Last night was meant to be game 4 of Charterstone. But life predictably got in the way for one of the group. Unlike previous hiccups alternate gaming too place instead.
The substitute game hitting the table last night was Nusfjord.
Jonathan (Owner of the game) had only played the game solo, and for the first time a couple of days before. So this was a first for him as a multiplayer game, and it was the first time at all for Jeff and myself.
The decision to play Nusfjord was made late afternoon. Which meant Jeff did his homework and watched a couple of reviews online. Me? Once I was home I had tea and watched the latest episode of the relaunched Roseanne. It hadn’t even occurred to me to swot up like Jeff.
We had the usual joke of “it’s just like Agricola”, before Jonathan went over the rules.
I love the meeples they have in this game. The wooden fish, the little boat first player marker. The wood meeple is a wood meeple. In fact I like the components a lot with one exception. That’s the cardboard money tokens. Talk about letting the side down. They are minuscule. If this game ends up in my collection then these will be the first thing I’d upgrade in the game, possibly the only thing. I have spare cardboard coins from 7 Wonders, 7 Wonders Duel, and Clans of Caledonia that I could replace them with. Well you’d have spare as well if you had the cool metal coin upgrades for those games too.
I really did enjoy this game, despite coming in last. I found this game far more accessible than Feast for Odin. That was like a complete sensory overload with everything you could do. This game has 3 resources, fish, wood and coins. You can see the elements that Uwe Rosenberg likes to use in his games reused here. For me the way he’s mixed them works. I like the shares mechanic. You can issue them as an action and get money for them, you can buy other people’s shares. When you have another players shares they give you a fish for each share you have of theirs at the start of each round. The recruiting village elders to get slightly better actions that only you can take is cool. Building buildings will gain you a one off bonus, plus maybe points at the end of the game. These buildings also cover up spaces on your player board, that if empty give you negative points at the end. You also have to build boats to increase the amount of fish you bring in at the start of each round. But these boats are also worth points at the end of the game.
This isn’t a points salad type of game. Yes points are how you decide the winner. But these aren’t going to be massive scoring games. Jeff won with a score of 30 points, Jonathan got 27, and I came in last with 23. With the 3 building decks there is going to be some variety each game because not all cards are used. Plus then you will also get different combos.
I’m nearly on the edge of saying this is my favourite game of Rosenburg’s that I’ve played. Nope it is. No doubt about it. It hits the sweet spot for me. Yeah I’d happily play this again.
After we finished playing there was some general chatter, plans made for Fridays gaming, and then we disappeared off into the night.
This post will come as no surprise to anyone, especially after I said I’d put this list up in my previous post on Brawl. Yep jumping on the bandwagon like so many on the interweb whether they are youtubers or just players of the game, I’m putting up a Brawl deck list.
Naturally I’m sticking with the same commander, Zacama, Primal Calamity. I don’t like playing against him. He’s so oppressive. In our meta once he’s out with the mana to back him up he’s stomping all over the battlefield. It’s basically game over. But how did I select which creatures stayed and which didn’t? With none of the Commander staples for mana ramp, the creatures that tapped for mana or gave me a discount had to stay. The Elder dinos were going to stay, then I went with creatures that gave me some ability when played, and stayed away from those that had the enrage ability in general. When I looked at the deck list when writing the post I thought I’m light on lands. Ideally there should be 23/24. But then I remembered with the creatures that tap for mana or give a discount, plus enchantments that increase the mana I can tap for, Growing Rites of Itlimoc, and Immortal Sun there is a bit of ramp and extra mana hidden elsewhere. There is also some tutoring with Commune, Forerunner, and Harvest Season. So with the tools or should that be cards? That I have this ain’t too bad a deck.
A little Easter day fun to start off the third and final post on my Easter pulls. Why I didn’t think to do something like this earlier I don’t know. Personally I think Nico would make a rather good Planeswalker. He certainly could replace Nicol Bolas for scheming. Not long after Loki arrived I remember having both dogs on my lap and catching Nico shoving Loki off onto the floor when he thought I wasn’t looking! Mind you Loki is just as evil. Take this morning for example when I thought he was just after some attention, a little tummy rub. Oh no he came over and threw up all over me. I tell you these attack chihuahuas are pure evil.
It’s the start of the Easter holidays, and I decided my Easter present to myself would be 9 booster packs of this little card game called Magic the Gathering.
I’m so tempted by Star Wars Legion which has just been released over here. But I don’t know anyone who is getting it, or wants to get it and play. So I’m loathe to invest time and more importantly money into it. It’s not as if I’m getting some of my more miniature heavy games like Imperial Assault, Zombicide, and The Others to the table. So if I’m struggling to get them played it’s going to be even harder to get a miniatures game to the table. It’s not like I was playing X-Wing every week when I had that. That’s the drawback of living in the back of beyond.