Category Archives: still alive

What’s new pussy cat?

bgstat, by the numbers, Fenland Gamers, gaming stats, life, the universe, and everything, stats, still alive

January was a slightly better month for me gaming wise than the previous two months. But still the numbers weren’t great.

However I should be grateful that I got to play some games. Especially that some of those games were with Nathan.

Now I am hoping now that Nathan is driving, and has a new car. That Nathan will be able to navigate the British roads to find his way up to mine. Enabling us to play some of the bigger games that are not an option at his due to the clash between game foot print and the size of his table. Or in simpler terms his table isn’t big enough. To be able to at last share my favourite game of all time Scythe with him will be amazing.

My top 9 games for January 2024

What I do find incredible from last months stats is that I played 10 (not 11 as Knock Out Whist aka Trumps was not a new to me game) new to me games. That’s two thirds of the games I played in January.

I have ordered twenty new custom d6 dice for Fenland Gamers members to have. It’s a new design for the six face, that has the club name and year.

Like the previous design (which I still have some left) I’ll be giving them out to regular club members for free.

I even have a design ready to go for UKGE this year to give to club members that make it to the show and the annual club picture that gets taken there.

Plus I want to do a club poker chip. But I have to buy them in quantities of fifty to get them at a reasonable price. They are also a bit more expensive. So they will have to wait until later in the year.

There is only so much I can finance out of my own pocket for this sort of stuff. I’m not on some CEO banker salary.

I like being able to do stuff like this for members.

Whilst I’m talking about Fenland Gamers and this ties in with the last life, the universe, and coffee post, I am testing the waters on the viability of Sunday sessions. At the moment I have created one club event to gauge interest. I’ll write more on that in future I’m sure.

Payday was Friday. Which was just at the right time to enable me to order the latest offering from Stonemaier Games, Wyrmspan, along with the optional deluxe component kit. I’ll leave the neoprene playmats until the next payday, along with the Rolling Realms promo packs.

Interesting enough this release of Wyrmspan has an initial print run of 100,000 copies. That’s a crazy number. Usually (I think I’m remembering this correctly) publishers print twenty to thirty thousand copies of a game initially. Then if the game does well do a second print run.

We know Wingspan sold an insane number of copies (well over 1.5 million by now I would think). But does that incredible success translate to Wyrmspan?

I can’t wait to see the next state of the nation post/email from Stonemaier Games where they give the total number of copies sold for each of their games.

Until Wingspan, Scythe was the bestseller. I’m just curious to see if Apiary and/or Wyrmspan have it in them to challenge Scythe for that number two spot. I am expecting them both to do well.

When I was sharing with a friend at work Friday morning that I had ordered Wyrmspan she said my face lit up. I guess I’m pretty excited about getting the game.

Once more with feeling

life, the universe, and everything, still alive

It’s another one of those posts where I let you know I’m still alive.

Obviously writing one of these posts means I’ve done no gaming at all in over a week now.

My free day yesterday was an opportunity to play a game or two. But alas no one even responded to my post on the clubs discord server.

It’s probably for the best.

Not sure how good an opponent I’d be.

At the moment I’m feeling very bruised emotionally.

Thinking about it I’ve been this way for three months or so now.

I can’t wait until I swap stores which should help on that front. The three weeks can’t go fast enough.

The little bits of gaming during this time have been but brief rest-bite from it all.

I don’t think my new shift pattern will enable much gaming. Not unless I can fix the Tuesday evening gaming location or hope folks are free Sunday afternoon.

Will have to see how it works out on that front.

So I’m still here. Just a bit battered.

Hopefully a good week ahead

father son gaming, life, the universe, and everything, still alive

Things change. It’s the only thing that we can count on in life. Well that and the other two, death and taxes as the saying goes.

Things are going to change on the work front once again. For the better? Who knows?

In the meantime I have nine days off.

The plan is to go visit Nathan for a couple of days.

Obviously I’m taking the LoTR lcg and the Fellowship of the Ring saga.

But alongside that I’m taking some dice games with me to play as research. In that pile are Seasons, Viva Java the dice game, High Score, Yahtzee, Farkle, the Knizia books, Age of War, Hellboy the dice game, and hopefully Strike! (if it arrives in time).

I’m really looking forward to seeing Nathan and playing games with him. It’s been way too long since my last visit.

The gaming outlook looks bleak

life, the universe, and everything, still alive

Well it looks like December will be a very bleak month for gaming for me.

December has gotten off to a rotten start.

My first Friday evening off and unable to rustle up a game. No one seems free or well enough either to play anything today.

Saturday looks like a write off too.

Monday and Tuesday the community centre isn’t open. So my usual two days off (my weekend) no gaming happens.

So at the moment my only opportunities for gaming this month are three club sessions.

It’s a little disappointing. I’m dying to get Dune Imperium Uprising to the table since it arrived Thursday. Play a game or too of Dice Masters.

During such a busy period at work, down time is more important than ever. Doing something that you get immense pleasure from even more so.

Sadly I think I’m going to be having to draw upon the reserves to get through the upcoming period, and hope the new year starts off better.

A brief life update

life, the universe, and everything, still alive

It’s been another hectic week and it’s just going to get busier as we enter the run in to Christmas.

At work it’s basically all hands to the pump.

So December is looking like a bad month for getting games to the table.

Dune Imperium Uprising has arrived. Sadly it looks like everyone interested or possibly interested in playing it are recovering from a bout of sickness and diarrhea hitting their household.

The D-Day Dice Kickstarter has been a surprise arrival. No warning it was fulfilling, just an email from the Royal Mail saying a package was coming.

I have a new book to read. It’s all about cheating in video games. It’s an academic text and I’m looking forward to looking at the research and its conclusions.

See you in the next post.

The reorganisation continues

Friday Night tv, Holiday tv, life, the universe, and everything, Middle week tv, still alive

I have the flooring to do. But I have the shelves in the living room up.

Yes not the expensive IKEA Kallax that are very very popular in the board gaming community. But budgets define the options and choices we can make. These were within my budget.

After starting to fill these two units it was apparent they wouldn’t be enough. I would need more.

The problem is and has been space to put them up.

To get these in my two seater settee had to go.

I had a suitable spot for two more to go in the dining room once the table there went.

However before I cleared that and put the plan into action there was something big happening to the house.

My landlord was having a new front door and windows put in. The “old” ones were most likely the original ones (making them about 100 years old!)

Existing units in living room
New units in back room

All that window stuff happened whilst I was off on the union rep training last week.

So Saturday saw me getting the table cleared. I then put the two new units together configured so the lowest shelf was above Loki cocking leg height!

I’m now starting to fill the new space.

It’s going to be very close to whether this will be enough additional space to hold the rest of my game collection.

In the meantime I have a new dvd project to watch at some point that has just popped through the door in the last week.

New dvd project

Yes I’m a fan of Planet of the Apes franchise. I can even find nice stuff to say about the Tim Burton remake! But before I go off about all this and what they mean to me I’ll stop. All that sort of stuff needs saving for when I do a post about this viewing project.

Despite having a space issue for storing board games. It doesn’t stop the odd new arrival or pre-ordering stuff. In this case I’m expecting Dune Imperium Uprising at some point soon. It’s out now in the States I believe, and pre-orders from Dire Wolf have been sent out. I’m just waiting for it to arrival with retailers in the UK so my pre-order can be sent.

I’m waiting for Amazon to send me the latest book by Scott Rogers. This one is on board game design. Can’t wait to read it. Plus I have a book on cheating in video games on the way. For reason both won’t be here until next week. Very unusually slow for Amazon.

Catch you in the next post.

UPDATE: I did get some fantastic news late last night from the eldest of my sons (well I still look on them as that, even though there may not be a biological link). It nearly bought me to tears.

Long time readers of my ramblings will remember one of my big regrets in life is my relationship or lack of it with the eldest two boys.

So it meant a lot to me that he shared the news with me. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he hadn’t and I’d found out via Nathan. It would have hurt. But I wouldn’t have held any ill feelings.

I’m not going to say exactly what the news is because I’m not sure it’s my place to do so.

I’m so happy for the eldest.

Hotel Life

life, the universe, and everything, still alive

Still here with yet another life update post.

Been away on a union rep training course last couple of days. Which has been fun and informative.

Even been put up for a couple of nights in a Premier Inn.

I’m not sure the price difference between this chain and Travelodge is warranted. I see hardly any difference in the quality of the rooms.

I will grade the breakfast here as a 6 out of 10. Let down massively by the lack of fried bread and having hash browns.

But being in the hotel reminded me I do need to book a hotel for UKGE. The Travelodge we normally frequent is not its usual £35 a night at the moment. But double that. Have they cottoned on to the fact that UKGE is on and they can exploit us poor boardgamers?

Although there has been no gaming since Friday. At least there are plans for playing games this Friday in place.

Right catch you laters now I’ve let you all know I’m ok.

Failed plans

life, the universe, and everything, still alive

It’s been a quiet week on the gaming front so far.

This weeks planned lcg/ccg/tcg game night on Tuesday fell through.

We were due to be playing Commander however the one flaw we didn’t foresee was the community centre would not be open!

Unbeknownst to any of us, having missed the change to the opening hours sign the community centre would be closed on not only a Monday but also Tuesdays now (except for the third Tuesday of the month for the open mike evening).

It’s not surprising as the business had been pretty slow on a Tuesday with them closing early. Which we were fine with.

Now we need to find either another night that works for everyone, or another Tuesday night venue.

At the moment current thinking might be every other Friday evening.

I have pre-ordered the new Dune Imperium Uprising. Which hopefully will be hitting stores this weekend. So maybe with me by the middle of next week. I’m excited to play this and see how the changes work.

The Two Towers expansion for LotR lcg was posted this morning along with the Deadpool and X-23 hero packs for Marvel Champions.

Obviously the Two Towers and Fellowship are something I want to play with Nathan. But I want to bring not only LotR but Marvel Champions to a lcg/ccg/tcg evening. I know FFG did these special scenario decks for LotR for cons like GenCon. Which were made available to the public. Sadly these are out of print and going for the usual stupid money. I know there are fan run cons for Marvel Champions where they have custom villian scenarios. These of these would be ideal for a game night but alas cost or lack of info means currently they are not an option.

Tomorrow is club night so looking forward to that. It’s looking like another low attended one. Numbers have dropped recently. I’ll be taking Apiary, Terraforming Mars the dice game, and Grail Cup.

So that’s the none eventful week so far.

Laters.

Plans for my week off

life, the universe, and everything, still alive

After such a gruelling couple of months work wise I have a week of R&R.

Sadly it’s between paydays so I don’t have the funds to visit Nathan. Which I need to sort out as a priority.

In the meantime I do have some gaming arranged.

The plans start off with the weekly lcg/ccg/tcg game night. Not sure what we’ll play yet. That’ll be numbers dependent.

Then Wednesday sees me visiting Ben to play Apiary. Plus time allowing we might fit in a game of Terraforming Mars the Dice Game.

Thursday is going to be mystery game night. Marcin has arranged a gaming session. But what we are playing who knows. It hasn’t been decided yet.

So glad I have some gaming going on this week. Plus it looks like my shift pattern for next few weeks might allow me to get to club nights too.

Catch you in the next post.