Journey Starts

Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night

STOP BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER THERE MAY BE SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE GAMES GLOOMHAVEN AND CHARTERSTONE. WHILST I WILL TRY AND TALK ABOUT THESE GAMES WITHOUT RUINING TOO MUCH. THERE MAY BE A CHANCE I MAY SOMETHING THAT MAY OR MAY NOT SPOIL THE GAMES FOR YOU IF YOU ARE INTENDING TO PLAY THEM. IF THAT IS THE CASE THEN THIS IS NOT THE POST FOR YOU. GO AWAY ENJOY LIFE, PLAY SOME GAMES, DRINK SOME GREAT COFFEE, EAT CAKE, AND WE’LL SEE YOU IN THE NEXT BLOG POST.

It’s just been one of those weeks. Which is lucky for readers of this blog because it has meant I haven’t been able to write any posts that share my boring life with you.

Last Sunday was the start of what basically is going to be a very very long campaign set in the Gloomhaven universe. Which is a long winded way of saying that Justin, Edmund, Charlie and myself started playing Gloomhaven.

Oh and if you are planning to play the game, please be warned SPOILER ALERT!!! Possibly.

I chose the spellweaver as my character because none of the others went for a character with spell casting abilities. The others went for the brute, tinkerer and I think the last one chosen was the human scoundrel. I named my character Glamdalf. Wait for it…

Naturally Glamdalf has a personal objective, that I’m not going to share on here in case the other party members get so bored that they read this post. When Glamdalf achieves this super secret personal objective I believe I will have to say good bye to her as she retires from the game. Or more likely goes off in search of further adventures down a different path to mine. While I get stuck breaking in a noob while facing who knows what horrors.

We were dumped straight into the action with scenario 1 – Black Barrow. We are in the Corpsewood, just out side of Gloomhaven. I can’t remember why, but we had ended up in a barrow full of thieves, and we were going to clear it out!

With some great team work, we completed the scenario, which also allowed me to complete my battle objective (See above). Playing the spellweaver was great fun. I love casting the spells, using the invisible cloak, being able to pull back spells from the lost pile. A very cool character. I’m looking forward to seeing how Glamdalf grows, and what more powerful spells she learns.

For me Gloomhaven is yes a dungeon crawler, but it’s also like a RPG campaign without the role-playing element. Dare I say best of both worlds? We’re back in Gloomhaven in 2 weeks time. I’m looking forward to it.

Tuesday saw the arrival of the cards I ordered to make three pauper decks that Strictly Better MTG brewed and shared on his YouTube Channel. The decks I built from these cards were UG Elves, and from his 5 Standard Pauper Decks for $5 Each! video UB Control and Mono Black Aggro. The Elves were great fun to play. I quite liked the Black Aggro, but the Control deck I’m not too sure about. But still they were pauper decks so not that expensive to put together, and can be used like the battle decks etc for some casual play. What did annoy me is that I got caught by the post office for the tax on these cards, which I don’t mind paying. The bit I do mind paying is the £8 part of it that is the Royal Mail “handling fee”. Talk about taking the piss for doing sweet fa. We thought that the banks were a bunch of thieving gits with their bank charges. I think there needs to be some investigation into the Royal Mail and other couriers about these rip off handling fees they are charging. It’s down and out robbery.

Last night saw the start of my second legacy style game, but with a shorter campaign of just 12 plays ahead of us, Charterstone.

Oh and just like for Gloomhaven – SPOILER ALERT!!!

The intrepid heroes for this campaign were Diego, Jeff, Jonathan and once again myself (naturally seeing as it’s my game). Like a forgetful person who has forgotten something, I forgot my phone to take photos from the first play. Luckily Jonathan was able to take some and share them with me. Hence the photographic evidence below.

At the moment Charterstone is a legacy worker placement game. Very much with the worker placement mechanics of place a worker, or retrieve all of your workers as your options on a turn. Just like The Manhattan Project , which for the life of us Jonathan and I both couldn’t remember the name of last night when we noticed this similarity. It was siting on the edge of our tongues, we both knew the game. But no matter how hard we tried couldn’t say the name. Luckily at the end of the game it came to me!

There are some nice touches to this as a legacy game. I like how that instead of ripping up cards any discarded cards are placed in an archive box. Which if you buy the recharge pack so you can play the game again using the reverse side of the game board, allows you to know which cards you have to replace. I like how the rules unravel as you work through the initial cards building up the rule book.

Turns were fairly quick in the game. Mind you there were a limited number of options. But this may slow down when there becomes more to do each turn.

We enjoyed our first game of Charterstone. There are other bits I liked about the game. For example the art style. But I’ll look at these in future posts as I cover our game plays.

So there you have it, what you missed by me not posting since Saturday. I hope it was worth the wait.

BTN 2017 Edition

by the numbers

It’s been an incredible year of gaming. But I think 2017 will be remembered as a year of big box and epic games. And big boxes do present a storage issue, let alone getting them to the table. Which to be fair I haven’t done too bad at doing.

I think it’s also been a year where I have been a little “flat” when it has come to getting excited about new games coming out or being announced, especially round or at big gaming conventions. At the UK Games Expo I went along with no shopping list, or I’ve got to see that game. Gencon and Essen nothing was grabbing me and getting me excited. To be honest in the list of games for 2018 I’ve seen on The Dice Tower nothing is really grabbing me for the up and coming year either.

Kickstarter has been busy this year, and I have to admit when it has come to the fulfilment stage of backed projects that my “reward” for the project has been the last one out of the warehouse. Which has been very frustrating. But there have been some great Kickstarter projects delivered. I don’t think any have been duds yet. Although Clans of Caledonia has been close with its production quality, and graphic design.

Right let’s look at the headline numbers for 2017…


I played 124 games!!!! That’s amazing. I can’t believe that. If you’d asked me to guess before hand I might have gone 70 – 80. The number of plays is super high thanks to two games. Mid year it was Star Wars: Destiny and the last quarter Magic the Gathering. Two games that exploit the addict side of me, but also allow me to do something I enjoy a lot, deck construction. The number of new games played is actually 70, because 6 of those games the BG Stats app counted as new were ones I had played before, but before records began with the app. But 70 new games played is incredible. I didn’t actually buy or own 70 new games! 23 of those games were owned by some-one else, and some of those new plays were games I’d already owned and finally got to the table.

Here are in no particular order my top 9 most played games of 2017.

Ok let’s look at the two challenges I set myself for 2017. The first up was a challenge to get my city building themed games to the table. I kind of bent the rules on this one and included plays for the later half of 2016 as well. Still not managed to get Suburbia to the table.

The second challenge was to encourage me to get my bigger games to the table. To be fair this challenge should have been updated to include Twilight Imperium 4th Edition (TI4). There are at least three on the list that I really want to get to the table, and need to try harder to achieve this. But I got Star Wars: Rebellion to the table three times in the year, A Game of Thrones hit the table five times, Xia twice, plus TI4 twice in the month it came out. So it’s not as if I’m not getting the big ones to the table.

I’ll be setting a couple of new challenges for 2018 in the next couple of days and I’ll share what they are on here.

And there you have it, that was my 2017 in gaming.

Friday Night, Saturday

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night

Number 30. That’s the number on the tin for my eager enthusiast copy of Mint Delivery. This is a limited edition (50 copies only) early copy of the follow up to Mint Works. I went for this backer level because I’m impatient and couldn’t wait until March/April time to get the game. I will get a final production copy of the game also. But it’s great to have this early copy. It beats making a print and play copy of the game. I’m hoping the final tin is a little deeper so everything fits in. So why am I talking about this now? Well the game arrived between Christmas and the New Year, and has the honour of being the first game I played in 2018 that isn’t Magic the Gathering.

Last night Diego, Chris, Jonathan and myself played a learning game of Mint Delivery. It was the basic game, in the rules sheet there are rules for more advanced variants of the game. The map set up will be the same each time, which is why they are able to produce a playmat for the game. A playmat does seem to move away from the original ethos of these games. And this is me playmat addict saying this, but I don’t think it’s necessary for this game.


With the way the game is setup the variability, and thus the replay ability for this game comes from the contracts you complete and their random placement on the board, and the ability and obstacles in the advanced variants. Like Mint Works, this excels at giving you a taster of the main mechanic it is based on in a reasonably short time period. This is a fun, quick, pick up and deliver game. I think it took us about 20 – 25 minutes to play. I liked it, Jonathan said he liked it more than Mint Works. So I don’t think we’ll have a problem getting this to the table to play again.

The rest of the evening I spent facing one of my own decks, while testing another one against it. My blue control deck which illustrates an infinite loop was destroying me last night as I put my take on Death and Taxes up against it. I just wasn’t hitting the land drops last night. Sometimes this just happens, not much you can do about it. Just hope the cards are kinder to you next game.

I wasn’t feeling too well, so after 3 or 4 games I left for the evening. I think the heat of the room we were in was making me ill. I don’t do heat. I’m a cold weather person.

I had a lazy start to Saturday. I was going to go to the Magic Open House at my FLGS. But rushing around so I could be back in time to play Civilization:A New Dawn didn’t grab me.


Diego, Jeff and myself pitted our fledgling empires against each other. It was interesting to compare this 3 player game against the 2 player one. There was hardly any combat in the game. Although it was through combat that I grabbed the final objective I needed to trigger the end of the game, and after the final turns of Jeff and Diego were taken, victory. Jeff was close to being able to grab victory in his last turn of the game, but unluckily was short by 2 points in his last combat to being able to achieve that. Jeff had admitted afterwards he’d been too focused on Diego and what Diego was doing, and ignored me. Which allowed me to sneak in under the radar. Mind you at the time I wasn’t aware of that. Yeah I liked this at 3 players. Less aggressive (Or this game was) than the 2 player first play I had with Justin. But still good fun.

Oh my copy of Tao Long arrived this morning. I backed this on Kickstarter, and got the deluxe addition, with the four seasons expansion and 4 player expansion add-ons. I have to say the production quality of the game is really good. Now I have to arrange to get it to the table. I think an abstract game session is in order. An excuse to get other great abstract games to the table also.

My first game played in 2018 was…

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[queue drum roll] and this will surprise everyone (not)…

Yep Magic the Gathering. Despite recent posts and the hypnotic train wreck that is going on, my first game played in 2018 was this game that everyone seems to be fighting for the heart and soul of!

It shouldn’t be much of a surprise really. Although I like the idea of solo games, and have a few that are either solo games or can be played solo, I’m too lazy to actually play them solo. That’s not to say I haven’t played a solo game, it’s just not something I do on a regular basis. Which explains why on New Year’s Day I wasn’t playing something different to Magic the Gathering as my first game of 2018. My first gaming chance was going to be at work with the students. They were back Wednesday, as were the enrichment sessions I run. Returning students had received Magic products over Christmas of one form or another, and had built new decks as a result. Naturally they wanted to play with those new decks. So the enrichment session was a try our new decks session. While my “Death and Taxes” deck did well against most of the decks, it got destroyed by a black zombie deck that played two different Liliana planeswalkers and a Vraska (Sp?) planeswalker, that if allowed to do their ultimates destroyed me. Sadly I had no answer for them, or the deadly destroy all lands card he’d play just before firing off those ultimates.

I did throw together an initial blue/black control deck to play against Justin and some decks he had built last night. The deck is in development. It’s built to show the infinite loop to the students. However it can also be a mill deck if needed as a alternative win condition. So now I have two decks in development.

Tonight will be my first opportunity to play a non-magic related game, plus there are two events planned for the weekend that are non-magic related. So by Monday the gaming stats will be taking off and showing more than just Magic played.

BTN December 2017

by the numbers, stats

Wow that’s Christmas and New Year been and gone, back to work tomorrow. But it’s also the end of another month of gaming. Which sadly for you lot means more boring stats, and very little insight. Let’s just jump right in with the numbers this month.

Again I beat the numbers when it comes to plays, mainly thanks to MtG. But the played games once again falls just short.

The final section as usual presents the data graphically so we can try and see trends. Yes I played lots of MtG more than the previous month.

My Game of the Month…

This month there are a few contenders for the title. I think any other month anyone of them could claim the title. But one with its immense scope, and just the fact it is so epic, and truly lives up to those words, it can only be Twilight Imperium 4. I hadn’t played the third edition (hopefully during the Summer). But this updated reprint by FFG which includes parts of some of the expansions is truly an epic game.

My gaming moment of the month…

This has to be one of my students MtG game in the tournament that we held at the end of term. Two students were playing, one student was playing dinosaurs and had pumped up a single creature to a 19/19 which he promptly sacrificed using fling to do unblockable damage to the other player. Thinking he’d won with that killing blow, he packed his cards away. It was then pointed out to him that his opponent had on the field a creature I think it was that had the text on it saying that he was unable to lose the game, and his opponent couldn’t win, so he hadn’t won. It was impossible to reset the game to its previous game state, so his opponent was declared the winner. The students reaction was so funny, and over the top. It has to be the gaming moment of the month.

Worst Game of the Month…

It is the season of good will to all, and luckily there has been no game to be thrown into the Nantucket Wing of Shame this month.

Hopefully hitting the table in January…

I’m leaving the two classics that I shamefully haven’t played yet on the list for January.

▪Suburbia – I really need to get this to the table. It’s been sitting in my collection for a while now. It’s shameful I haven’t played it yet.

▪Ghost Stories – another classic that has been sitting in my collection. About time this saw the light of day also.
The weekly Friday Evening Gaming at The White Lion (or FEG@WL as I call it) is usually on a Friday, but double check on our Facebook page first.
Every second Wednesday of the month we have our monthly meet up. This month that second Wednesday is the 10th. Some of us are starting a Charterstone campaign that evening.
If you are in the area and want to attend one of the events, please visit the Fenland Gamers Facebook page for further details about the event. Hope to see you there

Third and Final Scythe Expansion Announced

news

Scythe: The Rise of Fenris, the third and final expansion for Scythe has been announced. Arriving in Q3, I’m already excited about this news. Scythe was my game of 2016, in my first ever Top 100 this year, took the the number one slot. 11 new modules that you can mix and match in, plus a replayable campaign mode that introduces those modules as you progress through it. In away sounds a little like the Tuscany expansion that came out for Viticulture but with more thought put into the campaign side. If I remember correctly the suggestion was for Tuscany that the winner chooses the next module to add into the game. Well ok it’s really the module side that is similar. The campaign element is really new if we are being totally accurate. But still really looking forward to this coming out, and I’ll be preordering this as soon as I’m able to.

Read the full press release HERE.

Wishing you all a Happy New Year

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And welcoming our new overlord 2018.

It’s a big year ahead of us. I hit 50 this year. How? I have no idea. One day at a time I suppose. But you can look forward to the melancholy, and navel gazing etc nearer the time. Two big board game expos this year in the UK, I have hotels booked, just need tickets now. I might even write something interesting on here too. So you might want to stick around just on the off chance that I do.

Remember for the majority of us it’s back to work tomorrow, so enjoy this last day of freedom from the daily grind.

War and Politics

Fenland Gamers, Game day

Yesterday 5 tribes went to war, did some trading, made alliances and generally had a great time. Yeah Twilight Imperium 4 made it to,the table with 5 people playing it.

I’m just going to say wow! The politics, the ebb and flow of alliances, deal making, attempting Jedi mind tricks. The trading and agenda phase aided and enhanced all of this. One of those deals between red and green gave green the centre of the known universe Mecatol Rex. Which afterwards quickly went south and saw their two massive space fleets duking it out. Further alliances were formed, lines drawn. But this was all a distraction that allowed green to keep Mecatol Rex and score some easy points.

My starting position seemed anomaly heavy and planet light, and boxed me in stopping me expanding out, or even getting to the centre of the universe to claim it for my own.

Yeah this game is fastly becoming a favourite. Hopefully I’ll be able to get it to the table a couple times a year. If it gets out that many times I’ll be really happy. I’d love to get it out to the table again real soon, but I don’t see how with the current schedule of games planned that it’s possible. In the next 2 weeks 2 campaigns start, Charterstone and Gloomhaven. Both are legacy style games as well, that are going to be running for a few weeks. Then in February we start our next MtG league using the Rivals for Ixalan set that comes out on the 20th January.

Watching the train wreck

rant

I think the following really does sum up the current situation for WotC and Hasbro over #magicgate as it’s become known.

I know it’s the holidays and all, but the deafening silence from said companies over the continued harassment going on in the community on both sides of the argument is worrying. There really should be some high profile bans going on. But at the moment WotC seem to be copying the three wise monkeys when it comes to people they like. They get away with murder, but god forbid if you are not in the approved list of abusers and harassers, then you can expect them to come down on you with the ban hammer. If evidence provided by the recently life time banned person is accurate, WotC are hypercrits, and actually view what that person did worse than actual physical abuse and harassment. Why do I say that? Well the evidence presented shows that a person can admit to saying “I hope you burn to death” and admit to harassing a magic judge at an organised event and not get banned. Apparently a person can threatened to, and I can’t believe I’m writing this, rape a WotC employee, and have a ban for making the threat revoked. Or get this this you can actually sexually harass a player at an event as a judge and get a temp ban, and then shown a route back to the community!!!!! Then there are new allegations that WotC, their judges program and now their event partner Channel Fireball don’t vet magic judges for being sexual offenders, despite young vulnerable people attending their organised events. What’s worse is that they are now trying to cover up (again I have to say allegedly) the fact that these convicted sex offenders were still judges at events after being convicted.

So if these allegations are true why are there not more lifetime bans going on? It’s also worrying that the so called “pillars of the magic community” are silent on all this, burying their heads in the sand. Mind you one or two of them should be getting lifetime bans too. Just because they don’t like the messenger doesn’t invalidate the message. So you have to ask why are they silent on this? Are they hoping if they bury their heads deep enough in the sand that the issue will go away? If these “pillars of the community” are all about the community then they should be speaking out on this. But sadly I don’t think they have the publics best interest at heart. Watch the “right” YouTube videos and you might come to that conclusion also (but for other reasons).

I’m just sitting on the sidelines, watching just how messy this train wreck will get. If you like high body counts, lots of collateral damage, gore, and being deafened by the sound of silence, then you really have to follow this. Both sides of the argument are committing atrocities against each other, the fallout is going to be messy. It’s hypnotic, and I can’t turn away from the carnage.

Let’s be civil about this

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With all the pieces sitting on my table I put together an initial version of the “Death and Taxes” deck this morning. Which was followed by punching cardboard for Civilization: New Dawn. But there was a reason for this flurry of holiday activity. I was going to be testing the Magic deck, and playing Civilization in the afternoon with Justin.

At Justin’s I had him play my R/G Dino deck. If this new deck did well against that then I would know I’m onto something. But sadly it got its butt handed to it. I just wasn’t hitting the cards I needed. So back to the drawing board, and looking into how I can be more consistent and draw the cards I need.

After being given some food for thought about the new deck. We set up a two player game of Civilization: New Dawn using the suggested tiles and layout for a first game.

I thought this worked out pretty well as a two player experience. Naturally there are elements that would work better in three or four games, such as the diplomacy cards. But combat was not an issue for me as it has been for some of those that have reviewed it. Like many similar style games, the combat isn’t the main act. It’s sharing the main headline with other mechanics. And like those other games the combat is a simple, it’s a streamlined affair. Yes in this version there is a little bit of randomness with the use of dice. Is that much different to the tides of war/battle cards that are optional in the A Game of a Thrones board game? But there is also a little bit of predetermination before you even get to the dice rolling.

I loved the focus track, and the way that works, which is the main driving mechanic of the game. The decisions you have to make, or are forced to do just so an action you want to do is more powerful, or you even have to do at that moment despite it being a lot weaker than you want.

Yeah this is a nice Civ like game or even Civ like lite to be more accurate, that gives a taste of that experience in a much shorter time span. A gateway Civ game? Possibly. Plenty of replay ability with the variable map tiles, 7 races/leaders, 5 different goal tiles (that you randomly select 3), different routes to upgrade your technology.

Despite winning I liked it as a 2 player game, and looking forward to playing it again with more players.

5 player Twilight Imperium 4 tomorrow ^_^