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.

I was feeling a little bit sick as I was getting ready for the evenings Fenland Gamers Friday meetup at The Luxe. I really did feel like not going. A multi coloured yawn felt imminent. But I battled on getting ready, which was basically putting my MtG stuff together and a couple of small box games in a bag.

At our fabulous hosts The Luxe I got everything set up for the evening. Which is basically getting our folding table out and chairs round it. I put two play mats out ready for playing MtG. This was a change from the normal routine. Which was bought on because earlier in the week a new member to the group had said they were coming along with a friend to play MtG. So that was what I was geared up for.

The start of the session came, only one person (an existing member) had turned up. I checked my phones and there were missed calls from Jonathan. He was blocked in by an ambulance and other cars with flashy lights. He’d be along as soon as he could get out of his drive way.

While waiting for people to show the two of us played a couple of games of MtG using my two standard decks, the mono blue mill and the golgari aggro mid range. The honours went one a piece.

At the end of the second game Jonathan arrived. But no one else had. Luckily he’d bought a couple of games with him. One of which was a new game. So we decided to have a learning game of Heaven and Ale. You know our approach to new games, learning on the fly.

Sometimes, depending on the publisher, the included rules are multilingual. Sadly not in this game. This was the German edition of the game, which meant Jonathan had to track down the English translation and print them out. Luckily that is the only bit of translation that the game needs, the rest of it is language independent. For non gamers, often the German version of the game is cheaper than the UK version, and is worth that little extra of visiting the bgg site for a translation (or the English rules may be on the publishers web site).

Continuing the tradition of being kind to readers of this blog, and having punished you enough already in this post, the headline for this game is I liked it.

Ok for those that are interested I’ll now go into what I liked about the game.

This is a nice tile placement game. I do like the method of getting tiles. It uses a similar mechanic to Glen More and Tokaido. You are selecting a tile space on the track, buying the tile, and placing on your player mat. Unlike the two mentioned games where the last placed player on the track takes the next move. Players take turns moving irrespective of position on the track. This variant of the mechanic is refreshing.

The price of a tile is determined where you plan to place the tile on your player mat. There is a shaded side, and a sunny side. The sunny side doubles the cost, and when a tile gets activated on it, it moves the matching resource tracker on your player mat. The shaded side does nothing to the purchase price, but when the tile gets activated it generates money.

Which means you have a nice series of decisions to make in this game. The first being the tile to select on the track. Which tile you want next, how far along the track you are prepared to travel, followed by which side of the player board will you place it.

There are two ways to activate tiles. The first is to select a scoring space, and the other surround an enclosure. The enclosure option adds up the values of surrounding tiles, which decides which enclosure tile you place there. This tile then allows you to advance your abbot token a number of spaces, and activate a number of surrounding tiles. These activations are the way you advance your resource tokens and abbot on your tracker, plus also generate income.

The one thing that isn’t great is what seems like the over complicated end game scoring. I’m not going to explain it in detail. But it involves getting your abbot as advanced as possible to determine point multiplier and a conversation ratio. That ratio is used to try and advance your least advanced resource token at the expense of your more advanced one. You want that advanced as far as possible because your last placed tokens position is the value you multiply the point multiplier with! See even that brief explanation is complicated. Imagine reading the rules and trying to work it out.

In our game I got a nice engine going, that exploited abbots sharing high value tiles. I was initially concerned that once the starting money had gone, that there would be issues getting more money. But the first couple of rounds I generated lots of money while the others struggled and ran out. Which meant that on one round they advanced around the track very quickly, leaving me to just pick up a lot of tiles. I completed two enclosures that round. The final round I scored barrels and picked up a lot of max point barrels. I think I was the only one who filled there tile spaces.

I’ve gone all fancy in the above photo to show a combo that worked well for me. When I activated that abbot on the scoring, those two four cost resources scored twice. Also that abbot being shared by two enclosures meant it would also get activated twice.

So you can guess from that above paragraphs that I smashed the game, and won. Jonathan was observing what I did during the game. So in future plays expect to see similar tactics from him, and used against me. Things will definitely be more competitive.

A great game, a nice change from the usual mechanics that hit the table.

Once again thanks to Jonathan you get the chance to see hobo Darren.

I have to admit I was disappointed that the MtG players didn’t show. I was all prepared for playing MtG, and fought through that feeling sick. It was lucky that Jonathan showed and had games with him. Otherwise the evening could have been a total washout. If you say you’re coming it’s good manors to let the organisers know if you can’t make it. As one other member did last night. We can’t cater for all eventualities, so we plan the games we bring along based on numbers and requests.

A big thanks to The Luxe for being great hosts once again.

UPDATE (5/1/19): Jonathan sent the following to me this morning:

“Looking at the Heaven and Ale playthrough, I think we were playing the monks incorrectly. The monks only score adjacent tiles when ‘triggered’ by using a purple scoring disc. They do not score adjacent tiles when placing a shed; all they do is move the Brewmaster 1 step per monk activated, when a shed activates them – something we were not doing.”

The joys of our style of learning a game, discovering the misplays afterwards! Plus there was no guarantee that we wouldn’t make misplays even if we had read the rules before hand.