Epic Planning

zombicide

I’m not going to finish my little project in time. I think I’m going to be a box short.

What am I talking about?

Oh this week Zombicide is hitting the table again!

But having so much stuff for it, like Season 1, Season 2 – Prison Outbreak, Toxic Mall, Season 3 – Rue Morgue, and Angry Neighbours. So that’s all the big boxes. Plus I have a few of the expansions adding more survivors, crows!, zombie dogs and companion dogs, extra zombies.

It’s not everything but getting there.

So I decided this stack of stuff needed organising.

I’m trying to get everything into the five boxes. Well that’s the ideal.

Which means I’ve been making inserts from foam core.

At the moment I’ve got three boxes done, which covers tiles, and zombies. I’ve just started on the counters and cards inserts for one of the remaining boxes. Which leaves the final box for survivors and their zombie version, plus character cards. And I need to squeeze rule books in too!

I was hoping to have this all done before I roll out Epic Zombicide.

What’s Epic Zombicide? 

Well since discovering the amazingly large table we are allowed to play on at The White Lion Hotel, it struck me this would be amazing to play Zombicide on.

In fact I thought I bet I could build a massive map with all my tiles on the table.

And thus the idea of Epic Zombicide was born.

So this isn’t one of the amazing scenarios or campaigns that come in the rule books or compendium. No this will basically be start at one end of the map, and fight your way to other. There will be spawn points all over the place, abandoned cars, waves and waves of zombies. 

I have a dry run of Epic Zombicide planned on Wednesday at work! Which will then with any tweaks needed return to the table that started this path the next day.

But the secret to success is going to be organisation. Hence my little project in foam core.

Once I’ve finished the project I’ll do a little video showing it all off!

I only have one regret for this insane idea of mine. That is I didn’t get the pack of 3D doors and barricades on the season three Kickstarter. They would make this super epic looking on the table.

Sadly can’t find them anywhere. Oh I can find the ones for Zombicide 2.0 or Black Plague as it’s known officially. But they have that medieval look to them that is out of place in a modern setting.

I wish CMoN (not my favourite company in the world, in fact I hate them) would do an “upgrade” kit for original Zombicide. Giving us the improved player boards of the 2.0 version. Plus give us a single sheet rule change that matches the 2.0 ranged weapon targeting rule (I talk about house ruling it here).

For me zombies are modern, not something for a fantasy medieval setting. It’s why I haven’t bought Black Plague. It’s what I have but with a fantasy theme! Why would I want to buy everything again!!!

Anyway I digress. I can’t get the 3D stuff anywhere. That’s such a shame. Hopefully I’ll stumble across them in the future.

Right I’ll love you and leave you it’s nearly my bedtime as I finish writing this! Yes I’m that sad and old!!

Shadows of Porta Nigra

Fenland Gamers, game night

Finally Porta Nigra hit the table. That’s another one off the pile of shame. Which is getting smaller and smaller.

So how did this bit of shocking news happen?

It all started with an innocent Facebook post enquiring what games members of the Fenland Gamers group were playing this weekend. I’d got nothing planned, except continue making inserts to organise Zombicide. So I was curious if others were enjoying life, the universe, etc. 

Not long after posting this probing question I received an invite from Jonathan to play some games at a long time Fenland Gamers haunt.

This was the first time either of us had played the game, so we were learning from the rule book (once again – yep we tend to break that gamer rule about not doing this).

It took a turn or three to get the hang of what’s what within the game. But it was a quick game to pick up.

I liked the use of the players deck to control the duration of a round. That was neat. 

Having the player choose two or three actions depending on the card from the available ones on it, with a mechanism to take extra actions, was really neat. 

Despite the limited choice you still have to make some tough decisions, the first being which action card to play from a hand of two. Then which actions and the order of them. 

You are having to manage your resources, aiming for majorities in each building area, whilst trying to score as many points for your building. 

Jonathan managed to get a bonus card that gave him 30 points at the final scoring. Which put huge pressure on me to try and negate that. That pressure only increased when that bonus got power up’d to over 50 points. It’s only in the third and final round was I able to cut that damaging point surge to twenty odd points with my own 30 points surge.

I loved the end of round scoring where you counted up number of building blocks used to build your buildings so far to split between money and points. I went for a fifty fifty split each time. 

This is not a low scoring game I beat Jonathan by 2 points, 254 to 252. Which was much much closer than both of us thought it would be.

When the light was just right we got some awesome shadows on the board from our buildings. Plus I have an excuse to use a photo of me that is really all about the shadows taken by Jonathan.


Porta Nigra is a lovely game that looks attractive when you are playing it. I love that 3D element of it. 

We will definitely play this again. The problem is when now?

A great afternoon of gaming, thank you Jonathan for the invite.

WS24Oct16

news

Well with Essen keeping our Esdevium/Asmodee overlords busy last week it was rather quiet, with a game (Escape from Colditz) and an expansion (the Mystic Vale one) having sold out before the update was released!

So now we are going to start seeing a tidal wave of games coming out after the Essen announcements and trying to hit the shelves before Christmas.

This coming week sees a new CCG hit, this one themed around the ever popular Final Fantasy video games. The Final Fantasy Trading Card Game is using the money sink hole model of the collectable random booster packs. Which is why I won’t get it. I don’t have that space in my life or budget for such a game.

The big must get for me next week is the first expansion for 7 Wonders Duel, Pantheon. I’m really looking forward to this as is Nath. We love 7 Wonders Duel, however this expansion may push the limits on Naths small table he has in his room in halls.

Krosmaster 2.0 hits also next week. I did like the first edition. This is Final Fantasy Tactics the boardgame really. I sold mine in the end as the skirmish game I wanted to try and get to the table more was Imperial Assault. Although I am tempted to get again. 

Continuing the rerelease of expansions using the new artwork comes one of my favourite expansions for Carcassonne Princess and The Dragon.

Although I haven’t got Civil War yet for Marvel Legendary (yeah shocking I know), it won’t stop me picking up this Deadpool expansion for the game. Now if only they’d release Howard the Duck that came out as part of their 3D cards in the US last year.

As you will know at the last Fenland Gamers monthly Meetup we got to play Keyflower. Now Key to the City – London is hitting the stores, which I believe is basically Keyflower at heart. Now I know Jonathan has a London boardgame fetish! So I imagine he will be getting this. I hope so, then I can decide which one I want in my collection.

Finally some rather nifty Star Wars The Force Awakens card sleeves are out next week.

So that’s it for the coming week. It’s just going to get more manic and expensive the closer we get to Christmas.

Achtung Baby!

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night

It’s been a very quiet week from me on here and that’s been down to “manflu” taking me out for most of the week.

Luckily after going through the worst patch Wednesday night and Thursday, things started to improve. The downside of the bad patch being having to miss a first playthrough of Escape from Colditz that Jonathan and I had just got through the post.

So Friday was once again on us, I was feeling much better, not great, but functioning. So FEG@WL was a go.


So with Jonathan putting on his German prison guard hat, Deigo, Les and myself formed an orderly line in the middle of the courtyard to plan our Escape from Colditz.

Opening the box, this game oozes theme, and I just love the production quality of the game. A lovely touch was the separate history booklet that was included. Rightly so much thicker than the rule book.

We played with the new “updated/modified” rules of this 75th Anniversary edition. I will say the rules aren’t that clear. Ideally they should have reworked this making them easier to follow. Looking at them for a first time I found them a little difficult to follow.

All I can say is we had a blast playing this game. It really was a lot of fun. 

Yes there is that competitive element on the prisoner side with the first getting two prisoners out being the winner. But you also have a collaboration side as well.

In the early game I was deliberately taking out guards to give my fellow escapees a window of opportunity to move around without threat. I also hit on the idea of it getting the inner solitary confinement cells full so I’d get placed in the outer one and need less items to escape one let out!

We would be swapping escape equipment making sure Jonathan had no idea of who had what. That way we kept him guessing how we would be trying to get out.

We’d even be giving equipment to aid escape when a run for freedom was being made.

We’d make dummy runs to try and distract Jonathan.

There was one moment on my escape when Jonathan really should have arrested my prisoner instead of blocking me. But I’d tried putting doubt in his head, suggesting he’d missed some-one else’s plan. I couldn’t believe it when he blocked me, Jonathan thought he was blocking my escape. Which he hadn’t I just went out the other way open to me. The other way he’d missed. The other way to freedom!

I wasn’t the first to escape. That honour fell to Les. We had a dual escape going on, the other escapee being Deigo. This was presenting Jonathan with some hard decisions to make. We liked watching him squirm!

I was getting very few opportunity cards to help my escape because I was doing my usual rolling high! While Les was pulling loads of them.

We did find that maybe the rule about getting of solitary was maybe a little broken. The rules state you needed to roll a double to get out. So we found there were sometimes several turns where you could do nothing while you waited to roll that double to get some-one out, or draw an opportunity card that got a pow out. We may house rule this next time to even things out.

I’d highly recommend this blast from the past, if you can get a copy (Esdevium had sold out before they did their weekly update sheet!!) I will warn you it’s a long game. We cut our game short because of time, we’d taken 30 turns approximately in 2 hours. So you may want to pencil in an afternoon playing this.

This was a really fun evening of gaming. A great way to start half term.

This Is Saturday…

Ashes, Game day, imperial assault, Tournament

Saturday mornings growing up meant watching Swap Shop and/or Tiswas. 


I have to admit along with almost every teenage boy and adult male Sally James was the fantasy woman to dream about.

Adult me know spends his Saturdays now and again playing board games. 

This Saturday was one of this occasions.

My FLGS The Hobbit Hole was running an Imperial Assault Summer 2016 game kit.

I haven’t played Imperial Assault for a year and a half, and then it was a learning skirmish game!

So as you can see I was in great shape for a tourney. I’d thrown together a Jedi team to play with, could hardly remember how to play. The omens were good.

I was up against two regular players who “toured” the local game shops playing these tournaments. So yeah they were experienced. Whilst the third was the brother of one of them and had been playing for two days. Two days of intense training I think.

As you can imagine out of three games I won precisely zero. In my first two games I did score some points by eliminating a unit or two. 

But the cursed reinforcements command card stopped me scoring any points in my last game. 

It was evident especially in the last game being familiar with the scenarios, their objectives and tactics, was a big advantage.

So the most predictable result happened I was fourth, or last as it’s officially known in a four player tourney.

It was then onto Cambridge and meeting up with Scott to collect the two latest Phoenixborn, and play a game or two of Ashes.

I’d been lazy about what deck to play and build against Scott when I hit on the genius idea mid week of using one of the new Phoenixborn and the deck that comes with them.

Victoria Glassfire was the one I chose. Boy did I enjoy playing her. I loved some of the new cards. The art as usual is out of this world.

Scott won our first game whilst I was getting to grips on how to play Victoria.

But our second game was a different story, especially after I tweaked the starting five by swapping out one card. 

I’m still sure there was a more optimal way to play Victoria but I’ll take the win.

I think despite no Sally James teenage me would have enjoyed spending his Saturday this way.

FEG@WL 14Oct16

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night

A bit like Crackerjack when I was growing up, it was Friday, it was 6pm, it was time for FEG@WG. Not quite as snappy or as popular as Crackerjack, and also not at five to five!

The first game of the evening for the four amigos that had assembled to play games was Splendor.

Deigo crushed this game. An easy win he put down to the many defeats he’d suffered at the hands of his partner. 

Earlier in the day the postman had delivered the playmat for Tiny Epic Western. So naturally I wanted to take the mat out for a spin.

So with our Mexican stand off set up on the playmat it was time to admire it.

This is a massive playmat. 


But a lovely one, that not only really captures the poker element of the game in its colouring trying to evoke the baize of a poker table. It actually captures the feel with a baize like feel! What a great use of texture.

Gamelyn games make some really nice playmats for their Tiny Epic games. However they do take the games away from the Tiny ethos. 

In our Mexican stand off Ben was quickest on the draw and won. 

A great evening gaming once again! Some nice banter, great company. All finished off with the now traditional dodgy meat fest.

Fenland Gamers Oct 16 Meetup

Fenland Gamers, game night, Uncategorized

Last night saw the October meet up of the  Fenland Gamers at the White Lion Hotel. This was a first for the monthly Meetup.

Our first game of the evening was Keyflower. 

Part worker placement, part bidding. It’s a nice challenging game. 

You have to decide whether to use a tile for its ability or to try and bid on it to get ownership.

There is an advantage to owning the tiles. Points for starters, plus it may increase the number of workers the next round that you have to play with. Because if another player uses on of your tiles you get those meeples at the end of the round. 

You also get to bid for choosing bonuses at the end of the round. Get a chance using tile abilities to gather resources that you can use to upgrade a tile. 

It can be tough making that decision what to do. 

The art isn’t amazing, but has a nice cartoony feel to it. I do like the player screens that are used to hide your meeples from the other players. 

Despite loosing to Deigo it liked the game a lot.

We finished off the evening with Isle of Trains.

I’d nearly bought this game at the expo. Which is a shame as I liked playing this also. And it won’t be long before it ends up in the collection.

I love the multi use cards. Using them to pay for cards, to use them as carriages/trains or as a resource to activate an ability. 

That activating of an ability is genius. Because that only happens when you put a resource on an opponents carriage. But if you do that you are helping them get nearer to completing their contract. If you do it on your own train, nothing happens, but you do have the goods to use for completing a contract. That’s an interesting decision to have to make. How badly do you need the ability to meet your goals? 

The records will show that I won this game.

A great evening of gaming. Looking forward to Friday now for the next lot.

Wait this had no title!

Fenland Gamers, game night

I have to admire Jonathan it takes a lot of balls to build the Nantucket wing on his house.

Last night I’d hesitate to say we played the game Western Front. We tried it is the best I can describe it as.

I’m not going to waste more time on this game at the moment. When the best you can say about the game is you like the linen finish of the cards. It says it all really.

We followed up with Karmaka, a game I knew the theme would not appeal to Jonathan. However I thought he might like the mechanics and art.

I called it right, Jonathan beat me whilst not disliking the mechanics, but not enjoying the theme.

Our final game was a two player Tiny Epic Western. Which was an ok experience but much better with more players.

Luckily for me I won. Which ended our gaming evening and despite the false start a pleasant evening of gaming.

Weekend At Naths 

father son gaming

I visited Nath this weekend. The weekend before his birthday. All of a sudden that little boy who looked up to you, is now towering over you, started a degree, and living the student life (despite being told to slow down, but it seems I’m old, and Halls has changed since I was in them last).

We only played one game Friday night. And it only just was Friday when we started it. That was 7 Wonders Duel. 

It was a close game, neither of us bothered attempting for a science victory. Nath progressed a military path early on, whilst I did grab matching science tokens to give me a bonus that was worth three points at the end. A decision that would haunt me at the end. 

I did manage to build all my Wonders early on, whilst Nath only managed one. But he was racking up blue victory point cards. Having forgotten his military plan during the second age. It was midway through the second age that I went big into the military path. 

During the third and final age I managed to get right up to the door of his empire on the military path. One more point and I’d have the instant win. One point that I would have had if I’d taken the right science bonus earlier. 

Instead the game went to points. Which gave Nath the win by two massive victory points.

Saturday saw me hunting down two lgs in Portsmouth while Nath had his football training.

Before I got to the first one I passed an artisan bakers. Who could resist one of them?

After being tempted to buy one of everything on the cake front, and narrowing the bread options down to two. I left the premises with a baguette, beer loaf, two cinnamon rolls, and a lemon meringue pie. 

All I’m saying is best lemon meringue pie ever! Perfectly balanced, lovely pastry. Amazing.

We started our gaming off with Timeline Star Wars. A nice light start. Although one or two cards did stump Nath to give me the wins.

We followed that up with a game of Karmaka, which I had just received after backing on Kickstarter.

First up I love the art on this game. The box is beautiful, as is the art on the cards.

There are some nice touches like the two cards you can use to replace the main board, allowing you to take the game on the go in a smaller box.

The components are of a high quality. I love the little meditating meeples. The insert is nice, and a great touch.

This game really does capture its theme of reincarnation and karma in its mechanics and art.

I like the whole having to decide how you use a card. Do you save it for your future life? Do you score it for its deeds value? Or do you play it for its ability and possibly have your opponent place it in their future life to possibly use against you?

I like how the death, rebirth works. The moving up levels of transcendence based on whether you have scored enough deeds. Or you might get stuck if you haven’t and get a karmic ring instead.

Nath and I found for a game about karma and transcendence this had a high take that thing going.

We enjoyed our game, another Kickstarter win for me, and a game win for Nath.

Next up was a game of Magic the Gathering using the latest duel decks Nissa vs Ob Nixlis.


Next Nath and I tried to make our way across America and to safety while avoiding zombies in Hit Z Road.

Nath had a default win after my survivors failed to make it to safety and ended up as  zombie food.

Our gaming finished off with Star Realms. Which I won. Although Nath thought it was over kill that I added up my total killing blow instead of stopping once I’d hit enough to win. Well it’s not Star Realms unless you are hitting them for as much as possible.

Sunday started off really relaxed! It was half nine when I woke and made a coffee for myself. 

Finally with Nath awake we hit the local spoons which was literally a stones throw from Naths. 

Back at the bomb site known as Naths room there was time for one more game before I had to head back.

Nath chose the game our weekend started off with 7 Wonders Duel. During the Wonders drafting I drafted a couple with military bonuses to stop Nath having them. And then decided that I would go big on the military route to victory.

Which I managed to pull off despite Nath trying to slow me down once or twice.

A great game to finish on. 

I had a great weekend with Nath. I’m so proud of him. Can’t wait until my next visit.