butts at this game, some would argue beginners luck. But not I. Getting a massive score of sixty three is not luck.

Before our racing started Jonathan and myself had met up a little early to play a game or two as warm up. So we played Nations the Dice Game.

Our first game saw a couple of miss plays, like scoring only one point for being in front in books instead of two. The other more crucial was missing out the fourth age/round. DOH!

Neither of us got much of an engine going, mainly because there were very few tiles coming out to buy that gave us extra dice.

I sneaked the win. Despite the misplays, Jonathan liked the game enough to give it a second play. This time we played it correctly, and with more tiles coming out that gave more dice, engines kicked in, and more options of what to do became available.

Jonathan liked the game, and made the comment I think everyone makes after playing it, I know I have, it's over way too quickly. You just want it to go on for another round or two.

A great evening gaming once again.

Sunday afternoon gaming

Fenland Gamers, game night
Yesterday I got invited to join Jonathan and his dad for an afternoons gaming. Upon arrival I got greeted by a puppy called Bonnie. Who was very bouncy and friendly. My ones will being giving me that betrayed look when I get home when they smell Bonnie on me.
Our afternoons gaming started off with the teaching Batman Love Letter to Jonathan's dad. For which he cashed in his beginners luck chip to win!
We followed up with a game of Brew Crafters: The Travel Card Game. A game I hadn't played before, but has been in my collection in the pile of shame for a long time.
So I was very glad to have this opportunity to play the game.
I enjoyed the game. The dual use of cards, either as a resource to complete recipes, or for its ability, is pretty cool. Which means you have to make a decision whether to use the card to complete a recipe and get points that way, or play the card for its ability and build up an engine that might get you more points when you complete a recipe, or get a free card after completing a recipe, or bonus points at the end of the game. It gives that brew crafting experience without having to go through the full on brew crafters game. It's a pretty quick to play game, I think it was about thirty mins most.
Yeah this is a nice light filler card game, which Jonathan's Dad won, leaving Jonathan and myself last with equal points.
We followed up with another first, this time for all of us, by breaking out one of the 18p (plus postage) games Jonathan got from Amazon US when they accidently priced up a load of games incorrectly, The Struggle for Catan. Which is Catan the card game basically, or Catan light.
Ok I liked this one too. I love that this gives that Catan feeling in a filler game. There are some nice touches in the game, like the destiny card which decides the direction that cards are “stolen from” if all of a card type such as roads, knights are taken. The city cards having different affects on the game such having players discard down to seven cards is nice. Plus there is a city expansion card that gives an on going ability such as protecting a road from being stolen.
I romped home with the win. I can see this game being added to the collection.
Next up Ladybug Lunch hit the table to refresh Jonathan's dad on the rules, because he was going to be teaching it soon on a trip. Three adults playing this game meant the game took on a surprise cut throat tone. Once again the spoils of victory went to Jonathan's Dad.
Our last game of the afternoon was Bohemian Villages. This was my fifth play of the game this month. I love this game. It's just a shame the game is not widely known. From my understanding there is no US distributor, which means none of those big video bloggers over that side have covered the game yet. Which means hardly anyone knows this game exists. If Stephen Buonocore of Stronghold Games was faster off the mark he'd be signing this game up before anyone else gets it. The game is bi-lingual (English/German), so technically doesn't need any work done on it, just needs getting out there.
I managed to beat Jonathan by a point, but his Dad once more walked away with the victory once again.
Finally thanks to Jonathan one of those rare photos of me playing a game. In this case Ladybug Lunch.

A great afternoons gaming, a big thank you to Jonathan and his Dad for inviting me along.

Our First Friday Evening Gaming

Fenland Gamers, game night

Last night saw the first weekly Friday Evening Gaming meetup of the Fenland Gamers at the Angel Inn in Wisbech.

The evening of gaming was scheduled to kick off at 5pm, Debbie rushing from work arrived just after. So while we waited to see if others would turn up we played King of Tokyo.

Debbie kicked my butt royally at the game. She won the first game with a points victory. Our second game we drew because I bought and played a card that did three damage to both of us, and killed both of us. Why would I do that? I knew I wouldn't survive to my next go. Debbie was doing an extra point of damage each attack because of a card she had bought. Two claws plus that extra damage would have finished me. So I settled for a draw. Our third and final game saw it going the way of the first game with me losing again.

Jonathan and his daughter turned up just as we were deciding what next to play. So we asked Jonathan's daughter to choose our next game to play. And she choose well, we were going to be playing Codenames.

The teams were boys against girls. We played two games, swapping over the roles between guesser and clue giver between games. Jonathan and I won both games. But it was great fun. You have to be able to put yourself into the head of the other person whether you are guessing or giving the clue. I was just grateful that Jonathan's comicbook knowledge and inparticular Spider-Man was good enough to get one of my clues.

Next up we played <spoiler alert> my game of the month, and a big favourite of Jonathan's as well, Bohemian Villages. Jonathan's daughter hadn't played before so we ran through the rules at the start. This is such a fun game. It's fun to watch some-one miss taking their income at the start of their turn, roll the dice and then realise what they have just done. Points lost. Then you do exactly the same on your own turn because you also got distracted or forgot. Debbie and I drew for last place, while Jonathan took first place.

Our last game of the evening was Ladybugs Lunch but hey it really should be called Ladybirds Lunch. This is Americanisation gone too far. I'd never played this game before but everyone else had. Luckily fifty percent of the design team was there to teach me! This was a game that Jonathan co-designed. You control a ladybird who has to clear the bugs off your flower. It's a “kids” game, no that's not fair, I'd call it a family game. A fun little family game. Thanks to Jonathan's shuffling (which his daughter loved) on my first turn I was in a good position to win on my second turn. Then Debbie and the others picked on me to stop that happening. A few turns later Debbie took the victory.

So our first Friday Evening gaming was a fun time. A good start, now to grow the numbers.

Pick on me

chatteris warlords, game night

Four player Neuroshima Hex played as a deathmatch is an interesting experience. It should have been a free for all, with everyone attacking each other. However, for a while it seemed more like everyone was just going to crap on Darren. My HQ was attacked by the others for what seemed like most of the game.

Once I was gone I knew they would turn on each other. Somehow I managed to hang in there with six hit points, when that fighting amongst themselves started. Their hit points started to drop off fast.

The final battle was triggered by one of the other players. One of them died, another just about stayed alive but with less points than me, and somehow I ended up in second place!

For a first play for the others, and the bit longer to find out what the tiles did, and learning the game, this four player game took a reasonable hour to play. Yes Neuroshima Hex plays best with two. But it's still a great game with four. So scales well I think.

Other games going on at this weeks Chatteris Warlords were Bolt Action, Dead of Winter, Star Realms, Warhammer Conquest, and some fantasy themed wargame.

Pandemic Legacy October Revisited

Fenland Gamers, game night, pandemic, pandemic legacy season 1

Monday four bruised and battered adventurers once more tackled the month of October after managing to somehow get themselves back up off the ground from their last kicking by the game.

Joe the soldier had been dumped from the team, his inability to find a cure was not helpful. So parachuted in to take his place was Typhoid Mary the immunologist.

The easy objective of destroying two military bases was easily achieved, one of them was also a starting military base.

Between Mat and myself we had found two cures. The third was on its way. We had even built a vaccine building and had started making vaccine and using it to get rid of the faded.

Our third and final cure was in sight. In fact we were a couple of moves away from getting a much needed win.

That's when the game decided it had had enough playing with us, and it was time to put its meal out of its misery.

Once more an epidemic outbreak broke into pandemics, and like a broken record we ran out of faded and lost the game.

Our fourth loss in a row.

Mat was given the honour of opening the box he had been eying up since the beginning. Inside that mysterious box so many have seen but few have opened, were some cards! Cards that get shuffled into the players deck that will hopefully make our next game easier!

We decide to call it a day after yet another tick in the loser column, and attempt November next time.

But wow we are potentially now two games away from the end of the game, but with the way we have been playing more likely four.