It looked like there was going to be seven of us for the evening. However two turned up who hadn’t indicated they were coming. It also didn’t help that they came in and went out without saying a word! Turns out they went to get something to eat first. Would have been nice to know.
Whilst that was going on Marcin, Diego, and myself played Apiary.
The following is how the faction and hive mats went.
Sime & The Warre (Me)
Jemit & The Poppleton (Diego)
Iber & The Skep (Marcin)
I had a blinder of a game. I wasn’t sure if I’d done enough to overcome the early lead on the score track that Diego had taken.
But once again getting a lot of seed cards, playing combos, getting three planted, plus three honey comb tiles meant I had enough end game scoring going on. Plus I barely explored once again.
As the final scores show I did really well. Even improving on my previous 100+ score.
Diego’s score was better than my first time playing.
Our next and final game Vaalbara was played with now two well fed members. Diego rocked this one and easily won the game.
Whilst we got two games in, the other table managed to play one four player game of Amun-Ra.
It’s been a quiet week on the gaming front so far.
This weeks planned lcg/ccg/tcg game night on Tuesday fell through.
We were due to be playing Commander however the one flaw we didn’t foresee was the community centre would not be open!
Unbeknownst to any of us, having missed the change to the opening hours sign the community centre would be closed on not only a Monday but also Tuesdays now (except for the third Tuesday of the month for the open mike evening).
It’s not surprising as the business had been pretty slow on a Tuesday with them closing early. Which we were fine with.
Now we need to find either another night that works for everyone, or another Tuesday night venue.
At the moment current thinking might be every other Friday evening.
I have pre-ordered the new Dune Imperium Uprising. Which hopefully will be hitting stores this weekend. So maybe with me by the middle of next week. I’m excited to play this and see how the changes work.
The Two Towers expansion for LotR lcg was posted this morning along with the Deadpool and X-23 hero packs for Marvel Champions.
Obviously the Two Towers and Fellowship are something I want to play with Nathan. But I want to bring not only LotR but Marvel Champions to a lcg/ccg/tcg evening. I know FFG did these special scenario decks for LotR for cons like GenCon. Which were made available to the public. Sadly these are out of print and going for the usual stupid money. I know there are fan run cons for Marvel Champions where they have custom villian scenarios. These of these would be ideal for a game night but alas cost or lack of info means currently they are not an option.
Tomorrow is club night so looking forward to that. It’s looking like another low attended one. Numbers have dropped recently. I’ll be taking Apiary, Terraforming Mars the dice game, and Grail Cup.
After plans to get Marvel Champions to the table fell through earlier in the day. I spent the afternoon instead organising the collection instead.
For starters I had four character packs to “file away” along with The Hood Scenario pack. Plus the latest campaign box Next Evolution.
Whilst organising the new cards my mind wondered and made me think how I’m currently (the couple of times I’ve played it) and plan to use the game. It’s a bit like how I also use the Lord of the Rings lcg too.
A lot of the content creators out there on the various media platforms out there build their own character decks. They get a lot of enjoyment out of doing that. And to be fair I would too. After all it’s a side of MtG, Dice Masters, and Vampire the Masquerade Rivals.
However there is only so much spare time in my life. Unfortunately I don’t have any spare to dedicate to this side of playing these two lcgs.
Also I only get to play both games with other players who do not own a copy of the game, and are not into building their own decks.
So using the pre-constructed hero decks as you buy them allows me to play with others who enjoy the game but haven’t committed to it financially.
During setup I can say “which hero is your favourite?” or ‘who do you fancy playing?” Grab the decks and away we go.
Obviously before hand I can decide on the villian we are going to go up against and which modular scenarios (if not using the recommended) we are using. However I can also repeat the hero selection for the villian to and let the other player chose their favourite.
I like this grab and go, no thought needed approach too.
How do I thematically justify it?
Well Marvel used to print two comics that would cover this mix and match approach.
The first was Marvel Team-up. This would see two heroes come together to defeat a common villian. Usually these two heroes would be polar opposites.
The other comic they did and also ended up as an animated series on Disney+ is What if…? Which explores major moments in the Marvel universe and what would happen if they happened differently.
Both could explain why the heroes were together and why they were facing off against a villian they had never gone up against before.
Another factor in the not deck building is I only want to play the games with others. I don’t play solo, or only play solo. If I was playing solo I’d be more tempted to build my own decks. I don’t get much enjoyment out of playing games solo. It’s the social side I enjoy.
The original plan for today was to play a four player game of Memoir 44. But for reasons (I say reasons because we have no idea why the fourth player never turned up) we only had three players.
Luckily I had decided to grab a back up plan for such a situation. Which we decided to go with.
So instead of Memoir we set up to play Apiary.
Below are the faction and hive mats that each of us used.
Utel – The Log (Jeff)
Iber – The Warre (John)
Carpa – The Langstroth (me)
I actually planted seed cards! The first game I’ve managed to plant any and I do four.
I completed my hive mat, and a frame. Plus upgraded my faction tile.
I think I explored twice during the game, and did one retrieval. After I got a tile that allowed me to retrieve a worker and activate a farm every time I did a research action I was researching a lot. It was getting me a seed card and victory points.
There was a moment early on when I did hate buy a tile to stop Jeff having it. If he’d been allowed to get it, along with his faction ability he’d have gotten two basic resources of his choice every explore action on top of everything else.
I triggered the end of the game, and below is how the scores stood after all the smoke had cleared.
Final scores
I have to say if Jeff or John had those scores in my previous two games they would have won. And Jeff did so much better than I did in my first play.
I’m just taken aback by how high my score was. Especially considering my first two plays.
A great afternoon though despite our original plan falling through.
Last night I met up with Marcin to play some games. Which meant this was a third night this week that I’d done some gaming. Something that hasn’t happened in a long long time.
We started off with a game of 51st State. A game I haven’t played in a few years. I think the last time I played this was at a UKGE with my friend Scott.
We were playing Marcin’s copy of the game that is the Ultimate edition. Which is a pretty cool edition that replaces the Master edition. It has all the expansions, “upgraded” components, insert, etc. I was almost envious and regretting I hadn’t got this edition myself. But at the time it was announced and added to GameFound or whatever it used to be called I couldn’t justify the expense.
After a brief refresh on the rules we were ready to play.
I was off to a slower start than Marcin unable to get anything going resource wise until it was too late to stop or catch up.
By the time the game ended I had only gained 3 victory points to Marcin’s 25!
Next I introduced Marcin to the dark draft format for Dice Masters using my pauper cube.
The teams we ended up drafting were the following:
My Team
Gambit: Ace in the Hole
Green Goblin: Goblin Lord
Mystique: Ageless
Hawkeye: Longbow
Psylocke: Betsy Braddock
Wolverine: Wildboy
Professor X: Recruiting Young Mutants
Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme
Basic Actions
Rally!
Gearing Up
Marcin’s Team
Black Widow: Natural
Falcon: Samuel Wilson
Iron Man: Upright
Punisher: McRook
Loki: Trickster
Sabretooth: Something to Prove
Pyro: Saint-John Allerdyce
Doctor Doom: Reed Richards‘ Rival
Basic Actions
Smash!
Ambush
Game one saw Marcin use the Punisher to great effect. It kept chipping away at my health whilst I failed to really get a solution in place to deal with its threat.
Game two saw me do much better. A mixed attack of two Green Goblins, a couple of sidekicks, and a Gambit swung in to grab me a victory.
Our third and final game was over very quickly. This was the Green Goblin and sidekicks showcase. Which saw me swinging in with an unopposed 18 attack made up of five sidekicks, a Green Goblin, and a Gambit iirc.
The two games I won Marcin did get a Punisher out. But it was used less effectively. For some reason Marcin preferred Falcon over Black Widow.
In all the games I was using the crap out of Professor X’s global to move sidekicks into the prep area. In the first game I needed to do that to buff up Mystique. With the side benefit of it allowing me to ramp into a Professor X or Doctor Strange.
Marcin enjoyed the dark draft format. Which means the two people I’ve played it with it’s been a hit. Marcin also liked the cards in the cube more than the modern cube. They were less complicated. Easier for a new player to understand.
Tuesday I got to do some overtime during the afternoon. But I was finished in time to be able to play some Vampire the Masquerade Rivals with Diego.
I had none of my Rivals stuff with me. So was reliant on Diego providing everything. For this session we used the Justice & Mercy expansion that Diego had for the game.
This expansion has the Banu Haqim and Salubri clans. Our first game had Diego playing Banu Haqim, and myself Salubri.
Salubri is an interesting clan to play out of the box. For starters you get an agenda point at the start of each turn. So already the game starts with a 13 turn timer. Add in an attachment that allows you to tap your vampire for an agenda point that timer gets shorter.
Next interesting thing and probably more so than the first, is the fact Salubri can only have one vamp out at a time! When that vamp gets taken out you don’t loose the game, you get a chance to play one from hand first.
It’s actually a fun clan to play. I could see myself building a deck around this clan.
After Diego narrowly won we swapped decks.
Banu Haqim is a rituals deck with diablerie thrown in. Sadly for me, unlike Diego in the first game, I didn’t draw the ritual that allowed me to steal agenda points.
Which meant I wasn’t able to slow that 13 turn timer, or take out enough Salubri. So Diego got a second win.
I think this is the first Rivals expansion where both clans have been fun to play. I’ll have to get this expansion.
Wednesday saw me round Ben’s to play Apiary with him and Charlene.
Once again I lost. But my score was improved. I even got to the end of the Queen’s Favour track.
I still had a blast playing the game. I love that whilst playing you feel like you are doing cool stuff.
Ben’s amazing final flight
Our second game of the evening was First in Flight. A game about the early days of powered flight.
This has a cool mixture of mechanics. There is deck building and push your luck, a rondel with turn order. The later working similar to Tokaido or Glen More.
I love games that have asymmetrical variable player powers. And I played into mine of getting to look at extra cards whilst looking at cards from your deck to great affect.
In our game I was allowed to get several trick cards that allowed me to look at the top of my card and manipulate card order. Which allowed me on my final flight to get a winning distance of 48.
That final flight was funny because Ben had been getting all these powerful cards to improve his distance, had a more powerful descent card, and had mentioned this more than once during the game.
Sadly as you can see in the gallery above his final flight was very disappointing and very very funny.
I enjoyed First in Flight.
So Wednesday was a great evening of gaming.
The post title?
Back in my teenage years Iron Maiden released a single Flight of Icarus.
I was reading the heavy metal magazine Kerrang! at the time. Naturally they reviewed the single and there was one line that has stuck with me all these years later.
Which I thought would be appropriate for a post where I talked about playing a board game about man’s early attempts at powered flight.
After what can only be described as a disappointing month for gaming (I played a grand total of four games). I’m hoping November improves.
However this new month has got off to a good start with me able to attend my first club night for two months.
Sadly it wasn’t a well attended club night with only four of us making it. However that was the perfect number for a first play of my latest addition to the collection, Apiary from Stonemaier Games.
So not only were we playing the latest hotness (or one of them) but it was also a chance to play a game with Jonathan. Something we haven’t done for a long time.
Does it really need to be said about the production values of the game? I think by now it should be taken for granted that Stonemaier Games have produced yet another high quality game. For me considering the hive tiles and other tiles are cardboard a more durable solution to the hive mat and frames would have been nice. They seem too flimsy. I can see why they are this thin. And frankly I can’t think of a solution that’d work as well.
I love that included in the box is a new addition to a Stonemaier Games game a teach the game sheet. If I count the Swift pack included in Wingspan this is the second time such a thing has been included in the box. Granted they work differently. With the Swift pack taking players through their first few turns, and the teach sheet aimed at helping a player teach the game to new players. But it’s nice to see this sort of thing in the box.
The player aids are really useful as well, and hit the sweet spot with the amount of information on them.
We played using randomly chosen hive mats, and randomly chosen hive tiles from the marked starter hive tiles.
I love this game.
Apiary plays very fast. We learnt the game, and played the game in just short of two hours. A turn is amazingly fast.
The bump mechanic is great. I love how it increases the strength of the bumped bee.
You have a small bit of area majority going on with the hibernation mechanic and section of the board for end game scoring.
The various tiles you can add to your hive do allow some combos to kick off when you go to various spots on the board. For instance every time I did the grow action I got a free bee back from the pool (if I had any there) and a free frame.
I know there will be the usual criticism of this latest entry in the Stonemaier catalog of its “not balanced” blah blah blah. And to be fair to some of those making that comment depending on the game have a valid point. However Stonemaier Games actually listen and make adjustments based on player feedback, such as in Tapestry and the civilisation adjustments, or not allowing certain faction and mat combos in Scythe.
I’m not sure anyone can make that comment about Apiary at the moment because you’d have played a lot of games to see if that is the case. But I’m sure there will be a broken combo between the hive mats and faction tiles.
The handicap system used for getting over first player advantage is not bad with players getting a higher start on the score track.
The multi use seed cards are fun. Either being able to be discarded first one of the basic resources, played for the ability on it, or finally planted for an end of game scoring bonus.
Ok I didn’t do well on my final score coming in last. However I did do cool stuff (see my comment about tile combos above).
This is a fun game. Everyone enjoyed it. And that’s two players who coming into it had reservations about an aspect or two of the game.
I had a blast playing the game. It was a great game to share with Jonathan again. Oh and Marcin won.
After missing last weeks lcg/ccg/tcg game night (I think it didn’t happen in the end) due to me doing some overtime at work. I was glad to be getting some gaming in again.
This week it was going to be just Dave and myself. So I arranged to play test the dark draft format in Dice Masters with him. Commander would have to wait for another evening with more players.
When I play Epic the card game (usually the app version of the game, did I say the app is free? You only pay for online competitions or cosmetic stuff) I only play dark draft. It’s my favourite two player format of the game. Especially for a draft experience.
I love that decision space you have with the initial hand of cards. You can only have one but which? Which do you really not want your opponent to have? Which one do you really want or need? Which of the two decisions is the stronger? Is it more important that your opponent doesn’t have that card? Or do you really really need that card more?
Add on top the incomplete information of what your opponent has drafted it really does add up to some very difficult decisions.
We drafted using the Marvel Pauper Cube I created (you can get the list of cards I used here).
Draft 1
My First Drafted Team
Black Widow: Natural
Gambit: Ace in the Hole
Green Goblin: Goblin Lord
Punisher: McRook
Psylocke: Betsy Braddock
Wolverine: Wildboy
Rogue: Anna Raven
Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme
Basic Actions
Rally!
Transfer Power
Dave’s First Drafted Team
Captain America: Special Ops
Falcon: Samuel Wilson
Black Panther: Wakanda Chief
Vision: Density Control
Spider-Man: Hero for Hire
Mr. Fantastic: Brilliant Scientist
Professor X: Recruiting Young Mutants
Nick Fury: Mr. Anger
Basic Actions
Teamwork
Focus Power
I was happy with the curve I had. The only character I never bought was Rogue in the two games we played.
Doctor Strange was a really cool dice to have out. Getting free basic action die was super helpful. But it seemed like I could never roll them when I had sidekicks they could affect in the used area.
But my team worked a bit better than Dave’s to get me two wins.
Draft 2
My Second Drafted Team
Black Widow: Natural
Punisher: McRook
Rogue: Anna Raven
Deadpool: Assassin
Hawkeye: Longbow
Namor: The Sub Mariner
Wolverine: Wildboy
Marvel Girl: Telekinetic
Basic Actions
Rally!
Invulnerability
Dave’s Second Drafted Team
Toad: Tongue Lashing
Pyro: Saint-John Allerdyce
Green Goblin: Goblin Lord
Mystique: Ageless
Professor X: Recruiting Young Mutants
Colossus: Unstoppable
Gambit: Ace in the Hole
Magik: Illyana Rasputina
Basic Actions
Gearing Up
Transfer Power
It was a clean sweep on the victory front. Although game one of the second draft I thought Dave had me. He got me down to seven health before I was able to stabilise and make a dramatic comeback to snatch victory. The basic action dice for Invulnerability was the secret source for my victory here. Being able to swing in with everything and still have characters left on the field was a life saver. Especially against a heavily buffed Mystique.
The second game of draft two was just not kind to Dave. The dice were just not rolling kindly for him. He kept getting energy. So much energy.
For the record I never bought Rogue in these two games either!
So how was it?
Wow! This worked so well.
Dave said he preferred it for two players. This is now my preferred two player draft format too.
It delivered everything I enjoyed about the format in Epic the Card Game. And worked so well using the cube.
I highly recommend that if you are playing a two player draft then this is the only way to go about it.
Late to the party (by about three years or so) but I did finally cave and purchase Luigi’s Mansion 3 for the Switch around the middle of the month.
I’d been wanting to get it since the Super Mario Bros. movie came out earlier in the year. I’d come out of the cinema in Basingstoke having seen it wanting to buy a Mario game. Job done on that front for Nintendo. But the game stores there put me off buying any Mario game with their inflated prices and my tight budget at the time. I was hoping a second hand copy would have been within range. But sadly that was not the case.
I didn’t complete Luigi’s Mansion 2 on the 3DS, and I never played the first on the GameCube (or 3DS). The first one would have come out during the married, step parent phase of my life.
I did enjoy my brief time playing Luigi’s Mansion 2. This action adventure game I describe as Nintendo does Ghostbusters. It kinda had that vibe for me. Obviously there are official Ghostbusters video games (which will one day have a post or two of their own).
However this is a Nintendo Luigi-fied take on Ghostbusters. Very family friendly. It doesn’t have Slimer but Luigi does have a pet ghost dog called Polterpup in Luigi’s Mansion 3.
There are other similarities between the two. Such as Luigi’s Poltergust being the equivalent of the Ghostbusters proton pack and trap combined! Or the rooms throughout the hotel you are exploring being populated with various ghosts doing their thing. Very Ghostbusters-esq.
The boring bit about how I’m experiencing the game
For the record and those coming across one of these types of posts for the first time. I’m playing the game on a Switch Lite. No surprise there.
When I’m playing the game at home I will be using the inbuilt speakers of the Switch Lite to listen to the audio. However any game play away from home will use my usual setup of VANKYO C750 Bluetooth active noise cancelling headphones. Which are over ear, Hi-Fi Stereo, and apparently deep bass.
This is the memory card version of the game that I purchased that when first played downloaded and installed the 1.3.0 update for the game.
Obviously I won’t be experiencing the multiplayer side of the game, but playing it through its single player story mode.
Like all the other Switch games I’m playing at the moment I’m not spending hours at a time playing the game. But grabbing “moments” when I can. And if you have read my recent life, the universe post you’ll know playing anything has been a real struggle.
Potential Movie/Ride Threat to Disney!
I really enjoyed the cut scenes I’ve seen so far they set up the story, the current level or introduce ghosts etc really well. With no words just sounds that convey the meaning in place of words. These cut scenes felt like they could easily be from a Mario/Luigi movie. They have that cartoon quality to them.
Twice now Disney have done a Haunted House movie trying to capitalise on the popularity of the ride/experience with the same name in their parks. More importantly trying to replicate the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
Both movies haven’t been a massive box office hit. I don’t think the latest one even broke even at the box office.
I think Disney have to be fearful of Nintendo and Luigi’s Mansion.
I can easily see this game series becoming an animated movie like Super Mario Bros. did. An awful lot of children were introduced to Mario and Luigi this year via the movie.
With the Super Mario Bros. movie Nintendo showed they can produce an animated movie that stays true to the source, appeal to gamers, and a wider audience. My friend Diego was familiar with Mario, hadn’t played many if any of the games. His 5 year old daughter certainly had no idea who Mario was. She loved the movie, and Diego enjoyed it also.
Obviously that’s an antidotal point I make there. But considering the amount of money the movie made world wide at the box office I suspect that experience was not a one off.
Plus in the Nintendo parks that are starting to appear around the world you have the perfect source material to produce a Nintendo version of the Haunted Mansion themed around Luigi’s Mansion.
I love the cartoon Ghostbusters-esq look and feel of the game. It really does feel like you are playing a cartoon. Probably more so than any other Marioverse (has that been used before by others?) game I’ve experienced.
And on that note I’ll end this first look at Luigi’s Mansion 3.
Obviously like all my other game plays at the moment these posts will be sporadic (see reasons above). Plus who knows where they will go?
