Category Archives: game night

game night

Learning Games and Draft

dice masters, Dicemasters, game night

“OMG Darren! Just stop. You need to write about something else for a while. Give us a break from all this Dice Masters ramblings.”

But, but, I actually got to play it last night.

Dave and I met up and played some games of Dice Masters.

We started off playing the learning teams from the TMNT set. So two characters each, and three basic action cards in the middle.

Starting off with poor dice rolls and being forced to basically buy basic action dice is not a great start to a game of Dice Masters. But thems the way the dice roll sometimes.

With that sort of head start it wasn’t a surprise that Dave got to claim the first victory.

I have to say I was a bit disappointed with the cards selected for the teams in this learning game. The two characters in my team didn’t have any synergy at all. Their abilities were pretty pointless.

Our second learning game was the Secret Wars Origin packs. Now these were more fun. I had the Groot led team, whilst Dave had team Spidey.

I thought this worked better as a learning game. Groot’s ability to stop a character from blocking for the turn when fielded was very useful in putting a stop to the Spider-Man blocking ability. Much to Dave’s annoyance.

For this second game I was able to go on and get the win.

Game three saw us jump right in and do a two player draft with the two Secret Wars draft packs I had.

Wow the difference in card quality and design is significant. The cards felt so much better. Although I do have one complaint. The trigger abilities by an asterisk need to be more clearly marked on the cards. So it is clear which is an on going ability and which is the triggered one by rolling a side with an asterisk.

They do foil cards now! Wow I like that.

During our draft I thought that I had drafted a Reed Richards when in fact I had accidentally taken a second Beast! How that happened I don’t know. It was not my intention. I had wanted a second Fantastic Four team member to benefit from a buff that Invisible Girl gave other Fantastic Four members. It’s why I specifically drafted a Namor with the Fantastic Four icon on.

What a blunder!

Despite losing. I just couldn’t handle Galactus. I kept throwing bodies in front of him, sometimes enough to KO him. But when he also had Thanos with him. It eventually wore me down. Although Beast was annoying as a blocker with his reroll when KO’d. We had a lot of fun.

I don’t think in this game either of us bought a basic action die.

Draft works really well like this. Much simpler than opening multiple booster packs.

Glad I ordered two Dark Phoenix draft packs now (might after drafting them, use them with the Secret Wars draft packs create a Modern cube for drafting).

It was so much fun playing the game again. Boy have I missed playing it. And now once I create some cubes, or teams I can play with my friends whenever we want.

I got some gaming in

game night

The pills I have to pop to mask the arm pain are still working. Which means I was able to get some gaming in.

This meant I was able to carry out the Three Sisters plan on Tuesday.

What hadn’t been taken into account was we were clashing with the open mike night at the social club.

Unlike the open mike night at my local back in Guildford when I lived there, which was poetry and comedy. This one was all people that had the impression they can carry a tune.

One particular crime against humanity and music was a cover of Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive. Apparently the singer is a really nice guy. But I’d argue otherwise just based on this one song alone that he is a cruel sadistic git.

The other acts were not much of an improvement with their covers either.

With this audible assault going on we were still able to concentrate on our game of Three Sisters. Barely.

This game was an all in game using both the weather mini expansion plus the third mini rock garden pad.

I rarely use the apiary when I play Three Sisters. But this time I set my self the goal of focusing on progressing along its tracks.

It’s one of the things I love about this roll and write. There are so many ways to approach the game and focus on things.

I also managed to grow all the pumpkins! Plus complete a couple of perennials.

Considering Dave had been thrown in the deep end (literally) with this game his score was quite respectable.

Three Sisters Scores

We followed Three Sisters with a game of the roll and write I picked up second hand from this years UKGE, Roll Through the Ages Bronze Age.

This is a step down in complexity from Three Sisters. But still an enjoyable game especially when you roll three skulls and cause a plague giving your opponents minus three points.

I was pleasantly surprised when I won this one. Everyone else was building more than me whether it was cities, monuments, or making discoveries.

Roll Through the Ages Bronze Age scores

After the two roll and writes the “music” got too much for Dave forcing him to leave before he was driven mad and forced to get revenge. We had a three player game of Village Rail.

This was a new to me game. Which was very enjoyable.

You know in Small World if you want a faction not at the start of the market row you have to place a coin on each faction until you get to the one you want? This game uses the same mechanic to draft cards whether they are scoring cards or track cards.

Money is quite tight in this game, with your main source of income coming when you complete a line and earn money for the number of items matching the bonus card or whatever it’s called you decide to use for that track.

Otherwise you are drafting cards to place in your play area to try and maximise the points you score when you complete the a track or for the long game of end game scoring.

Somehow I managed to get a convincing win. Beginners luck.

Village Rail scores

After this victory we too made a dash for the door with our auditory pain tolerance levels having been reached.

Last night saw me play AuZstralia for the first time.

This is a Martin Wallace game. I have one or two of his games in my collection (London second edition, Wildlands, Hit Z Road, come to mind straight away).

Having played this now I can see what all the fuss was when it came out.

These days I find Cthulhu themed games boring or at best a lazy theme for a game. However it works here but then again it could easily be replaced with dragons for example with Cthulhu being replaced by Tiamat.

But it’s the mechanics I like about this game. I like how each action you can take has a time cost, and repeating an action already with a cube on means it costs you gold plus the time cost.

Like Tokaido, Glen More, Trekking Through History, Patchwork, etc the person at the back of the time track takes the next turn until they are no longer last. It then becomes the new last placed person to take a turn or turns.

A rather cool thing is the ancient ones don’t actually start doing their thing until all players pass them on the time track. Then they start waking up and causing havoc.

Our game ended when Cthulhu destroyed Marcin’s port. After the points were totted up Diego and I would have shared the victory if Cthulhu hadn’t scored one more point than us to grab the victory.

AuZstralia final scores, the ancient ones won with a score of 24

I blame Marcin for building too many farms for Cthulhu to reduce to desolate waste lands and thus giving the ancient one the points for victory.

But it is a fun competitive co-op. I like it a lot.

I’m glad the meds masked the pain enough for me to play some games this week with my friends. I needed these after missing last weeks gaming.

Well, how could you have waited so long?

Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night

Friday was once again a Fenland Gamers club night.

I got a chance to play Outlive with its expansion for the first time in about five long years.

When I last played Outlive in 2018 the expansion was a mere twinkle in the games designers eyes.

Marcin got me picking the expansion up for him at UKGE this year for him. So I most definitely hadn’t played the game with the expansion.

I was keen to play the game again.

It was great playing this post apocalyptic worker placement game after such a long time.

I came last, so not even first loser. But I did some cool stuff. I had fun.

After a morning taking Mum to get her new glasses adjusted, and installing a new Wi-Fi router (could have done without that small expense) I picked up a handy game or two to play with Dave as I left the house to meet him.

Which is why we ended up continuing the trend started by Outlive the evening before by playing Eminent Domain.

Eminent Domain is another game that last got played in 2018.

I do like Eminent Domain. But this deckbuilder does not get nearly as much play as it deserves, as the gap between plays proves.

We did waste a bit of time setting up. Working out what cards were what. And for me refreshing my failing memory with the rules, as Dave playing the game for the first time learnt them. But that’s the drawback of picking up a game that I hadn’t played in a long long time.

After narrowly losing to Dave I introduced him to the roll and write genre with Trek 12: Himalaya.

This is a fun introductory roll and write I think with just enough challenge to keep more experienced players engaged.

I did managed to summit our first mountain, narrowly failed the second mountain by 2 points, and was not close on the third and final mountain.

With me getting points for the first two mountains, and Dave claiming points for the third. We ended the expedition a draw.

However I had other reasons for introducing Dave to roll and writes. The next ones I want to play with him are Three Sisters and Motor City. Yep we will be going from the safe paddling pool where Dave has just dipped his toes in the water to dropping him in the deep end!

Splish, splash!

If you go down to the woods today…

game night, LCG, Lord of the Rings, LoTR

You’re sure of a big surprise.

“The nastiest things they saw were the cobwebs: dark dense cobwebs with threads extraordinarily thick, often stretched from tree to tree, or tangled in the lower branches on either side of them. There were none stretched across the path, but whether because some magic kept it clear, or for what other reason they could not guess.” The Hobbit

Well maybe the spiders weren’t that big a surprise. Given the abundance of cobwebs. However the other monsters we came across were.

It had seemed such a simple task that we’d been asked to do.

“You are traveling through Mirkwood forest, carrying an urgent message from King Thanduil to the Lady Galadriel of Lorien…” Passage Through Mirkwood scenario LoTR LCG

Our party delivering this urgent message would have been an unusual sight, nay even a surprise to anyone coming across them on the road.

It’s not often you see dwarves and elves traveling together. Old animosities put aside for this most urgent of tasks.

Yes Dave (elves0 and myself (dwarves) were playing the two starter decks that I bought alongside the revised edition of the core set.

As this was a learning game we were only doing the recommended introductory scenario Passage Through Mirkwood.

Considering that the elves starter deck has Galadriel as one of its heroes I’m not sure what mental gymnastics to perform that explains her presence.

But blanking out this anomaly worked for me.

As our party of odd comrades made their way through Mirkwood by following the Old Forest Path, passing through the odd Forest Gate, and ascending the mountains of Mirkwood. We encountered the odd spider and party of orcs. But these were easily dispatched.

I don’t know if the encounter deck was being kind to us. But until the last quest card it did seem quite easy. We had single appearances of creatures. Which we fought successfully. At one point there were two scary looking threats in the staging area. But we were able to put facing them off as we had not amassed enough threat for them to engage us.

We’re these starter decks too powerful for this introductory scenario?

Our final hurdle was to find and defeat Ungoliant’s Spawn.

Luckily we found Ungoliant’s Spawn very quickly.

That when revealed ability of Don’t Leave The Path was a great aid in doing so.

However it was joined by forest Spiders and a King Spider.

Things had suddenly got much tougher.

But luck was on our side Gandalf final appeared and did some damage to Ungoliant’s Spawn. Our dwarven and elven allies were falling like flies as we battled to take out these spiders.

But eventually axe and bow managed to dispatch the eight legged freaks attacking them.

I really enjoyed Lord of the Rings LCG. It struck me as a less complicated Marvel Champions. But just as fun.

Resources are a big thing in this game and often you find you don’t have enough to play the cards you want to.

I think 2 players is a nice number to play this type of co-op lcg with. We know I’m not a solo player.

It was quick to pick up the flow of the game. Which I liked.

Obviously I love the theme of the game. And I’ve discussed my history with Tolkien and Middle Earth in a previous post or two.

Dave also enjoyed it. And after a discussion and showing Dave the campaign rules he’s happy to start a campaign. But he had one proviso. That we play on the expert setting where the hero health carries over between games and does not reset. I’m up for that.

So after I have exposed Dave to Marvel Champions we will start the core set campaign.

Wait I told you that!

Expeditions, game night

Last night saw Expeditions hit the table for the third time since it arrived.

I’m really enjoying the game. It’s fastly becoming a favourite of mine.

The game last night saw Julie, Dave, and myself exploring the frozen tundra.

The bgstat app randomly chose Dave as the first player. Which meant I got to choose first based on seating order.

This is how our chosen champions and mechs matched up after our choices:

  • Olga & Changa with Highlander – me
  • Anna & Wojtek with Odin’s Wrath – Julie
  • Vesna & Voltan with Tatanka – Dave

I really need to try another champion next time I play. But it’s hard. Olga is the champion of the Rusviet faction in Scythe. And we all know how I feel about that faction.

Whilst setting up the tiles, I particularly thought how cool that the two tiles that gave workers were on opposite sides of the board, with all the card draw clustered in the middle. This was going to force a splitting of the mechs depending on the plans of the players. No grouping, congestion here.

It was another game where I only refreshed once and that was early on in the game. And if my memory isn’t failing me Julie and Dave refreshed about three times each. The rest of the time it was the tile or card ability that was used.

We also saw less use of the sweep action to reset the face up cards. Which meant we saw less of the deck. That meant less of the cards I like to get came out.

Supplies for exploring

One thing I noticed at the end as I was boasting about my fourth and final glory star was how few cards I had left in hand. Not counting the two starting cards of the champion and their companion. I had two! The rest were either quests that I solved or items that had been to upgrade my mech.

The glory that I was able to boast about!
My end mech state

My victory was pretty comprehensive. I was particularly happy with the ruthless way I triggered the end of the game. My last turn saw me block off the second boast tile stopping Dave and Julie from getting a third glory token out.

Now I did help/advise both work out their best last turn to maximise points gained.

Final scores

It was at the end whilst packing up that Julie and Dave said that next time they knew to look for combos/synergies more.

Wait I told you that at the start. I pointed out during my early turns what I was looking for in a card! That I liked cards that gave me one of the main actions, such as move when I played it. It was particularly galling that Julie had said it as I told her, nah pointed to the cards that were out that fed into her mech ability of being able to use/get maps. Sadly I wasn’t able to do the same for Dave.

I ended up taking one of the cards seeing as Julie refused to act on my advice and go her own path.

I’ve played at different player counts now for each game, and I think it scales pretty well. Except when you have players inflicted with ap.

Turns are normally pretty quick, so little down time.

Although I think I’d max out the player count at four. I like that at the higher player count there is more blocking. Whether it’s intentional or not.

It was a fun evening and I loved that I got to share one of my favourite games to new players.

Wait did I just say it’s a favourite game?

Friday Night Encounters

Fenland Gamers, game night, Stonemaier Games

Last night was once again a Fenland Gamers club night.

Last night numbers were slightly down. But we had enough for a couple of tables. One table played The Warriors board game. Which if you are under a certain age have no idea it’s based on a 1970s movie. Mind you Jonathan had no idea it was a movie either. I think the only person playing it familiar with the source material was Dave. I’d be interested in giving it a try. I do like the movie.

Our table got to play the latest hotness, the sequel to Stonemaier Games second biggest selling game (it was the top until Wingspan came out) Scythe, Expeditions.

Every copy of Expeditions has an achievements sheet included. One side are the achievements to record names against. The other side is an extract from a captains journal (see below).

It turns out thanks to a really observant individual on the games Facebook group that there are different versions of this journal page. In less than 24 hours the group has managed to identify at least 17 different ones (it may be all of them now).

It’s suspected there are 20 different journal pages. Jamey did say there was a hint to the number in the photo. Which I have zoomed in on below. Which seems to confirm the number 20.

What’s even cooler is that Jamey signed 20 of these sheets and they were randomly placed in copies of the game!

My copy of Expeditions was the iron clad edition, with the add-on metal coins. The difference between the iron clad edition and the standard are the amazing metal mechs instead of plastic ones.

The production of the game is up to the usual gold standard set by Stonemaier Games. The setup of the game is made super easy by the games insert. With a great storage tray that holds the coins, worker meeples, and map tokens. Thus can be taken straight out of the box and used on the table.

The art is just out of this world. Jakub Rozalski is just amazing. I love the whole world he has built with it. That 1920’s alternative history with the mechs. Love it.

Story wise Expeditions takes place after the events in Scythe and the Rise of Fenris expansion. We shift from Europa to “…Siberia, where a massive meteorite crashed near the Tunguska River, awakening ancient corruption.” It’s our job to venture North to investigate this meteorite crash.

There is a darker tone to the plot line and art. I’m trying to think of a way to best describe the theme/tone. I think Scythe meets Cthulhu might best describe it.

There are some Easter eggs within the game. It wouldn’t be a Stonemaier game without them. There are two cards named after other titles in the Stonemaier catalogue (Charterstone and Scythe). Plus Jamey’s two cats feature on a card (see below).

We started off as a five player game, however three quarters of the way through our fifth player had to leave.

This first game took three and a half hours. But at full player count (for the majority of the game), and two players that suffer from analysis paralysis is it any surprise?

Once setup Expeditions is a table hog, and was a very tight fit with five of us round the table.

However the game has a table presence that is made with the large metal mechs.

The base snaps didn’t fit perfectly on one or two of the metal mechs. But I think that might improve over time.

For those thinking this is going to be like Scythe, it is not. There are a couple of similar mechanics, such as not being able to repeat an action twice, the victory track and glory tokens, and there are mechs! This plays completely differently. There is no confrontation/interaction between players apart from blocking another player getting to a space by occupying it yourself.

I love how the card titles help tell the story of the game. But having multi use cards that you have to decide when to stop using them for their ability and turn them into say an upgrade for the mech, a solved mission or meld a piece of meteorite is a cool.

There is also having to know when to do a refresh action to move cards from your activated area back to your hand. It’s a tough decision. It’s all you do on a turn. But the payoff is getting a powerful next turn. Although I did find it more useful doing the refresh action on a tile instead once one was revealed.

Being able to utilise not only your Commander and their animal companions abilities, but also your mechs is really important. I played Olga with Changa, naturally. I also had the highlander mech which meant I could put gained cards straight into my hand.

If Marcin hadn’t triggered the end of the game I would have on my next turn. Marcin also went on to win as well. But the point difference between us was from him having vanquished more corruption than me.

I had a blast playing Expeditions and can’t wait to play it again. I think this will be finding a place in my top 10 games.

Longer than a John Bonham drum solo

Game day, game night, Twilight Imperium 4

As planned our four player game of Twilight Imperium 4 (TI4) with the Prophecy of Kings (PoK) expansion took place yesterday.

Which meant Dave, Diego, Jeff, and myself gathered indoors round two tables pushed together on a hot July afternoon.

The previous evening I had confirmed that there was no booking of the community centre. It was important to know before hand if we had any time constraints (other than the place closing up for the night) before starting so we could make adjustments.

As per usual I arrived early to start setting up and merge the PoK expansion with the core game. I punctuated this with a triple quarter pounder cheese burger. Hey a galactic empire marches on its stomach.

When the others arrived there was still a little setup left to do, plus choose our factions.

Dave and Diego went with factions from the core game, whilst Jeff and I went with one of the new factions from the expansion.

The factions chosen were as follows:

  • The Nomad – me
  • The Universities of Jol-Nar – Dave
  • The Argent Flight – Jeff
  • The Mentak Coalition – Diego

By the time we finished setup (including choosing factions) nearly an hour had passed! So a 1:15pm start was really 2:15pm before our first expansionist actions were being taken.

For me TI4 (or earlier editions) is the board gaming version of epic stories like Lord of the Rings, or the Foundation series.

To be fair it might be quicker to read either than play TI4.

TI4 is an epic game. Not just because of the scale of it (it’s a massive table hog) but the inter-galactic warring factions fighting for supremacy has this epic grandeur feel.

The first few rounds were void of any conflict, and were mainly factions racing to grab planets to get the resources needed to build up their fleets for defensive and aggressive purposes.

Our first space battle was between Jeff and Diego over Mecatol Rex. Even after that skirmish combat was a rarity until the later stages.

I did quiet well developing my technology. It helped my Commander (part of PoK) enabled me to produce my command ship for free. This enabled me to develop War Sun technology and take Jeff on and rebuild very quickly after any losses.

We had two epic battles in the middle of the galaxy.

I liked what PoK bought to the core game. The leaders, mechs, factions. And it didn’t bring any real extra overhead to the game.

As a four player game we got to choose two strategy tiles each. Which was nice having two to activate. Although the second tile may not have always been one you had wanted.

We actually finished playing around 9:40pm. Yes I can see you doing the math. That’s about seven and a half hours of playtime.

A little longer than I had calculated. I’d estimated about five hours. But now you know why earlier I had checked about any bookings.

The thing is whilst you are playing you are so engrossed in the game that you have no idea what the time is. Before you know it seven hours plus have passed.

Ok you do get a hint during play when you miss phone calls asking where you are. But hey is it my fault I forgot to warn mum the game was likely to run a long time? Heck she got a McDonalds delivered out of it.

Anyway after the space dust had settled Dave’s turtling empire ended up victorious.

This was truly an epic afternoon and evening with great friends. The way a Summer Saturday truly should be spent.

In a social club far far away…

game night

The well-being day came and went. I did get to play some of the games I took with me in the afternoon.

Deep Sea Adventure was a hit with my friend Sam. I think she might be getting a copy once she is back from her holiday. In the meantime I showed Sam the Oink games app on her phone with the game (I think) free.

Love Letter along with Cat in the Box, and Sushi Go Party also hit the table that afternoon.

It was a great afternoon gaming with friends and colleagues who I don’t usually get a chance to play with. I hope that I get a chance to do this again.

Sadly Scythe Expeditions didn’t arrive by Friday evening. I knew it was a long shot. The update from Stonemaier was UK/Europe would be shipping this week. I was hoping that there might be a small chance it’d make an appearance but it was really wishful thinking.

I know Spiral Galaxy has started shipping however I’d love to know how many champions are in the UK with Expeditions orders. I’m not totally convinced they are shipping champions first. Or are there that many champions in the UK that ordered it?

Anyway last night was a chance to play a game or two with Gavin. It’s been a while since we last had an opportunity to play some games. With the stars aligning Diego was also able to join us, plus Julie and her son.

We started off playing Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

I really like this game. Obviously the theme is right up my alley. I am a Star Wars fan.

The components are great. The models of the villains and the Jedi are really good. Plus the robot figures that are used instead of disease cubes are not only detailed but have a variety of different poses.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars uses the pandemic engine. And I really like the changes they made to it.

The most obvious is the completion of missions and defeating the villian instead of curing diseases. Another is there are no outbreaks. Instead a block aid ship gets placed that needs taking out first.

Setup is much quicker with the missions. There is no shuffling cards into decks.

Talking of cards you don’t draw cards at the end of your turn. Instead drawing a card is one of the four actions you can take. Giving you much more control over your hand of cards, or allowing you to go hunting for a card.

Naturally the game beat us. Sorry Ventress defeated us. It had looked like Ventress was going to beat us royally. We had only completed one mission, the threat level was going up far to fast. But then we had a spurt of completing the remaining three missions and having a chance to defeat Ventress. However we ran out of time before we got that chance.

I think Nathan is going to enjoy playing this.

My final game with everyone was Vaalbara which Diego totally rocked. I left them playing Perudo.

A great evening gaming, and a long overdue catch up with Gavin.

It’s been emotional

game night, life, the universe, and everything

It’s been a long week.

One that’s been very emotional as well.

At the start of the week I finally had the offer from college to become a full time lecturer. Which I accepted.

However it hit me hard that the one person I really wanted to share the news with I couldn’t. I miss Nan so much.

And the working week ended that way to.

It’s not only the end of term but the academic year and my leaving class of level three students gave me a card and box of Maltesers. An unexpected and very nice thought.

But when I opened the card back in the room where I was doing my final marking of the year, my eyes nearly leaked as I read it.

The card means so much. It’s hard to express how. But it’s nice to know that all the hard work has been appreciated by the students.

After thanking the students again I just wanted to share the card with Nan. And once again the eyes threatened to leak. If it was hard to articulate how I felt about the card. There is no way I’m getting close to getting across how much I miss Nan.

Last night I got to play War of the Ring the card game with Diego. For once the free people of middle-earth (me) won. Plus it was a points win ending the game early by creating a ten point difference

But the glow of victory didn’t last long as Diego thrashed me at Star Wars the deckbuilding game as the Empire.

It was a cool evening gaming with Diego. I’m glad our life events are enabling us to play more games together. Now if only they would sync a bit more so we could game with Jonathan more.

The spice did flow

Fenland Gamers, game night

After the failed attempt to have a club night last week. Which would have been the first post UKGE we got back on track by having one this week.

I took along my now pimped out copy of Dune Imperium in it’s new home of the Deluxe Upgrade box. Along with After Us, War of the Ring the card game (with the four promo cards I purchased at this years UKGE), and Cat in the Box. Plus the limited edition, super rare black edition of the club tee. There are only three of these and all spoken for.

Despite only five people actually responding to the event on the clubs discord server. We actually had twelve turn up.

This meant we split up into three gaming tables of four players on each.

Luckily there were three others willing to play Dune Imperium.

The Dune Imperium Deluxe Upgrade kit (finally arrived earlier in the week)

One of them was new to the game so I limited our game to just the core and Rise of Ix expansion. Having Immortality in the mix as well would have been too much.

Who had which leader?

  • Viscount Hundro Moritani – me
  • Prince Rhombur Vernius – Julie
  • Princess Yuna Moritani – Dave
  • The Beast Glossu Rabban – new player

I bet me not playing Yuna surprised you. It surprised me too. But then Dave had already chosen her. So I had very little choice in the matter.

I liked Hundro a lot. Especially his starting bonus of getting an Intrigue card.

For most of the game I was just behind the leaders on the victory points. I was in the mix and just needed a good round to leap frog into the lead. Ideally timed to trigger the end game.

Early on I picked up an end game scoring intrigue card that rewarded me for being having three or more influence on the faction tracks. Followed by taking one off Julie that gave me a point for having more than ten solari. Almost straight away after taking that card off her I drew another with the same condition on it.

I had potentially four victory points in those three intrigue cards at the end of the game.

Our game went the full ten rounds.

I didn’t win a single combat. Most of them I didn’t even participate in.

In the later rounds I made sure I couldn’t lose the two alliances I had. In this game losing one to another player is a massive point swing.

In the last round I was able to pick up a Spice Must Flow card to gain a much needed victory point. It helped that the cost was reduced by three with a card I had.

After the dust had settled and points from tech tiles and intrigue cards added I won with twelve points.

I really love the deluxe upgrade kit. The models look awesome on the board.

The metal first player token is amazing. It feels really nice and has a great weight to it.

The insert I like. It just about fits everything in sleeved. There is no room for any thing else. So I hope there are no plans for a third expansion.

I think the only way the kit could be improved is if they had replaced the remaining cardboard with acrylic tokens.

I had a great time playing Dune Imperium. A great evenings gaming.