X for expand 17Apr16

expansions, new arrivals
The weeks new arrivals started off with the arrival of the two player micro experience of Eminent Domain, in the form of Eminent Domain Microcosm. To take up some of the empty space in the small box there were promos for the big brother and also Battlecruisers. It will interesting to see what Nath makes of this.
With the new edition of Viticulture some of the expansions that make up Tuscany are in it. However Tuscany will never be reprinted, so if you want to play with the extended game board this is the only way of going about it. Already this goes for more than the retail cost and is hard to get. So being able to get a copy for its rrp is good going. At the time of pre-ordering the Tuscany expansion I also pre-ordered the new Moor Visitors expansion.

All these fancy words are saying is I have two expansions for a game I don't have yet! At least it's an investment!

After seeing the Anonymous sleeves below on a TeamWorkCast video I thought I've got to have them for my Noise anarch deck. Also while shopping for them came across the card dividers. Which are going to be used to organise Marvel Legendary and all the expansions. Forty mad a small dent, but I'm going to need a lot lot more.

Also I thought it would be an idea to be able to mark which tiles had been used when playing Suburbia. Getting the official licenced 3D tokens is soooo expensive. So these are the my alternative.

After being bitterly disappointed and rage posting on the Kickstarter page because the publisher of Kodama wanted those outside the US to pay postage on replacements, and an email exchange with the publisher, I now have the replacement card for the miss cut card that was in my deluxe Kickstarter copy I got last week.

So I'm a happy bunny…

Two Down One To Go

Cthulhu Realms, game night
With life events putting a stick in the spokes of life's bike, Ben was unable to attend the Friday night gaming group in Wisbech. Which meant that our gaming plans were also in chaos. I hadn't bought anything with me to play, because I had been expecting to play Agricola.
So my first game of the evening was my second game ever of Cthulhu Realms. If you remember I'm not a big fan of this “improved” Star Realms. Unlike Star Realms there is zero buzz for the game. Even with the imminent release of an app version (apparently due in next month or so) I don't think this will change.
I think Cthulhu Realms does have better rules for multiplayer. Particular how it handles the trade row, or rows in this case, and dealing the damage out to the players on either side of you. But these rules can be adopted in a multiplayer game of Star Realms. Which I may well do.
I still dislike the iconography, and decoding. Yes more plays will make it easier. But I'm very loath to put that effort in.
Playing the game this second time didn't warm me to the game, I'm still frosty about it.
Next up instead of Agricola we played a five player game of Caverna.
“Have you played Caverna?”
“No”
“Don't worry it's just like playing Agricola”
“Er I've not played that either”

I'd say the rules explanation at best could be described as lacking. Much of the start of the game was spent in frustration.

Ok, it's worker placement. I worked that out. Oh wheat gives me points at end, and can be used for food. Cool. I can work with that. Sadly I wouldn't work with that if I'd known it was half a point per wheat token I had.

Happily breeding pigs and sheep. Oh they are worth points at the end. Cool. What if I don't have a cow or dog I get negative points?!!! Why wasn't this mentioned at the start, but left to scoring.

Why were they levelling up their dwarfs? What benefit did that give you?

Ok you get the picture. It was like playing a game with a fog of war. The rules were need to know, and I didn't need to know.

I can't say I really enjoyed the game. But I think that is down more to being in the dark a lot.

Plus on top of all that another week with that bloody loud music being played. One more shot I think then my Friday's may just be free again. This group is fast becoming an unpleasant experience.

 

Fenland Gamers April 16 Meetup

Fenland Gamers, game night

Last night saw the monthly meetup of the Fenland Gamers.

Our first game of the evening was the latest “accidental” addition to Jonathan's collection, the chilli growing themed game Scoville.

Wow is the game good, and I'm not just saying this because I won. Ok won is an understatement I knocked it out the park.

There is a lot to love about this game. Each round (apart from the first where the order is selected at random) the players bid in a blind auction for the right to choose where they want to go in the turn order. You may actually want to be last guaranteed! In our game I was the highest bidder and first most rounds. I was using the market to keep topping up my cash each round to power this. After the order has been sorted, players form first to last get to choose an auction card from an auction row. These cards give you extra chillies dependent on what is depicted on the card. So one card may give you a black chilli, while another may give you a yellow, green and blue.

I love the auction mechanic for deciding turn order. Whether it's a blind auction like this or the one in Five Tribes. So much is involved in that bid you make. How important is it you go first? What is the least I can spend to make sure I get the position I want? Etc.

I loved the fact that the last (fulfilment) and first (planting) stage of a round went in the order first to last. Then in the middle, harvesting the order gets reversed. So it may be important that you go first harvesting to get that particular coloured chilli you need. Which means winning that blind auction and putting your marker last is an option.

Fulfilment is cool too. Being able to complete recipes for points, and/or buy from the farmers market to gain combinations of points, money and chillies. So I could trade two green chillies to get four points, three coins and a brown chilli. Plus I can sell chillies to get money. Of which the price is decided by the number of chillies of that colour being sold that have been planted divided by two.

When planting chillies you can also score points by planting a chilli that matches one of the trophy tokens (which vary in value). So there are lots of scoring opportunities through out the game.

You also get three bonus tokens that give you extra abilities, like planting an extra chilli, or moving one ,pore space and changing direction. However if you don't use them they are worth extra points at the end of the game. This is very similar to the bonus abilities in Seasons.

How many recipes, chillies, money etc you have is all hidden information. And there is a player screen provided for each player for them to hide their bits behind. So you are having to remember who is going for what.

The wooden chilli tokens are awesome. I would like to have seen some bigger size coins. They are on the small side. Plus the player screens could be larger. Having holes in the game board the shape of the chilli tokens to hold them in place really works.

Overall I love this game a lot. Like the theme this game is hot! Definitely going on the wish list.

We followed up Scoville with intrigue and political manoverings by playing Council of Verona.

For such a “simple” game, this is really good. It has a mini card draft where you are drafting cards to help you to hopefully achieve the agenda of a character on the cards. Not all characters have agendas some have abilities that allow you to switch cards around, or tokens.

The game plays quickly, which is lucky because it took one play through for everyone to get the game.

It's a shame this game and it's expansions are at best a pain to get in the UK. And describing it as a pain is an understatement. I think this would be far far more popular if it was easier to get. It's quick to play, has a surprising bit of depth to it. Plus if you are teaching Romeo and Juliet (the world it is set in) this would make a great game for students to play.

The evening ended up with Love Letter The Hobbit (nope not going to use the full name it's too long winded, mind you it would be shorter than this little aside) and everyone type casting me as a hobbit or dwarf!

Every time the others played a Smaug, “Darren, are your Bilbo?” Or “Darren, are you Thorin?” Or “Darren, are you Killi or Filli?” Not “Darren, are you Legolas?” Or some other non vertically challenged race/person.

Nope little digs at my height, beard and receding hair line where the order of the day.

The game of hate on Darren, ended in a draw between myself and Gavin, as time had ran out.

Another great evening of gaming.

 

Street Magic in Chatteris

chatteris warlords, game night, netrunner

Last night was the now weekly journey from the frontier town that is Wisbech to further into the depths of the fens and the outpost town of Chatteris. The things we do to play games!

My first game of the evening saw Noise returning to the table to run against the Jinteki Personal Evolution. It felt good to have him back running. I really am an anarch at heart. My opening hand had Street Magic and Same Old Thing, plus a Hivemind and Streetpeddler. I decided to keep my cards.

The Corp scum took an early lead, after establishing a scoring server protected by three pieces of ice. I had none of my ice breakers (ok that's basically Faust and David, with a little help from Parasite and Datasucker) out. I did get Datasucker out early and an incubator.
The Corp did score an early Chronos Project taking out about five cards. The second one they scored took a larger chunk of cards out. Apparently this deck had been designed to cater for my Noise. Isn't that sweet?
My problem this game was econ, and not getting my ice breakers out. Aesops didn't appear to near the end, and the same for Faust.
I did score a couple of agendas, one from Archives and the other from R&D. And I could have won if I had the credits to score the agenda.
Looking back I think I should have done a mulligan on the starting hand. But I didn't want to lose that Street Magic.
I also got to play Star Fluxx. As usual this game is beautifully chaotic. Just when I thought I was going to win, but my plan was thwarted. Allowing the player after me to grab the win.
My final game of the evening was introducing Ben and some others to Love Letter The Hobbit Battle of the Five Armies. That's a bit of a mouthful so I just call it Love Letter Hobbit.
I do like this version of Love Letter, but not the gem tokens. So I replaced them with small blue cubes. I love the touches like the one ring having a zero value all during the round until the end when it gets a value of seven. Or Legolas and Tauriel having different win conditions.
Batman Love Letter is still my favourite but this is damn close. Still neither Ben or I won.
Yes there was some Bolt Action last night. Over in another corner was a group doing a draft cube of Magic.

It did seem quieter than usual last night. But then there are going to be nights like this.

There was also a club committee meeting last night. Basically it was blah blah blah to me, well I'm not a committee member, but Ben is, and it was held during our Netrunner game! So while that was on hold I was at a lose end. Which eventually saw me passing the time playing Star Fluxx.

I was called into the meeting to confirm I was volunteered (thanks Ben) to help out on the clubs Facebook page.

But as usual another fun evening of gaming in the depths of the fens.

August and everything after

Fenland Gamers, game night, pandemic, pandemic legacy season 1

After an intermission last night the A Team were back fighting to save the world.

Each month we start with an objective completed, because we have military bases in each of the zones. It's a nice feeling knowing we only have two objectives to complete.

Before August started we had some cards to read. Suddenly we weren't just searching for a virologist but also an immunologist. Another search board was added. This time we had to be in a rioting faded city to look for them.

We had a new character join our team Colonel Mustard, he had been drafted in to replace my quarantine specialist who unfortunately died in July. Mustard had the ability to spend an action to remove a faded figure from a city, plus he could freely move through roadblocks. Plus as a character upgrade when he left a city with faded on it one of them gets removed. With all that cool stuff he also had a draw back. For Mustard to cure a disease he needs to have two extra cards of the correct colour to cure it. Mustard was going to be our engine for controlling the faded.

With a little help from Jonathan and Debbie, Mat was able to find this new elusive immunologist. Lots of stickers were added to the rule book to cover the new stuff bought to the game.

This is where (just been looking up some stuff, and discovered this) we have done a MASSIVE misplay!!!!

We had discovered two cures, starting to look at the third when outbreaks overtook us and we had lost.

August reset time for our second attempt. We needed a win else we would be opening that mysterious box four.

We'd won! Our player deck was dangerously low. So pretty close. It helped having the Colonel keeping the faded down. He even cured a disease! Ok it took seven cards but he did it.

I'm loath now to talk about the win and how we got there, or my thoughts on the immunologist and the bits we missed played.

I'm not sure how we move forward with the misplay. It's going to have to be a group discussion on our next play.

Once we have a decision then I'll come back and look at the bits. At the moment I feel dirty and foolish.

 

The gaming sprawl grows 9Apr2016

new arrivals

The collection expanded by one Kickstarter project arriving this previous week with Kodama.

It has this awesome looking little Kodama Meeple. The art work is pretty cool. However I have one card miss cut that I need to contact them about. Luckily it's one of the cards to use with kids, so won't affect my playing of it. But still needs replacing.
The player mats for Tiny Epic Kingdoms/Heroes' Call arrived. These lovely neoprene mats will add to the game greatly. But like the other mat for the game and also the mat for Tiny Epic Galaxies they do take the game games away from the portable fit everything in the box idea.

The four packs that make up Tyrants came in. So one set down, two more to get! Plus a fourth set for Nath. But the purchase of them will be spread out. I do like the art on the new tokens. The third instalment for T.I.M.E. Stories also dropped through the letter box.

I'd forgotten about this one. There were enough promos in this one to justify getting it. Which for the Christmas one they did I couldn't do. Plus as I mentioned in another post earlier in the week there was a nifty little way using cards to select a game to play at a gaming group.
Finally a friend was having to cull some games to finance some other more expensive ones he wanted to keep on the right side of his wife. Which is understandable. I don't have that factor to worry about, so his pressure is my gain! Suburbia has been on my wish list for little while, so jumped at helping my friend out by buying it off him. Nice thing was we also had a nice beverage and chat at Costa while conducting our little bit of business.

 

Hunter Rules

game night

I think this is becoming a thing now, Friday evening on way to con club to play games stop in The Luxe and have a quick chat and catch up with Bouncy. Then onto the con club to play games.

This Friday night gaming session is a different experience to the others. It's a younger crowd, and with one of them blasting their unwanted music during the evening (luckily not all the time) at times more irritating.

However Ben from Chatteris was there as usual, so with Jamie and his son we played a four player game of Star Realms using the hunter rules. Which meant you attacked the person to your left for direct damage, but could do both sides for bases and outposts.

As is now tradition for multiplayer games of Star Realms Ben was eliminated first. Now tradition dictates that after Ben has been whipped from the board, that I will soon follow him out of the exit.

However tradition was not to be followed this time. Just as the Emporer wanted Luke to kill his father, but failed to do because of some misguided family bond. We were not going to see that sentimentality tonight, Jamie's son dispatched his dad from the game in a cold vicious manner.

It was me against the heir to the empire. Sadly for the heir, I had a good engine up and running, that allowed me to inflict massive hits of damage. I wasn't going to let the fact I was up against a youngster get in my way of victory. So against tradition I dispatched the outposts in my way and delivered the fatal blow to get the win.

Our next game of the evening was Epic. We did a draft and played the hunter rules, which worked the same as it did in Star Realms. Attack to the left, events to both sides.

This game went the way of tradition in Star Realms. Ben got steam rolled by Jamie. Which then meant I was on the receiving end of the Jamie war machine. I didn't last long. Tradition was upheld this time.

It was father against son. Sadly for the young lad, his father is a cold blooded killer when it comes to Epic. This was Darth Vader destroying Luke. There was no fatherly love here, sentimentality went out the door. Nothing was stopping Jamie from being victorious. Oh yeah Jamie won.

Our final game of the evening was Star Fluxx. With the usual chaotic game play, Jamie managed to surface from the chaos victorious.

That was our last game of the evening before I set off into the night.

A great evening of gaming, some intense moments, some fun moments.

 

Temptations for next week 11Apr16

news

FFG and Esdevium drop the big one next week, not only in scale but cost, with the release of the latest in their licenced games from the Star Wars franchise, Star Wars: Rebellion. This game has been described as the original trilogy of movies in a box. Will I be getting it? Not sure at the moment. It has been getting great reviews, but cost and time to play are the main draw backs at the moment.

The Gallerist has been getting lots of praise and finally hits the shelves in the UK. While I'm curious to find out more about Sangoku, is it a bad sign that they have to tell you what game the designer did previously?

Next the Matsuri expansion for Tokaido comes out officially! How come I got this early through proper channels? Curious. I love Love Letter, have a problem keeping copies because I always seem to be giving mine away! However these versions that come in a box and not the nice velvet bag puzzle me. Why would you want the boxed version? Especially when the Adventure Time one comes in such a cute Jake bag.

Finally the nine Kickstarter versions of Tiny Epic Kingdoms (a restock) and the new expansion Tiny Epic Kingdoms: Heroes' Call come out.

Well that wraps up the stuff from next weeks new releases that caught my eye. Don't forget you can see the full list over on the Esdevium website.

 

QOT?

qot

Well it's a question of something, I just don't know what, day? Week? Month? Will I even repeat this and ask other questions? I don't know. Will the question spark a discussion? Who knows?

Recently I had a whinge about how difficult a time I had selecting games to take to a games evening/gaming group.

But once you are there, everyone has bought games along to play, how do you select which game to play?

Usually at Fenland Gamers its a very relaxed thing, usually left to some-one eventually making a decision after everyone has said “I don't mind”.

In the Brettspiel Osternest Easter Basket they included a little card game that gamifies the process of selecting the next game to play.

I thought this was a nifty (do people still use that word?) idea. I can't wait to try this next week at the mo they Fenland Gamers meet up.

Share your methods of selecting a game to play at a games evening in the comments below.

 

Wheeling and Dealing

chatteris warlords, game night

Yesterday was Tuesday in case that little snippet passed you by. But it also means it was the weekly club night for the Chatteris Warlords.

Earlier in the day Robert at the club had posted on the Facebook page for selling and trading games that he had a couple of games up for trade. I was interested in his Kickstarter copy of the original Boss Monster. I wanted the exclusives that came with it, shiney boss cards, metal level up tokens, mini expansions, exclusive sleeve.

At the meet I checked the game over while showing Robert the games I had bought to trade. It was hard selecting games to offer, but in the end I had come up with three games, Tiny Epic Kingdoms plus the mat that you can get for it, Eight Minute Empire and Epic Spell Wars.

Robert was interested in the first two games. We came to a deal that involved the exchanging of the two games he was interested in for a drink from the bar and Boss Monster.

So I have two copies of the first Boss Monster. The shiney Bosses etc have been merged into my combined set, leaving just a plain first set. What to do with that? Well that will be given to Nath when I see him, I've also put the normal bosses from Boss Monster 2 into it.

My first game of the evening was against Robert. We sat down and duelled it out playing Star Realms. We were both scraping our starter cards, Robert was buying more than myself. But in the end it was his engine that worked better than mine, and was inflicting large twenty odd points of damage each turn.

Next up four of us played Firefly Fluxx. I enjoyed Firefly Fluxx, is it my favourite version? I don't think so. We did witness Robert take a turn that was longer than a John Bohnam drum solo, which by the time he had finished playing all his cards won him the game!

We followed our game of Firefly Fluxx with a game of Batman Fluxx. Once more we got to a point where Robert went off into the Fluxx version of the drum solo again. This time he didn't get the win, that was left for Chris who came after him.

The rest of the club were playing Colt Express, Bolt Action, a paupers cube of Magic, Sentinals of the Multiverse, Lords of Waterdeep, a little historical war gaming and a futuristic mech version of Bolt Action called Gates of Antares.

I still don't get the whole war game thing. The tape measures, etc. In this day and age I definitely don't get the having to cut bits of a model off a spew, glue together and paint. Painting ok I can see the fun I that. But the likes of Cool Mini or Not, FFG show the miniatures for these games should be complete and ready to paint.

Oh and then the constant having to reference the manual. Yes I know the two playing this game only play it four or five times a year. So gaps between play just long enough not to be able to remember the rules could completely. But still.

A great evening as usual.