Category Archives: game night

game night

Hunter Rules

game night

I think this is becoming a thing now, Friday evening on way to con club to play games stop in The Luxe and have a quick chat and catch up with Bouncy. Then onto the con club to play games.

This Friday night gaming session is a different experience to the others. It's a younger crowd, and with one of them blasting their unwanted music during the evening (luckily not all the time) at times more irritating.

However Ben from Chatteris was there as usual, so with Jamie and his son we played a four player game of Star Realms using the hunter rules. Which meant you attacked the person to your left for direct damage, but could do both sides for bases and outposts.

As is now tradition for multiplayer games of Star Realms Ben was eliminated first. Now tradition dictates that after Ben has been whipped from the board, that I will soon follow him out of the exit.

However tradition was not to be followed this time. Just as the Emporer wanted Luke to kill his father, but failed to do because of some misguided family bond. We were not going to see that sentimentality tonight, Jamie's son dispatched his dad from the game in a cold vicious manner.

It was me against the heir to the empire. Sadly for the heir, I had a good engine up and running, that allowed me to inflict massive hits of damage. I wasn't going to let the fact I was up against a youngster get in my way of victory. So against tradition I dispatched the outposts in my way and delivered the fatal blow to get the win.

Our next game of the evening was Epic. We did a draft and played the hunter rules, which worked the same as it did in Star Realms. Attack to the left, events to both sides.

This game went the way of tradition in Star Realms. Ben got steam rolled by Jamie. Which then meant I was on the receiving end of the Jamie war machine. I didn't last long. Tradition was upheld this time.

It was father against son. Sadly for the young lad, his father is a cold blooded killer when it comes to Epic. This was Darth Vader destroying Luke. There was no fatherly love here, sentimentality went out the door. Nothing was stopping Jamie from being victorious. Oh yeah Jamie won.

Our final game of the evening was Star Fluxx. With the usual chaotic game play, Jamie managed to surface from the chaos victorious.

That was our last game of the evening before I set off into the night.

A great evening of gaming, some intense moments, some fun moments.

 

Wheeling and Dealing

chatteris warlords, game night

Yesterday was Tuesday in case that little snippet passed you by. But it also means it was the weekly club night for the Chatteris Warlords.

Earlier in the day Robert at the club had posted on the Facebook page for selling and trading games that he had a couple of games up for trade. I was interested in his Kickstarter copy of the original Boss Monster. I wanted the exclusives that came with it, shiney boss cards, metal level up tokens, mini expansions, exclusive sleeve.

At the meet I checked the game over while showing Robert the games I had bought to trade. It was hard selecting games to offer, but in the end I had come up with three games, Tiny Epic Kingdoms plus the mat that you can get for it, Eight Minute Empire and Epic Spell Wars.

Robert was interested in the first two games. We came to a deal that involved the exchanging of the two games he was interested in for a drink from the bar and Boss Monster.

So I have two copies of the first Boss Monster. The shiney Bosses etc have been merged into my combined set, leaving just a plain first set. What to do with that? Well that will be given to Nath when I see him, I've also put the normal bosses from Boss Monster 2 into it.

My first game of the evening was against Robert. We sat down and duelled it out playing Star Realms. We were both scraping our starter cards, Robert was buying more than myself. But in the end it was his engine that worked better than mine, and was inflicting large twenty odd points of damage each turn.

Next up four of us played Firefly Fluxx. I enjoyed Firefly Fluxx, is it my favourite version? I don't think so. We did witness Robert take a turn that was longer than a John Bohnam drum solo, which by the time he had finished playing all his cards won him the game!

We followed our game of Firefly Fluxx with a game of Batman Fluxx. Once more we got to a point where Robert went off into the Fluxx version of the drum solo again. This time he didn't get the win, that was left for Chris who came after him.

The rest of the club were playing Colt Express, Bolt Action, a paupers cube of Magic, Sentinals of the Multiverse, Lords of Waterdeep, a little historical war gaming and a futuristic mech version of Bolt Action called Gates of Antares.

I still don't get the whole war game thing. The tape measures, etc. In this day and age I definitely don't get the having to cut bits of a model off a spew, glue together and paint. Painting ok I can see the fun I that. But the likes of Cool Mini or Not, FFG show the miniatures for these games should be complete and ready to paint.

Oh and then the constant having to reference the manual. Yes I know the two playing this game only play it four or five times a year. So gaps between play just long enough not to be able to remember the rules could completely. But still.

A great evening as usual.

Dice Down

game night

After getting Nico chipped yesterday, yes I know the vet was playing with death, I made it to the Friday evening gaming group that meets up at the Con Club.

Naturally when I got there games were already in progress.

My first game of the evening was taking over some-ones hand at Star Realms when they had to go off and setup for their game of Warhammer 40k I think it was. So I'm not counting this as my play. The player I took over from was a noob to the game, I believe this was his first time playing. Needless to say the deck I took over wasn't great. Lots of cards I wouldn't buy. However it did allow me to knock Ben out of the game. Then mirroring the previous time I played a four player Star Realms game I was knocked out.

It then remained for the back and forth between the two remaining players. Both able to keep topping up their authority each turn. However the superior base and outpost purchases of one player gave her the win, and more authority than she started with.

The first proper game of the evening for me was Dead of Winter. While setting up it was discovered my exposure dice was missing! We had a good look for it, but it was not to be found, so we improvised with a d10.

We did the suggested first main mission that required us to kill a certain number of zombies (based on the number of players) but they would only count if when killed a d6 was rolled and it had a value of four or higher.

All I'm going to say is my group of survivors drew the short stick when it came to longevity of life. Let's just say my rolling of the improvised exposure dice, and the others in the group who did it for me too, were not great rolls. My survivors were getting bitten a lot. This may sound callous but if we had beat the main mission would have meant I'd met my secret objective and won.

The round counter was ticking down slowly, but because of survivors being bitten and their death, and the failure to complete a crisis we failed the mission due to running out of morale.

It's a shame the exposure dice was missing/lost. It did kind of ruin my enjoyment of the game. After a search at home and still no sign of the dice, I was straight onto Plaid Hat to get a replacement organised. Very quick response from them directing me to a replacements page to fill in, that actually requires a photo of the bar code of the game box as proof of purchase and allow them to track faulty batches. So the replacement is in progress, but will I be able to play the game and enjoy it in the meantime? I don't know. Even with the replacement sorted, it's eating away at me about what happened to the exposure dice. I don't remember seeing the dice the other day when I was putting the standees together. Damn how long has this been missing?

I'm going to pass judgement and thoughts of the game until the exposure dice has been replaced.

Our final game of the evening was Tiny Epic Galaxies. A game I won with 21 points, however Ben was looking at coming last, but jumped into second because he had completed his secret mission.

A good evening of gaming despite the missing dice.

 

The Month of July

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

Oh spoiler alert. Yes it's that post again where I talk about my latest play through of Pandemic Legacy Season 1, which may or may not include spoilers. So if you want to remain oblivious to what happens in the game so that you too can experience all its twists and turns as surprises then stop reading now and see you in the next post.

She was only with us for a short time but her light shone brightly in that time. Last night Wanda the quarantine specialist passed away after a rather vicious attack by one of the faded fatally wounded her.

Basically last night the Scooby gang (yes I went there) finally after a couple of delays got to tackle the month of July in Pandemic Legacy Season 1.

Our first attempt at defeating July failed miserably. We did complete an objective or two, and were working on finding cures for all three diseases, when epidemics turned into pandemics and outbreaks just over ran us. It all happened so fast we didn't know what hit us.

One thing we had to do was build a research station in a city that was faded. Why? Well that's where the virologist is hiding who may have a cure for the faded! Well we are assuming it's a cure, we won't know until we find them (a new objective) and can reveal on the card what they have discovered.

Our second attempt at completing July was off to a good start. We automatically complete one objective now each game, because we have a military base in each zone. Which means only two objectives to complete.

We had two diseases eradicated, another objective down, and with Hawkeye sitting with enough cards to cure the final disease we were damn close to winning. However the faded were ripe for out breaking big time. Our team just needed to get to Hawkeyes turn.

On B's turn an epidemic hit causing a minor outbreak placing a faded in the city Wanda was in. She already had two scars. At the start of her turn she was dead!

It came round to Wandas turn, the faded delivered its fatal blow to her. A civilian popped into her place to try and carry on her good work. But to no avail, another epidemic hit, this time the faded damn burst, the tidal wave of pandemics started to hit, we could have survived but ran out of faded figures. Game over.

That was close, damn close.

Looks like another new team member joins us for August.

 

It’s drafty

chatteris warlords, game night, netrunner

At the weekly Chatteris Warlords meetup last night there was a Netrunner Draft going on, whilst some X-Wing and historical ship miniatures games were being played, amongst other stuff.

I've done two or three drafts before, a D&D Dicemasters one at last years UK Games Expo, and a couple of Epic drafts (one with Nath and one at this weekly meetup).

I'm still kind of undecided how I really feel about drafts. I like them, nay enjoy them even. Do I love them?

Netrunner is a LCG where you pre-construct decks to play with. Everyone has the same pool of cards to build from. There are no blind boosters. So Netrunner doesn't lend itself to being able to do drafting like you can with say Magic the Gathering or Dicemasters.

So FFG came up with a solution to this that allows Netrunner players to draft.

Basically FFG sell you three decks that go together. The first deck is a base one that contains a draft runner id, a draft corp id, and a few core cards. Everyone gets the same cards in this base deck. The other two decks are made up of one for the corp and one for the runner.

Each of these two decks are made up of forty random cards chosen from a card pool of two hundred odd cards I believe. They are randomly chosen at time of printing at the FFG card printing shop they own in the US (they use this for the small run stuff like these draft decks, promo cards etc).

Starting with the corp deck you split the four cards into “packs” of ten by dealing from the top of the deck without looking at them or shuffling before hand. You then follow normal drafting rules using the four packs. You then repeat this for the runner deck.

After drafting you go off to your private spot to build a corp and runner deck from the cards you drafted. Having built your decks you pair up and duke it out as per normal in Netrunner, except you play to six agenda points instead of seven.

So having been through all of the above I played Ben. Our first game was my corp against his runner. Which ended in a victory for Ben. However I had an early Sundew and pad campaign giving me lots of credits, plus some ice out. Ben hit my snare in R&D. Unluckily he scored agendas that were in my HQ to get the win.

Our second game the roles were reversed. Ben had a scoring server iced up, had iced up his HQ and left R&D wide open. Ben had a card on his scoring server that he was advancing big time. It was either an ambush that was going to hurt me big time when I ran into it, or an agenda that gained extra points the more advancement tokens on it. It turned out to be the later, a Project Beale scored as four agenda points. I soon caught up scoring from the unprotected R&D. I was hitting R&D at least once a turn for free!

Ben installed a new card on his scoring server and advanced it once and iced up his R&D. Too little too late, I ran on his R&D, I couldn't break the ice or its subroutines, but there was no end of run, so I was through and scored the winning agenda.

So the evening ended a draw between myself and Ben.

It certainly was interesting drafting in Netrunner. Not having to worry about influence, or number of copies of cards whilst building your deck, certainly make for some interesting decisions and combinations.

For instance I drafted Wyldside, which gave me card draw, but also costs me a click. I ended up with Rachel Beckman (seemed to be a card no one wanted, I think due to cost, eight credit cost to install is expensive). With no pancakes to get the click back, Rachel Beckman is a costly but effective alternative in this limited card pool. You get one extra click to spend each turn, plus she gets discarded when you take a tag. So a little tag protection. The synergy didn't occur to me while drafting, but when deck building from my drafted cards.

Drafting I think makes a fun break from the regular deck building. I think it might be more popular if Esdevium/FFG didn't price the latest draft set so expensively. At the moment for those that want to draft the only way people can play it cost effectively is to buy the older sets.

Another great evening running.

Meat Damage

expansions, Fenland Gamers, game night, netrunner, painting

Easter Monday, a bank holiday in the UK, and the last day in a four day weekend that started on Good Friday. For some it's a religious holiday celebrating the death and resurrection of Christ, for others it's just a long weekend and an excuse to pig out of chocolate. On the chocolate front I pig out after Easter when the shops reduce the price of their Easter eggs, more sugar high for your money.

My Easter Monday afternoon was spent at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole at Chatteris.

I was there for an informal painting workshop that was being run. I was given a Warhammer tyranid that had already got a base coat on so was ready for painting to practice with. After doing a poor job painting the main areas, I got to try dry brushing. A technique I have wanted to get a grasp of. Yes I knew the theory of doing it. But needed the confidence to do it. Having the practice miniature and guidance was enough to help give confidence I needed.

Naturally I hadn't gone to the store empty handed. I had a small bag of games and decks with me also.

I had leant my copy of Get Bit! I'd taken along to a family there to play with. It was the least I could do having won a game of Fluxx with them. After the painting I got roped into playing a two player game of Get Bit! In the two player variant both players play two robots. The game was enjoyable, not earth shattering. It won't be leaving my collection soon, but only because I have very few games that youngsters can play.

Chris and I played our first game of Netrunner. It was my Shaper deck against his Jinteki Corp deck. Chris won this easily scoring agendas. He'd built up a nice scoring server that was well protected. I was getting cards in place, but economy was an issue this time for me this time. Not having funds to make runs because you can't pump your ice breakers isn't good.

Our second game saw his Kate deck against my NBN Corp deck. Turn one I set a trap for the runner in a single remote server, iced up R&D and HQ, on the runners turn they played a couple of cards, did a run on my trap and took a tag. “How many cards are in your hand?” I enquired not casually enough. I think the runner knew what was coming. Scorched Earth, BAM! Turn two kill!

Quickest win of my short time playing Netrunner. Wow that was like shockingly amazing.

We reset and played again. This time the game played out more like a typical game. Once again early on I had the cards to do the kill in hand. But the runner was more careful in avoiding tags this time.

My little “tricks” we're playing out. I let the runner score some one point agendas and getting Franchise City scored in response. The runner scored 15 Minutes, that went back into R&D on my turn. I was allowed to keep two Pad Campaigns in play, even with three agendas in hand and a Scorched Earth, I was still able to create lots of new servers. The bottom of R&D was getting loaded up with agendas thanks to Daily Business Show. The runner had even taken News Team as a minus one agenda point to avoid taking a tag.

The game came down to one final play, if the runner failed on the run I'd won, because I could score out the agenda. The first ice they hit was a Wraparound, which got +7 strength, breaking that with Crypsis emptied the runners pockets of credits. Next up Turnpike, the runner gets a tag – finally! Then he final piece of ice an Enigma that the runner was able to break. Bugger they were through and got the win. Next turn I could have played the two Scorched Earth to kill them, or scored the agenda.

What a fantastic game. Who cares that I lost, it was a blast.

After a flurry of text messages from Jonathan, our Pandemic Legacy evening was moved to Wednesday, and transformed in to a three player gaming evening.

Our first game of the evening was naturally Five Tribes, since in the text exchange Jonathan had said he wanted to play the game again. How much did Jonathan like the game? Well in a virtual shopping basket in a virtual store, in a virtual world, is a virtual copy waiting to be turned into a real physical item in meat space once a virtual button has been pressed, and digits representing money are moved from one virtual place to another. Or without all that waffle, it's sitting in his Amazon basket.

Once again Jonathan's tactic of buying items, ignoring the djinns or clearing tiles paid off and gave him the win. Obviously I'm really bad at this game and came in last by a point to Debbie. A single point!

We then switched things up by playing Five Tribes again but this time with the expansion The Artisans of Naqala. Wow this is a great expansion. It doesn't add tonnes of stuff, but boy oh boy. With the mountains and chasm more thought has to be given to routes, because these obstacles have to be gone round. The sixth tribe adds a new scoring avenue and power ups, the tent wooden token, adds a scoring booster. It's a very nice expansion that doesn't overload you with new rules to learn, it just fits very naturally with the base game.

Jonathan and Debbie's scoring just went ballistic this game, Jonathan burst through the two hundred points barrier. Debbie hit 179 points, while I managed to beat my previous score but was way way way behind the other two on scoring. So yes I lost again and Jonathan won.

We finished off the evening playing a couple of games of Batman Fluxx. I won the first game, while Debbie took the win for the second game. Like Love Letter with Fluxx you choose the theme you like and play that. Some slight changes to rules, the way things play, but you expect that. In Batman Fluxx keepers have abilities/rules that can be used. For example I think it was the Batmobile I could discard to gain another turn straight away at the end of mine. Or the Batcave increases the number of cards you can draw, hand limit, play by one.

I enjoy Fluxx, I like the changing rules and goals. It's not everyone's taste, I think the theme for tonight was right, and the others enjoyed playing it.

So a great bank holiday playing games, doesn't get better than that.

 

Magic Batman

game night

This afternoon saw me at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole. I'd promised to let the owners daughter play Magic a The Gathering Arena of the Planeswalkers after she saw it being played the other weekend. It's important that you keep your word to little people.

Despite getting some hits in taking out some creatures, I still got beaten. When it came to doing the defensive rolls I seemed to be rolling like Jonathan does in Memoir and Battlelore, badly!

I can see the owner getting some pressure to get a copy! Which he had admitted he was getting a little bit of over Love Letter. I'd introduced his daughter to the game the other night at the Warlords gaming meet. Apparently the is idea he sells me stuff, not me introduce his daughter to games that he then has to buy. Oops ^__^

After being defeated at Arena of the Planeswalkers we had a game of Batman Love Letter. Being a two player game, we played first to eight points. Which I won with a massive nine points to three. I scored two at the end to get the win (that's guessing the other players card with a Batman card).

It was a fun afternoon.

And I'm back Monday for a painting workshop being held at the store.

Battle Royale

chatteris warlords, game night

By now regular readers will know that Tuesday evenings are now a gaming evening with the Chatteris Warlords. Which strangely enough is located in what can only be described as an O2 data network black hole. Yes despite having a signal to make calls, being able to get email, post to social media on your mobile device of choice (why anyone would want anything other than an iPhone I find mystifying) is not possible!

Luckily (or not depending on your point of view) the working mans club the Chatteris Warlords meet up at has free wifi. So I'm able to update social media etc once in the building.

Last night was a first for me playing Star Realms. How so? Well we played a four player game.

While with the core game, the odd promo, and Crisis expansion (minus using the Heroes) was more than enough cards to play with, what I didn't have enough of were the starting cards of explorers and vipers. There were only enough for two players. Once I get my hands on a Colony Wars set this situation will be resolved. However that didn't help last night. So we improvised. What we ended up doing was proxying some of the gambit and hero cards as vipers and explorers by slipping in a bit of paper in the sleeves with viper or explorer written on them. Not ideal, but workable.

Our four player game was being played as a free for all. So anyone could attack anyone else.

Ben and myself and played before. Ok Ben had been playing for a week. The other two players this was their first game.

As the photo above shows I had a great base and outpost setup for the later stages of the game. I was also down to just pure great cards each turn, which included The Ark and The Command Ship (got a turn before before being knocked out of the game). The only way I'd really want to improve the above was by having a Mech World there, but that went early on to the noobs. But everyone did quickly learn how bad ass Fleet HQ was once I got it.

The noob next to me also got a bases and outposts wall up in front of him. I should have destroyed it when I had a thirty point face smash to deal out. But instead I took Ben out of the game because I saw him as the bigger threat.

The noob opposite me I'd already knocked down to nine authority previously. Had no bases/outposts that would pose a problem or effective defense. Plus wasn't comboing big hits.

But the noob next to me, with his bases and outposts, was able to combo up taking out my outposts and having enough authority to smack me out of the game.

That meant the noob opposite had a single shot at taking the noob next to me. He gave it a good shot. Managed to get to twenty odd points to attack with. But not enough to win the game. Next go the noob next to me won.

I enjoyed playing Star Realms like this. There wasn't too much of everyone just ganging up on a single person. It seemed fairly even with everyone attacking everyone else. Although it is possible to have one against many.

My final game of the evening was a quick game of Batman Love Letter that I taught to a couple of people. Which both enjoyed.

A fun evening of gaming. Lots of different games going on, Bolt Action, X-Wing and that WWII airplane game that inspired/influenced X-Wing to name a few.

I Have A Plan!

Fenland Gamers, game night, love letter

We were going to be a man down last night, so with no Matt the remaining Pandemic Legacy crew decided to hold a normal game evening instead.

Our first game of the evening was one of the hot games of 2014 Five Tribes. If you remember I had played this once before nearly a year ago, but the experience was less than enjoyable because of a big baby being a sore loser.

This evenings experience playing Five Tribes was so so much more pleasurable. Jonathan's tactic of getting goods from the trade row won out. Jo was collecting fakirs for some reason, and despite it being pointed out they are worth no points at the end, claimed she had a plan.

Our game ended because there were no more legal moves left to play.

I love the fact you get this nice thick (read lots of pages) score pad for this game. Discoveries are you paying attention? You don't even give a score pad!

After the scores were calculated and added up, Jonathan romped home for the win.

Our second game of the evening was Takenoko. Cute panda, bamboo, frustrated gardener, what more could you want in a game?

This game seemed to be over quickly. It definitely lived up to the predicted forty five minutes playtime on the box. Everyone but myself seemed to be completing their aims quickly. Jonathan took an early lead. Very little irrigation was taking place, or more accurately none except for some I did. There was hardly any bamboo growing either. A lot of tile placement was going on, and they were the cards being completed the most by the others.

Jonathan won, by completing the goal of seven cards and getting the bonus two points. In Doscoveries the wooden die feel light, and I don't really enjoy handling them. However the wooden dice in the Tokenoko feels much better.

Like Jonathan I too thought we were missing something about the game? What was the point of the other cards? More to the fact the gardener. I'm going to have to go on bgg and see if this is a common problem with them game.

It did hit me over night maybe this isn't really a four player game! Maybe it works better as a three player game.

I had a meh feeling after the game. Neither hated it or really loved it. The question I have to ask myself does this now warrant staying in the collection? It might hit the table again to try it with three players. But at the moment it is sitting on a short list of now two with Krosmaster Arena of being on my way out list.

Wrapping up the evening we first played Love Letter Batman. Jonathan just walked away the victory for this game getting four tokens in two games before the rest of us even got a single token. For the record that's two wins, and two eliminations using the Batman card to guess correctly a players card.

The evening concluded with a game of Lost Legacy and our great debate, controversy of the evening.

So what caused the debate? It was the investigation phase. We were all still in at the end of the game. So we started the investigation stage to find the Lost Legacy card. As per game rules, we started at one, and went up in order, for people to take their turn locating the Lost Legacy card. I was first to go on number four. I guessed Jonathan and was wrong. Next was five, which was Debbie and she had it in her hand and won. So Jo and Jonathan didn't get a go guessing. It was the way this ended that was the bit causing the problem. Made worse when it was pointed out that because Jonathan had an X card he wouldn't get to guess at all.

In this game if you had two discarded X cards you are eliminated. Jonthan had drawn one early, and had ended up with a second, so was handicapped unable to get rid of the card to get one to allow him to guess at the end. I did point out there were cards in the deck that could have overcome this situation. I had one I didn't play that would have got him out of the situation. Jo played one that would have by shuffling his discard pile back into the deck, but instead she used it on my discard pile instead.

I didn't see it as an issue. There is a lot of decisions and thought that has to go into playing Lost Legacy. If you have a low number card do you play it for its ability or hold on to it to guess early at the investigation stage? I played the one card The Saint early which stopped me being eliminated. I had also played a card that allowed me to look at two cards off the top of the deck, put one in the ruins and put one in my hand. So I had knowledge of the ruins.

The higher value cards in the game seemed at trying to eliminate players. So for me ones you definitely try and play.

I think the theme didn't help (Jonothan isn't a scifi fan), and a little confusion over the end part of the game with none of us realising until the end when we went through the rules for the investigation phase that low is good at that point. Which is different to Love Letter.

Five Tribes was definitely the big hit of the evening.

 

Use the force Luke

chatteris warlords, game night, magic, X-Wing Miniatures

Yesterday was the Hobbit Hole's X-Wing Store Championships. Which because of the required playing space (each game play area is a 3' X 3' space) and number of players was being held at the local working men's club hall (also home of the Chatteris Warlords).

I wasn't taking part, I dropped out of buying the X-Wing expansions and keeping up with the meta just before the Scum and Villiany expansions hit. Which was the around the same time Imperial Assault came out. I wasn't getting to play X-Wing, still not selling my collection as the models are amazing, plus I can only afford to follow one of these type of games, and I thought I'd stand more chance getting Imperial Assault to the table.

The new Ghost model from the Star Wars Rebels cartoon is beautiful. And what surprised me the ship is bigger than the Falcon. I may be tempted to get this one, for its model factor.

So why was I there then if I wasn't going to take part in the tournament? Well rumour before hand was there might be some other games being played as well on the fringes. So with some games and decks in a bag I had turned up in hope of playing some games.

My first game was against March Jamie (and yes I do give him some banter about being from March) and a friendly game of Magic the Gathering. This time my green/black deck worked! The two previous times I played this deck I struggled to get the lands needed to play cards. This time I got after a couple of mulligans I got a starting hand I was happy with, and was getting cards I could play, and the lands I wanted. The game ended up being very close. I was left with one point of health, as I delivered a finishing blow to get a win!

The second game I got to play was a three player game of Colt Express, once more with March Jamie and a third anonymous party. The third party was very keen to play this game, because they wanted to play with the time machine promo, and I knew the rules for it. Maybe a little too late we discovered the anonymous third party may or may not have been influencing the cards that appeared in their hand of cards to play! Not surprisingly that anonymous third party won! This was a casual game, and played for fun.

After that March Jamie and I continued the earlier Magic the Gathering theme by getting Arena of the Planeswalkers to the table.

At last!

I didn't win a single game of this out of the three we played. But I had a blast playing it. After each game we swapped to a Planeswalkers that hadn't been played yet.

There were some great moments, like when I was playing Jace and using his spells and enchantments to frustrate Jamie by sending his squads back to his reserves. Or when March Jamie found out about Ob Nixilis and his ability to simply destroy an adjacent enemy once a turn. That was funny, because he had moved a single unit strong water based creature next to him to attack.

Ok that last game there was a little bit of time pressure because the it was getting dangerously close to the end of the time the hall had been booked for. So I did a mad rush in with Ob Nixilis to take on the opposing forces when I should have moved everything up together.

But still as I said there were many fun moments that made the game very enjoyable. It's is such a shame that Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro are not getting more behind this game. This game needs more expansions fast. Such as a landscape expansion adding more landscape to the game, the 3D element makes the game much more interesting, not just visually but game play wise. It affects line of sight, bonuses when attacking and defending, and also movement.

A major element of this game is also the squad building, or would be if there were more squads. That's the other expansion this game needs, more so than landscape. Not being able to build squads or tailor your spells deck is really limiting the game.

The models are really quite impressive in their detail considering the cost of this game. Not the best quality, but surprisingly good. The play area is quick to setup, but you do need a large table to play.

Arena of the Planeswalkers is a blast, but let down by poor support. Which is a shame, it deserves to be better supported, FFG would have done so much more with this. Actually I'd love to see PlaidHat licence this to make an Ashes version.

So glad this got to the table, will definitely be playing again.