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The Impact of Games

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It’s been a mad mad week at work. Somehow I’ve got through it. I’ve been shattered both physically and emotionally in the evenings. Often this week being out like a light by 8pm!

But it’s scenes like the above photo that make it all worth it.

In a workshop this week I introduced some students to a game called Ricochet Robots. My plan for the game and main purpose of the game was, and still is to use the game as a lesson starter activity. But I thought I’d test it out first.

The students loved it. Not only did the ones playing it really enjoy it. The game and the students playing drew in class mates too. Who couldn’t help but try to solve the current puzzle also while looking on!

At the start of this academic year I’d bought in some games to play in induction week. Love Letter Batman was a hit (I have four copies of this now specifically for using with students). A couple asking where they could get it. Sadly I had to tell them their FLGS had none in currently because I had just bought up its remaining copies for them to play with.

I’d also used both my copies of King of Tokyo with a class. Another hit. 

But with two students a game of zombie dice was enough to break the ice, that a real friendship has started up.

We’ve also had a six player game of ultimate werewolf as an ice breaker. But I’ve plans for that in the near future.

In the past Munchkin and The Resistance have also been popular. I’ve yet to get these to the table with my students here.

I love using board games with students. Especially in induction week as team builders, ice breakers etc. I prefer them to the old stale activities of build a bridge out of paper etc.

Back to the photo above. What hasn’t been told is the magic that the game worked on one of the students. The little break from their reality it gave, allowing them to be for a brief moment a teenager again without the problems of the world on their shoulders.

The students also remembered they had Doctor Who Risk at home. Which was bought in the next day and played at lunchtime in the canteen. Swines not inviting me to play!

But it’s these moments that make it all worth while.

Next up on my list of games to try is the Timelines series. I think this will make a great starter.

Plus I’d love to convince management that a board game club would make great enrichment along side the more traditional activities on offer. I can dream.
Epilogue: what makes a great game for students? For me it’s a game that ticks the following:

  • teach in less than five minutes
  • is quick to pick up
  • ideally play more than four players with little downtime
  • theme has to be appealing
  • Fun!
  • Ideally not expensive – this is my pocket it’s coming out of

BTN September 2016

by the numbers, Uncategorized

It’s that time of the month to look back and reflect on the previous months gaming again.

So here we go here are the numbers for last month.

It doesn’t feel it but the graph shows the trend on plays is down for a second month. But games played is up. I have played some meaty games last month.

If I’ve counted right eleven of the games last month were first plays of new games or from the pile of shame.

My Game of the Month

I like this award to be a new game. Whether it’s just been released or one that I’ve never played before. However I’m bending the rules!

This month my game of the month is Istanbul with all the expansions. The new expansion Briefs and Siegel mixed in with the Mocha and Baksheesh expansion just take the game to such an amazing level.

Played this way isn’t for noobs to the game or gaming. But if you are a seasoned  gamer, or played before, oh boy this is just mind blowing.

Worst Game of the Month

I think last month must have been a good month for gaming. I don’t think I’ve played any that you would call a stinker or worse deserve a place in the Nantucket hall of infamy, that is current housed in the Nantucket wing at Jonathan’s.

The Pile of Shame Five

So looking at the last pile of shame Five that I named as targets to play only one of them was played.

This time I’m going to deviate away from the usual selection process and have a list of games I want to get back to the table.

  • Five Tribes
  • Imperial Settlers
  • Neuroshima Hex
  • Tiny Epic Kingdoms
  • Viticulture

All great games that are long overdue a return to the table.

FEG@WL last day of September 2016

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night, Uncategorized

It’s Friday, it’s been a long, hard week. Only way to start the weekend, and blow away that built up stress from the week then has to be play some games with great company and an ice cold beverage.

Diego, Jonathan and I were gathered at the White Lion to do just that. 

Our first game of the evening was The Great Heartland Hauling Co.

We played with one of the alternate three player layouts and the truck stops expansion.

I made an instant dash to the GPS truck stop to buy that and gain the ability to move diagonally once per turn. However that left me with no ability to move and buy goods to trade. Which meant I was stuck at the starting point for three turns until I was able to draw fuel cards!

It was that bit of rashness I think that gave the advantage to Diego. Who went on to get the win. Although I came second, I was happy because I’d managed to sell everything I was transporting. So I didn’t get any negative points.

Jonathan had a complete disaster of a game. His truck must have been robbed of its tires at a truck stop and left on cinder blocks.

Our next game was Grifters. Oh this was a game of frustration for both Jonathan and me.

Jonathan just wasn’t getting the specialist cards to do much. While Diego was buying job cards just before I was about to, or blocked a plan I was going execute with a specialist action. Like grab the Blackmailer card off the top of discard pile but putting utter junk on top of it on his go.

As you can guess Diego romped home to the win.

Our final game of the evening was a new one to Diego and me. It was Skyline, a light dice game where you are building skyscrapers.

This has a push your luck element on the dice roles similar to Age of War and Elder Sign. Where if you want to reroll the dice you lose one if you are unable to use at least one.

Diego triggered the end game by claiming the 36 point building tile. I got lucky and was able to score a final 16 point building, while Jonathan was not able to score any big points to boost his score.

I have to admit that in this final go I was only looking at getting a higher score than Jonathan. I had assumed Diego had the win sewn up. So imagine my surprise when we totalled the points I had won by a single point.

Somehow I’d broken Diego’s amazing winning streak!

Skyline is a pleasant quick filler game. I enjoyed it.

Well you know how the evening ended after the games. We celebrated our wins and losses by consuming dodgy meat wrapped in naan, with salad (the token attempt to make it healthy, and ease the feelings of guilt) and some chilli sauce.

Tomorrow we attempt to usurp Jeff from his Iron Throne when we play A Game of Thrones the Board Game.

To the max

Fenland Gamers, game night, Uncategorized

Istanbul is a bloody good game. That’s a fact. 

Adding in the “mini expansion” the kebab shop makes it a little better. It replaces the Fountain tile and I wouldn’t play the game without this now. 

Playing with the first full expansion Mocha and Baksheesh adds new and interesting elements to the game. Such as coffee and it’s alternate path to victory, and the ability to block routes.

But how would the latest expansion Brief and Siegel that came out this week effect the game?

Well Jonathan broke his self imposed game buying ban for the month to buy it, and he had it delivered Thursday. 

So with an exit pass granted Jonathan and I met up to throw everything Istanbul and the kitchen sink on the table for a mega epic version of the game.

With all the expansions in play set up takes a little time. And moving from four by four tiles to the four by five grid of tiles with the first expansion to five by five makes the game massive. 

Placing the rubies on the board on the relevant tiles, they now look lost! Dwarfed by this increase in size of the board. 

The new expansion introduces letters and seals, that are not only another way to get rubies but also away to get extra turns. 

Naturally you get letters by visiting one of new tiles (there are two of the new tiles that give letters out), or from the courier (which acts like the coffee trader,smuggler, and governor). Each letter has an “address” or tile number on it. When you get the letter it’s worth one seal, deliver it to the “address” it’s worth two seals. Visit the Secret Society tile, and you can trade six seals for a ruby and possibly between three and one coins depending when you get there. Or you can use three seals per round to take an extra turn.

Jonathan used his seals well to get that extra turn at key moments. I’d been using this new scoring opportunity early on to take an early lead.

I scored all my rubies between letters, coffee and the odd guild card that gave me cheap ways to buy a ruby pushing the value up for Jonathan. 

During the game I made no effort collecting lots of goods and trading. The only goods I collected were enough to purchase/fuel certain powers. 

My first tactical mistake was with my companion (a new addition to the game) where I moved him too far away from the Caravansary and the Guild Hall (which were next to each other). If he was in position whilst I was exploiting the tile combo Jonathan had stumbled across on the opposite side of the board (see below), I could have still been drawing the guild cards and bonus cards, and get extra coffee counters.

And that brings me to the companion another new feature of this expansion. Because of the size of the board now, this is a much needed addition. It does give you a choice each turn, do you move your merchant or your companion once you have them. The companion acts like the merchant except it can only move one tile at a time, he works alone (can’t pick up assistants) and any tiles/bonuses that show the merchant don’t apply to the companion. With the companion you are able to leave him on the other side of the board to your merchant. 

The Kiosk tile is awesome. It gives you a letter, plus it has kiosk mini tiles that have bonuses on them. You draw one more than the number of players, you pick the one you want, carry out that action. Then the other players do the same in turn order. Then the last tile left you get and action. I was using this a lot. 

With the increased board size the tavern bonus tile that allows you to move any number of places in a straight line is a must.

Once Jonathan hit the tile combo shown below he soon caught me up on the ruby front. I joined him in exploiting it too late. Although throwing the barrier in his way to slow him down and make his life a little difficult did work. If I’d have remembered I could jump the barrier (the draw back of not having played the game for a while) along with my other “mistake” I could have won.


In the base game the “Black Market and Tea House should have a distance from each other of at least 3 places.”  We felt that there should be a similar ruling for the above combo. Otherwise it’s too powerful a combo. We may house rule this. I think Jonathan is going to bring this up on bgg also. (He did here)

In the end this was a very close game with Jonathan pipping me to the post and the win. But I may have got the win if not for my two “tactical” errors.

Unless I’m playing this game with a new player I will not play this game any other way than with everything in play. The base game is a bloody good game. But with everything it gets taken to a new much, much higher level. The multiple avenues to victory, the random layout of the board each game, there is just so much variety and replayability. 

It should be noted that apparently according to bgg there is a camel driver mini expansion that for completeness I will get but wasn’t used in this game because we don’t have it technically! 

Friendly trolling!

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It’s when your friends troll you with tweets like this…


I think we all know how I feel about this game (for such a small game it’s a pretty large pile of poo, for those in any doubt).

Jonathan has even taken on board my name for his crap game corner of his game collection of the Nantucket Wing. 

So it’s pretty easy to troll me on this one!

That time of month… Again

Fenland Gamers, game night, Uncategorized

Last night was the second Wednesday of the month, and thus the time of the monthly get together of The Fenland Gamers.

My first game of the evening was Bohemian Villages.


My opponents and attempting to stop my path to glory were Katie and Jonathan’s daughter.

I skilfully manipulated Katie and my young opponent using my Sith force powers to delay the game long enough for me to complete the village I had the town hall in.

It’s hard to gloat about beating an eleven year at the game. But this was my arch rival which made it a bit easier to do.

Our second game of the evening was the totally awesome, not so new and shiny The Manhattan Project Chain Reaction.

I got to set a new record during our game. Previously my games the greatest number of cards is managed to play on s turn was 16. Last night that was blown away when I managed to play 20! Yes you read that right I played 20 cards. I was drawing new cards, stealing cards, it was amazing.

We’d all managed to score bombs but I was in the worse position because I had no plutonium whilst the other two did. 

However one great turn and not only had I managed to catch up but was looking at grabbing a bomb that would trigger game end.

In the end I had scored enough points to hold off a late point rush from Katie on her last go to win by a single massive point.

While we were playing our games Jonathan, Debbie and her Nathan played our groups hot game of the moment, Saloon Tycoon. Which he somehow managed to win!

Our next club monthly meet is the 12/10/16 for those interested. 

FEG@TA Saloon Entrepreneurs 

FEG@TA, Fenland Gamers, game night, Uncategorized

You have just received your Kickstarter copy of Saloon Tycoon (hand delivered by the photogenic Jonathan), you are in a pub, what could be more thematic than playing the game in said pub?

I felt a bit guilty while we were setting up Jonathan’s copy of Saloon Tycoon. He’d still got some cardboard popping to do, cards were still in cellophane. 

Boy does this game take up a surprising amount of space. The table was just about big enough. If there had been another player we would have been screwed. Basically we’d have had to have put it away and play something else.

We have some beautiful looking games these days. You just have to look at Ashes or Hit Z Road as examples of the heights companies are reaching. However there is just something about a game that has a 3D element to it. Colt Express, Camel Up! and Imhotep (to a lesser extent) for example just have this visual impact that draws people to them. Saloon Tycoon joins that list of games that have that pleasing 3D visual impact when you build floors on parts of your saloon. I think it’s one of the things that attracted me to the game in the first place. For me this 3D element of the game, with each player board area being different, really works, both visually and game wise.

The rule books could be better. Probably with a reference book explaining the cards. Or more clarifying how they work. 

The player aid cards included I like. They provided a nice concise summary of a players turn, and scoring during play and game end.

Jonathan had an issue with the graphic design of the player score board. He thought it was a mess and hard to use. It was less of an issue for me. Although I think it could have been bigger! Score spaces are only big enough for a single cowboy meeple. At a minimum they should be big enough to have two meeples on a space.

A game turn is simple enough, I like the card driven play, but also being able to do something that doesn’t require a card, like draw more cards or take gold. 

With the cards controlling actions, you are able to get combos and have a little interaction with your opponents. Mostly in the form of taking cards from their hand or taking gold. There is also a bribe action that allows you to steal characters from other players.

It grates that when counting floors we are forced to use the Americian numbering. It’s just wrong, like the way they write dates and spell colour.

It’s also cool that each room type has some sort of one time bonus you get to perform when you complete building that floor/room. Before you can buy some of them they have prerequisites like you will need a specific room built already or have a first floor for instance. So you are not only deciding what to build on cost, but bonus and if it allows you to build a more expensive powerful room also.

I like the secret objectives players have, along with public ones anyone can go for. This goes a long way to adding to the games replayability. 

It was the secret objectives and completing his that made the difference and allowed Jonathan to come from behind and win.

As you may have guessed we liked playing the game. It continues a run of kickstarters that we backed that lived upto or exceeded what we thought they would be.

After building our Saloons it was time to hit the road and cross the zombie infested badlands of Route 66 in Hit Z Road. 

This time Jonathan made it to the end of the journey but fell short on the points front. Jonathan definitely faught more zombies than me, whilst I avoided them as much as possible. Yes I was more care free with my survivors and ended up with one making it to the west coast and safety. 

I’d also managed to amass more resources than Jonathan and was in a better shape for the last leg of the game. Plus it meant I was able to claim three of the four bonus cards at the end. Which was more or less the difference between our scores.

Yep this was just another Friday night of great games, friendship, finished off with dodgy meat covered in token salad and a liberal dash of chilli sauce. 

Ws22Aug16 – The Russians Are Coming

news, Uncategorized


Yep the Asmodee/Esdevium Borg Collective are unleashing the Soviet war machine on us next week with the release of some Soviet tanks for the skirmish game Tanks.

Which is lucky because if any thing will work in the Dead of Winter (see what I did there?) it’s Soviet tanks. Which is handy because we will need them to survive The Long Night (oh yeah I went there). Yes the stand alone expansion for Dead of Winter, Dead of Winter The Long Night brings us more hidden traitor, surviving against the odds set against a zombie apocalypse backdrop magic. Plus you can integrate it into the original game too.

Your FLGS will also get a chance to restock the second expansion for Seasons, Seasons Path of Destiny. Along with the Spiel des Jahres nominee Karuba. I’m sure they will feel really lucky and blessed that they have been given this opportunity.

Finally the dungeon building card game Boss Monster gets an expansion allowing 5-6 players to play with the expansion called Crash Landing.

So that’s it for another week. It still feels relatively like the lull before the GenCon releases storm. It’s just going to get busier in the run up to that big holiday at the end of the year.

Never a truer word said

netrunner, Uncategorized


I just love the above bit from the rules/flavour sheet included with the latest data pack Blood Money from the Flsshpoint cycle.

It appeals to my anarch soul. 

The Android world is so rich. FFG do such a great job bringing it to life with Netrunner, using amazing art (which has Easter eggs hidden in it sometimes), flavour text, and mechanics.

Just love it.

Out ws15Aug16

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Once more we are scrambling for the crumbs as they fall from the Esdevium plate. So what morsels will we be devouring gratefully in the coming week? 


First up is the two player game Tides of Madness. Portal Games follow up to the Tides of Time with the now obligatory Cthuhlu theming and having to take into account madness now also! The original Tides of Time was a beautiful looking game, with a nice twist on the draft mechanic.

We also have a chance to get our teeth sunk into the first expansion for Dice City. Dice City doesn’t get as much love as it should, especially considering how much better it is than the over rated Quadropolis.

Clocking in on the expensive side are the first three Imperial Assault skirmish map playmats. Ideal for quick play, no digging out tiles for starters. However they are more expensive than I think they should be. The sweet spot would have been the seventeen coins of the realm each. Which would have been an instant buy. But at the price of £24 each it’s not so attractive.

The Walking Dead continues its spread throughout the board gaming world. This time as a themed expansion for Zombie Munchkin. I’m surprised it has taken them so long to do. If I had the Zombie Munchkin this next one would be an instant buy.

Kennerspiel des Jahres nominee Time Stories is getting restocked. A timely reminder I still need to get this game to the table. Think on this purchase as being similar to buying a console with a game. You are buying the core game system with a module. Then you can buy more modules as they get released (currently three I think so far). 

Finally two new armies for Neuroshima Hex 3.0. I love this game. And the addition of more armies is always welcome. I’d love a roll up play map of the board to make the game truly portable and something I could carry around to play. A great game, with a great app implementing it. The Dancer army is in the app, however the other isn’t. This is definitely the one thing next week I’m most excited about.

Well that’s it. The other crumbs that fell off the plate looked a bit off. So I had little interest in them. 

See you in the next post.