Rolling and Writing

first look, game night

Yesterday Jonathan very kindly met up with me to try out some of the new additions to our collections.

Sadly our regular hosts were not available due to the refit taking longer than we expected. We are now having to cancel club meet ups. Which is seeing a first in the four year history of the club, a cancelled monthly meet up.

So Jonathan and I met up at the local Spoons. It’s been a while since we have done any gaming here. It far more busier and noisier. But on the plus side I can get unlimited coffee for £1.30. On the downside it’s just about drinkable coffee. So for me on the beverage side a very very cheap night out.

The first game to hit the table was the latest game from Portal Games Imperial Settlers: Roll and Write.

I like roll and writes, or the ones that are in my collection. They do seem to be this years must have for a publisher to be putting out (just like legacy games and escape rooms before that).

Naturally we played a 2 player game, and the basic version of the game. There is an advanced variant, and a solo variant too.

The game plays quickly, each game is 10 rounds, and we found a round was very quick.

I liked that the dice are used by everyone playing each round. So everyone gets the same number of basic actions each round, plus any bonus actions from buildings or tiles. And also get the same basic resources plus any bonus resources from buildings, tiles or harvesting.

I like the use of two sheets one for the village, which when the buildings are built give bonuses each turn, and an empire that is where you can harvest resources and score victory points. Neither felt overwhelming individually or together. Which the Ganz Schon Clever sheets do.

The empire sheet allows you to track rounds, and gives a very small area on that tracking for notes. Which we both found you needed. I was using it to note how many actions I had each round, and resources used.

One thing I like about the Portal Games rule books is the little touches of humour. But the one in this rule book has to be my favourite of all time (see below)


I love the graphic design and look. Naturally it matches up art wise with its inspiration thematically Imperial Settlers. But there is also this kind of pastel, sketch note feel to it as well. I point to exhibit a above for the house rules, and exhibit b below with the tile photo below. I really like the feel it gives to the whole game.

Let’s talk about the dice. There is a great design, game play choice made here with the worker die being not only a different colour to the resource dice. But also larger. It really hammers home this die is not a resource die, it’s use is different.

But wood?!!! Couldn’t we have better quality dice? These really are the weakest part of the game. You get 4 pencils included (very nice touch). But you scrimp on the dice?

I’m waiting to here back from Portal Games about why the adventure mode pad (used for solo games, each sheet is a unique village) can’t be used in a multiplayer game.

I can’t wait to try the advanced mode. But it’s cool that the game has this, plus the solo mode.

I like this game a lot. It’s not as light as say Qwixx or Qwinto. But less complicated than Ganz Schon Clever or the really over complicated and awful Welcome to Dino World. It’s hit the sweet spot.

I suppose I better admit Jonathan won by a single point.

Jonathan and I did start to set up Caverna: Cave vs Cave – Era II. Wow with the base game and this new expansion boy does it take up a lot of table space. Looking at the new rule book you play the base game first then move onto the expansion! We did the maths based on the game play times on the boxes. With having to refresh our memories on how to play as well this would take more time than we had. Our calculations put it at over an hour to play.

So we moved onto a game of Citadels. A classic for sure. I love the 2 player drafting of characters. It’s very similar to dark draft in Epic. You have an idea of what the other player may have taken but not exactly.

I will need to sleeve my copy before using it at club nights.

I managed to get the win of our play of this.

Jonathan did give me a game last night. They were being given out free at the expo. Apparently this is a worker placement style game. But looking at the box you’d have no idea what type of game it is. The description on the box gives no clue. The publisher is doing themselves no favours.


I’d like to thank Jonathan for being so kind for taking the time to meet up and play games last night. It was really appreciated.

Games played: Imperial Settlers: Roll & Write, Citadels

My take on that UKGE Incident

rant, RPG, UKGE

While I was busy showing people how to play Epic the card game on Friday I missed all the drama happening elsewhere at the expo. Now I don’t intend that to seem like I’m making light of what actually happened. I’m not. But I struggled to find a better word to describe what happened. I feel what ever word I use sounds like it is trivialising what happened. And I don’t want to do that.

On Friday during a RPG session that was being run the GM decided to cross the line and do something I think was totally out of order.

Here is a first hand account as told by a person in the game.

(I grabbed the screen shot above off one of the Facebook posts that shared what happened. Unlike the person that shared it I have removed any way to identify the person involved. What happened is more important than who it happened to.)

Naturally this has been a hot topic of debate and even made the BBC News Website.

Firstly the organisers of the expo need to be applauded for their handling of the incident and quick response. They seem to have done everything right as soon as they were made aware of what happened.

I know they have said they will review things and put stuff in place to avoid this sort of thing happening in the future. However I don’t think that the process they had in place for approving the RPG sessions was at fault. It was obvious that the GM had not included in his submission for the game that this would be happening or hinted to the players before hand either.

So I fail to see how the organisers or any other event could avoid this happening in the future. What you can’t stop is a GM being a total dick and just throwing something just as vile and unacceptable out of nowhere in to the game.

If I need to state it, for the record I think what this GM did was disgusting, unacceptable and I can’t imagine any circumstances (even with real good friends) that this would be appropriate.

What I did find odd, was that some were kind of defending the person online, using the freedom of speech etc defence. You can’t defend this. It doesn’t fall under the freedom of speech.

What I find hard to understand is the mentality of this person. Just what thought process did they have that made them think this was a good idea? I’m baffled.

Single handedly this person has not only harmed those involved in the session, they have bought the hobby into disrepute. I’m hoping after the dust has settled that the person has had time to reflect and see that what they have done is wrong, and made an apology to those involved. But something inside me says that they are finding the attention and coverage fun. I don’t know why I think that. But if the person thought the subject was a good idea, and then enjoyed the aftermath of it. Something tells me that they may not be entirely repentant.

Which is a shame. There are so many positives to the hobby. The last thing it needs is dicks like this ruining it, and destroying those positives.

I hope that those involved get the support they need, and that they hopefully will find peace.

UKGE 2019 Happenings

epic, UKGE

Wow I bet you folks thought I had stopped the blog with no posts happening for 3 or 4 days.

But as you know I was at the UK Games Expo, helping out on the White Wizard Games (WWG), demoing (as it would turn out) Epic the card game.

I did post some photos on Instagram that got shared on Twitter and Facebook. Don’t worry about finding them, most of them will be further down in this post.

Day 0 – Arrival

Thursday is the usual day I like to travel to the expo. Drive across mid afternoon, so I arrive between 4pm and 5pm. I hopefully avoid all the traffic that way, can get registered in to wherever I am staying and settled in. It also means I don’t have a silly start the next morning to get the expo. I can have a nice and relaxed start instead.

That’s the usual plan from previous years. When I’ve had the resources to attend.

This year was a new experience for me.

The previous day the contact for WWG had arrived at the hotel I and the other demo staff were meant to be staying, and there had been a problem with the booking. Apparently there was a mad scramble to sort something out for us. We were given details of the new location, which was an apartment (or flat for us unsophisticated folks).

By the time I arrived at the flat I still hadn’t received the codes for getting in. I texted the WWG person who sent them back 5 minutes later.

I negotiated the locked key boxes. Like any good RPG open the first one gets the key to get inside the building. Open the box inside gets the key to the flat.

As you can see from above the top two photos (taken from the hotel website) were where we had initially been booked into. It’s walking distance from the NEC Hall 1.

The bottom three photos above are where I actually ended up!

The outside I think you would agree looks a bit rough. And that is being extremely kind. But it had free parking, which solved a problem I had for the day if we were at the original 4 star extravagance (I had planned to just leave my car in the NEC car park for the 3 days of the expo – which is cheaper than the airport parking I’d been directed to, but it left me the problem of parking for the night).

The flat was a 2 bedroom flat, with a double room (the couple helping out had that room) that had an en-suite bathroom, the small bedroom (that I was in, picture above), a second bathroom, kitchen/living room. It also had free WiFi.

Having a kitchen was handy. It meant I could cook, get milk etc. Location wise the flat is really good. Within 2 minutes walk there were 2 Chinese take-aways, pizza/kebab establishment, kebab establishment, fish and chips, fried chicken, Co-op, cash machine.

It’s just that the exterior isn’t the most attractive.

Our WWG contact wasn’t going to be able to meet me due to a minor accident the previous day. They had sprained their ankle, and was unable to get around for a day or two. It would appear yesterday was not a good day for them.

I had curried baked beans on toast for my tea. Sometimes the simple things give you the most enjoyment. And this is one of those things for me. Mind you baked beans on toast always brings back memories of when I used to have tea round my friend Gareth’s. We had other food, but that is the one that I will forever associate with being round his.

The couple from France arrived around 7pm, and after they had settled in invited me to join them to get something to eat. But I had already eaten. Routine (if not broken) has me eating at 5pm. Today had not broken the routine.

Day 1 – Showtime

After an early night I was up early as usual. I don’t use an alarm, my body clock seems to be programmed (by the dogs) to wake at 5am. I snoozed for an hour before getting up and having my usual breakfast routine.

I arrived at the NEC and at the proposed meeting point with our WWG contact by 8am. I was early. I sent a text saying I had arrived and near the meeting point. Just in case they were inside the hall already. The reply let me know I would now be meeting some-one else from WWG who would have the passes etc. The injury meant our contact was unable to get to the show.

I was there early, because that’s me. But there people already at the ticket office, queuing up for their tickets (hence that photo below), the doors didn’t open until 10am! I sent photo to Jonathan to let him know the queues had started. But he was nearly at the entrance himself, because he was on the bus from the car park. So we met up for a brief chat.

After getting our badges, we went inside to the stand. After putting on our WWG tee’s we set up the tables ready for the “punters”. Because I knew Epic, myself and the French couple were assigned to doing the demos of that for the day. It was easier for WWG to find people that could demo Star Realms and Hero Realms, but a bit harder for people that could do Epic.

Epic was very popular due to the promotion for the expo of get a demo of the game and get a free copy of the game. However we had an allocation that we could give away each day. Naturally this went very quickly. Anyone coming along after lunchtime didn’t stand a chance of getting a copy.

Wow did the morning fly by. Before I knew it, it was 2pm and I hadn’t had a break. Luckily WWG got subway subs in for everyone earlier. So I had mine, and then had a quick wonder round the hall. I used this time to meet up with Jonathan again. who let me know the new expansion for Memoir ’44 was on sale at the show (which was early as the official date was the 6/6). So I snapped that up from the place he had seen it on sale. I also got a bonus scenario booklet with it as well. Which was a pleasant surprise.

Unofficially I heard that the Judge Dredd version of Wild Lands might be compatible with the original. Rules to allow this were being worked on at the moment. If that was the case, it would make the decision to keep investing in Wild Lands easier. Because if push comes to shove I’d take the Judge Dredd version over the original every time.

The rest of the day passed equally as fast.

A discussion late in the day between WWG and the demo team (that’s me and the others) we were told we could claim our store credit from sales stand. That all we had to do was tell them using store credit to pay and how much store credit we had.

Sorcerer the new game from WWG had been selling really well. The bundle deal was nearly sold out.

As we were leaving for the day to return back to the flat, another joined us. They were also staying at the flat. This was fine, I was expecting a fourth.

However once back at the flat I had a text saying that a fifth (who was the real fourth person) was arriving after 7:30pm.

Wait! What? Five in a 2 bedroom flat? I was not chuffed. Luckily there was a fold out bed in the flat. Sadly no extra towels, or bedsheets. Our contact when informed of this did manage to get the cleaner to come in and sort that bit out. But this really wasn’t on.

We all decided to get some take away. After getting supplies from the Co-op (I purchased fizzy drink, and apple juice), we hit one of the Chinese take-aways. The chow mein and salt and pepper ribs were fine.

But everyone was shattered. Who knew teaching and playing Epic could be so exhausting? The French couple were able to get an early night. However I and the other guy weren’t because the fifth person hadn’t arrived yet.

They finally arrived close to 10pm instead of the 7:30 as told. But we had no option but to stay up. Our contact suggested that we leave the key in the key box outside the front door and they could let themselves in. But I pointed out that was a pointless exercise, because if we did that we wouldn’t be able to lock the front door!

Eventually after the new arrival got settled in we could all get some much needed rest.

Day 2 – YNWA

Once again I was up early. This time the advantage was I got to use the bathroom first and the shower.

With the fifth person sleeping in the living room/kitchen. It made making my own coffee a bit awkward. So I snuck in and grabbed my breakfast and drinks for the day, and then left the flat hoping to find a McD or something on the way.

In the end I ended up grabbing my favourite hot beverage from the NEC Starbucks franchise the Chai Tea Latte.

It was kind of relaxing sitting in the empty exhibition hall having my breakfast.

I did have to get the NEC staff to organise cleaners to clean up a large puddle that was right beside the aisle to the WWG stand.

As soon as staff turned up on the retailer side for the stand I asked them if they would put a bundle aside for me. Which they did.

They day went pretty much like the previous day. Except that we had extra copies of Epic to hand out after a demo. I think the copies lasted an hour longer before running out.

I saw Jonathan again throughout the day, and also one or two friends that had also come to the expo for the day. I really did enjoy this part of the expo. Probably the highlight for me. And I even got a chance to get a brief play of a proto type game a friend had brought along to get feed back on.

Late in the afternoon it emerged that WWG had none of the kickstarter stuff for Sorcerer with them! have to admit being disappointed at this news. That was the side I wanted to pick up really if I was going to get Sorcerer.

The day didn’t get any better on that front. I went to get my bundle that had been put to one side at the start of the day. Yep you can guess what I am about to write. It hadn’t been kept at all. Plus they bundle had sold out, as had a lot of the Sorcerer stuff. Then as I was taking this in a rather grumpy boss of the stand told me that we should be getting our product from WWG not them. I was getting a bit miffed. But before I waded in all guns firing I wanted to talk with the others to make sure my understanding of being able to buy from the stand from the previous day was an accurate memory.

Back at the flat after grabbing a Chinese take-away again I watched the Champions League final live on YouTube. It was a nervous 90 odd minutes as a Liverpool fan, considering that Liverpool weren’t for whatever reason firing on all cylinders. Despite the performance not being the usual high quality for the team, Spurs failed equally to perform at their best. Although to be fair to Spurs they were the better of the two teams on the night. Sadly for them just not in front of goal and taking opportunities.

So Saturday ended on a real happy note. My team for the last 45 odd years won their 6th European League trophy.

Day 3 – Departure

I repeated Saturdays morning routine, and added packing away all my stuff and putting it in the car. Well it was checking out day for the flat.

At the expo I used the quiet time as an opportunity to briefly look around and also take some photos of an empty expo hall 1. Something as a punter you don’t get to see normally.

Once people started to show up on the stands, the saga of the store credit and where exactly it could be spent took twists and turns. The boss of the stand tries to make sure that demo staff don’t miss out, and puts copies of Sorcerer aside for those that wanted a copy. They would work it out later with WWG about payment. A very very kind offer that I personally really appreciated. But then once WWG get in it’s all change again. WWG will ship to us any product we want that they don’t have with them. And that we would be given an opportunity to purchase the demo copies of Sorcerer at a reduced price.

Naturally this annoys the boss of the stand. It annoys me. It means I have to wait for anything I want. I didn’t want a demo copy of the game. Missing pieces, mistreated cards etc. were a concern. Heck we had “borrowed” tokens to use as counters and tracking life with Epic for starters (we had to improvise somehow).

One of my fellow demo crew members was tasked with taking the order of what people wanted to spend their store credit on. They had prices for the kickstarter stuff as well.

It worked out I could get all the Kickstarter exclusives and add-ones, but not the base game with the credit I had. So that’s what I went for. I reasoned that I’d be able to pick up the retail game easily enough, and probably cheaper than WWG would let me have it for.

Now instead of driving home with my brand new copy of Sorcerer and add-ons. I have to wait a minimum of a couple of weeks. Which my gut feeling is telling me will drag on longer than that. Mainly because I think WWG will be distracted in the meantime with Origins in the US that occurs in about 3 weeks time. So now their priorities shift to getting ready for that.


I wasn’t able to hang around at the end of the show (4pm) to help pack away. Maybe I should say more accurately that I was unprepared to do that.

My journey home was uneventful. The Attack Chihuahuas were pleased to see me back. Loki even left me a welcome home present by the backdoor!

Final Thoughts

As I said at the start and in a previous post, this was a first for me.

Seeing friends again that I haven’t seen in a while (months/years) was a definitely a highlight. But also seeing my friends from back home was equally a highlight.

Tom and Zee still seem dead set on pushing the myth that Barenpark is a game.

The guys behind the Judge Dredd RPG are pretty cool (as is their podcast).

I really enjoyed teaching Epic, and playing the odd game with a “punter”. But all the stuff around it kind of soured the experience a little.

I think it is accurate to say that the problems were due to poor planning and communication. In hindsight the warning signs were there with the late getting back to people with details etc when they asked for volunteers. And leaving it very last minute letting people have details about where they were staying (and that’s before they knew about the booking snaffu).

A lot of stuff could have been avoided with better organisation, confirmation phone calls/emails, better communication.

I appreciate that things go wrong, mistakes happen. And you can excuse one or two. But this was mistake after mistake. And they were avoidable mistakes.

There was also a confusing bit for me. If this was my company I’d be there before the help (which is what I was) arrived. I’d want to be first on the stand. Make sure everything was right before the doors opened etc. But they weren’t. I was first on the stand. They have no idea about the water spill. They arrived just before the doors opened. Or at least delegate that to one of your employees who is there with you.

I know where I lay the blame. But this isn’t a blame game. It’s a learn from your mistakes and do better next time.

Would I do it again?

I think so, just not with WWG. Great games, but…

Plus if anyone reads this post they most likely wouldn’t want me now to help out anyway. Very few people these days want reliable, independent, thinking, hard working people. They want cheap. Ok I just described myself twice. But you know what I mean.

UKGE 2019 Starts Tomorrow

epic, star realms

Just a gentle reminder that from tomorrow the UK Games Expo (UKGE) is on.

Depending when you do the table, the UKGE is either the third or fourth largest table top convention in the world. It swaps between Origins and UKGE. They keep leapfrogging each other. Although this may not be entirely true since PAX Unplugged started. I’m not aware of the numbers that is attracting.

I think this is the biggest UKGE ever. They have 3 NEC halls this year, plus the Hilton Hotel. I’m expecting attendance numbers to beat last years record attendance also.

Despite its growth, the expo never feels crowded as you go round the stands. The walkways between stands are wide enough to make movement easy and not feel that you are fighting to get around.

The expo is starting to be taken seriously by publishers outside the UK. Particularly the US ones. It’s hard to justify not being here when it is so large. So we are starting to see more publishers have their own presence at the expo. There is still away to go, but it’s a start. That also holds true for game releases and previews etc.

If you are in to table top games and all that covers, this is really worth a visit. Even if it’s just for the day.

I’ll be there all 3 days of the expo.

But my experience of the show will be different to anything I’ve experienced before at the expo. Each year so far my expo experiences have added something new. But this will be a massive first.

This year I volunteered to help out on the White Wizard Games (WWG) Stand demoing their games. I’m excited and a tad apprehensive at the same time.

WWG also have 3 events running during the expo.

Win one of those tournaments and become immortal! Well semi famous, and associated with a game you enjoy forever!

I know folks look forward to my daily posts about nothing. But that schedule may be interrupted. I’ll try and do a post each evening. There will be photos from the expo during the day going up on Instagram.

Hope to see you at the expo, and maybe have the chance of teaching you how to play one of the games.

Adding Agitators

painting

This is a short post! ‘Thank god” went the shouts around the Internet.

Earlier today I shared on Facebook and Twitter via Instagram the photo below, asking people to guess what I’d been doing.

Here is the answer.

A few days ago I was watching a video on YouTube by Lukes Aps.

After watching that video as I was ordering more paints (I needed more for the cave tiles) I also ordered a bag of 8mm ball bearings.

So with the new paints that arrived at the same time I’ve added agitators to them. I feel so pretentious saying that.

There is not any way in the world at any point in my life I’d think I’d ever be doing this, or speaking like that.

But it’s a useful tip to know.

Standard Superfriends Thinking

Deck tech, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

After the weekend and that cool Planeswalker event I got to thinking. Yeah I know a dangerous thing.

But after seeing how effective the new Teferi was, and also the other 2 Planeswalkers I played, especially when all out on the battlefield. I’ve been thinking you know what wouldn’t it be fun to build a superfriends deck?

To be fair getting a couple of Planeswalkers out like both the new Vivien and Vivien Reid, is shocking. That’s 7 cards you can look at in a turn, and get either 2 creatures or a creature and a land. Plus creatures get flash. That’s insane.

I want more of that sort of insanity.

I’d previously looked at some cards that were used in a modern superfriends deck (here).

So naturally I want to be using them, probably sideboarding Ashiok.

I can’t play Jace the Mind Sculper (not legal for starters – even if I did own one, which I don’t).

However I do have a single copy of Teferi, Hero of Dominaria. That should be enough.

I like adding in 2 copies of Oath of Teferi. That extra activation of Planeswalkers will be very useful.

My thinking at the moment is to splash green and play 3 copies of Hydroid Krasis with 4 copies of Frilled Mystic (body and counterspell). Plus and this is a massive plus, Wilderness Reclamation.


So that will be 7 creatures in total!

I’m thinking approx 8 Planeswalkers, but might push it to 10.

4 enchantments, and the rest counter spells of one description or the other.

Yeah the deck is going to be a control deck.

I’ll put a couple of Carnage Tyrants in the sideboard for the mirror match up.

So do I squeeze in a Nexus of Fate?

I see the sideboard being a rogues gallery of Planeswalkers that can be swapped in to counter various match ups.

It’s going to be an interesting exercise to see if this will work.

When last we left our heroes…

D&D, RPG

What a great way to start off a D&D session. Naturally and this won’t surprise you is how the living legend Matt Colville starts off his D&D games. It signals to the players we are starting, stop that chitter chatter.

Mr Colville then gets one of the players to recap what happened in the previous session. He uses it a diagnostic tool, what did the players think happened etc.

The video he talks about this is the DM Screen one. I’m not going to embed that here again. Just look at yesterday’s post where I embedded it for another reason.

Guess what? Yep I’m going to borrow this for my own games. Which we are still negotiating dates for our session one! One DM and five players. So that’s six calendars to sync. Ok two of us have no life and can make any date (well 99% of any suggested date) whilst the others have outside commitments/relationships that need to be looked after. What is it with these people and having a life?

As of this morning we may (touch wood, cross fingers, and any other unfounded superstition that may help) not only have found a date for session one but also session two also!

Honestly though I think negotiating Brexit is easier than finding a date we can all agree on.

But I do like that opening line. I think I will nick it for the title of the write ups of our sessions on here. The write ups will be my post mortem of the session. I suppose similar in format to the videos Colville does for his D&D Live plays The Chain. So I’ll have a brief plot summary of what happened in the session, followed by my thoughts on how the session went. What worked, what didn’t, that sort of stuff.

Would there be any interest in me sharing my notes for the campaign/session? It’d be in pdf format, and change a lot. I could use Google drive to keep it and share it with the world. If you are interested in this let me know in the comments below.

Let’s finish with a selfie of Loki and me.

Some proposed rules for our sessions

D&D, RPG, session planning

This post is aimed at my players for our campaign when it starts.

In this post I want to propose that these are our house rules for the game. By that I mean rules that are not in the Players Guide, Dungeon Masters Guide, Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide, and The Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

The first item I proposed I came across whilst flicking through the pages of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. I’m not sure we will ever use this, but if we do I think it could add some dramatic tension.

(Extract above taken without permission from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything)

Ok the next proposed rule or thing I plan to do is for me the DM to roll stealth checks! WTF?! I bet my players are saying as they read that. With coffee or some other beverage being spat across the room and hitting the sleeping cat or a kid. We know dogs are stupid like kids and cats to sleep in the firing range of spat out drinks.

Anyway instead of me trying to justify/defend this, why don’t I hand things over to the amazing and inspiring Matt Colville (well I’ve not mentioned him in a few posts, so,it’s long over due) to explain things.


The DM Screen episode (and the inspiration for the video above) also covers it.

Ok this next one is also a biggy.

We hadn’t talked about advancement in our session zero. But I think at the time, before I had read this in the appendix of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything (XGE) I was leaning towards the story advancement method of gaining XP over XP tracking. Now I’m very much in favour of this. For the record this is from Xanathar’s but they got it from the Adventurers League, which is like D&D organised play for want of a simple way to explain it.

I’d already nicked the Adventurers League rule for our session zero for creating characters Players Guide plus one other source book. Which I said was the Swordcoast Adventurers Guide. The reason for this is that it’s to keep costs down for the DM and the players. They don’t want people having to spend lots of money just to play the game. It puts people of playing. And that’s why for our first campaign I did the same.

The rules side is another thing. Whether I use the trap rules for generating them from the DMG or XGE is neither here or there. It’s invisible to the players. For the record I like the method in XGE. Just as the rules used for ships etc coming from GoS. The players don’t need to know the specifics.

We will be using skill challenges in the campaign. Which technically are not in the 5e rules. But as I pointed out kinda in a post yesterday (WHICH MY PLAYERS SHOULD NOT READ – IT HAS SPOILERS) by way of a link, it’s possible to run skill challenges in 5e.

So players either leave comments below or discuss in our messenger group. Everyone else I hope you are finding posts like this of interest.

An update on planning session 1 #4

D&D, RPG, session planning

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

Technically this post is not just an update on planning, but also some research notes for the campaign in general.

It was whilst doing this research that I stumbled across a D&D Beyond Encounter of the week that is exactly what I am planning on doing in part of the first adventure. This is going to save me a lot of work in researching nautical terms and what they mean when it comes to doing stuff on the boat to prepare for the storm. The post has a nice table (illegally copied below) you can print out and hand to players. But more importantly it’s a skill challenge. Which is something I wanted to have in this opening adventure.


Table source: D&D Beyond Encounter of the Week: Sharkfin Shipwreck
(There is also a follow up adventure they did, which I can also use. I hadn’t planned anything for the planned skill challenge and if they failed. But this makes an interesting alternative to my planned adventure. D&D Beyond Encounter of the Week: Coral Colosseum)

One of the things I’m struggling to get my head round is the whole breathing underwater thing.Which is the driving factor behind the research that inspired this post.

On the D&D Beyond forums I found this snippet that’s related to my quest for information. I like this suggestion, anything that can add variety so I’m not using the same old tropes over and over again.

Post source: D&D Beyond Underwater Combat and Drowning

There is also a very nice quote by C.S. Lewis on another discussion thread, once again on D&D Beyond. This makes great advice for when it comes to planning underwater adventures.

Post source: D&D Beyond Help with Underwater Campaign

But still no answer to my question about breathing underwater. I can’t remember which source book it is (probably GoS) that has tables for damage to equipment due to water pressure etc. Which implies that equipment of some can be used.

Then as I was writing this post I thought “there must be a magic spell that allows players to breathe underwater?” And there is. Why I didn’t think of this to start with?

It gets worse. I found this post on a forum giving some suggestions for magical items that can also be used.

Post source: an online forum

Now I’ve found this out, it all seems so obvious. I really should read the resources I have. Or at least not skip sections.

But now I no longer live in bewilderment and confusion. I feel like I have enough info now at hand to drop an underwater encounter into an adventure anytime I like. I have ideas for magical equipment that the party can maybe purchase or find.

On a post (forgot to keep the link) about underwater adventures there was a recommendation to read Mel Odom’s Threat from the Sea.


Luckily the trilogy is available as audio books on Audible. I happen to have 3 unused credits, so I have something new to listen to on my way to UKGE this coming week.

Gods, Mines, and Magic!

Deck tech, Game day, game night, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

Friday evening I got to play games with Diego and Jonathan.

This doesn’t happen nearly as often as I’d like. I’ll keep saying this over and over, but they are two of my favourite people to play games with (there are a handful of others on that short list, and I’m sure you can guess who they are).

Our first game of the evening was Coal Baron. Another game that Jonathan and I hadn’t played in a longtime. It was way before I started recording games using the BG Stats app. So I did a little digging on this hear ol’ blog of mine.

My searching did dig up this post. So if you go and look at the date of the post, we are going back to September 2015 when I last played this game. Even more interesting is that it was at my first Fenland Gamers meet up. Wow!

Incredibly it was the same outcome as all those years back now. I was last, with a 4 point difference! It pains me to admit Jonathan won this by a point.

Games played: Coal Baron, Santorini

Our final game of the evening was the classic “just one more game” Santorini but as 3 players.

We ended up playing 3 games of this, with Diego taking the honours in all of them.

But a fantastic evening of gaming. Great company.

Saturday was going to be an endurance test and a first for me playing MtG.

The days plan was to do Standard Showdown and then take part in the Planeswalker Weekend event straight after.

Before Standard Showdown started I managed to get a couple of casual games in with Paul. I haven’t used the mono red deck much. So I used these games as an excuse to do so. Pail was playing his dinosaur deck.

The first game was as expected and the mono red burn just flew. Our second game was a different beast altogether. For a long time I was mana screwed on 2 mountains. Luckily I was able to hold in there to start getting land. That’s when things took off for me. I’d been sitting with 3 Goblin Chainwhirlers and a Rekindling Phoenix since the start of the game. Once I was able to start playing them it was game over.


For Standard Showdown I went with the Simic deck.

Casual Game (using mono red burn)

Paul: Win 2-0

Standard Showdown Stats

Participants: 9

Rounds: 4

Round 1: Dean (dino aggro) Win 2-1

Round 2: Robert (burn/aggro) Loss 0-2

Round 3: John (Simic merfolk) Win 2-1

Round 4: Michael (Rakdos) Loss 2-0

Record: 2-2

Final Position: 5th

Prizes: 1 participation pack.

Basically the Planeswalker Weekend draft event that I was taking place in was like the old Game Day or Store Championship. On the line was the following War of the Spark play mat. Which looked better in real life.


This was my first draft event. It was fun. But you are drafting for value to start with. Which for me on pack 1 worked out as a good card to build around also. I skipped the Planeswalker and took the rare card that was a 2CMC rakdos creature card. So I let that set my colours for the draft. I don’t think anyone else was really going for those colours. So I was picking up lots of cheap creatures and spells in those colours. I think it helped having decided from pack 1, card 1, what colours I was going for and the style of play.

The “hook” for this draft and Planeswalker Weekend was that Planeswalkers could be cast with any colour mana. So when it came to grabbing the Planeswalker from your packs it was irrelevant as to the colours needed to cast.

Planeswalker Weekend Stats

Participants: 14

Rounds: 4

Round 1: Young Lad Win 2-0

Round 2: Alex Loss 0-2

Round 3: Joshua Win 2-0

Round 4: Sam Win 2-0

Record: 3-1

Final Position: 5th

Prizes: 1 participation pack, 2 foil promo cards, 1 booster

There was a free for all for the sticker packs. But I wasn’t a fan of the art style. So I didn’t join in the feeding frenzy for one of them. I think this is some of the worst MtG art I’ve seen.


As you will see I didn’t stick to the 40 card deck minimum, and went 44 cards!

There is some synergy between cards here using the Amass mechanic. Whether it triggered when a creature entered the battlefield, or when it died.

The Planeswalkers worked really well. They gave an element of control that distrupted the opponent’s game.

The mana curve for the deck is exactly what I wanted for a deck that was going aggro.


Here is the deck I built from the cards drafted:

Creatures:18

1 Banehound
1 Dreadmalkin
1 Grim Initiate
1 Dreadhorde Arcanist
1 Dreadhorde Butcher
2 Duskmantle Operative
2 Goblin Assailant
2 Lazotep Reaver
2 Vampire Opportunist
1 Mayhem Devil
2 Shriekdiver
2 Herald of the Dreadhorde

Spells:12

3 Kaya’s Ghostform
1 Spark Harvest
2 Aid the Fallen
2 Sorin’s Thirst
1 The Elderspell
1 Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage
1 Teferi, Time Raveler
1 Teyo, the Shieldmage

Lands:14

5 Mountain
9 Swamp