Flocking together!

Fenland Gamers, game night

During yesterday there was a discussion on the Wingspan Facebook group about pinks powers and when they triggered. A kind soul in the group posted the following extract from the rule book.

Jonathan responded with the following:

Which sparked a bit of friendly banter in the comments for yesterday’s post.

But let’s be honest and raw here. This is badly written, or not thought out, the rule book that is. I don’t care how well your eyesight is, you can not read the pink card from across the table. And I think it’s unreasonable to pass the responsibility of remembering on to the other players. If the player who has the ability forgets it, or misses it, tough. However I do think that a better solution would be that each player announces the action they are taking, and when they are taking any when activated abilities, and the outcome. Then the responsibility is put back on the player with the triggered ability. The other players have done their bit to help, by making sure everyone knows what they are doing. If then a player doesn’t announce their actions and when activated abilities, then I would agree with Jonathan you could assume that player is trying to cheat.

And yes there was more banter later that evening. Naturally this part of the post will spark more banter and discussion.

Last night saw five members of Fenland Gamers meet up at The Luxe to play Wingspan.

I wasn’t going to ever play at the full player count. But here we were about to play the game with five players. For the evening Ice Blast drinks were banned from the table. They drip everywhere. It’s the ice that forms on the outside. It melts and drips everywhere.

The Luxe are currently doing the branded/themed drinks for the Spider-man into the Spider-verse movie they are currently showing. Jonathan and I both had one, and I got a couple of the character toppers. I wasn’t going to get any, I knew I’d want to get them all. Katie arrived, I paid the extra to upgrade her drink, and get myself a third character topper. So from having zero, I’d got three in a single evening. Later in the evening near the end I had another drink, and got a fourth. I’m so weak willed sometimes. But now I just need the final one to finish the set.

Back to Wingspan. I was pleasantly surprised that it worked really well at the maximum player count. I’d like to say there was a lot more downtime between actions. But I try and use that productively planning my turns, adjusting plans. Plus once engines were starting to work, even on others turns you got to do stuff sometimes, like collect food, get a card. And turns are fairly quick.

In this game there was more group hug cards out. Which meant that I hardly had to do a draw card action, because I was getting enough cards from other people’s turns. Jonathan has an activated ability that gave everyone a worm token from the supply, plus The Usual Suspect also had a bird that gave people a resource.

Ollie grabbed the win by five points. But more importantly I was first loser, and beat Jonathan by a whole point.

It was a great evening. A great hosts. Let’s do it again in two weeks.

That’s my weekend taken up

Uncategorized


Yep this morning the second and final season of The Punisher hit Netflix. We all know within days that Netflix will announce there will be no further series of The Punisher. Just as they did after the other Marvel licences hit. We all know why they are being dropped. And we all hope that Disney/Marvel pick up the shows and run with them.

But in the meantime we get to enjoy the show and cry at the end that we want more, knowing we won’t get them.

Although I’m not attending the midnight one today, it’s the start of Prerelease weekend for Ravnica Allegiance tonight. I am attending the Prerelease tomorrow morning. Which starts at 11am, and runs to about 4pm. It’s looking like there will be over twenty attending the session I’m going to. It will be good to see some faces that I only get to see at these events, and hopefully the WotC tournament software will give us a chance to play against each other.

Plus there is the fortnightly Fenland Gamers meetup this evening at The Luxe. It’s promising to be a good one with plenty of banter. Especially between Jonathan and myself over a rule in the Wingspan Rulebook that some-one asked about this morning on Facebook. I hope Jonathan is going to be wearing fireproof underwear and clothes because he is getting burned tonight.

So that’s my current weekend plans, what’s yours?

Commander Deck Ideas Update January 2019

Commander, magic, MtG

Long time sufferers of this blog will recall that from time to time I like to update my list of Commander deck ideas.

With the arrival of some cards to use in Commander decks I thought I’d share with you the new cards that have arrived and latest version of the list of deck ideas.

These first three cards I want to find homes in existing decks. Waste Not can slot into two of my decks. The first will be the Death and Taxes deck. I think it would also be good in the Scarab God Zombie deck I have. My only concern is that I don’t remember having cards in the deck to force opponents to discard. So most of the time I don’t think it would be doing anything. I’ll have to revisit the deck list.

Return to the Earth definitely will be going in decks that have green. Big Green Stompy needs more flying removal, and the fact it can target artifacts or enchantments also. I like it.

Murmuring Mystic will be going into my upgraded wizards precon, I can’t remember the Commander, but I went in the spellslinger direction. So getting a 1/1 body each time I cast a spell, I’ll take that. Plus a 1/5 as a blocker, so hard to remove and can block. Sweet.


Rooftop Storm, how did I not know about this card? Thanks to Dean (he also put me onto some of these other cards also) I now do. This has to find a place in the Scarab God zombie deck. Cast them for free? Yes please. Only time I wouldn’t want to do this is with an X cost. But I don’t think,I had any zombies like that.

Pitiless Plunderer is in for a new deck idea. That idea is an artifacts deck. It will hopefully combo with Revel in Riches and Mechanised Production. I’m also looking at using it in a standard deck, that will either be blue/black or possible black/white.

I so wish Kaya, Ghost Assassin had blue instead of white in it’s casting costs. It would have been nice to have the card in the ninja/assassin deck. But she will go nicely into the planned abuse etb deck.

The final card to arrive was Profane Command. This has to be a prime candidate for a Commander staple that should be in every deck that splashes black. It’s a card that should go alongside Torment of Hailfire.

Here is the updated list of deck ideas:

Trostani token spam
Infect/wither deck (Atraxa as the commander possibly)
Atraxa deck upgraded
Death and Taxes
Care bear
Abuse etb
Saproling and fungus (go wide or go home!) possible Commander Slimefoot, the Stowaway
Ninja/Assassin
Artifacts deck
Eldrazi
Demon tribal

Up the beanstalk!

netrunner, RPG

I have a soft spot for the now deceased Android Netrunner lcg, despite having sold out of it at what retrospectively looks like the right time.

I loved the game play, it was so thematic. The whole runner aka hacker vs the big mega corporation. Trying to infiltrate their way into the corporate servers and steal their agendas. And it really felt as the runner that was what you were doing. Whilst as the corporation you were trying to stop the runner and protect your agendas.

The whole Android universe that it was set in was so rich, and dystopian. It had the whole Bladerunner aesthetic to it. Classic cyberpunk. Which I’ve been a big fan of since the mid eighties.

At some point in the near future (hopefully) FFG will be releasing their Genesys RPG source book for the Android universe, Shadow of the Beanstalk. I’m rather excited about having the opportunity to visit the Android universe again. Especially if I can convince some-one else to GM. But in reality it will most likely be myself being the GM. So I thought I would do a post about sources of background information (or should that be inspiration?) for the world of Android that GM’s and players a like can use.

We’ll start with the published fiction. I think all these are available digitally. FFG have been producing these rather nice novellas (read short stories). The physical versions of you can find them are hardback, and nicely produced. The stories are around 90-100 pages in length, with a short author bio. Then a few pages of background info about the Android universe relevant to the setting of the story. Which is rather nice for what we want. I’ve got Monitor and Exodus and they are quiet enjoyable stories. Oh and it should be noted Undercity isn’t out yet, but available to pre-order.

The novels are much older, I’ve not got hold of physical versions (which I’d love to do at some point). Plus I’ve only read Strange Flesh and Free Fall. Which I found very enjoyable.

But the one book you do want is The Worlds of Android. FFG describe it as the

“…definitive guide to the Android setting and its unique vision of the future. A beautiful, 272-page hardbound setting guide and art book, The Worlds of Android features full-color art, stunning gatefolds, and a polyphony of narrative voices that convey the immense diversity of human experience in the rich, fictional universe made famous by Android: Netrunner and the Android board game.”


I totally agree with that description. Naturally I haven’t seen the Shadow of the Beanstalk. But I’m assuming this will be the perfect companion to it.

With the data packs and deluxe expansions (iirc) there were flavour inserts. Which might be useful. One or two were extracts from the novels. They might be worth trying to track copies down. I do regret not keeping the ones I had.

Plus there was some great flavour text on the cards. It would be worth googling for card images and making notes of ones you like. Especially for npc’s that your players might come across.

So there you have it some sources for extra background information for an amazing universe. I hope that helped.

MtG: Arena – Dead To Me

magic, MtG, rant

Apparently if the rumours are true, then I will never ever, ever, ever play MtG: Arena.

The rumour started over on Reddit via a post from a disgruntled just made jobless customer support person, who spilled the alleged plans WotC have for Arena, and then removed that part of the post minutes after putting up for the world to read.

Naturally 10 minutes is an eternity on the Internet, and that was more than enough time for some folks to read those words, and take copies as evidence.

Any hoo, yesterday MTGLion on YouTube, shared this rumour with the rest of the world, along with his thoughts on it’s implications.

For me I was gobsmacked that WotC would even consider doing this. And it doesn’t make sense.

WotC have been spending lots of money to push Arena to the masses and get Hearthstone players. They have paid Hearthstone streamers to do Arena content on their channels. They are even trying to push it as an esport. WotC are also supporting Arena streamers with stuff like free packs, promoting them via their social media, etc.

All that money spent, which must be in the millions of dollars to get people playing the game and take on the 800 pound gorilla that is Hearthstone.

It doesn’t make sense to restrict yourself to what is basically the smaller market, while your competitor is on all the platforms. You’ll never get the same numbers or better them that way. There is a reason why AAA game developers are prepared to upset their PC owning fans and go for the bigger mobile market with their next releases (I know it’s much more complicated than that, but the simplification supports my point).

According to the rumour, there is a new mobile only product currently being developed instead. Why?

Well I’ve seen it mention by some (like Mike Hatcher on YouTube) that the Arena interface isn’t particularly mobile friendly. And that is the reason why we won’t see it on mobile. I’ve not played it, can’t because it’s not on Apple platforms (iOS and MacOS). However the videos I’ve seen, or the bits of the game looks very Hearthstone like. So I’d imagine or hope that the deck building etc is also similar. Well we know that the Hearthstone interface works across platforms, so, if I was developing a new card game I’d be learning from that.

So because of a poor mobile interface, WotC are handicapping Arena and spending the what will be a lot of time and money to develop a new mobile friendly MtG game? Surely considering that Arena is technically in beta, they should be tweaking the interface, or even redesigning the “broken” bits to work across platform.

It doesn’t seem right to me.

Developing a mobile app isn’t cheap, especially with all the supporting infrastructure that it will need (servers for starters). Then they will have to spend even more money promoting it. And then I feel the mobile app would potentially impact the numbers playing Arena. It all depends on what the mystery app offers.

But we have to remember these are rumours. Until announcements are made, or hard evidence surfaces, we have to take them with a pinch of salt. Naturally WotC haven’t said anything yet, and I don’t think they will until they are good and ready. Why would they want to effect the uptake of Arena and the amount people invest in the game financially and time wise? But if the rumours are not true wouldn’t they just come out and straight deny them?

WotC have announced that they have a solution to the fifth card problem. Which is nice, I still have a problem with the economy and redeeming codes given in boosters and the handicapping of that.

But while Arena is not on iOS, it will remain dead to me. I’ll keep an eye on developments. But my advice even to fans of MtG that own PC’s I’d be advising to hold off. See how this rumour plays out, and then decide where you want to spend your time and money on digital MtG.

So if you are on Hearthstone, I play casual, and you can hit me up for a game on the following id.


I’m also on the Epic the Card Game Beta as the same name. Yes Epic looks uglier, but boy is that dark draft a lot of fun.

Ravnica Allegiance Prerelease This Weekend

magic, MtG


This coming weekend starting at midnight Friday, many MtG players will be opening up the guild kit for their favourite guild. After assessing their cards for value, they will then build a 40 card deck, play some MtG, get some participation packs, and go home. Or hang around and repeat the whole thing again.

Also at the prerelease your FLGS will be able to sell you a booster box a week early, or the two Planeswalker decks for this set. The booster box comes with a buy-a-box promo (see below) that is only available while stocks last from buying a booster box.

I like prereleases, they are great fun. There is a buzz of excitement in the air. You play decks that you would never play normally.

Personally for new players I think they are a step too far. The deck building side too early in the players journey with the game. I know prereleases are more casual and friendly than other organised play. But still having time to help a new player and building your own deck is near on impossible. You might be able to help if you get finished deck building early. But in reality there isn’t usually that much time to help.

But it doesn’t mean the new player won’t have a great time. I think they can. It’s just the deck building might be a little daunting.

I’ll be at the Saturday day time Prerelease at my FLGS, and I’ve chosen the Simic guild. Hope to see you there.

Ravnica Allegiance Open House @ The Hobbit Hole

Game day, magic, MtG

Yesterday was the Ravnica Allegiance Open House at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole. Yep free Welcome deck, promo card, learn and play MtG. For a new and returning player doesn’t get better than that. For an existing player there is still a lot on offer as well.

You get to teach the game to new players, and share in the start of their journey into addiction and madness. The sweet sweet promo card. Playing with unsleeved cards. It’s so rare that we get to play with unsleeved cards. Tournament play requires sleeved cards, sleeves protect your more valuable cards while playing, and insert any other reasons you sleeve here. So it’s refreshing to play with cards in their natural state.

I took my spellslinger decks with me (to teach with) and last years 2018 Commander decks (in case of any new players wanting to try Commander also). Plus I had my Muldrotha and my dinosaur Commander decks.

I went with the red deck box, that was a red/blue or Izzet deck if we are going with the Guilds theme of the current and the imminent set.

Games 1 & 2 – Paul (white/blue aka Azorius)

I’ve played Paul before at Standard Showdown. Paul is an experienced but casual MtG player, and always fun to play against.

Our first game I was able with the blue side of my deck to delay the inevitable of the game with cards like Uncomfortable Chill, Waterknot and Sleep. But unable to get any real presence out. I did some direct damage with a lightning strike and shock, and used them to remove a couple of threats. My Hostile Minotaur hit once then became the victim of Paul’s Waterknot. I held on for as long as I could but Paul built up a formidable flying attack of angels and sphinxes that did me in.

The second game was better for me. For starters Paul was only putting out plains, so I knew there was no blue shenanigans coming my way. I was also getting my creatures out like the Hostile Minotaur, while being able to stop Paul building up any real threat. I don’t think I took any damage in this game at all.

Result: 1 – 1

Game 3 – Dean (can’t remember Dean’s deck I think it was black something)

Now I knew my red side of the deck had a Shivan Dragon. Which was the card I was expecting to trigger the flying ability of Kargan Dragonrider. So I was pleasantly surprised to see Sparktongue Dragon and Volcanic Dragon show up. It was even better because I had a Goblin Motivator out that meant any creature played could be given haste. So even my Snapping Drake’s when they hit the battlefield were an immediate threat.

By the time Dean had started to build up a board state, it was too late. I had dragons and drakes out, plus a dragonrider. He was unable to stop the final killing blow from above.

Result: Win

Game 4 – Glen (mirror match)

I’d already got my required number of games to get the days reward. But Glen still needed games. So I kindly obliged.

This was a game of who got to their good cards first. Sadly it wasn’t me.

Result: Loss

The days reward…

I didn’t keep my Welcome Deck I gave that away to one of Dean’s nephews.

Dean sat next to me, he was looking through a trade folder that belonged to Glen. One or two cards caught my eye.

So I got the following three cards to go into the Horrors from the Deep Commander deck. They looked like fun cards to try out, and well fitted the theme of the deck.


I also got another assassin for the slow brew ninja/assassin deck I’m brewing. Plus a card that would combo with others in the Death and Taxes deck, and could go in a potential demon deck I’m thinking of.

I did buy three Guild packs (Golgari, Selesnya, and Dimir). These are a themed booster built around one of the five Guilds containing 35 cards for that Guild, plus a MtG Arena code to give you three free in game boosters.


I’m going to rant here. This is useless to me. I don’t have a PC. I’m an Apple fanboy. MtG Arena isn’t available on iOS or MacOS. Plus I bought three of these decks, yet would only be able to redeem the code once! Yeah WotC aren’t very generous on this front. Yet sitting on the stores shelf’s are Pokemon product all proudly proclaiming on the packets/boxes that I could get that booster or deck to play free online.

I’ve said before considering the engine WotC are using, there is no reason why MtG Arena can’t be beta tested on these platforms also. It would make sense to be testing in these at the same time.

But then I think about how stingy WotC are being with the redeeming of codes. The stuff I hear online about it’s in game economy and it the deck building, 5th card issue, and I’m thinking maybe I’m lucky it’s not on my iPad.

I’m currently playing Hearthstone again, and keep dipping into Epic the card game beta to play it’s dark draft (I love that format). WotC are throwing ridiculous amounts at marketing MtG Arena, and even trialing best of one in certain unlucky FLGS in an attempt to attract digital players to the physical game.

WotC have lost me as a MtG Arena player when they do eventually release on the iPad. I’d have invested too much in the game they want to knock off it’s throne.

Anyway back to these guild packs. £6 for 35 cards, is not bad value. You are getting 5 more cards than if you had bought 2 boosters. Plus they are cards in colours you want. So you are improving the odds of getting something useful for building a deck for that Guild. I pulled another Assassin’s Trophy in the Golgari pack.

The days MtG was finished off with a 6 Player Commander game. Glen used his competitive deck and toyed with us all. We were just twiddling our thumbs before Glen was in a position to combo off and kill us all in a single go. I’ve talked before about using competitive decks against lesser decks. It still holds true, and I stand by my words. It’s not really a fun experience.

It was a fairly successful Open House for the FLGS. There was a constant stream of people wanting to play. It was a good day of MtG.

My Welcome Deck List

Red Side
1 Shivan Dragon
1 Fire Elemental
1 Goblin Motivator
2 Hostile Minotaur
2 Onakke Ogre
1 Sparktongue Dragon
1 Volcanic Dragon
2 Kargan Dragonrider
1 Fiery Finish
1 Electrify
1 Lightning Strike
1 Shock
1 Trumpet Blast
1 Radiating Lightning
13 Mountain

Blue Side
1 Riddlemaster Sphinx
1 Aven Wind Mage
1 Frilled Sea Serpent
2 Snapping Drake
2 Tolarian Scholar
1 Wall of Mist
1 Air Elemental
1 Mist-Cloaked Herald
2 Divination
1 Sleep
1 Uncomfortable Chill
1 Befuddle
2 Waterknot
13 Island

Baby Kraken Have Surfaced

D&D, RPG


Finally the Table Breaker dice that I backed on Kickstarter arrived. I say finally, but that’s me being impatient once I knew that they were coming.

In reality the dice are two months early. I shouldn’t be getting these dice until sometime in February. However thanks to a bit of good luck and filling in my backer details early, I was, along with 140 other lucky regular backers getting our dice early along with the early bird backers.

I went with the black and red colour combo. It looks cool, but more importantly it’s very readable. I’ve seen some dice that the numbers are not that clear.


The dice are beautiful, and have a nice weight to them. The whole presentation is really good. The metal storage case can have the foam for the dice in the lower half removed and be used as a mini dice tray. My only complaint is that the hinge seems a bit too wobbly.

But how did I ended up with these amazing dice?

It started as a joke! Longtime sufferers will recall that last year The Usual Suspect broke my folding gaming table. Which meant that one or two of my supportive friends in my hour of suffering, used that opportunity to make jokes at my expense. Some would consider this cruel, but it was good natured banter in reality.

The day after, my friend Bouncy posted a screen grab of a kickstarter page for these dice on the club Facebook page. I missed the intended joke totally, and went off looking for the dice, cursing my friend for not including the link. Naturally I liked what I saw and backed the project.

It wasn’t until much later in the day when Jonathan commented on Bouncy’s post that he had only just got the joke, that it dawned on me also. Wow how slow was I? But it was funny, and had also cost me money. Well it would do (the Kickstarter hadn’t finished at that point), I could have backed out of backing the dice. But they looked really cool, and the name was cool also. So I let it ride.

I suppose you would like to hear what Dram got up to in the first session of the New Year. So read on for more in the adventures of …

Dram Tactical Genius


Our party of adventurers awoke the next morning, sore, beaten, but more importantly not stinking of poison.

While the others in the group pottered around, Dram did what was second nature for him. He made and ate breakfast.

Breakfast was followed by a boring discussion about what to do next. Ace and some others in the group wanted to go to Cragmaw Castle. No one seemed on board with Dram’s idea about seeing the dragon again. Which seemed the more exciting option. Where was the fun going to some castle? Apparently there was some guy they had to search for there. Who might have a map to a lost mine. This really didn’t sound as much fun as Dram’s idea of seeing the dragon again.

Out voted, the group broke count and headed off towards Cragmaw Castle.

They were travelling light and fast. Which for a halfling was more like jogging along to keep up with these big folk. How that gnome and his heavy armour was keeping up he didn’t know. In the distance Dram could here the wings of the dragon flapping as it flew above it’s domain. Which for Dram was a constant reminder of the excitement they were missing out on.

Early evening the group pitch camp near the edge of a woods. After the evening meal, before settling down for the night. There was another debate about the path to take. Sarmyar made an incredulous remark during it that Dram had to pick her up on. She had remarked at one point that she wanted excitement, to which Dram responded “but you turned down seeing the dragon again”. That put her in her place he thought.

Sarmyar and Ace took first watch. Dram snuggled up under his blanket and fur skin blanket, and drifted off into a slumber.

The next thing Dram knows he is being woken by a commotion, Ace and Sarmyar had awakened the camp, they were under attack.

Dram could make out shapes and flapping. He cast darkness to hide and give him time to prepare his defences.

Unable to see, Dram felt around for his staff. With battle noises filtering through to him. Dram used the staff to give himself mage’s armour.

Fully protected and now ready for action, Dram made his way out of the darkness. The rest of the group were still fighting these creatures. Magic missiles flew from Dram’s hand as he guided them to hit the creatures attacking Nick, Sarmyar and the gnome. They dropped to the floor dead.

Dram had once again saved the day.

As they waited for the darkness to disappear. Dram looked at the creatures corpses. He recognised the small, leather winged blood sucking stirge.

The final watch after all that excitement was carried out by Dram, Grull and Nick. Which was rather boring, and uneventful.

As the sun rose in the sky, slowly warming up everything it touched, Grull and Sarmyar disappeared off to do a spot of hunting. Dram naturally made breakfast.

After breakfast had been eaten, and Dram’s thoughts had started to turn towards second breakfast. The hunting couple returned with a boar over Grull’s shoulders. Second breakfast was going to be awesome.

After breakfast Ace had the bright idea of taking a short cut through the woods to Cragmaw Castle.

Light was dappling through the overhead canopy. The walk was rather pleasant. The party hit a path that they decided to follow.

Suddenly Sarmyar disappeared into a hole in the ground. Dram reacted instinctively casting feather fall to save Sarmyar.

As the party gathered round the hole in the ground, hobgoblins appeared out from behind trees and bushes. Arrows flew through the air. One struck Dram.

There was only one response Dram had to this. Misty Step. Dram disappeared and then reappeared the other side of the hole Sarmyar had fallen into. Before anyone reacted or could do anything, for the second time in two days Dram was engulfed in a wall of darkness.

Once again whilst hidden, Dram used his staff to give him mage’s armour. He was ready now for this battle. The noises of which were making their way through the darkness. It sounded exciting.

Dram slowly made his way to the edge of the darkness. Poking his head out he saw the pit directly in front of him, now half full with hobgoblin corpses.

There were two hobgoblins attacking a dire wolf. Nick had transformed again and as usual getting himself into a sticky situation. Dram casts magic missile and directs them at the two hobgoblins, then fades back into the darkness. Well you need to see something first to hit it.

Dram repeats the manoeuvre. This time there is a single hobgoblin left attacking the dire wolf, and a cleaved hobgoblin corpse between the dire wolf and Grull. That lone hobgoblin took the full force of the magic missile. It’s body slumped to the ground, expired.

Gnomes are such carrion-scavengers. Our “paladin” was true to his race, and rushed over to go through the pockets of the hobgoblin that Dram had just killed.

Dram was concerned about Sarmyar. He didn’t think she had bumped her head from her fall, after all he had saved her. Which she could have been grateful about and at least said thank you. Maybe she got hit on the head during the excitement of battle. That’s what is had to be. Why else would she keep going on about a dust cloud, and waiting for it to disappear? There was no dust cloud.

The gnome went over to Grull and showed him a bit of paper that he had found on the hobgoblin corpse.

Feeling brave Ace went looting the remaining bodies. Who then starts handing out pieces of paper to the rest of the group.

Dram looked at the piece of paper handed to him. It was a wanted poster with his likeness crudely drawn on it. “I’m going going to send that back to mother, she’ll like this”, spoke Dram to no-one in particular.


If Dram thought gnomes were carrion-scavengers, Ace was going to make what the paladin had done look like the height of good taste.

Ace started hacking off one of the hobgoblins heads, and then tied it to his belt using the remains of the hobgoblins hair.

With that image firmly in your mind we leave our adventurers for another week.

Monthly Meetup January 2019

Fenland Gamers, game night


The afternoon saw a hors d’oeuvre gaming session with my friend Nathan. Nathan is very knowledgable about video games and movies. But I might question that after recent new information came to light. Such as until Pokemon Let’s Go X (can’t remember which one he got), he hadn’t played a Pokemon game before (Go does not count). Then if you saw his films of 2018 he enjoyed Superman 4 The Quest for Peace. I think ’nuff said on that. Just knowing that is enough to make my case.

We started off with a couple of games of Keyforge. We both played new unopened decks. So we had no idea about the decks, except the houses they contained. Which meant we got the full discovery experience as we played.

We only played two games, using new decks both games. If time allowed I’m sure we would have played best of three with each deck. But this was uber casual, playing for enjoyment. Which is why the honours being shared, a game a piece seemed right.

During the second game Nathan’s partner arrived. So after I had finally won the game, I taught them Kingdomino. Nathan owns the game, but hadn’t played it, and wanted to be taught how to play.

This really was a fun way to spend a Wednesday afternoon.

The first monthly meet up for 2019. And what a meet up. Some of those that attended got to play possibly the first big game of 2019, it’s definitely the hottest game of the year so far, Wingspan, approximately 3 months early!

But first we played a five player game of Sheriff of Nottingham. I’ve not played this game for a while, but like all things gaming it has a lot of stiff competition for getting to the table.

Sheriff of Nottingham is one of those games that really is reliant on the people you are playing it with. Get the wrong bunch playing it, and the game is not a fun experience. On the other hand, get people that ham it up, buy in to the roles they are playing, and the experience is really fun.

Last night we had a great bunch playing. There was banter, well two postman at the table there was going to be. Especially at their profession. Throw in some school boy humour based around male chickens. It was a blast playing the game. I think possibly the funniest game I’ve taken part in to date. Because of that I didn’t care I was nowhere close to winning.

Afterwards we split into two groups of three to play games. Naturally this is when Jonathan, myself and James played Wingspan.

Officially Wingspan isn’t due to hit the shelves of your FLGS until March. However thanks to me being impatient and jumping on the pre-order bandwagon of getting it direct from Stonemaier Games, it hit the table last night.

This is a really really nice engine builder, that looks amazing. Any faults found with the game is really nit picking.

We played using the competitive end of round scoring. So ideally you are building your engine with one eye on the end of round scoring rule for that round. Whilst also taking into account the end of game bonus you chose.

In our game we had three completely different engines. Mine was an egg and tucking cards engine. Whilst James had a card draw engine. I don’t know what engine Jonathan had. But that illustrates the variety you can have in the engines you build. And I know with the number of birds and their abilities in the game, there is a few more engine types and then mashups that we didn’t touch.

With 170 odd bird cards in the base game (an expansion is already planned) there is a lot of variety, and you are not going to see every card in a game. It’s also going to be a few games before you’ve seen all the bonus cards. With eight end of round scoring tiles, that are double sided, that are selected at random at the start of the game, there is even a bit of variety there. So I guess in a kind of long winded fashion I’m saying there is a lot of replay ability in the game.

I really like that you start off the first round with eight actions to take that round. Then at the end of each round that number goes down by one as you use one of your action cubes to mark your position on the end of round scoring track. But even though you get to do less on subsequent rounds, the actions you take are more powerful thanks to the birds you are attracting.

It’s a hard decision to make at the start of the game about which of the starting hand of five birds you want to keep, if any. Because each bird you keep costs you one of your starting five resources.

It seemed to me reflecting back on our game, that rounds one and two are your building your engine rounds. The third round is the start to exploit your engine, and the fourth and final round is your engine doing it’s thing.

I liked the mechanic on the Barn Owl card I had that used already selected resource dice. They got re-rolled and any mouse symbols went on the card. It just simulated the hunting of this predator perfectly. Loved it, seemed very thematic. There were a couple of times when I couldn’t use the ability because there were no used dice.

And the bird tower and the resource dice, love them. Love how they are used in the game.

The rule book is easy to follow, and I love the little designer notes scattered through out it. Having the reference section separate is nice. Although the quick start rules that it has inside the cover would have been better on the back page in my opinion. They even suggest if you are learning the game as you go along (which regular readers will know is something we like to do in our game group) to use these rules. When I read that in the rule book it bought a little smile to my face.

With the card tray, supplied containers for eggs and resource tokens, set up and clearing away is pretty quick.

The game looks beautiful. The art as I’ve said previously is gorgeous and could easily be in one of those Observer bird books. Out on the table being played, the bird box dice tower, and the eggs make great table theatrics. Overall with quality of components is amazing.

My nit picking for the game is that with all the cards sleeved they barely fit in the rather nice card storage box included. In fact I had to take the automata cards out and put in a small deck box. For those interested these are the sleeves I got, Mayday Games 57.5 x 89 mm sleeves Chimera USA Premium Card Game (Pack of 50). There is a couple of millimetres gap at the top of the sleeve. But I can live with that.

There is a typo that I’m not bothered about. But there is a couple of misprinted cards, with incorrect numbers on. The correct images are available on the games FAQ, but it would be nice to be able to get replacement cards.

I’m going to also nit pick about the thin card stock for the end of round scoring track. I’d have liked it to be a bit thicker, maybe even cardboard.

And I’ll agree with Tom on The Dice Tower that the score pad is a bit plain when you look how colourful the rest of the game is.

Wingspan really does live up to the hype. It delivers in spades on it’s promises. This is one game I can’t wait to get to the table again. The bar has been set really high for the rest of the year.

As usual for this type of post a big thank you to The Luxe Cinema for hosting the evening once again. And a “you rock” to the staff on duty.

Use Any Miniature Systems

miniatures, RPG

One trend or genre I seem to have stumbled upon In recent weeks is that of miniature rules that you can use any 28mm miniatures with. These are rules that you use whatever you have lying around, and don’t rely on you having to buy starter sets, or construct “armies” from only official models, or buy lots of extra specific rules aimed at specific army types.

The first rule set I came across in this genre was via my friend Duncan. He tweeted a link to the rules for Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse. Duncan knew with my liking of Zombicide that it might be of interest to me.

It’s the ideal entry point for me, because I can use my Zombicide stuff. It even got me painting minis (mainly zombies so far) from Zombicide (although I need to get back into the painting mood, not been feeling it since the Summer).

So Last Days is a zombie survival skirmish game. Both players have a squad of survivors that will be fighting it out with the added threat of zombies roaming about on the board.

The rules have about 5 scenarios for you to use as the basis for a skirmish or to string together into a campaign. Plus there is a planned expansion coming out later this year I think with further scenarios in, and whatever else they decide to include.

The game plays on a 3ft by 3ft play area, uses d6 dice, some miniatures, terrain, tokens or something to act as the tokens, and a tape measure.

The latest one to find it’s way to me is the Rangers of Shadow Deep system. This is a fantasy based solo or cooperative rule set. Which as far as I know makes this kind of unique. There aren’t many systems as far as I know that play solo, or are cooperative, if any.

The rules come with 4 missions that have sub scenarios, plus an additional campaign setting. So a lot of play there already, plus you can buy a cheap mini expansion single mission.

For playing this, it differs from Last Days in that it uses d20 dice instead, and is mostly played on a 2.5ft by 2.5ft area. Otherwise you have the same themed requirements.

For me not being a massive miniatures gamer, I’m coming from a zero starting point. Which means I’m having to build up slowly the necessary bits to play with.

For Last Days I’m in a better position than I am for Rangers of Shadow Deep. Last Days allows me to use all the stuff I have for Zombicide. With the Walking Dead miniatures game I can pick up stuff for that to re-use. And that is what I have slowly been gathering bits for.

On the fantasy front I have zero stuff to repurpose. Although stuff like trees (once I have them) can be shared. So when funds allow I’ll slowly build up what is required.

If you are into the miniature based gaming it’s likely that you already have a lot of stuff you can use.

For me I’d like trees, bushes etc, I’ve looked into the cost of buying and boy is that stuff expensive. There are tutorials online for creating my own. But (there is always a but) I don’t have the tools, skills or time. Excuses I know. However I’m struggling to paint as it is at the moment.

One drawback for me, is these games require tokens. Luckily for Last Days I found some pre-made ones. I’m hoping that I can find a kind soul that has also produced some tokens that can be bought for Rangers of Shadow Deep.

I’d love to be playing these games. But I need at least the unpainted stuff to be able to. Last Days is the one I’m closest to being in that position for. So these games are a side project for me, as I slowly build up what is required.

But I think both of these would appeal to the none miniatures gamer because of that lower entry point, of any mini will do. You don’t need lots of minis, these are squad based, so up-to 5 or 6 (depending on squad construction) should be enough for a player. The rules aren’t overly complex in my opinion. Plus the rule books are less than £20 in both cases.