So long, farewell 

Fenland Gamers, game night

Last night saw the Fenland Gamers say “so long and thanks for all the fish” to the venue of our monthly meet ups and other gaming sessions for the last two years. For the next three or four months the monthly meet up will be at our Friday evening venue The White Lion. But hopefully by Christmas a new home will have been found for the monthly meet up.

Earlier in the day Gavin had posted on the clubs Facebook page that he was going to bring along Clank. Which I was really happy about. I’d wanted to try it. There has been a buzz about the game since it came out. Deckbuilder, push your luck, fantasy theme, what more could you want?

So our evening started off with Clank. This really is like Deep Sea Adventure but with a deckbuilding mechanic instead of the dice rolling. It has that feel to it.

Now I enjoyed this game. I liked the deckbuilding aspect, the push your luck of how deep do you go to get that treasure. Just like Deep Sea Adventure while you are trying to get deeper to get higher value loot, another player maybe playing the game as a quickly get in and get out, leaving you a mad rush to get out to safety with whatever loot you have managed to grab. I liked the idea of clank, and pulling cubes from the bag to deal damage.

It’s a nice game, that I’d happily play again. Does it live up to the hype? Not really. It’s a nice combination of mechanics. Its a good game, not a great game.

It would have been even better in our game if I’d managed to kill some-one off by making that early dash for the exit.

Despite not being a deckbuilder fan, or big on fantasy, Jonathan took the win.

Our second game of the evening was Barenpark. This game had a lot of buzz pre and during the expo. I don’t know why. I wasn’t struck with the game when it was explained to me at the expo. I’m sad to say that the game didn’t do anything to dispel my initial feelings about the game.Barenpark sucks. In fact I’d go as far as to say it is in fact a big pile of steaming bear poo. It’s as if the designer Phil Walker-Harding looked at Uwe Rosenberg’s work and thought “I know, I’ll remove all the stuff that makes this game a game and fun”. Rosenberg has used the main mechanic of placing polyomino tiles on a grid, trying to fill it up in several of his games. But he adds another layer to that like an economic layer and tile denial in Patchwork. Walker-Harding decided that just placing tiles on a board is game enough in itself. This has more in common with a jigsaw puzzle than a boardgame.

Now I can see why Jonathan likes this game. But it’s not because the game is any good. It’s not. There are other reasons. And to some extent yes this game is definitely not aimed at “gamers” but I’m loath to say it’s a gateway game. I think it’s far far simpler than that. Possibly a warm up to a gateway game.

Jonathan has decided to build an extension to his Nantucket Wing of Shame, by building the Barenpark cellar of over hyped games. Yes the “game” is that bad.

Oh for the record I won the game. I won at a game that I hate. I feel so proud of myself.

This is how I felt after the playing Barenpark. I just wanted to take my anger out on a bear!

That’s me in the bear outfit by the way. I was at a gaming expo a few years back now helping promote an idea game called Fist of Awesome. Which was a really nice 8 bit style graphics Streets of Rage type game. At the expo myself and a photographer would go round getting people to have their photo taken beating up the bear (me). Except the mature gamer podcast guys took it literally and actually did beat me up.

After my victory we had a discussion about the merits of the Barenpark, and some other gaming stuff. The usual boardgaming banter.

A great evening gaming despite Barenpark to say good bye to this great venue.

We do not have an addiction

Destiny

Looking on the stats app I have on my iPhone, that is used to record all my game plays on. So far for June I have played Star Wars: Destiny 31 times. Taking into account the four games I played at the UK Games Expo, that means this month alone I have been battling it out with Dale over 27 games.

The app tells me that Dale and I have played 51 times so far. With the edge currently being with me. I have 29 wins to Dale’s 22.

Dale and I both hold the longest win streak, which is currently at 5 games long.

Dale does have a bigger card pool than myself, having bought a booster box more than me. We are currently playing with both starter sets each, and half a booster box of a Spirit of Rebellion, plus 10 addition booster packs, plus some targeted buys. While Dale has 1.5 booster boxes worth of cards, plus 5 booster packs plus targeted buys. Which by any standards is not a massive investment. We are eagerly awaiting the reprinting of the first set Awakenings.

The games have on a whole been so so close, often turning on a single key moment. Like during one of today’s games when Dale avoid 6 ranged damage on his ePalpatine by discarding this annoying upgrade Force Illusion. Ok it got rid of 6 cards from the top of his deck. But I’m not playing a milling game with my Sing/Bala-Tik/Tie Pilot deck. I’m going for maximum carnage. That bought Dale enough time to kill me off.

It’s great having some-one to play with. We are able to lend each other dice (if we have them). For instance Dale borrows my Palpatine die to play the elite version. Where I need to borrow a Tie Pilot die from him when I play Training.

I have to admit this is a great two player game that we can play during our lunch break. We can often get three games in. It hits all the buttons for me, deck construction, theme, dice. Yes it is collectible and the boosters are random. But I can over look that for such a great game. We are having a blast with not a massive pool to build from. The release schedule also seems a lot less crippling than the mess that is/was Dicemasters. That was madness due to poor scheduling you’d end up with nearly a new set a month! The only big drawback on that front is supply. Destiny is a popular game at the moment. FFG seemed to have improved it for the current set Spirit of Rebellion. They grossly under estimated it on the initial Awakenings set. Luckily we have the one off reprint at the end of the month. So being able to buy product is important. It’s what helped kill Ashes for me. Didn’t matter if I could get some-one into playing it, they couldn’t buy it.

It’s great to have some-one to play with, and who is into as much as I am. That was one of the downsides of Netrunner and Ashes for me.

I like the to and fro Dale and I have with our decks. His Palpatine was trashing decks. My mill deck could win just on the odd occasion. But now my Sing/Bala-Tik/Tie Pilot aggro deck has the upper hand. However Dale has by the sounds of an email I’ve just received identified some cards to add to his deck that I won’t like. Shame they are not in stock at the moment.

For better or worse we are also thinking about maybe going to a store championship or game night. I think the nearest one I have seen so far is Lincoln at the start of July. Then we will see how poor our deck construction skills are. I think we will get our butts handed to us. It’s a shame we don’t have anything nearer.

I’ve added a new page

Uncategorized

I’ve added a new page that just lists the cards I have collected for the game Star Wars: Destiny.

It’s mainly been created so that when I do the deck posts for the game on here people can look on that page and see why possibly I haven’t included a certain card or a second copy. The usual response most of the time is either I don’t have the card or if I do just the one copy.

But this page will allow visitors to check out for themselves whether I have the card or not. The we can proceed to discussing the merits of the card if I have it and why I should that one instead of another. Or consider the card I don’t have. 

You can view it HERE or use the link above.

My Top 100 Games ’17: 90 – 81

Top 100

Here we are with the second post covering my Top 100 Games. This time covering entries 91 – 80.

What’s interesting for me about this list is that three of them are games I backed on Kickstarter. There are five or six more games I think that I counted further up the list that I backed on Kickstarter. Plus there are others further up the list that had Kickstarter campaigns that I missed for some reason (probably money or I didn’t know about it at the time).

I might go back and add this next bit to the first post, but I am now also including the BGG Ranking for the game as well. Remember these rankings are the ranking of the game at the time the post was written. So if at some point in the future you read this post or the following ones and the ranking has changed, that’s why. The ranking was accurate at the time of writing.

Obviously there are a couple of games below where the BGG community like the games more than I do at this point in time.

Ok I can’t bore you anymore, here is the reason you are reading this post. Here are my Top 100 games for 2017 positions 90 to 81.

This is the ordering of the games:

90 – Thief’s Market (BGG Ranking: 1862)

89 – Pandemic (BGG Ranking: 62)

88 – Saloon Tycoon (BGG Ranking: 2004)

87 – House of Borgia (BGG Ranking: 4454)

86 – Tsuro (BGG Ranking: 720)

85 – Machi Koro (BGG Ranking: 639)

84 – Alhambra (BGG Ranking: 369)

83 – Eminent Domain (BGG Ranking: 377)

82 – Specter Ops (BGG Ranking: 328)

81 – Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island (BGG Ranking: 25)

There you go that was 90-81, next post in the series will be 80 – 71.

Sing/Bala-Tik/Tie Pilot 1.0

Deck tech, Destiny, star wars


This is my third deck that I have built, but the second one I am putting the details of on this blog! The second deck I have built is still a work in progress and not really in a position to be called a 1.0 and talked about.

This deck and the my second deck are a departure from my first deck, in that these are “aggro”. So without further ado here is my Sing/Bala-Tik/Tie Pilot deck…

Battlefield: Ewok Village (Endor)

Support

  • Air Superiority (1 cost, Neutral/Red) x 1
  • Attrition  (1 cost, Villian/Red) x 2
  • Backup Muscle  (1 cost, Villian/Yellow) x 1
  • E-Web Emplacement  (3 cost, Villian/Red) x 1
  • First Order TIE Fighter  (3 cost, Villian/Red) x 1

Events

  • Aim  (1 cost, Neutral/Gray) x 2
  • Armed to the Teeth  (0 cost, Villian/Yellow) x 2
  • Bait and Switch  (0 cost, Villian/Yellow) x 2
  • Cheat  (1 cost, Neutral/Yellow) x 2
  • Collateral Damage  (0 cost, Neutral/Red) x 2
  • Nowhere to Run  (2 cost, Villian/Gray) x 2
  • Relentless Pursuit  (0 cost, Villian/Yellow) x 2
  • Salvo  (2 cost, Neutral/Red) x 1
  • Disarm (1 cost, Neutral/Yellow) x 2
  • Flank (1 cost, Neutral/Gray) x 1
  • He Doesn’t Like You (0 cost, Villian/Yellow) x 2

Upgrades

  • F-11D Rifle  (2 cost, Villian/Red) x 2
  • Infantry Grenades  (2 cost, Villian/Gray) x 1
  • Rocket Launcher  (3 cost, Neutral/Ted) x 1

My thinking behind the deck

I’d heard a comment on a Facebook page that Sing and Bala-Tik were a lethal combination. So I thought I’d like to explore that. They are obviously an aggro combination. I had a single die for each and some points spare so I chucked in the Tie Pilot to work with Sing especially. Plus it gives me access to a second colour with cool weapon upgrades.

The theme is to strike hard and fast. Hopefully doing 5 or 6 damage minimum a turn.

To help with that I have cards to manipulate the dice (Nowhere to Run, Bait and Switch, and Aim).

I have cards like Disarm, Flank, and He Doesn’t Like You to remove opponents dice or weapons/equipment.

Cheat is a go to card with Yellow to give me a chance of recursion.

Air Superiority is there to help give shields to keep characters alive long enough to kill off the likes of ePalpatine.

As part of the plan I use attrition to make defeating my characters come with a cost.

Backup Muscle is part of the plan for inflicting addition damage. While Relentless Pursuit is a nice way to attack a character hiding behind shields. I attack an undefended character then move the damage to my intended target.

Collateral Damage is there to make use of my damage and do addition stuff to my opponent by removing a resource. Salvo is there for a similar reason but this time to maximise its impact.

Armed to the Teeth could provide that final point or two of damage to win the game.

The weapons and support are there to give extra chances for the Tie Pilot addition damage sides to be used.

How’d it do?

Well it’s been doing really well against Dale. Against his Chewie/Mon Mothma it’s been really successful. I’d like to say dominating it. Dale has been tweaking it, and improving his deck. In fact he ended the week on a high with a win.

Against Dale’s ePalpatine it’s 50/50. Mind you we only played two games. But that match up really is a race to roll damage.

Where next?

I would like a second backup muscle and air superiority.

I’d like to replace the 3 cost cards I have with cheaper options. This deck isn’t about getting resources and saving up. It’s about rushing stuff out cheaply and quickly, finishing off my opponent quickly.

I must get Dale to play my mill deck against this.

FEG@WL Post Expo Meet Up ’17

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night

Last nights weekly meet up was our first after this years expo, and our first chance to play our spoils from said expo.

Having said that I didn’t take anything with me to potentially play. When I got home from work for my version of a Formula 1 pit stop before going to the meet up, my Mum (who lives next door) dropped a bombshell! Earlier in the day she’d fallen and “damaged” her wrist/arm in the fall. She needs to get it seen too but other circumstances prevented that. There was nothing we could do about it then. Well my idea to amputate was poo poo’d on. You’d that my internet doctors certificate was fake or something. We’d have to get it sorted on Saturday. 

So I had no games with me, and it turned out neither did Jonathan. 

Luckily Chris had bought a couple of games from his spoils with him. Out of the two on offer (I can’t remember what the other one was but we had played/owned it!)  we chose Orleans.

This game cries out for an insert. There are lots of cardboard chits for this game. But still not as many as A Feast For Odin.

Chris read the rules out, 18 rounds, 7 phases. WTF this is sounding over complicated and long. But in reality it’s the opposite. It’s fairly quick, and all those phases are in reality very quick and simple.

I like the bag building element. It’s very Dice Masters like. Which when teamed up with the action selection to do stuff and recruit new workers is very enjoyable. Allocate workers to an action, take action and place workers used and any new recruits into the bag ready to be drawn at random at the start of the next round. 

Managing the bag is fun. And that’s the bit I find reminds me of Dice Masters. Trying to control what’s in there, and improving your odds of drawing the specific workers you draw. To that extent preloading actions partially or fully aids in doing this. 

Having 18 event cards that also act as the round counters is a great idea. The event cards work really well because they can mean you have to take a particular action that turn to get the resource needed to complete it or face a punishment.

Also having the ability to add tiles to you player board that give you unique actions that only you can take adds to the replayability and your tactics. I got a level 2 tile called the school that allowed me to use scholars as wilds.

Having multiple scoring routes, sources of bonuses I liked. Once again variety and replayability.

Graphically the game is ok. It’s not an ugly game. But you wouldn’t say it’s a stunning game either. 

There is a lot of depth in this game. And I have to say I love it. This will be the third game I’m going to have to steal off Chris when he’s not looking. Sorry borrow on a semi permanent basis.

After Chris won. I had to shoot off home. What with mum and her “injury”. 

But a great evenings gaming.

I like you but…

Ashes, netrunner

In a previous post I was pimping the page that I was selling some of my games on. It’s a once a year thing I do in the run up to the expo, with collection being at the expo. Mainly because I am too lazy to go through all the hassle of wrapping stuff up and arranging for it to be collected by a courier.

Anyway in this years clear out I sold two games I really like! If I really liked them why did I get rid of them? A very good question, and I’m glad you asked it. Let’s have a look at the two games and see why I decided to sell them.

First up and probably the easier to explain is Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn. I do like this game. I love the fact you can pick your starting five cards. It has deck construction, dice rolling, a nice back and forward flow to it when taking actions, with I take an action, then you take an action. You can mitigate poor dice rolls. The art is gorgeous. Stunning. I do like the art a lot.

But…

No one is playing it locally. There is no Ashes scene. Well unless you live in London that is, it seems that way. So I just wasn’t getting games in. Even if I got some-one interested in playing the game, supply has been an issue, especially on the expansions. Which brings me to another point. It’s coming up to a year now since the last expansion came out. There are a couple of expansions coming out (soon? I suspect being saved for GenCon). The tournament scene is on life support. Apparently there are events in London. But that’s too far. There was definitely no UK/EU Finals at this years UKGE. I didn’t see any one playing it either.

This decision to sell Android Netrunner did require a lot of soul searching. It was a very hard choice to make. I love this game. Spoiler alert, it just missed out on being in my Top 10.

Once again this is a game that has great art work. I love the art on the Day Job card. It’s why I didn’t sell the Day Job art work play mat I have. I love the flavour text on the cards.

Look at the flavour text on two of my other favourite cards Faust and DDoS.Isn’t that amazing? The theme really hits the spot for me. Cyberpunk, hacking, battling against big corporations. I love it.

So what made me send my collection off to a new home? The FFG Most Wanted List (MWL). Particularly the last update that introduced the extra three influence cost on some cards. I spend time building decks, finding combos, then to have FFG wreck my deck is not on. I could have just about lived with the cards being one extra influence. But making four of the cards in my runner deck an extra three influence, nope. They also did similar with the NBN stuff. “Ah but you could play games with others not using the MWL”, yeah but in reality it wouldn’t happen because the majority of players locally only play in the FLGS tournaments. And if I had made it to the Peterborough meet that is held to play then they are busy playing and testing decks to take part in tournaments (because they play at my FLGS tournies, and travel to play in them as well). So in reality I wouldn’t be able to play with those cards. It just felt FFG hated the factions I love playing in Netrunner. Plus I was not getting games in-between the FLGS tournaments. Like Ashes I really need to be playing it more.

I haven’t given up on this style/type of game. Dale and I play Star Wars:Destiny in our lunch breaks. And that’s the big difference, I am playing the game regularly, and we can buy product (now that it appears that FFG have solved the supply issue). Not sure there is a local meta for the game because I know that my FLGS doesn’t sell the game. I might have to see what is happening in Cambridge. Definitely won’t set foot in the LGS in Peterborough. And I think there is a tournament in Lincoln at the start of July. So Dale and I might try entering to see how that goes. But there definitely does seem to be more going on with Destiny than Ashes. I can see it catching up with and over taking Netrunner for FFG. I just hope they don’t ruin it like they have done with Netrunner.

There you have it, why I sold two games I really like and what I’m addicted to now! What are your thoughts on this. Do you agree with me, or do you think I have made a massive mistake?

My Top 100 Games ’17: 100-91

Top 100

Well we are finally at that point where I can present my Top 100 Games. That’s games that I own, and doesn’t include games I have played. That will be something I will add in for the 2018 list!

Yep after putting in all that effort developing the python scripts to allow me to do pairwise comparisons this is going to be something I can do easily now. But it means I can also add in the ability to take into account games I have played also. Which I will do now between now and the next time I go through this exercise again next year.

So that’s one upgrade to the matching engine I will be making. I will also be adding to the stats engine also. The first update will add a ‘pile of shame’ button that will list the games I haven’t played in my collection. The second update will be to look at the BGG Top 100 games of all time and compare that to my collection. So the output for this will be something similar to the BGG Hot List that I have done.

At the expo last weekend I did ask Sam and Zee how they did their lists. It’s less technical than mine. Well I am a code monkey. But it’s not too dissimilar either. They look at their collections, produce lists. Sam actually uses almost a paper version of pairwise comparison.

I think my biggest problem with this series of posts presenting my Top 100 is just how to present it in blog form.

I’m not going to write much, well anything about the games this far down the list. But maybe when I hit the Top 20 write little bits about what I like about those games. I am linking to the BGG page for each game in my Top 100. Thinking about it I might just write some general comments about the group of games on a whole.

Just one more thing to waffle on about. Remember these are games I like. Just because they are this far down the rankings does not mean I don’t like them. It just means there are other games I like more. If I didn’t like them they would not be in my collection. Although that is not entirely true. Until the expo Cthulhu Realms was in my collection for a looong time. Just glad I managed to find it a good home, and get a fiver for it.

Without further ado here is my 100-91…

100. Discoveries

99. Coup

98. Kingdom Builder

97. Catan

96. New York 1901

95. Ticket to Ride

94. Timeline: Star Wars

93. BANG! The Dice Game

92. AGES

91. Dark Moon

I was a little surprised about this group of games. There are some classics here, almost all of them could also be described as gateway games. I think considering AGES is an independently produced game, and little known, to be in the Top 100 is amazing. It is a nice deck builder. Which is a mechanic I do like.

I can’t wait to see what 90 – 81 are. Oh it’s as much as a surprise to me as it is to you. I’m trying to not look ahead!

UPDATE: Did a silent video of this list now, for those that don’t want to read my waffle.

Verses: Istanbul vs Viticulture 

Head to Head, Matchup, ranking, VS

Well I think there has been enough of a break to justify doing another of these Verses posts. I actually put this match up out there before the expo.

It really is a hard decision to make. Then again I think I have said that about more than one of these so far. Both of these games are in my Top 10 (at the moment, but I don’t expect that to change).

Istanbul, when played with all the expansions goes from a great game to an amazing game. The random nature of the layout of the tiles (taking into account a couple of tile positioning rules that stop one or two tiles being near each other) adds to the replay-ability of the game. With the expansions there is more than one path to victory. Plus there is a little take that added when you can block a route on the board slowing down your opponents.

Viticulture is a great worker placement game. But like Istanbul add in the expansions and wow. This has great production values. The turn order selection for each round is really cool, and gets even better when using the Tuscany extended board. The decisions you have to make at this stage before you have placed any workers on the board is incredible.

These two games are great examples of how to take great games and then take them to the next level with the expansions. I’d only play either without the expansions when introducing new players to the games. Otherwise it has to be all in (well we are still working towards that with Viticulture).

What did I decide? Well I don’t think it will come as any surprise to anyone I sat on the fence on this one and called it a draw. It is so hard to decide which one I prefer more than the other. There really is nothing that separates these two.

On Facebook Jonathan echoes my feelings about this one.

On a follow up, since the comment was made by Gavin, he has caved and bought Viticulture.
On Instagram I had one comment. I think the difficulty of this match up scared people off. That or they just didn’t care.

Fantastic Four Return

marvel legendary, news

While I was at the UK Games Expo this story hit that the out of print Fantastic Four expansion for Marvel Legendary will be back in print.

That’s huge news. This is an additional product to the Marvel Legendary plans for the year. It is also an exact reprint of the original expansion so no new content, and no first print promo card included (this was confirmed on their Facebook page iirc).

So expect a mad dash by those that have been holding on to their copy trying to sell it in hope of getting the inflated price it has been going for before the market totally disappears. It’s good news for fans of the game that wanted this expansion but couldn’t afford or justify the inflated prices being asked for it.

Now we need Days of Wonder to relent like Marvel (although things on the Marvel end were a bit complicated) and republish some of the out of print expansions for Memoir ’44. If Days of Wonder are unsure of demand, they could run a Kickstarter campaign for the expansions, and then just keep the supply topped up from time to time so that prices don’t get silly again and people who love playing the game can get the expansions and play them. Do Days of Wonder not like money or something?

Read the full icv2 article here.