Quantum Creed Looping Cops!

Fenland Gamers, Game day


Well having totally mashed up four time travelling films and tv series to make a blog post title that is a complete disaster this post can only get better right? Wrong!

Yesterday as the Rock would say “finally! T.I.M.E. Stories has hit the table!”

I’m going to give a spoiler warning just in case, and I’m bound to, do disclose spoilers for the games first scenario/mission Asylum. 

So Jonathan, Will, Lucia and I gathered to act as time agents or whatever the game calls us. Whilst Jeff very kindly came along to act as GM/DM for the game. Jeff had played this scenario before. Apparently three times! For the rest of us this was the first time we had ever played the game.

My first recepticle was Vasil, who had a little addiction problem with “nose candy”. Which he apparently had managed to hide three vials of from the screws. And was now able during my control of him to use these vials to roll extra dice, or heal other players! But if he ran out took a permanent life point hit. 

All the recepticles had their strengths and abilities. At the start you are choosing at random which one you want to play, you have no idea which will be useful in the mission ahead. So you go with the one you like the look of. 


The game is fun. I thought there was going to be more puzzles. It was the impression I got from reviews on The Dice Tower. 

In reality it’s more discovering the pieces of the main puzzle, and getting items to unlock more items, and locations.

There are still one or two things we haven’t done in the game. Which means there is a little mystery in the game, that we will never know unless we go back and solve them!

Surprisingly I cracked the main puzzle! Jonathan had been working on it, taking on the mantle of code breaker, making copious notes from the collected clues. But we all put our heads together to solve it when we reached the key point in the game when it needed to be solved to progress.

After that brief flash of glory, I soon became the villain! 

Which I think is unfair it was a majority decision. A naked woman was involved!!! Will went to the toilet at a crucial moment when the vote was taking place. If he’d been there to argue his case. Did I say there was a naked woman? 

Anyway we voted to do as the naked woman requested, which I thought would lead to a final big boss fight. The alternative was to disobey her (she was naked, why would you?) and fight these stone statues that I suspected would come alive, and then fight a big bad.

But no following your pants apparently has bad consequences. I think there might be a life lesson in there somewhere. We instantly failed the mission. No big boss battle! 

Then Will came back from the toilet to face the consequences of his weak bladder. 

See when you look at it in the correct light, the real lesson here is don’t go to the toilet during a key vote. Which leaves my rule of life “do what the attractive naked lady wants” still in place.

Jeff was great as the DM/GM. He had a brilliant wicked cruel streak, planting seeds of doubt at really appropriate moments. I think it really helped having Jeff there, being familiar with the rules etc. It also gave me confidence in playing the game. Going into the game I was worried about the resetting the game part, and how that all worked when you ran out of time. In fact I’d had that concern ever since reading the rules months ago. But between Jeff and actually playing the game that concern vanished.

This is a game that will be dependent on the people you play it with. Have the wrong people and I don’t think the experience will be that enjoyable. We had a fantastic team.

UPDATE: forgot to say how awesome the art work is on the cards. And how clever it is that the backs make up the scene of the room you are in. The art really is stunning.

We had a great time. T.I.M.E. Stories deserved all the praise it has received. If this had been any other month I think I’d be saying this is my game of the month! However as I pointed out in my previous post about game of the year, it’s too early to make that decision. It’s the front runner for sure. And has set a high bar for the likes of Kemet, Scythe, Lunarchitects, and Mechs vs Minions to beat.

I have set a date for The Marcy Case, the second mission and first expansion for T.I.M.E. Stories. So early 2017 hopefully sees the team back together taking on the next challenge.

FEG@WL 4Nov16

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night

It’s Friday, it’s five to five and it’s Crackerjack! Oh no wait it’s six and it’s Friday Evening Gaming at The White Lion.

I love starting my weekends this way. Gathered with old friends and making new ones, playing great games, enjoying great beverages, and finishing the evening off with “meat by-products” in a naan with salad and chilli sauce from one of the finest cut-my-own-throat dibbler wanna-be’s in Wisbech. 

Last night was no different. Lucia and Will joined us for the first time. And it was great meeting them. Despite Lucia winning our game of Love Letter Batman , and me not getting a single point. 

It’s one of the things I love about Fenland Gamers as a club. It’s not about winning (ok it might be) but about having a good time. It’s not an uber competitive must win at all costs, throw a temper tantrum if you don’t win. 

We have friendly banter, a laugh and joke about losing, and making sure I finish higher than Jonathan. 

Our second game of the evening was a first time for all of us but Jonathan. But he hadn’t played it for a long while. So it was kinda a level playing ground.

Oh the game Finca. This apparently according to Jonathan is a hard to get game now days. Well unless as Rocket argues I want it more than him, and I bribe one of his kids to “relocate” the game to my collection for me.

It’s a nice game. It makes great use of a rondel disguised as the sails of a windmill or finca as it is called in the game, to collect resources (fruits) and delivery tokens (donkeys) to complete various orders around this island you are on to villagers.

You get four one off use power ups that if not used give you points for each one left. But sometimes you want that power up to give you that little tactical boost.

On each of the zones/areas on the board are a small pile of orders to complete. Clear six(?) of these piles from around the island and the game ends and it’s down to adding the points up. In the meantime when a pile has been completed, a bonus token is awarded to the player with the majority of the indicated fruit type on the token on their completed.

History and my game play tracking app will record I lost, while Will won.

Our final game of the evening was a game that really does not get enough love Bohemian Villages. Jonathan and I love this game. It’s easy to teach and quick to learn. A blast to play. 

Jonathan has the new promo mini expansion from the Brettspiel Advent Calendar 2016. This basically adds three new tokens to the game that you can claim one of if you score thirteen or more on your dice roll. One token is a one off use that anables you to change two dice to a side of your choice. The other two give permanent abilities that either allow you to add one to a dice value or subtract one from a dice value.

I went for the add one to a dice value early on. I found that very useful through out the game. Jonathan got both of the permanent tokens. Which we both agreed at the end was over kill, you only really need one of them. 

But this promo is a nice little addition to the game. It gives you another thing you can do with your dice. I think I’d always play with it (if I had it).

Somehow I had a mare this game and ended up last again! With Jonathan who had been trailing all game taking the victory! 

So another Friday without a win! But despite that I had a blast. That journey to last place each time was fun. 

After a little gaming geek type chat, it was off to binge on “meat by-products” in naan, to bring a great evening to an end.

My Game of the Year is…tbd

Uncategorized

On the Fenland Gamer facebook page there was a brief discussion about what our personal game of the year would be.

Despite ten months of the year gone, I still feel that it’s too soon for me to be making that decision. I still have some games that I want to play before the year has finished.

For starters I have Scythe just arrived, Kemet is in the postal system, Lunarchitects has entered the postal system, Hero Realms is due to be posted to me any day now.

I’ve pre-ordered Cry Havoc. I want to get Robinson Crusoe (funds permitting). This next one is a long shot but I may even see The Others before Christmas. Jonathan has a couple of games he wants to get to the table.

Plus some of the games in my pile of shame may also make it to the table.

So as you can see there is still potential game of the year candidates to hit the table.

I do know that I will be choosing my game of the year from the short list created from my game of the month that I chose surprisingly enough each month!

Sadly I only started awarding that back in March so I will have to go back and look at what games I played in January and February and choose a winner for those months.

By awarding a game of the month, I have done a lot of the work already in narrowing down the field for my game of the year. I do know that it won’t be easy picking a winner from that short list. There are some pretty awesome games there.

So have you chosen your game of the year already?

Really Games Workshop?

rant

Oh look one of the sprues from the new edition of Blood Bowl. I took the image from a unboxing video.

Games Workshop just don’t get it. It’s 2016 not 1995.

There is no excuse these days to release a boardgame that doesn’t have miniatures already made up! 

I want to be able to buy, take home, and play straight away. 

Not buy, take home, spend hours putting the miniatures together, once I’ve managed to cut them off the sprue. Assuming I haven’t broken any bits of a model during that sprew surgery.

If the likes of CMoN can produce a game with lots of miniatures for prices that around the same price point of the Games Workshop stuff, the Games Workshop have no excuse what’s so ever.

So despite wanting to buy the game, I’m out on this one.

BTN Oct16

by the numbers

Yep that’s another month gone, and we are even closer to the year end.

Out of the 28 games that made it to the table, 10 of them were new (or new to me). That’s not bad. It means I also played 18 games I’d enjoyed previously.

So what does my gaming trend look like? Well the dip has been reversed. Which is always nice.

My game of the month

This was a no brainer for me. I’ve based the decision on the experience I had while playing the game. I had such a blast whilst playing it had to be this game. Oh it’s Escape from Colditz. 

Really great thematic packaging. Fantastic component quality. Rule book could do with improving. Osprey did an amazing job with this reprint.

Worst game of the month

I’ve had a great month of gaming and nothing has qualified for this award this month. Which is always nice to see I’m playing quality games.

Well that’s it for another boring stats post. 

Training Beach

Uncategorized

Sunday afternoon I played a solo game of D-Day Dice.

I thought first play I’ll use the suggested training map but on its full setting, skipping the slow intro path to the game.

I did find this map easy. Largely helped by my good rolls of the dice. I rolled the deadmans dice three times! That’s three skulls, one red, one blue, and one white.

I had a load of specialists that made things less challenging. 

But I enjoyed the solo experience none the less.

I’m keen to try the harder maps. But I’m certainly glad I got the game.

Plus it takes up a small foot print. So ideal to take when I visit Nath.

Such a shame this is an out of print game now.

Fenland Gamers 2016 Survey

Fenland Gamers

A couple weeks back I ran a survey on the Fenland Gamers Facebook page. 

What was the purpose of the survey? To hopefully get some feedback on how we could improve the club for members.

So in the spirit of openness here are the questions, and anonymous responses from that survey.

There are 51 members of the clubs Facebook page. 32 members saw the post about the survey. Or as a rounded up percentage 63% of the pages members saw the post.

We had 10 people complete the survey. So that’s 31% of those that saw the post actually clicked the link and took the survey. So rounding up that means the survey was completed by 20% of the pages members.

So some interesting numbers and feedback to crunch, process, cogitate.

Tech and Magic

magic, netrunner, Tournament

Yesterday six people with nothing better to do than play a few games of the rather excellent asynchronous living card game Android Netrunner gathered at The Hobbit Hole to compete for the Summer game night kits main prize of some plastic tokens. 

Match 1 Phil 2 – 0

The cards were really against me in this first match up. 

Take for example our second game when I was the corp. Two back to back runs on R&D hits three agendas for the win. Well that is the danger of the high value agendas. Up until that disasterous moment I thought everything was going to plan!

Phil does take part in a lot of the organised play like regionals etc. He also is an Ashes player. So that makes four I know in the area. That almost makes a local meta if we all managed to play together! Sadly we are dispersed a little over the area. So will need to work on how we can get together.

Match 2 Kar-Fai 1 – 1

Two runner wins this time. Kar-Fai is fantastic at deck building. He proves you don’t need every card going to be competitive. With core sets, a deluxe set I believe he builds very strong decks. His deck building and playing skills beat mine hands down.

Match 3 Jamie 1 – 1

At last facing off against Jamie. We managed not to play against each other in the last tourney.

I was confused a bit initially by Jamie’s tactics during our plays. For instance he happily took tags against my NBN deck! 

Which has in other games been an issue. Because most now know to avoid that with my deck, because that then allows me to start messin with the runner and eventually scorch earth them.

Which is exactly how I killed Jamie for the win.

Jamies Jinteki deck is very punishing. Making runs and scoring triggers damage of some kind. He leaves servers open, plays lots of little agendas, daring you to run and score. Black mail allowed me to hit servers easily, and with Same Old Thing and Deja Vu made it seem like I had more than two copies.

But then Jamie returned the favour killing my runner!

Two corp wins for the record.

Finished joint 4th with Jamie

Phil was the winner. So being beat comprehensively by the winner of the comp wasn’t too bad.

Final thoughts…

There was definitely a bias towards Jinteki and Shaper decks this time round. A lot of fun was had. Sadly the next tourney will be in the new year. Once Esdevium manage to get their act together and send the kits out.

So while waiting for the Netrunner tourney to start yesterday I caved and joined the new Magic the Gathering league that’s started up at The Hobbit Hole. 

Yes I know I’m an ultra ultra casual Magic player. Mainly playing the duel decks, I have a green/black deck I built. Which I played once, but the deck I think isn’t currently legal for standard, but might be for modern.

So why have I entered a league? Have a look at the rules below. As the way it’s been setup, it’s ideal for new players, and ultra ultra casual players like me.

You buy three boosters and construct a deck of thirty cards from them. It means I don’t have to have a large collection of Magic cards, or have been buying lots of the latest set to take part and stand a chance of doing well. It eliminates that how deep is your pocket element.


In my three packs I got one shiny and a Planeswalker. The Planeswalker according to Chris (a much much more experienced Magic player than me) in this format is potentially a very powerful card to have in a deck. 


Looking at the Planeswalker if she is going to be in my deck then she has made my deck a blue/red which after a quick Google is known as Izzet. 

Luckily with this colour combination I have enough cards to make up the suggested numbers from above. How well it plays is another thing.  

Now all I need to do is get along to the store and play some games!

FEG@WL Extended Edition! 

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night

With half term coming to an end Fenland Gamers celebrated it with an extended Friday evenings gaming session. 

Our extended session started off with Jeff, Jonathan and myself playing Piece o’ cake. Which is no longer in print. However it is coming out again rethemed around pizza. 

This really simple “I split, you choose” mechanic based game is really deceptive. 

The splitting the cake into enough pieces for each player can be really really tough. You are trying to split it so you get left with something of use for yourself, whilst tempting the others with pieces that won’t score them too many points or give them an advantage. 

Then again choosing which slice to take can be just as tough a decision.

No despite its apparent simplicity this is a nice quick filler game. Don’t be surprised to see the pizza version in my collection at some point in the future.

The history books recorded that Jonathan won the game.

Our second game of the evening was Roll for the Galaxy. 

Yep I know what you are thinking, “wtf how did you get Jonathan to play a sci-fi themed game?” 

Well like BA in the A-Team and getting BA in the air, we had to use copious amounts of drugs, brainwashing and hire some of the best hostage negotiators to get Jonathan at the table to play this game!

And you know what? Jonathan enjoyed the game. Yeah I know. I have to respect Jonathan a lot. Despite knowing the theme was one he didn’t like, he still gave it a shot. 

Our game will have the history books recording a victory for Jeff. However that was down to a split decision by the judges because we tied on the victory points. But his number of credits and dice in his cup broke the tie.

Next up to the table was Splendor, with the official playmat being used. 

That playmat may seem expensive. But it is a really nice mat. It feels quality, thicker than the playmats you get for the likes of Magic etc. Plus there are some nice setup prompts reminding you the correct number of gems to use Baer on players , and the same for patron tiles.

After taking an early lead and getting the first patron I wasn’t prepared for Jeff’s engine kicking in and taking him to the victory. Jonathan and I tied for last place.
We were joined by Diego and Les, with no sign of Debbie. So Ticket to Ride hit the table. 

I was totally and utterly shit at the game this time. I got blocked out of completing one of my two starting tickets. And it tanked from their. 

Jeff once more walked away with the victory. Are you getting a theme here with the games we played?

Luckily I managed to avoid any “banter” for being last.

After establishing that Debbie had not died from her cold and turned into a zombie, Bohemian Villages hit the table.

Well I think you can guess who won the game. But it was fun played my with five players. And even more fun with Jonathan coming in last with a really low score! Yes some friendly banter was had.

Our final game of the evening was the same game that started the evening.

Long story short Jeff won this too.

This was a great extended gaming session. 

Finally I don’t think we have enough pictures of me. So here are some taken by Jonathan during the evening of fun!

WS31Oct16

news

In a poor attempt to shake things up here is a short video showing the new releases for next week from our Esdevium over lords.

Yes as usual there are other things coming out next week, and I’m not interested in those ones. This is what’s caught my eye. Hopefully these will interest you also. 

I keep thinking I want to do a podcast of some sort but I’m not sure what format yet. For me I’m bored with what’s out there at the moment.

The current formats are tired, clones, predictable.

I want something fresh, me. 

Oh well will have to wait for what I come up with.