I know the postings have been sporadic this week, especially since Wednesday. But that’s when things got busy.

I had to miss this months monthly meet up for the Fenland Gamers because my local cinema The Luxe was running a Star Wars double bill. They started off with episode VII The Force Awakens at 8:30pm. I knew I’d booked the double bill, so when Netflix added The Force Awakens recently I avoided watching the movie so that it would be more fresh on the night. A plan that worked. I think this was the first time I had been at The Luxe since the change in ownership, the new screen and projector. The viewing experience has definitely improved. No more annoying mark/tear on the screen. There were some dressed up people at this showing, the cinema staff were also. The young lady behind the counter serving drinks and selling/printing tickets was dressed as Rey. She had done an amazing job. An hour after The Force Awakens at five minutes past midnight it was onto the midnight release and the first showing of The Last Jedi. I’m not going to put spoilers up. I enjoyed the movie. It could have been a bit shorter, a tad too much humour for me.

The problem with a mid week midnight showing like this is work the next day. Luckily after just short of 4 hours sleep, I managed to make a flask of coffee to help me stay awake through a days hard work watching student presentations, and then crawl my way into work. I do love this part of the course I teach on. Students pitching their game ideas as professionally as possible. It’s cool to see them dressed so smartly. Plus the ideas they come up with are really interesting, and imaginative. By the time it was time to go home having seen 17 pitches, I was in remarkable great shape on so little sleep. And yet despite that lack of sleep I wasn’t tired and ended up staying awake to just gone midnight!

Friday wasn’t going to see me getting to bed earlier than my normal rock and roll bedtime of 9:30, because we had a team Christmas meal planned for after work. Luckily my free time before going was spent playing Magic the Gathering. I really have created a monster at work with this game and my students. Our Christmas meal was at a Thai restaurant, the food was pretty good. Portion sizes were just right, despite my initial reaction that they were a little cheap on the quantity of sticky rice I’d been given. There was a random secret Santa, which I suspect was not as random as initially intended. Somehow the only person with a bushy beard (me) got given beard baubles. Even I without a sense of smell, smelt something was up. When I arrived home there was an unexpected parcel waiting for me. The mystery present was a Christmas gift of some Lego from my friend Duncan. There was even a Christmas card from him with a humorous reference to my dislike of Barenpark and Nantucket. There was also a play set of the Abrade card for Magic also waiting for me.

I really could have done with a relaxed, drifting in and out of sleep type of morning today. Catching up on some of the sleep I had deprived myself of. But no a while back I had arranged a learning game of Twilight Imperium 4 for 10:30. So I had to get up early, and punch some cardboard. I also wanted to get to Fenrock early to get the place setup ready to play. So I turned up 30 mins early, got the table in place and started setting up the game ready for the others. We were already a man down because earlier a car failure meant Diego wasn’t able to attend. But a very last minute message meant that we were now down to just Jeff and myself to play a game designed for a minimum of 3 players. If I’d known before I’d left I could have bought Star Wars: Rebellion a 2 player game to play. Instead we had to make do with a makeshift solution that would allow Jeff and me to play TI4 as a 2 player game.

Despite it not being designed for this player count, the trade and political side not really practical, we still had a good time playing the game. Fuelled by the excellent coffee that Fenrock do, despite taking an early and having the military superiority I still lost.

But playing the game this way did allow me and Jeff to get familiar with the games turn structure and basic rules. For Jeff he was also able to see how the new 4th edition differed from the 3rd, which he already owned.

I’m really looking forward to playing TI4 again on the 30th. Hopefully everyone can make that day and we get to play the game as intended. Now I have the rest of the weekend to catch up on some sleep, start building some decks around the infinite combos that arrived today. Or I might just browse some ideas for a Death and Taxes deck. Whatever happens I will be doing as little as possible and just relaxing.