Three is the magic number

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night

Last night saw three like minded souls yearning to throw dice, play cards and push round cardboard, meet up and play games at the weekly Fenland Gamers meet up “Friday Evening Gaming @ The White Lion”.

While waiting to see if anyone else was going to turn up, we started off with a game that was quick to play so that any late comers weren’t hanging around bored. The game we chose that fitted that profile perfectly, and at the top of my small games box was Mint Works.

While setting up I was “entertaining” Charlie and Diego with my previous play of the game of how I crushed Scott, with a record breaking 18 points. Ok it sounded more like boosting. But 18 points is an incredible score in Mint Works. A winning score is usually 7 – 9 points. So yeah I’m boosting about that play.

But they say pride comes before a fall. And I did fall. I managed to get a massive 4 points to claim last place. Diego and Charlie drew on 7 points a piece. But just like I have been in the past on a couple of occasions, Charlie was denied a victory by the tie rules for the game. Diego had the smaller neighbourhood so was given the technical win.

No one else had turned up during our game of Mint Works. So it was time for a heavier game.

After a little indecision Imperial Settlers was hitting the table. I haven’t played this game in a longtime. Which is shameful really. This is a great game. Luckily I have it well organised. Which you have to with all the expansions. It was easy for me to just pull out the core games faction and common decks.

Charlie was playing the Barbarians, I was the Japanese and Diego was the Egyptians.

Naturally with such a long time between plays mistakes were made, rules referenced. 

But after the five rounds and the final tally of points I managed to claim the victory by a single massive point.

To be fair to Charlie I don’t think the cards were kind to him. And they were very kind to me. Diego they were ok with.

Charlie rocks at Perudo. He totally owned Diego and me in our two plays of this classic bluffing game.

Our final game of the evening was Love Letter: Batman. Ok I’m a Batman fan, so it has me there. But it’s funny how a simple rule tweak elevates this version above that of the original. It’s so simple, play the Batman card, guess correctly and get a token. It gives another way for players to score, can shorten the play time. Genius.

The BG Stats app will show I won our game of Love Letter: Batman. It won’t show the fun we had. The multiple times I got The Joker as my first card, and knocked out early. Or the bullet I dodged when Diego played the last Poison Ivy on himself when I had The Joker that gave me the game. 

A great evening of gaming. Thank you guys.

The Fenland Gamers have their monthly meet up next week, followed by the usual FEG@WL. Hope to see you there.

Kodama vs Odin’s Ravens

Head to Head, Matchup, VS

I think when I was boring you with pseudo techie speak about how I was going to write this matching engine to allow me to rank my games, I threatened to write posts about some of the match ups. Sadly for you I’m carrying through with that threat at least once.

Our first match up in this series (more threats I’m afraid) is Kodama: The Tree Spirits vs Odin’s Ravens (second edition).

The winner of this match up was Odin’s Ravens. So how did I arrive at this choice?

Both games are very attractive to look at. Both theme wise are completely different. Racing ravens verses growing trees and tree spirits.

Odin’s Ravens is a two player only game. While Kodama plays two to five players. Although I have only so far played Kodama as a two player game.

Kodama is the more “complicated” of the two games. And probably the harder of the two to pick up and play after a long gap between plays. Looking back at the post I wrote when I first played (and only time at the moment) the game there was confusion over how the scoring worked. And I feel that may be the case again when this hits the table next time.I have played Odin’s Ravens more than Kodama (not by much). But even so it only takes a minute to refresh the memory on how to play after a gap between plays. And that refresh is mainly on the setup.

I think what swung it for Odin’s Ravens was it has a take that element. Using the Loki cards it is possible to interfere with your opponents progress. However doing so has repercussions for yourself (potentially) because you too will have to negotiate the hurdle you threw in the way of your  opponent. It’s not much interaction but it’s there, which is more than there is in Kodama.

There you have it. That is how I chose Odin’s Ravens over Kodama. Which would you have chosen and why?

May the 4th at work

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It would appear that Dale and I were the only ones taking what should be a national holiday seriously.

We had our Star Wars tees on, and played a couple of games of Star Wars Destiny.

We are awaiting the arrival of our booster box of the Spirit of Rebellion set. It’s in the post at the moment. So it was starter sets only.

Our first game was won by me. I got upgrades out, so had more dice to roll and utilise. Whilst Dale was struggling to draw upgrades to install. Oh I was playing Rey/Finn (but two dice on Finn – had to borrow the extra one from Dale). While Dale was Kylo and First Order Stormtrooper.

The second game we flipped sides. This was a far closer game. Which saw Dale facing defeat by having a single card left in his hand. While I was holding on just with the Stormtrooper who had a life point left. I was undone with some great rolling of the dice for Reys staff that saw three melee damage hitting me far too often.

I can’t wait until we are able to deck build once we have some boosters.

When I got home there was a great birthday present from my brother waiting for me. Aptly thematic for the day.

Ranking – Progress Update

coding, ranking

So this may not look much. BUT I have a ranking engine for my game collection!

Yep I now have a python script that creates match ups from my collection, and records the results. As you can see the script also gives me the depressing information that in total I will have to do a lot of pairwise comparisons. 23005 to be exact, based on a game collection of 215 games (it’s a couple more than that now, but that updated list hasn’t been imported into the database yet). The formula I used to work this out was totalNumTests = N(N-1)/2.

So two thirds of the way there. I now need to create my lists/stats engine. Or get an initial version done. But considering how many pairwise comparisons I have to do, it’s going to be a while before you see the fruits of that labour. However you may see the odd post that discusses one of the pairwise comparisons. Why did I rank game A better than game B, and asking for which one you’d choose?

To Do List:

  • Update script for populating to database with games to allow updates to the collection.
  • Lists/Stats Engine
  • Long term: create a GUI front end

May the 4th Be With You 2017

star wars

May the 4th Be With You – Happy Star Wars Day.

As we remember our princess and droid that left us for a galaxy far far away, we also celebrate our love for all things Star Wars.

I have plans for the day which includes Star Wars themed gaming. But all that will be discussed in the next post.

Are you planning on playing any Star Wars games today?

Countdown to UKGE 2017

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Yep my birthday weekend celebrations are over. It’s back to work, and the business end of the academic year is kicking in as we work to get students through to completion of their course.

But in the midst of all that the UK Games Expo is fastly approaching.

I’m all set for the three days.

  • Hotel booked – check
  • Three day Expo pass – check
  • Fenland Gamers Meetup planned – check

The Expo is a low key event for me! I don’t wonder round stalls self promoting. I never mention the blog. I’m not there trying to get free stuff. I’m there to enjoy myself.

I am planning to have a lucky dip of the spare  promos I have. So if people spot me they can grab a random promo.

I’ll talk more about the Expo over the coming days.

Have a great rest of the day.

Community v Community

news

I love the zombie post apocalyptic survivor theme, especially when it’s wrapped in a great graphic novel like The Walking Dead or one of the classic Living Dead movies.

The boardgame Dead of Winter did a pretty good job of capturing the feeling of those source materials. Survivors thrown together to try and survive against the odds. The odds were not just the zombie horde but dwindling resources and the elements. 

Plaid Hat then followed that up adding an expansion that could be combined with the original game in a modular fashion or be played stand alone.

But Plaid Hat have decided try and recreate that feel of warring survivor communities that you see in the last season or so of The Walking Dead. Plaid Hat today announced a new Dead of Winter expansion called Dead of Winter: Warring Colonies.

This new expansion adds a new Team Variant that requires both The Dead of Winter and The Long Night to play. But it then allows 4 – 11 players to form two colonies to compete against each other. 

The Lone Wolf module also sounds interesting. Which has a single player playing as their own team.

It sounds like a very exciting addition to the game. 11 people playing the game at once?!!! Wow. Could I get that many people together to play it?

I like the sound of the direction Plaid Hat seems to be taking Dead of Winter. It’s like they are following the story arc of the Walking Dead. Or the survivors story we have been playing in the Dead of Winter has just taken a new twist. 

You can read the full announcement HERE.

Gloomhaven Second Printing – Funded

news

Unsurprisingly the second printing of Gloomhaven funded this morning. So my bank account is a bit smaller today.

But look at that final funded total. Two more games (with delivery) would have taken it through the $4 million barrier. 

It was within $300k of matching the Eric Langa Ding Dongs and CMoNs oriental version of A Game of Thrones – Rising Sun. Which is phenomenal. Especially when you consider Gloomhaven didn’t have to rely on cheap (well not so cheap to produce) theatrics of amazing looking minis and Kickstarter exclusives.

The great thing is delivery is expected in August. So barring any unforeseen events, September should see the start of the campaign.

With 7th Continent also hopefully arriving around the same time. Plus Pandemic Legacy Season 2 also dropping in this crowded slot. This Autumn is going to be a scheduling nightmare.

BTN Apr 2017

by the numbers, gaming stats

I have to admit I am surprised with how April went. The month started off with the Easter holidays, and half of that marathon gaming session for charity. But over that half term period there wasn’t much gaming going on. Much less than I’ve done previously during a holiday. I’m hoping this doesn’t happen over the Summer too.

With that slow start to the month I thought I’d be lucky to hit any of the measurements for an “average” month. So you can imagine I’m gobsmacked with the final figures. 

You want the nice data for last month don’t you? So here you go here is the data for April and the data for April 2016.


I played two more games than this time last year, with less people! But in more places. However the number of plays was insane in the end. 

Nine new to me games hit the table, with four games I’d played before finally getting a recorded play. 

Looking at the games played, there has certainly been a few plays of games that would fall into the lighter end of the gaming spectrum. Some just have that “one more play” feel to them. 

Let’s look at the new section I introduced last month. Still no attractive graph. So you are stuck with plain raw data.


I’ve beat the “averages” easily this month. Smashed it!

The final section as usual presents the data graphically so we can try and see trends.

My Game of the Month…

Nine possible candidates for this coveted title this month. But in reality I think only three with a real shot at the title. Those three are Onitama, Sheriff of Nottingham and Sagrada.

I’m having a hard time picking between two of them. I think Sagrada is out of the running. But how do I decide between the other two? I’ve just noticed they are both Dice Tower Essentials games. Wow!

Nope these two games both deserve the title. They are complete opposites to each other. Both great fun to play. Only one thing for it. They will have to share the award.

Onitama and Sheriff of Nottingham are my games of the month for April 2017. 

You want a great, fun social game, get Sheriff of Nottingham. You want a great, quick, two player game get Onitama. 

Worst Game of the Month…

Did a game this month meet the super low standards to qualify for this infamous award? Will there be a new addition to the Nantucket Wing of Shame (my version of room 101, although it is humorous that I’m dumping all the bad games round Jonathans)?

The answer is no. I didn’t play any game that would qualify for this awapp d this month. There wasn’t one game played this month that I didn’t like, or more important hate enough to throw  into this pit of despair.

Hopefully hitting the table in May…

But going to put the ones from the last month back on for May.

  • Star Wars Rebellion – really want to play this now. Even came close to buying once or twice also in the last month.
  • Broom Service – I think a special learning session needs setting up for this.
  • Mech vs Minions – need to arrange a big session for this I think.
  • Star Wars: Destiny – I’ve gone halfs on a booster box for the Spirit of the Rebellion set that gets released on the 4th. Dale has the starter packs too now. So we will be able to start deck building and playing. No excuses. 

Fenland Gamer Events for May (so far)…

  • The weekly Friday Evening Gaming at The White Lion (or FEG@WL as I call it)

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.

49 and not out

Fenland Gamers

Somehow I’ve made it to 49 years on this planet. The last year of my forties.

So how did I spend the day of the year where I celebrate escaping the prison my mum kept me in for 9 months for a crime I never committed? (Imagine The Great Escape crossed with Prison Break and you’ll get the right image)

Well the afternoon was spent over in Cambridge visiting Scott, and dropping off the Star Realms and Hero Realms promos I had for him.

Scott introduced me to the game Fugitive. I played the marshal while Scott played the fugitive. I thought from the description of game play I’d been given this would be best for my first play. The game could do with a little shield for the marshal player to hide the markings on the little number board they use for tracking things on. I think I enjoyed it. It would be interesting to play the fugitive next time. From the marshal side it’s a deduction game trying to make guesses based on incomplete information. With each turn providing a little bit more information to help refine the guesses. 

I returned the favour by introducing him to Mint Works. Despite losing Scott enjoyed the game. It’s probably a 100% success rate at the moment for people liking the game after trying it. Just a shame it’s not easily available at the moment. Pretty sure there would have been some instant purchases.

Sadly while in Cambridge a cunning plan to recreate the following Ruby Wax sketch on a friend/colleague who was away doing adventurous type stuff in the Lakes came a cropper.

If it wasn’t for a minor flaw in the planning it would have been awesome and hilarious. Sadly the moment of comedy gold was ruined because I didn’t know their address. Nor did my partner in crime at work. Darn!

The evening has been spent at The Luxe. As if they knew (just a coincidence in reality), there was a showing of Robocop (1987), one of my all time favourite movies.


Will, Lucia and Jonathan met me before the film started for a drink and some gaming. Our pre-movie gaming sadly wasn’t a Robocop game, but Archer: Once You Go Blackmail.

In the first game we played I won the first two points before anyone else had a chance to take a turn! I drew the number 2 card Dr Krieger which allowed me to guess the hidden card, and if correct I instantly won. I did that twice in a row! I’m sure the others suspected me of cheating at that point. As Will said, I should have chosen the lottery numbers at that point. It won’t surprise you I won that game. We started a second game that ended in a draw because we had to go in for the movie.

We were in for a treat. It was the Directors Cut of Robocop we were going to see, with its extra 26 seconds (according to Bouncy).

It was a delight seeing it on the big screen again. I just love the movie. Over the years I must have seen the movie a good 15 to 20 times, if not more.

Naturally I’m old enough to have seen Robocop when it first came out. I also had it on video a year later, along with The Princess Bride (which I looove, and also getting the big screen treatment at The Luxe) and The Untouchables on a single long play video (yes not exactly legal at the time). It was this tape I watched a few times while studying at Brighton Poly. And accounting for a large number of those views. 

I had a fantastic time watching Robocop again with friends. It’s always great sharing a film like this. Plus the banter with Bouncy before and after the movie was fun. But then again the staff at The Luxe always look after you. 

Seeing Robocop again was a great way to end a very enjoyable birthday. And that’s that, the birthday weekend of celebrations has come to an end. Thanks everyone for the well wishes, presents, and spending time with me. Same time next year?