Category Archives: Uncategorized

Winter Is Coming

Here is a short time lapse of my first time playing A Game of Thrones the boardgame with Jeff, Ben and Jonathan.


In all I think we played our four player game in little over two hours. Surprisingly quicker than I thought it would be. 

In the end Jeff won taking the required seven castles, whilst I had been knocked back into last place. Yes I was in the lead early on before the others ganged up on me. 

I was surprised how little conflict went on in our game. I seemed to be the main aggressor. Something I paid for in the long run. 

I enjoyed this first play a lot, this will definitely be coming back to the table.

My only complaint about this game and the up and coming Iron Throne game (based on Cosmic Encounter) is the minimum number of players is three. So unless I can find a third volunteer when I visit Nath, neither would see the table. And I know that Nath would enjoy this game.

If you are able to get the players together this is a nice game to bring to the table.

The Tokaido Saga Ends

So stop the bloody clock. I get home from visiting Nath this afternoon and there is a surprise package waiting for me.

It’s from China. Wait could it possibly be? Noo. 

Wait it is, it’s here finally. At long last the replacement figure for the broken one in the Tokaido Collectors Accessory box I bought has arrived!


As you can see from the initial post this has been dragging on since the 25th February. Over five months it has taken Fun Forge to sort this out. Five blooming months! That’s rediculous 

Fun Forge do have the worst customer support I’ve come across. 

But I’m just glad that this saga is now at a close.

Father son gaming – making memories


I look forward to my visits with Nath. They are not nearly as often or as long as I’d like. Oh they are way too brief.

Despite being a young man now, and taller than me by a good four or five inches. Nath will always be my little boy.

I have plenty of memories of him as a little one. From the time he threw up on me and laughed afterwards when he was but a baby, or when he read to his mum and me for the first time, or our walks up Welsh and English mountains, or swimming in swimming holes in the Brecon Beacons, to us watching the whole of Prison Break together one Summer.

But how much does Nath remember of those times? Does he see them as good times? 

I love video games, I grew up playing them. As I aged and grew, so did video games, we grew up together. Not surprisingly Nath too is into video games. And for a while on our visits we’d play a couple of Nath’s favourite games, FIFA and Call of Duty. Two games I hardly play. So I was nothing more than a more random opponent for Nath to beat up on.

But I wanted our time together to be a higher quality. And that’s how I got back into playing board games after an obligatory long gap. I started getting games that played well for two players that would both interest Nath and myself.

Last night after making that first Vlog (I’m sorry if you watched it for stealing three minutes of your life you won’t ever get back), doing that washing up and cooking tea, we sat down and played some games.

We started off with 7 Wonders Duels. The first game went to me when I grabbed a military win. After recording the victory in the app I use to track my plays, I decided to try out the apps social media sharing abilities. So the world at large got to hear of my win.

We played a second game. This time I was trying for a science win, but also doing well on the military front. Nath had been building up a mass of blue victory point cards. If it got to victory points I’d have no chance. It was all down to the third age. Nath managed to block my science path to victory. It was down to the military route for me. But that too proved to be another dead end when Nath got rid of what was to be the last military card. It was down to counting victory points. Nath had a massive 41 points on blue alone. I had nothing to answer back with. In the end my final score was less than this opening score for Nath. I was well and truly schooled.

Our next game was The Manhattan Project Chain Reaction. Time to teach Nath how to build an atomic bomb! This is such a quick and easy game to teach, and quick to pick up. Nath played this game abit more aggressively than my previous opponents. Instead of drawing cards when he had the cards that allowed you to draw more cards, he mostly used their other ability to force me to discard cards instead. An interesting tactical decision that paid off. Nath won both games we played. The second game he destroyed me. I had scored a three point bomb, and I only made it to 4.5 points thanks to my uranium! 

Our third and final game that we played was Odin’s Ravens. Once again a fairly simple game to teach, and easy to learn. Our first game I won. But it was like my game with Jonathan at the weekend, if I hadn’t won that turn, Nath would have on his next turn. Our second game Nath romped home with some great plays of his Loki cards. I was at best 3/4 of the way home, at least two turns card wise from finishing.

Our limited time together on visits is I feel of a higher quality now, more social. I’m hoping these visits and our time together playing games are giving new memories. So that in years to come Nath will look back on our time together as adults with fondness, and remembering the time he played 15 cards in one go to wipe out my health and get the win with a smile as he does the same to his own kid.

Here have some cash…

Is what I’d rather publishers at cons like GenCon,Essen,Origins etc. would say, instead of giving exclusive promos away at the shows.

It’s the same thing basically. As the eBay scalpers in the screen caps above show.

It doesn’t show much thought to the rest of us games fans that can’t be at the show. It almost feels like a big giant v sign, or middle finger being waved at us not at the show.

Publishers should make the promos available via other sources like the bgg store at a reasonable price. But the majority don’t. It would seem their policy is “what is given away at the show, is not for anyone else”. 

Yes I know they aren’t needed. But still there are those of us out there that are ocd and like Pokemon have to “catch em all” when it comes to stuff for our favourite games. Plus they do add a nice little customisation to a game. 

It’s the same with Kickstarter exclusives. I don’t mind time limited and then made available to everyone. But to make something only available to the backers and no one else I think is just wrong. And once more sees eBay scalpers making money at the expense of others.

The publisher doesn’t see anything from the sales of these exclusives on eBay. So what are they getting out of this? 

I commend the likes of Plaidhat who have made promo Phoenixborn and Dead of Winter characters on their website. Others have made them available on the bgg store. Worst offender is CMoN and the Geek n Sundry folks with their Tabletop day promos.

Anyway rant over I know things won’t change the publishers don’t care enough about their fans to do anything about it.

Burnt

Last night I met Tom a fellow Ashes player (although he’s doing much better than I in getting games and deck building).

I’m not going to give too much away about cards in our decks. After all these are most likely going to be our tournament decks for the upcoming tournament at The Hobbit Hole on the 23rd (details can be found by selecting the menu option at the top of the page).

Our first match up was my hastily thrown together Aradel deck vs Tom’s Jessa deck.


We played a couple of games of this match up but I didn’t have anything that could counter Tom’s plan. Which he executed really well. It locked up half my battlefield at times. I needed a better way to handle this situation but what? It’s back to the cards looking for a solution I can include.

I made no changes between the two games because you need to play a deck at least a couple of times to even have a remote idea what needs changing.

Our next match up was Aradel vs Dimona.

I have to admit I was tempted to build a deck around Dimona. But I liked the idea of comboing Aradels ability with the natural dice ability. 


The third game went the same way as the first two with me crashing and burning, despite a tweak to the deck that I had made.

Before our what was to be final game of the evening I adjusted my deck once more taking into account advice Tom had given me. I adjusted my first five and played them to plan. The surprising thing was I played my first five to the plan described by Tom, but he didn’t! Plus he had first player advantage. Curious was Tom taking pity on me?

With that tweak and great start I was able to get my only win of the evening.

I have a better idea about how to play my deck, and how to play in general.

Although I’m tied up a lot next week with having to be ruthless as I take a trip down memory lane. Tom and I are hopefully getting one more play in before the tournament on the 23rd. Which I’m looking forward to. Could this be the start of a local meta? 

She stole my precious 

With the arrival of my Kickstarter exclusive deluxe copy of The Manhattan Project: Chain Reaction (it came while I was away visiting Nath), naturally I wanted to get it to the table.

So a quick post yesterday on the Fenland Gamers Facebook page enquiring about availability of others during the day to meet up and play was made. I do feel like I’ve jumped back to eight year old Darren when I make this kind of post. The eight year old me standing in front of a big red door, knocking several times to get some-ones attention. Who is then confronted by an irritated and stressed mother who I have just dragged away from some important task to answer the door. “Can Johnny come out to play please?” I ask hopefully. As eight year old me awaits an answer so does old man Darren sit there checking Facebook for any replies, constantly hitting refresh. 

Debbie replied she was free after 5pm when worked finished. Or in eight year Darren’s world of the seventies when she had done all the chores her mum had given her. 

We arranged to meet up at the grown up play ground Spoons just after five. 

Later in the day I also got messaged by Jonathan that he too might be allowed out to play. But if he wasn’t there by five thirty to start without him. 

So to cater for Jonathan not having completed whatever chores he had been allocated I packed two two player only games. New arrival and über bargain from The Works Sun Tzu and 7 Wonders Duel. 

I had chosen a nice table to sit at that sadly was inappropriate because although the gush of cool air as the main door opened was refreshingly nice, it also blew away cards on the table. So Debbie and I relocated to another less breezy location within the establishment.

Just as I was setting up The Manhattan Project: Chain Reaction Jonathan arrived.

This was a learning game, and although I’d read the rules a couple of times, watched a couple of YouTube videos, I still needed to use the rules to setup and explain the game. But that is an accepted part of this sort of gaming session. None of us have played the game, we are all learning, and at times none of us have had time to read the rules either. 

The rules are simple enough and fairly quick to teach. In fact the most complicated part I’d say is the set up! And that isn’t overly complicated.

Naturally The Manhattan Project: Chain Reaction is a card game that captures the essence of the worker placement big brother The Manhattan Project. 

Like its big brother it’s a race to build bombs and reach a points total, in this case ten points to trigger the end game. Person with highest score wins.

This is a game of combos, and using your cards either as a worker resource or as a production unit of some kind. With the odd card that gives you extra card draw or ability to force an opponent to discard, or even steal a card from an opponent.

Turns are usually pretty quick. So little analyse paralysis, if any. Some player interaction. 

I love the fact it used art from its big brother. So it’s instantly familiar if you’ve played the big brother, even when it comes down to decoding the cards. But even then this wasn’t an issue because Debbie hadn’t played the big brother before and quickly picked things up.

In my deluxe version I have wooden tokens to use instead of the cards to represent yellow cake and uriduim. These are really nice and a nice addition. 

Chain Reaction for me really does capture the essence of its big brother, it’s light, quick to play and learn. It really is a nice game, I’d definitely recommend getting a copy.

We followed up trying to blow up the world with a game of Harbour.

I like Harbour. It can be frustrating because it is very reliant on what the starting buildings are in the middle. In this game I was locked out of one building because I didn’t have an anchor, and could only use half of another’s ability for the same reason. 

Jonathan this time found the ever changing market a source of frustration. Which it can be, but still I do like that mechanic. 

The lead moved around the players as we bought buildings, screwed each other over manipulating the market, but despite that Debbie edged in front and skilfully completed the four buildings required to trigger the end game. 

Points totalled Jonathan and I drew for last place or if you want to be positive about it second place. But romping home with a massive lead was Debbie. So Debbie robbed me of my title of Harbour Master. 


I will get a rematch to try and claim my rightful title back. 

Oh the above card came out near the end of the game. We thought it was an insanely powerful card. I hadn’t seen it before. But wow!

Anyway with my precious stolen it was time to go home our mums were calling our eight year old selfs back in for tea. 

Victory at last

Last night Nath and I got to play a single game of 7 Wonders Duel after he got home from work, ate and showered. 


I’d started gathering science cards in the first age, and Nath managed to get a couple of military cards, while I’d grabbed one to counter that threat.

It was the second age that our individual plans started to take shape. 

Nath was definitely going for the military win, while grabbing blue victory point cards. I was grabbing science cards, and more or less pinning my hopes on that. 

I got two of the same science symbols so had my choice of the progress tokens. I took the one that added take another go to all my wonders. My next turn much to Nath’s amazement and I think disgust I completed all my wonders! Nath hadn’t done one yet and was now limited to just completing three.

I was pretty happy with my position. I had five science symbols, and I was building up a nice cash reserve. Nath had been chipping away on the military front, and despite a little push back on that front by me, was now sitting within four points of winning that way.

The third and final age, the science card I needed was out, plus a duplicate that could give me the win (allowing me to grab the progress token that acts as a science symbol). But there was also the military cards that Nath needed to get the win.

Nath managed to stop me getting the science cards I needed. My win condition was blocked. I started grabbing blue victory point cards in a desperate attempt to catch Nath up on that front.

Then Nath built the only card he needed, the one that gave him the pick of the progress tokens not used in this game. He chose the one that gave military cards one extra attack. Then he got to take the last military card a three pointer, which was now worth four to get the win.

We had two cards left before we went to points. Which I think Nath would have won also. 

A great first victory for Nath.

Father and Son Two Player Gaming Sunday


With a snappy post title like the above I bet you guessed I’m down visiting Nath. Which means Father/Son gaming (well when he’s not working).

Our scarce time together means we have to have to be “selective” in what we play. No epic marathon games here. We are talking a maximum of an hour to play. So I’d bought Imperial Settlers, Roll for the Galaxy, Run Fight or Die, 7 Wonders Duel, Epic, Magic duel decks, Qwixx and Star Wars Timelines, with me.

While Nath was working Kate popped round with a spare house key for me to use. In return I introduced her to Pokemon Go (we even visited a couple of local poke-stops), followed by teaching her Qwixx.

Qwixx is proving a great popular gateway game! It really has been enjoyed by everyone I’ve shown it to. Kate was no exception. I should point out Kate is not a gamer, Nath taught her Star Realms once. But that is about it as her experience of “modern” hobby gaming goes.

After playing our introductory game of Qwixx, Kate asked if she could borrow it over night. That’s a “I like this” if ever I saw/heard one. And yes I let Kate borrow Qwixx.

After Nath got back from work, and we scoffed some food, Nath’s copy of Star Realms hit the table. We were playing basically everything that had been released thrown into one deck – excluding the majority of the year one promos (but the Hero Realms Kickstarter is closing that gap).

Our first game was a fairly easy victory for Nath. Nothing memorable about except he kicked my butt.

Game two saw my come back. One of my gambits allowed me to get rid of my vipers on turn one, so I was just drawing econ cards.

I had a nice bases strategy going. I had two copies of one of the Colony Wars Trade Federation bases that each gave me two gold to spend each turn. However get a third base out with them and each gave me four authority and allowed me to draw a card. Tie this in with an Embassy Yacht you can be drawing four cards on a turn, plus getting eleven authority, and six gold to spend! That’s insane!!! And I got that combo firing more than once during our game.

In the end I was in the eighties for my authority when I destroyed Nath to go even on wins.

A tie breaker was needed.

It all started so well. Nath had the black market gambit card which gave him exclusive buys at a reduced cost. Boy did that work for him. It kept filling up with one cost cards, which meant they were free! I just thought “great, keeping spamming your deck with cheap cards, that will water his deck down nicely.”

It wasn’t long before I had Nath on the ropes and down to seven authority. My bases were doing a good job protecting me, I was keeping his bases out of play, my authority was in the sixties. It was looking good. If only I had been able to deliver that killing blow of seven authority, but the cards had decided against that.

In fact the cards had then decided to be kind to Nath, his authority crept up, while mine plummeted down. In the end Nath was able to destroy my galactic empire. But it had been an epic struggle. My bases and outposts had posed a formidable wall that had held off the onslaught for a long time. But once they crumbled it was over.

That victory gave Nath the over all win also, beating me 2-1.

After that draining third match we had a short break. A break really was needed.

Time to teach 7 Wonders Duel. We know what I think of this game, but would Nath enjoy it?

We used the suggested starting wonders for a first game. It made sense, Nath wouldn’t know what is good or bad in a draft.

Our first game actually went to points. The first time I’ve had a game get to this. It actually finished pretty close really, with me winning 52 points against Nath’s 46 points.

“Can we play again?” Nath asked. Wow a sure sign he liked it I think.

Some games just turn on one moment in time during the game. Our second game had such a moment. In the second age I was three points of being defeated by Nath with a war victory. Two cards left, the last one being a war card that I couldn’t stop Nath getting. If he got it, game over.

I had the wonder that allowed me to install a card from the discard pile for free when completed. Early in the round Nath had discarded my glass production card and I’d been planning to use this wonder to fish that back. But now I had to complete it and hope I could find a solution to save my skin in the discard pile. As luck would have it there was. A two shield thingy war card was in the pile. I installed that, moved the counter back two spaces. That was all I needed to do, I couldn’t die now when Nath took the remaining card.

From there Nath wasn’t able to recover in the final age. A points victory for me was assured.

“Another game?” I’m beginning to think Nath likes the game as much as I do.

Our third game saw me win with a scientific victory. Nath hadn’t spotted I had built up a nice collection in the first age. At the end of the second age I was one science symbol away from victory. I had no other plan, if it went to points I’d lose, and Nath was pushing a military win.

I dealt out the cards for the third age, the final science card I needed was in the first row dealt, so would be reached last. More than enough war cards were coming out to Nath’s delight.

The last two cards were placed. One of the the science cards I needed was one of the two cards. But who was going first? It was my choice being the weaker military side. Oh I think I’ll go first then. Science wins!

Phew that could so easily have gone Nath’s way. Luck if the draw again!

Nath wanted to play again, boy is he living this game. Sadly it was late now and being an old man I was really tired. So we called it a night there.

But some great memorable games played this evening.

FEG@TA 29Jul16

It was a mini meet up this evening, a kind of pre-con aperitif so to speak. What con? The yearly Madhouse Minicon held by Madhouse UK that run a turn-based fantasy game. 

Ok due to the continuing knock on effect on my social plans from two/three weeks ago, I wasn’t going to be spending the weekend at the minicon. This weekend if the plans work out will be spent gaming with Nath.

Debbie, myself and Lucus started our evening of gaming off with Dalek Dice. I won. But still think I prefer Zombie Dice to this.

Afterwards some con attendees arrived. So while Jamie introduced them to Dalek Dice, Lucus and I played Magic the Gathering using a couple of dueling decks. In our first game Lucus was just unable to get any creatures out to defend himself or to attack. He had land,in fact enough to summon creatures. Sadly it was all swamp, and he needed water! So I was able to happily field creatures and swing away at will. 

We swapped decks. And things went much better for Lucus. He was able to get some creatures out to attack with, and even inflict damage. However by that time in the game I had enough out on the battlefield to get me another win.

I like dueling decks. Magic without the collectable element. You can just play a game with two “evenly” pre-built decks and have fun. I do enjoy the deck building side, it’s just my pocket can’t handle the full on booster collectable experience, or justify the expense because I don’t play it enough.

What was to be my final game of the evening was 7 Wonders Duel with Debbie. 

I like this game a lot. It really is a great two player game. Which is why I think this has been the third week in a row this has managed to hit the table.

This game was particularly close and came down to the last card of the third age. If Debbie had gotten to the card first we would have had to start counting victory points. Which was going to be a hard one to call. I had nearly thirty coins, would have had ten victory points from the war track. But Debbie had a lot of cards giving victory points in front of her. 

However we didn’t get to that scenerio of points counting. The last card was mine. A war card doing three attack. Which gave me the instant war victory. It doesn’t get closer than that. Well maybe winning by one victory point. 

I think out of four games now, none have come down to points. They have all been instant wins split evenly somehow between war and science. 

Still love this game. 

But that was it. I was flagging. Strider had been sick in the night, and had been in and out for over an hour before hand. I think he was feeling sick but just couldn’t be during that time. So I was really knackered. I had started to drift off earlier in the afternoon! Debbie had also decided she was going to head off. The place was starting to build up with con attendees. Not much gaming at that point, more social, renewing friendships stuff.

This last photo shows how I finished off the evening. Yep stuffing lots of questionable meat into my face!

Start selling your organs

Next week sees Gen Con taking place. Where publishers will be vying for the publics attention with over priced stands, and sneak peaks at games about to be released, along with the obligatory big news announcements to try and grab the attention of those unable to attend.

However FFG are getting a jump start on the competition and their sister companies in the Asmodee collective by releasing what seems like almost daily or every other day news announcements about their upcoming roster of games and expansions.

Today FFG have decided that they haven’t got enough of our money and they want you to be selling organs as well.


They are going to be turning you into gaming junkies with their new collectable dice game Star Wars Destiny.

At first reading I instantly thought Star Wars dice masters. But after skim reading the article it also has a card/deck building element. So must go watch the videos etc later after I’ve done some gaming this evening.

The game hits your FLGS or “dealer” as they now be known in November.

Here is the official announcement