Yesterday after providing what can only be described as a token gesture of help (I wish it could have been more but I had already made a more important commitment which is the subject matter of the rest of this post) I made my way South to see Nath for the weekend.
For those that know me on other social media outlets would have seen the messy little piglet Nath can be a lot of the time.
After nagging him about this, we popped off to the nearby Sainsburys following up a lead from earlier in the day from my Scottish doppelgänger about reduced Lego. When we got there the evidence left (empty space on the shelf and the red reduced sticker) did indeed that there had been some cheap Lego to purchase. Sadly I was not one of those benefactors of Sainsburys generosity. Although I did snag four Star Wars The Force Awakens stackable mugs for four gold coins of the realm.
After some father son time watching Amazon Prime (the last Wolverine movie and the first episode of the new US police procedural show Lucifer) I set up Formula D ready for some gaming in the morning. I shared a photo that Celtic doppelgänger pointed out was a spoiler for the new Star Wars movie! Oops, that was unintentional.
This morning once Nath had resurrected himself saw us racing at speed round a race track. I gave Nath pole position, which I would come to regret. We played the beginner rules for this game. I love this game despite Nath taking an early lead that I was unable to close. I thought I had going into the final corners. But Nath just shifted up a gear and zoomed off across the finish line while I was going round the final bend.
Nath enjoyed playing Formula D, thought it was very thematic, and captured the gear changes etc with the dice really well.
Our second game of the morning was a learning game of Seasons.
Because this was our first game ever, so instead of drafting our nine cards for the game we used the suggested preconstructed nine card lists in the rules.
It really did help with this game having seen some YouTube videos before hand. I was able to set up without referring to the rules, and explain most of the game to Nath.
Like Bomb Squad Academy when we thought it wishful thinking to use the 100 point tokens, when we looked at the scoreboard and saw a 200 point marker, we were sure we wouldn't achieve those heady heights of scoring.
This game looks amazing. It's bright and vibrant. Wow. Game play wise, the turn order is so easy to learn, but hides the tactical depth. It starts with which dice to pick, to which spell to cast, to managing your reserves and the max number of active spells you can have in play. Plus we hadn't even touched the drafting and deciding which cards go in which pile. Then you have to decide whether you take a point hit at the end to get the use of one of the four abilities you can choose from. Add in card effects on played spells, and a turn can get very tactical.
Nath and both enjoyed the game a lot. It worked very well as a two player game. Now I'd like to play it with the drafting and more players.
Oh and Nath narrowly beat me by four points.
As always my time with Nath was way too short.
Posted by me using my iPad and the Blogsy app