Last night saw Jonathan and I visiting the pad of Debbie and Jo to play a “marathon” play session of Ticket to Ride. Ok not so much a marathon because Debbie was catching a bus to Kings Lynn at 10:30 to sign fans autographs.

In the meantime our evening of trains geekery kicked off with a game of Ticket to Ride Europe.

Once more I was faced with an upside down map of Europe. My tickets seemed to fit together okish.

During our game play there was plenty of banter and laughter. And somehow I was completing tickets! What was funnier not until I was nearly out of trains did anyone notice I was getting to that point!

Finally scoring and I had won! My first physical game win in a long time.

Our next Ticket to Ride map was the latest one released the UK. None of us had played this map before.

For the UK map they introduced technology cards. Cards that you had to buy so that you could do things like create ferry routes, or create routes in Scotland (or Wales, Ireland and France), or create routes that required three and four cards to build.

I liked this addition to the game. Remembering you needed them before making a turn did slow one or two of the others.

My initial starting tickets were interesting, I don't think I had one worth more than five points. Plus I had a one point route I could complete straight away!

With lucky draws I was able to get the technology cards I needed to be able to complete my tickets. Then I started holding the cards needed to get the technology that would make each completed ticket worth two extra points.

After getting that I was trailing on the score board. But there was a way to catch up and go into the lead. Sitting on the board was a massive forty points in the form of a ten card route to New York. So I went for that. No one else was going for it.

I think it came as a surprise when I played that route and jumped massively into the lead. I was waiting for the “that's over powerful” comment.

By the time I had scored that massive route, I was within striking distance of triggering the end game. The others still had lots of trains in front of them. So that's what I did, I went for routes that would allow me to trigger the end game as quick as possible.

After the final counting I had won again.

As I said I loved the technology cards. At the start of the game with such short routes I was wondering how anyone could get to one hundred points. Were the designers being optimistic? But at the final count I ended up with ninety nine points. I was even pleasantly surprised that there were route cards worth over ten points.

We finished up our evening playing a couple of games of Codenames. Our teams were split up as boys against girls. Both games were won by the boys. I think this was the first time I've played where I also got to guess from the clue.

Another great evening of gaming, and I had a clean sweep of wins ^___^

Posted by me using my iPad and the Blogsy app

Last night was the monthly meet up of the Fenland Gamers gaming group in Wisbech (Capital of the Fens, Centre of the Universe).

Our first game of the evening was a five player game of Istanbul. We were playing the base game with the kebab shop promo. Which replaces the water fountain tile, which as popular opinion and I agree on is the better of the two tiles to use. It doesn't just allow you to recall your assistants but gives you an alternative action to do instead of paying two coins to send your criminal relative to another tile on the board to do the action of that tile.

For our game we used the random tile setup, instead of the short or long routes setups. Jonathan has his little game plan for the short route setup that scores him gems very easily using just three tiles that are close together. I wasn't sure if he had a similar plan for the long route setup. But I wasn't going to risk it. Neutralise the plans with randomness. See before the game had even had its first turn, the game had started in the setup!

Luck was on my side in this game, and I took an early lead in collecting three of the five gems that I needed, while the rest struggled to get enough goods together to collect one. I'd hit on a nice little engine, that allowed me to recycle a bonus card to get me the resources I needed to go buy the gems.

Katie did interrupt that flow by buying one of the gems pushing up the cost of my next one. But I'd got four gems this way before it was no longer a viable scoring option for me. I needed one more gem to win. The others had started scoring gems, Jonathan was starting to get close.

But I had a plan.

If I could gather sixteen coins I could buy my final gem from another tile. The others hadn't spotted what I was doing. They had hardly any money each, so none of them was going to be threatening to ruin my scoring opportunity.

I had a bonus card that allowed me to move three or four tiles instead of two. Then a five coin bonus card was left on the tile that allows me to grab a bonus card. No one took it. I got to the tile grabbed the bonus card, checked my math, I had the sixteen coins needed to buy the winning gem.

My next turn would be my winning move, despite the tile I needed to get to being three tiles away. I had that nice bonus card that allowed me to get there in one move and win.

Wow I'd won my first game of Istanbul ever. Ok I've only played it a couple of times previously, but despite loving the game I'd lost them.

Next up after my glorious victory, was a four player game of WWE Superstar Showdown. I sat this one out, although it's a game I want to play (well I do own it). My contribution to the game was ref! And just like the real thing, not an impartial ref.

It was boys against girls. Gavin and Jonthan had drafted Big E and the apex predator Randy Orton. While the Katie and Jo had John Cena and Daniel Bryant.

The figures representing the wrestlers are quite good, and a nice size. Although the game supports upto four players, I think from my observation the game is more suited as a two player game.

The “rock, paper, scissors” mechanic when simultaneously revealing cards, and the pre-programming of your moves by selecting the three cards you want to play, works well I think for this game.

I think thematically loosing cards from the deck mimics a wrestler getting weaker, more tired as the match goes on really well.

As Jonathan pointed out the iconography on the cards takes a little getting used to. Luckily there are some handy reference guides on the board itself.

I'd love them to release an expansion for the game of some classic wrestlers like my favourite Stone Cold Steve Austin, or The Undertaker. Maybe add more event types.

In the meantime this is one I'll play with Nath (he's a wrestling fan, or was). I think it helps if you are a fan of wrestling to get the most out of this game. It does seem to capture the theme well. What I observed hasn't put me off the game. It won't go down as a great game. But it will be one of those fun, light games I think. But proof of this will be when I play it with Nath and see what he thinks.

Posted by me using my iPad and the Blogsy app

While Debbie is off answering the lure of grease paint and treading the boards reprising her off off off Westend Olivier Award winning performance of third tree from the left, the rest of our pandemic fighting group had to find our own entertainment for last night.

Sadly Matt was unable to make it, leaving Jonathan and myself to duke it out over the tabletop field of cardboard.

Our first game of the evening was Discoveries. A game Jonathan had been wanting to try.

During our game I was snapping up the tribes cards, especially after I got one early that allowed me to ignore whether the tribe was a friendly or hostile tribe. What I had forgotten was the points are awarded for the tepees based on who has the most, and not for the actual number you have. Which gave me a six point advantage instead of a twelve point one.

Damn that was a big miscalculation. One that cost me the game. Jonathan did better on the set collection than me, and edged the points scored on completed explorations also. So the six point advantage I got on the tepees was not enough to swing the game in my favour.

I think when the worst thing you can say about a game are comments about how the dice feel too light, or they should have included the score pad, then the game has to be good. And it is an enjoyable game. Is it a great game? No. But definitely one that will see more play. I have to try it with more players, who knows the whole game may change and become great.

Our second game of the evening was Battlelore Second Edition.

I was playing the Uthuk Army, while Jonathan played the Daqan Army.

One of the nice touches over Memoir '44 is the mustering of your army. This is basically building your army from the forces available to you before combat. This was our first play so we went for the other nice touch of using one of the predefined armies provided for the game. The ones we chose are shown below.

I chose mine because I wanted to play with a big monster! While Jonthan chose his because he thought a smaller army would be easier to command while learning the game.

The great thing about Battlelore is having the setup being part of the game. Which means Jonathan and I get to choose a scenario for our half of the board.

These scenarios decide victory point scoring, and extras like getting lore points. They also decide first player!

Scenario with the lowest starting letter goes first. Which meant Jonathan was going first.

Then after setting up the board according to the scenarios chosen, it's time to place your forces on the board. And here is another great little touch. You place cards representing the units face down, along with dummy cards to disguise where your forces are. Then once all placed, both players turn the cards over and place the figures for their forces on the board.

Draw your starting hand of command cards and lore cards, and let battle commence.

Before starting I thought we might struggle to get enough lore to play lore cards, especially the higher cost ones. However that was not to be the case.

I made one tactical mistake right from the start. I thought I'd camp my Chaos Lord on my building to get the two lore tokens each go. However what I hadn't read before positioning near to the building was it can't occupy a building hex. Doh!

Destroying units doesn't earn victory points in Battlelore, as they do in Memoir '44. However occupying banner hexes at the end of your turn do. During the early game Jonathan was scoring two victory points each turn and taking an early lead on that front. The best I could achieve was a single point. But I was getting plenty of lore. So I thought my best avenue was to eradicate Jonathan's forces from the board, the second win condition.

I managed to stop Jonathan's victory point engine, and make good use of my lore cards. Occupying both banner hexes I had started getting two victory points each turn. Jonathan eventually started scoring victory points again. It was going to be a race for a victory point win. A smite the enemy from the face of the board was still on for me. But before that would happen one of us would have reached the required sixteen victory points.

My victory was a close win. If I hadn't won that turn, Jonathan would have won on his. It was that close.

Jonathan had been getting frustrated with his forces. The army was too light for going against mine. With the archers acting like artillery in Memoir, it didn't help that Jonathan was rolling badly! Which isn't helped with only one face on the die being the hit for archers. He wasn't much of a fan of the lore cards. I on the other hand was, I'd been using mine more effectively. I had even called a swarm to block line of sight on my units, stopping an attack.

I like Battlelore, it's your Memoir fix when you want a fantasy setting. There are some great touches to the game. Definitely one to get back to the table, and add to its armies.

Posted by me using my iPad and the Blogsy app