Friday it had looked like I wouldn’t be able to make the planned days gaming round Diego’s on Monday.

I had shared my car woes on the Messenger group set up to plan the days gaming, and that I was not able to make it.

From that posting Charlene and Jeff both very kindly offered to give me a lift.

Both very generous offers that considering neither lived near me and would have to go out of their way to pick me up, I felt I had to turn down.

If a friend needed my help I’d go out of my way to help them. But ask for help? I can’t. It’s very hard for me to ask for help or to even accept it. Call it a personality flaw. But that’s me.

In the end Jeff direct messaged me saying he’d pick me up at 10am, and I could show him where Diego lived.

I was less of a detour for Jeff than Charlene. So there was a little less guilt accepting the generous offer.

The morning of the bank holiday celebrating our newly crowned sovereign King Charles III Jeff was a little early. Luckily I was ready.

Our days gaming started with a game of Terra Mystica.

I’d never played this before, and like one of my students hadn’t done the homework assigned to us by Diego of watching a how to play video.

I enjoyed the game and would like to play it again to explore the options more.

It struck me as very much a game where you have to play to the strength of your faction.

With the dragon lords I was playing I think I could have been a bit more aggressive in my expansionism. I was very aware of my limited power tokens (if that is what they are called). But my issues were during the early stages of being too expanding and running out of power tokens, and also generating enough workers. In the last couple of rounds I had the problem of having lots of power tokens and not nearly enough workers to use the tokens with.

I did spend most of the game trailing far behind on the scoring track, but a late surge of points during the final scoring from the priest tracks got me enough to draw last place with Diego.

Jeff and Ben shared the victory. Apparently there is no tie breaker in this game!

Our next game was Cat in the Box. Which Diego just romped away with the victory. Apart from the last round he was scoring over five points a round. It should be noted that Ben scored zero points the whole game.

Our third and final game of the day was Red Rising.

Ben won this game also. However as a five player game it played a lot quicker than I thought it would.

I had four cards I was holding onto from my initial hand as they allowed me to use them as either any named character or colour during the end scoring. I thought these will be really useful. Did I get any other cards that they could be used with? No. didn’t see any come out either.

I also spent a few rounds trying to get a third red card, which never showed up. And I couldn’t get to the one in one of the columns. That stopped me getting a cool combo that would have netted me over five helium in two turns.

Ben took the victory in this game while I was denied the first loser position by a couple of points. Diego took that honour.

I had a great day gaming with amazingly kind and generous friends.

There was only one way to finish off such a great day. Buying Mum a Chinese take away to celebrate her birthday (which just so happened to be the same day as this one off bank holiday). Yes I left Mum at home looking after the mutts on her birthday.