Last night saw the latest of the Friday night gatherings to play board games at The Angel. 

Our evening started off with a game of Thiefs Market. A game Jonathan had been wanting to try since getting his Kickstarter copy a couple weeks back.

I narrowly beat Debbie by two points to steal second place. The picture above tells you got to gloat on social media by winning.

Our next game before Debbie had to go was my game for the month of August The Manhattan Project Chain Reaction. Once Debbie had got the hand of playing the game again, she was able to beat Jonathan into last place, whilst I took the honours and glory that comes with winning.

After Debbie left Jonathan and I talked games. But more importantly about a project Jonathan was thinking of working on. 

We followed that up by end the evening with the now traditional kebab.

A great shortish gaming session.

It’s been a busy week and not much gaming going on. Hence the lack of posts this week. Plus I’ve also not had much to say. Which is unusual for me I know.

Anyway last night saw Jeff, Debbie and myself at The Angel for FEG@TA. The first at its new starting time of 6pm (last weeks didn’t happen because of holidays and such, or in other words I was the only one who could make it!) 

Earlier in the week Jeff and I had planned to play Tanks. But with “Calamity” Debbie (and she will kill me for just thinking that nickname up, but the poor girl has had a recent run of bad luck, which hopefully had come to an end) also coming along, Tanks was out, and our first game of the evening in. 

Since arriving (a couple of weeks back now) Jonathan and I have wanted to get our Kickstarter copies of Thiefs Market to the table. However life, the universe, and the usual unexpected things that life throws at you stopped us gathering with enough people to do so. 

So here I was, sitting at a table with two other people wanting to play games. We had met the minimum player count for the game. 

While setting up, we had the first player discussion to see which of us had most recently stolen something. Frankly I was so disappointed by the two goodie two shoes I was playing with. Obviously I am that Han Solo lovable rogue type, and the least trustworthy one at the table. So I took the first player token. 

After explains the rules as best I could, our band of thieves was ready to start splitting our ill gotten spoils, gaining notoriety, and trying to become the King of Thieves.

I have to say I enjoyed the game a lot. I love the first phase of a round where you are splitting the spoils (which are the rolled dice). That decision which dice and how many do you take, or do you steal from another player? I love the I’ll want x dice but if I take that many will I be too attractive to the other players that they will steal from me? This is a great mechanic. At one point I had a card that if I was stolen from I gained a notoriety point. So getting the first player token, then taking everything as the first player at the start of the splitting phase, forced the other players to steal from me and trigger that ability.

The buying cards phase is basically your engine building stage of the game. There is a lot of iconography. But the player aids break the symbols down, plus each card is explained on the rules sheet for further clarification if needed. And while you are learning the game things aren’t slowed down too much decoding them. The use of the cards as a means of giving the game an end and a clock is clever. So when you start being able to buy from the last deck you know that the game doesn’t have too many turns left.

During our game I thought Jeff was going to be the run away winner. But final scoring had the gap between his winning score and my second place score a lot closer than I thought it’d be. He had won by four points in the end.

For me the only main draw back is that this game is a minimum three players. I know why, I don’t think it will work with two. But it does mean to play with Nath, who I think will like this game, we will need to find a third player. 

I can see that the iconography may be a problem. But I think the player aids and the rule sheet mitigate this rather well. I also like that the player aids also summarise the setup, which to be fair isn’t complicated.

One thing I do like about TMG games or the ones I have that include it, like Harbour, is the social media winner card. Wisely TMG include one in this game. It just adds that fun bit at the end, celebrating the glorious victory. Or in this games case stolen victory!

I think this is a perfect game for FEG@TA and could be a regular.

So with Jeff crowned King of Thieves we moved on to clearing out dungeons in Welcome to the Dungeon.

I’d played Welcome to the Dungeon once before. Which longtime readers will recall was a two player game with Jamie. I wasn’t too impressed with it as a two player game at the time, and if my poor memory hasn’t failed me (and I can’t be arsed to go back and read what I exactly wrote) I thought it would be better with a higher player count.

Well our play through last night confirmed my suspicion. This game is far more enjoyable with even just the one extra player (plays two to four). It even improved the two player side once a player had been eliminated. 

Another game that has the potential of being a FEG@TA regular. Plus there is an expansion coming out later this year also.

Oh Jeff won this also by not scoring a single point. Despite Debbie and I both scoring a point each after successfully defeating the dungeon. Sadly we both failed to defeat the dungeon twice also.

Debbie had to go after Welcome to the Dungeon. So I introduced Jeff to the joys of building nuclear bombs in The Manhattan Project:Chain Reaction.

You know how I feel about this game. I’m not going to waste your time with more glowing platitudes about this game. All you need to know is that I won breaking Jeffs winning streak for the evening.

A great evenings gaming (that was finished off with that meaty pig out of a kebab). I’m planning to take Thiefs Market and The Manhattan Project: Chain Reaction to The Hobbit Hole (my FLGS) this coming Bank Holiday Monday. So if you’d like to try the games hit me up there. I’ll also have the new Star Realms United expansions with me.