It’s funny where you end up talking about board gaming sometimes.

Yesterday after a night of forcing matter of differing types out of both ends of the body, and severe stomach pain, Mum ended up being taken into hospital for further investigation and some magic pills/injections to take away the pain and stop the sickness.

Which meant I was left holding the fort, and having to clean up the aftermath. Lets just say if there was a list of things not to put on a bucket list, I hit three of them recently. One of them happened a couple of weeks ago, and the other two were yesterday morning. I swore the messy one was something my brother was down for doing.

After feeding the dogs, cleaning up after the dogs (second time I’d done a similar job that morning), feeding Nan, I headed off to be with Mum at the hospital.

When I got to Mum she was on the happy pill and the pain was a far and distant memory.

To while away some of the time I had taken the player guide from the bundle to look at. It was this booklet that was to start a couple of interesting discussions about gaming.

The first was at the hospitals Costa while I was being served. I had just ordered a blueberry muffin and a cortado (it’s my favourite drink they do) when the assistant serving me noticed the players guide, and mentioned there was a new set out soon. To which I replied this weekend, and the Prerelease was last weekend. He was a MtG player too, and we chatted about cards, and Prerelease events.

As I was returning to Mum they were just wheeling her away for an x-ray. So I went with her.

Apparently this wasn’t her x-ray. But while waiting around the x-ray department the male nurse asked me about my players guide. He thought it was something to do with actual magic. So I handed over the players guide and explained it was for a collectible card game, and told me all about the new cards. We then got onto boardgames. He remembers really enjoying Escape from Colditz. I told him about the anniversary reprint, and the slightly updated rules. He seemed quite interested in this. I wouldn’t be surprised he ordered a copy. He’d also played Risk (I told him about Risk Legacy, and explained what a legacy game was). The last game he bought was Star Wars Monopoly. I can kinda understand it, it’s got Star Wars on it.

After the x-ray, and seeing Mum back to her room. It was time for me to head home and look after Nan, and save her from the dogs. Don’t worry Mum wasn’t alone for long. My step-sister and her husband spent all afternoon with her, keeping everyone updated on events or lack of a doctor seeing Mum. That was way beyond the call of duty and I’m very grateful for them doing so. It allowed me to be in two places at once so to speak. Mum was going to be kept in overnight for observation. Even then she had company for the evening. Which was handy because I was able to text through what tablets she was taking, and have a quick chat to reassure her we were doing ok this end.

Even if they don’t find anything and send her home later today (at the time of writing no idea what is happening) I hope Mum has been able to rest and enjoy a break.

So you have this fun co-operative zombie survival horror game that gets harder the more zombies that you kill. You have everything for it (well almost everything), but it’s hard to get to the table. Not everyone shares your love for the game. Which means all that thematic plastic and cardboard is taking up valuable shelf space, calling you to play with it.

After a long overdue conversation last night with a great friend of mine that lives north of the border and who I often describe as the “Scottish version of me” (which isn’t really a compliment) I know have a rule book on it’s way through the crumbling UK postal service.

My friend told me about a rule book just released from the looks of it from Osprey Games called Last Days Zombie Apocalypse, a miniatures skirmish game that could use any old miniature. After our phone call in a blatant attempt to lure me in my friend shared a video about the rules via a tweet.
After watching the video I was very interested. Even more so when I saw that the rules were just under £14 with Prime on Amazon.

So what attracted me to click the purchase button for the rules to this miniatures skirmish game? I mean I often complain that the reason I don’t play any miniature type game like Age of Sigmar, Star Wars: Legion and Blood Bowl to name a handful is the cutting of sprues, gluing and painting before I can even play them. Which takes an age. My argument has been I want to be able to buy the game in a FLGS, open the game up, punch cardboard for 20 minutes and start playing or learning to play. Not spend hours/days constructing everything before I can start playing. Which is basically every miniatures game out there. How about that for a sweeping generalisation?

The reason I went for this rule set for my first miniatures skirmish game, (ok may not be my first if you include Star Wars: X-Wing and Star Wars: Imperial Assault skirmish mode) is because it is designed to be used with whatever models you have at hand. The designer even mentions various games and sources you can get models from to use in the video (and on the Facebook group for the rules). One of those games he mentions is Zombicide. Oh wait I have a lot of Zombicide stuff, I can use them! A miniature skirmish game where I can virtually start playing straight away using my Zombicide miniatures, count me in.

Now I know that my unpainted miniatures will be an abomination to the full blown, totally into the hobby, builds their own custom miniatures person. But stuff them. This all of a sudden makes the format accessible to some-one like me. And believe me there are an awful lot of people like me out there, where that cut/glue/paint bit switches them off totally. Until the likes of Games Workshop remove that part of their product they will never really make the miniatures hobby accessible to a wider audience.

But back to this rule set. As part of my due diligence I looked at some of the terrain options that were linked to by the designer. They look pretty cool, and a reasonable price. The game like X-Wing plays in a 3ft x 3ft area. Which is a nice size. Totally easily to get a playmat to cover the play area so it is easy to know the boundaries. There is also the fact that this rule set adds zombies into the mix too. So there is that extra element to the skirmish that you have to take into account. How this compares to the Walking Dead miniatures skirmish game I don’t know. Not sure I will get to know either, because I won’t be buying it because of the above reasons.

I’m pretty excited to look at this rule set and see about adding some of the Zombicide characters into this alternate zombie apocalypse. I want the Big Bang Theory Gang as my skirmish crew.

From time to time I’m pretty sure you’ve heard or even come up with your own “fantasy” list of who you would want to have at a dinner party, or some other group activity. Usually there is a condition of some sort put on the list like historical figures, or famous people etc.

To be honest I’ve not been a big fan of this sort of list, because I would chose my friends and family every time. Why wouldn’t you chose them every time over some celeb living or dead?

Having said that these are 3 people that are semi famous in a geek internet way that play MtG that I’d like to play a game of Commander with. Weirdly not all at the same time, but taking up like a guest slot in one of the games with my friends if some-one was unable to make it.

First up is Michelle Boyd. Michelle was one of the series one guests on Spellslingers (a Geek & Sundry YouTube show about MtG). I went with Michelle over the host of Spellslingers mainly because I thought she would be more fun to play against, and easier to read when she drew good cards. Watch the episode, unless she was hamming it up for the camera (which I think they do on that show in an attempt to make it more entertaining) look at her reaction to some of the cards when she draws them. To be fair like a cat is attracted to that strange person in the room, which 99% of the time is the person that does not like cats, I too am attracted to people that are the opposite of myself. So where Day9 and Michelle (for the camera anyway) come across as out going, entertaining people. I am far from that.
Next up Tom Vasel. Tom has said many times he likes MtG, and likes to specifically play Commander. I’ve spoken to Tom a handful of times now at the UKGE, and I’ve also seen how outgoing he is. The Tom you see on camera is the Tom you get in person. How he is that outgoing I don’t know. For me I find my normal social interactions tiring. You should see me in the evening at the end of the day, I’m shattered. I’m definitely not this outgoing, talks to strangers easily type of person.
Finally the last of the trio is Jamey Stegmeir. From his regular videos I know that Jamey plays his Magic digitally using the Magic Online app. So I’m not sure he has played Commander. But who wouldn’t want to play at least one game with possibly their favourite game designer. For sure he has designed my all time favourite game, Scythe.
So you may have spotted a trend here with the list, or how I perceive the public side of these individuals. But this list probably says more about me especially with the admission I’m not this naturally outgoing person. So is it odd that my favourite format of the game is the multiplayer social one?

Saturday saw me heading to my FLGS to pick up the Jace Spellbook, plus hopefully play some Commander.

While waiting for a chance to play Commander I threw together a first draft Angel Tribal deck. Which was then given a chance to be played.

My initial 7 cards was 5 lands and 2 costly spells. So I did a mulligan. 2 lands and Sensei’s divining top. A great turn 1 play. Then it went down hill and I was mana screwed for the rest of the game. Not much I could do but wait for impending doom as I watched the other 2 players do stuff, like play cards. Not a great first game with the angels. But this happens it Magic. I need more games with the deck before making adjustments. Although that won’t stop me from tinkering!

Before heading home I confirmed with John I’d be at the Dominaria store champs next weekend. So I need to build a standard deck if I’m not going to play my mono black aggro deck. Green stompy is calling me.

Father’s Day its hard to celebrate it when Nath and I are so far apart geographically. I don’t ask for or expect gifts and cards, for a young man at uni his time is better spent studying and having a life. A phone call and I’m happy.

My plans for the day? Chill, watch some Netflix. For me I’d been remarkably productive and creative for a weekend and had used Pixelmator on the iPad to make the following image.

I’d hit upon the idea of theming the Fenland Gamers logo for say a MtG Group, or maybe the new RPG group starting up. Plus we could theme our logo for the Facebook page for various major holidays or seasons.

Earlier in the day Jonathan had invited me to join him round his dads for some gaming in the afternoon.

First game to hit the table was Takenoko. A game we last played nearly 18 months ago. It’s an enjoyable game, with that cute factor of the little panda figure. I was beaten into last place by a single point, while Jonathan romped home for the win.

Our next game was the Small Detectives game. After the second turn I had seen one suspect, and been asked by Jonathan’s dad if I had seen 2 suspects. Which I hadn’t. I suspected I had been shown 2 suspects that Jonathan’s dad hadn’t seen, and deduced who the suspect was. The next 2 rounds I saw 2 weapons. I thought I had a 50/50 chance of getting a guess at the answer correct. So I went for it. I jumped to the police station and made my guess. I was wrong on both counts and out of the game. I had misread the suspects shown to me earlier. If I had been right, wow what a win that would have been. But alas, Jonathan also won this with me out of the picture.

We finished off the gaming session with The Mind. Let’s just say we didn’t get above level 5 and leave it at that.

But a great afternoon gaming. Thanks John for inviting me.

Remember I said I was waiting for Gavin’s wife to hate Outlive? Well thanks to Jonathan tagging me in on a Facebook post, I now have a second hand retail copy on its way. Gavin said the Kickstarter exclusives were available on the publishers website. So I had a look at what they were, and ordered them too. Luckily for the wallet the XL game board was sold out. We’ll look at what the Kickstarter exclusives are when they arrive.

Those that made it through Mondays post will know I did play some games at the expo. Three of those games were new to me. So I thought I’d share my brief thoughts on those games considering I didn’t do that in the other post.

Ominoes

This game was bought by Jonathan’s daughter after trying it out on one of the stands at the expo.

Ominoes is a light abstract game, with a fair bit of luck involved.

Despite that luck element to the game, it is still a nice enjoyable game. There is a little take that, blocking your opponents plans by moving their dice away from a scoring opportunity, or even stealing a scoring opportunity for yourself. The later is possible if there are enough wild sides showing.
A good intro abstract game, and great buy by Jonathan’s daughter.

The Lost Expedition

Next year a Judge Dredd game based on this is coming out. Osprey when asked assured me that the Dredd game is not just a reskinning of this game, but will have extra stuff (although to be fair I didn’t press them on this bit, and just accepted their word for it), and would be out February 2019.

The Dredd version is why I’d been holding off buying The Lost Expedition. But hearing it was still a ways off from coming out, I decided to take the plunge and finally buy this game. The added bonus for me buying the game from the publisher at the expo was that I got not one but both of the promos for the game. I managed both because I had bought up while buying it the card quality issue for London. Something that they had rectified and were offering replacement cards to those affected. I said I’d already sleeved mine, so had no need of the replacements. So the Osprey member of staff gave me both promos instead.

But that’s the boring stuff of how I got the game and the promos. What did I think of the game after playing it?

We played this as a 3 player co-op, which is one of the cool things about this game. It can be played as a solo game, co-op or finally as a competitive team v team game.
I thought as a co-op the game worked really well. The co-op part really only came into play once the cards for the day phase had been played. Then you are discussing which option on the cards to take as a group. I suppose this phase could be open to alpha gamer abuse, but that kind of gets balanced out by the leader having the final say on decisions.
I like that you have to make some hard decisions with the cards you are dealt with at the start of each round. Do you play the cards during the day stage or night stage? This is particularly hard to decide when you have all bad cards. The fact that during the day phase the cards played before executing them, ordered in ascending numeric order. Then in the night phase the cards are executed in the order they are played. Is a nice touch and adds to the decision process of when to play the cards.
I like the resource management side of the game.
Once again like The Mind, this is a game that if you decided to sleeve it will not fit the box. Heck even unsleeved you can’t add the promos and have it fit nicely.
Yeah I enjoyed this a lot, and want to try the other 2 modes of play now. Plus I can’t wait to see how this is with Judge Dredd.

Ganz schon clever

This game started getting some buzz after it was nominated for this years Kennerspiel des Jahres.
The English version of this game comes out later in the year, so for now unless you can read German, you have to download the rules translation from bgg.
I’ve played this as a 2 player and 3 player game.
During our first play we were learning the rules, and I was a little unsure about the game. Then I started comboing off. At that point there was a total swing in how I was feeling about the game. Suddenly I was thinking “Wow!” that was cool.
There are some nice tactical decisions to make in this roll and write. Mainly to do with which dice you want and which ones you will be making available to the other players.

I love the fact you can as you complete lines, or advance past certain points on a single line get bonuses such as a reroll or +1 to a die. Or even combo off by being able to put a cross somewhere else on the sheet.
This just might have become my favourite roll and write.

I think I had a good time!

Let’s rewind a bit, I wasn’t exactly in the best place before attending the expo. I think that came through a bit in the audio I did at the end of day 1. Which was amplified a million times with me also being tired and a little pee’d off. And it was looking for most of the Saturday as more of the same, but really pee’d off.

The sale of my Star Wars: Destiny collection was not as smooth as I had hoped. It was looking like the person had got cold feet and didn’t want to tell me. The lack of communication from the buyer was poor. It eventually came to light that on Saturday I was being used to look after the stuff because the person didn’t want to cart everything around with them all day. I pointed out that there was a shop and drop service, and I was using that to store the stuff, and would happily hand over my ticket to them. Which was enough of a push to close the deal and allow me to head back to the hotel around 3pm time. I was extremely drained at this point, waiting around, and getting frustrated aren’t exactly conducive to a great expo experience. Yes I know I am in control of my feelings, and should not let the actions of other effect them. But I wasn’t exactly in the greatest of minds to be that resilient to external factors.

There wasn’t a lot there that really grabbed me. I’m pretty sure others got much more out of this years expo than I did. The place was busy, especially on Saturday. But still felt that you could get around without fighting people in the aisles, or push through the hordes to get to see stuff.

This year seemed even more so the year of the super minor inter web celeb. Everyone including their dog seemed to be videoing for their YouTube channel. But apart from the UK super minor celebs we had even more of the international ones in attendance. There was “where’s Rahdo?” As he roamed the aisles of the expo halls, doing more Blair Witch Project footage. The Dice Tower crew were there for the third year(?), sadly no Sam this time. I failed in my attempt to show them the error of their ways and that Barenpark is indeed not a game. Plus I trolled Zee by saying Sam was the funny one. For some reason I do find that the Dice Tower guys seem the more approachable of the Youtubers there. The Shut Up Sit Down guys could be seen I think. I get confused as I often mistake their clones No Pun Intended for them. Oh and I will give a shout out to Toucan Play That Game, Michael is super friendly, sadly also under the impression Barenpark is a game. Scott of Scott Plays sadly couldn’t be persuaded to start an internet grudge with some of the other channels. I tried my best to lead him astray but to no avail.

Ignacy was seen wandering around the show floor on Friday after he got in from a delayed flight. But the small Portal Booth did see a bit of my money in the form of expansions, promos and a mug. Sadly I wouldn’t be around for the Ignacy demo of his latest game from Portal Detective on the Sunday.

I think the Shop and Drop once again was a god send, otherwise I would have been really really pee’d having to lug around the Destiny stuff for 2 days. This is a great service. It was a good idea having the chill out zone next to it. It made meet ups for trades, etc very easy to arrange. However I think next year the chill out zone needs to be bigger. It was not easy getting a spot to sit down most of the time.

My gaming was mainly in the evening with Jonathan and his daughter in the hotels restaurant area.

Games Played Friday:

Azul, Bohemian Villages, Ganz schon clever, The Mind

Games Played Saturday:

The Lost Expedition, Ominoes, Ganz schon clever

It may not appear so on here, but I’m not the most social of persons at the best of times. If I hadn’t gamed with Jonathan in the evening I don’t think I would have done any gaming outside of the odd demo at all during the expo.

Once the attendance figures have been released I will be very surprised if these are lower than last year. Will they have jumped up enough to secure the title of the third largest board gaming expo in the world for longe than Origins to be held? I hope so. It was evident that more publishers are starting to take the expo more seriously. However the lack of presence of the the likes of Wizards of the Coast, Stronghold Games etc shows that we are not there yet.

So that was my expo experience for 2018.