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.

Epic Storage Solution Arriving In May

epic, news

White Wizard Games creators of Star Realms and Epic announced that their partners in crime Legion Supplies when it comes to card sleeves and storage boxes etc for their games will be releasing in May sleeves, a long storage box etc for Epic. It gets better, the long box comes with a promo card Keira the Wolf Caller. So a similar deal as the Star Realms offering. The Star Realms long box was amazing value.

I do hope that the long box is long enough to hold upto three base sets, three lots of Kickstarter promos, three copies of the Tyrants expansion.

Plus Legion Supplies are currently running a competition to win said sleeves and storage box HERE.

I had started to look at sleeving options for the game, so this is a well timed announcement for me. I hope that Esdevium actually get this out to shops, because they did a poor job of doing it with the Star Realms one.

 

Life’s Hard Choices

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For me one of the hardest things to do before a gaming session is to decide what games to take along!

So many things go into influencing the decision. For instance which group am I playing with? How many people are going to be there? Have I promised to take a particular game along for some-one? What am I in the the mood to play? Is there a particular game I want to try and get to the table?

A planned session like our Pandemic Legacy one or the up and coming Formula D League, are easy. The decision has already been made what to play. If I'm responsible for providing the game I just have to remember to take it along.

Tuesday evening at the Chatteris Warlords, or the monthly Fenland Gamers meet up are much harder.

Fenland Gamers I know not to take scifi themed games, LCG/CCG games or games with a drafting mechanic, because my fellow gamers there are not into those types of games. Where as Chatteris Warlords I can find people into playing those types of games.

Tonight is the weekly Chatteris Warlords meet up. So my Netrunner decks will go with me, but so will my Magic deck on the off chance. Do I take Epic with me? What about Star Realms? How about one or two of the themed Fluxxs? Is it worth taking Imperial Assault? I'd also like to get Imperial Settlers to the table. Would anyone be interested in trying Ashes? Oh what about…?

Decisions, decisions.

Maybe I should be more organised before hand and post on both groups discussion threads asking who is playing what, or who wants to play such and such a game. That question doesn't usually get much of a reply if at all. It almost seems like I'm being ignored, or maybe others actually have a life and don't spend all their time online like me.

I suppose I'm lucky in a way that I don't review games on here, or I'd have to add that into the mix as well. I can do without that extra pressure.

How hard do you find choosing games for a gaming night?

Expanding the collection Weekending 2Apr16

elder sign, expansions, marvel legendary, new arrivals

I don't know why it took me so long to get this expansion in for Legendary. Especially considering it has Captain Britain in it. My main problem now is storage, and I want to sleeve the cards. There must be over two thousand cards to sleeve now, yep that's a lot. I'd love to use the official sleeves with the cool Legendary logo on them. But that would cost an arm and a leg, and probably a major organ. The official sleeves are so expensive in the UK. So clear penny sleeves are my preferred option, I just need to find the ones that are correct size and fit snugly. The other problem is the official card dividers. I've run out and they are not that easy to get in the UK. That seems a common problem, and theme with the industry.

Now I'm just waiting for the Captain America 75th Anniversary expansion to come out. Can you guess what that is all about? Then finally and I'm not holding my breathe for these, despite Upper Deck saying they will release them, the 3D Legendary cards that came out as promos in the 3D card packs (sold in the US) last year. I so want Howard the Duck, but not enough to pay eBay scalper prices.
The new expansion for Elder Sign Omens of Ice arrived. Its origins seemed a little unusual to me, where the app version of the game is influencing the original physical game. I'm not sure I've seen this before. This expansion is based/inspired by an expansion in the app. Plus the Atlanteans expansion for Imperial Settlers arrived. This adds a new fifth race to the game, plus more cards for the existing races.
It's funny really with a mini expansion, plus this one, there are more deck building options in this game than there is squad building in Arena of the Planeswalkers, where that is a main focus of the game!
I also received the final delayed (was originally targeted for Christmas) expansions for the Thunderbirds boardgame that came as part of my Kickstarter pledge.
In the box was a nice card holder, the three expansions (no expansion boxes), plus the role playing game! Yep there is a set of light rules and cards for setting up a scenario that uses the game board and pieces. Which I think is cool, and offers more game play.
So having just got the following awesome playmat for Star Realms, my very good friend and the Scottish version of me as he is known as, Duncan stumbled upon the fact that Gameslore now have in two Star Realms playmats plus two Epic playmats. Mental note must get the Epic ones for Nath.
The Colony Wars expansion/stand alone game for Star Realms also arrived. Every card is sleeved and shuffled in to make one MASSIVE deck to play with. This gives me enough starting cards to have four people play at once without proxying cards now.
 

I can't see how much more Star Realms can be expanded, and once the year ones promos come out (sooner than later I hope) surely that must be it for Star Realms. Which would explain why they announced Hero Realms the fantasy themed version of Star Realms. On a side note it's basically what Cool Mini Or Not did with Zombicide, couldn't take the modern theme any further after the third season, so reboot with a different theme. Oh which was fantasy also!!!

Dice Down

game night

After getting Nico chipped yesterday, yes I know the vet was playing with death, I made it to the Friday evening gaming group that meets up at the Con Club.

Naturally when I got there games were already in progress.

My first game of the evening was taking over some-ones hand at Star Realms when they had to go off and setup for their game of Warhammer 40k I think it was. So I'm not counting this as my play. The player I took over from was a noob to the game, I believe this was his first time playing. Needless to say the deck I took over wasn't great. Lots of cards I wouldn't buy. However it did allow me to knock Ben out of the game. Then mirroring the previous time I played a four player Star Realms game I was knocked out.

It then remained for the back and forth between the two remaining players. Both able to keep topping up their authority each turn. However the superior base and outpost purchases of one player gave her the win, and more authority than she started with.

The first proper game of the evening for me was Dead of Winter. While setting up it was discovered my exposure dice was missing! We had a good look for it, but it was not to be found, so we improvised with a d10.

We did the suggested first main mission that required us to kill a certain number of zombies (based on the number of players) but they would only count if when killed a d6 was rolled and it had a value of four or higher.

All I'm going to say is my group of survivors drew the short stick when it came to longevity of life. Let's just say my rolling of the improvised exposure dice, and the others in the group who did it for me too, were not great rolls. My survivors were getting bitten a lot. This may sound callous but if we had beat the main mission would have meant I'd met my secret objective and won.

The round counter was ticking down slowly, but because of survivors being bitten and their death, and the failure to complete a crisis we failed the mission due to running out of morale.

It's a shame the exposure dice was missing/lost. It did kind of ruin my enjoyment of the game. After a search at home and still no sign of the dice, I was straight onto Plaid Hat to get a replacement organised. Very quick response from them directing me to a replacements page to fill in, that actually requires a photo of the bar code of the game box as proof of purchase and allow them to track faulty batches. So the replacement is in progress, but will I be able to play the game and enjoy it in the meantime? I don't know. Even with the replacement sorted, it's eating away at me about what happened to the exposure dice. I don't remember seeing the dice the other day when I was putting the standees together. Damn how long has this been missing?

I'm going to pass judgement and thoughts of the game until the exposure dice has been replaced.

Our final game of the evening was Tiny Epic Galaxies. A game I won with 21 points, however Ben was looking at coming last, but jumped into second because he had completed his secret mission.

A good evening of gaming despite the missing dice.

 

Coming Out Next Week Starting 4Apr16

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Yes it's Friday and the marketing spokesperson for Esdevium has come down from Mount Olympus and left some stone tablets for us to peruse. So here is the stuff on the tablets that caught my eye…

First up we have the most important release of the week for me and other Netrunner players, and that is the third data pack in the Mumbad cycle Democracy and Dogma.

I enjoy Zombie Dice and I believe Dalek Dice maybe similar to it. So being a Doctor Who fan, although the current Doctor has been ruined by poor scripts and development, this certainly is high on my wish list.

If I was playing Dice City more this expansion would be an instant buy. At the moment it will be going on the wish list. Finally hitting our shores is the deluxe version of Tokaido.

Sneaking out next week is the third T.I.M.E. Stories expansion, which I believe has an ancient Egyptian theme this time. Plus that really excellent deck builder Eminent Domain is getting two new expansions.

As I write this post in LGS all around the country Friday Night Magic is still probably going on later than normal. At midnight those players will be taking part in a midnight pre-release of the next Magic release Shadows Over Innistrad. Then over the weekend the same stores will be running other pre-release events also. Then next week guess what? Yep Shadows Over Innistrad hits the shops officially.

There will also be launch events next weekend at the stores. There are also naturally a range of playmats, deck boxes and card sleeves also being released next week to go along with this latest release.

 

Stats for March 2016

by the numbers, stats

With March just ending its that time again to look at my gaming stats for the month.

Wow what a month hey? I thought I had done really well in February. Especially considering it's a shorter month than the others. But holy game pieces Batman I've blown that out of the water. Sadly as the locations show there were no Costa gaming sessions. So that will be an aim for April to get that being a thing again!
Thanks to the magic of Numbers I can produce a nice little graph to show my gaming trends. I think it's going to be hard to top March, and expect to see a dip next month. Hopeful not a big dip though.

March also happens to be the end of the first quarter for the year, so time to review the following that I wrote back in January.

So how did I do? Well as the games stats at the start show I got three of the five to the table. Which I think is not bad. Five Tribes was definitely the biggest hit of the three. Discoveries was a good game, but the wooden dice are horrid. As for Arena of the Planeswalker that game has so much potential but let down by poor support by the publisher.

But as I said in the initial post I'll be setting a list of five each quarter. We are now in a new quarter and therefore need a new list of games to try and get to the table.

  • Ashes
  • T.I.M.E. Stories
  • Thunderbirds
  • Dead of Winter
  • Imperial Settlers

Games that nearly made the list this month but just missed out: Elder Sign, Neuroshima Hex!, Seasons, Roll for the Galaxy and Eminent Domain. Who knows maybe they will make it to the table anyway.

So that was my gaming month by the numbers.

 

The Month of July

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

Oh spoiler alert. Yes it's that post again where I talk about my latest play through of Pandemic Legacy Season 1, which may or may not include spoilers. So if you want to remain oblivious to what happens in the game so that you too can experience all its twists and turns as surprises then stop reading now and see you in the next post.

She was only with us for a short time but her light shone brightly in that time. Last night Wanda the quarantine specialist passed away after a rather vicious attack by one of the faded fatally wounded her.

Basically last night the Scooby gang (yes I went there) finally after a couple of delays got to tackle the month of July in Pandemic Legacy Season 1.

Our first attempt at defeating July failed miserably. We did complete an objective or two, and were working on finding cures for all three diseases, when epidemics turned into pandemics and outbreaks just over ran us. It all happened so fast we didn't know what hit us.

One thing we had to do was build a research station in a city that was faded. Why? Well that's where the virologist is hiding who may have a cure for the faded! Well we are assuming it's a cure, we won't know until we find them (a new objective) and can reveal on the card what they have discovered.

Our second attempt at completing July was off to a good start. We automatically complete one objective now each game, because we have a military base in each zone. Which means only two objectives to complete.

We had two diseases eradicated, another objective down, and with Hawkeye sitting with enough cards to cure the final disease we were damn close to winning. However the faded were ripe for out breaking big time. Our team just needed to get to Hawkeyes turn.

On B's turn an epidemic hit causing a minor outbreak placing a faded in the city Wanda was in. She already had two scars. At the start of her turn she was dead!

It came round to Wandas turn, the faded delivered its fatal blow to her. A civilian popped into her place to try and carry on her good work. But to no avail, another epidemic hit, this time the faded damn burst, the tidal wave of pandemics started to hit, we could have survived but ran out of faded figures. Game over.

That was close, damn close.

Looks like another new team member joins us for August.

 

It’s drafty

chatteris warlords, game night, netrunner

At the weekly Chatteris Warlords meetup last night there was a Netrunner Draft going on, whilst some X-Wing and historical ship miniatures games were being played, amongst other stuff.

I've done two or three drafts before, a D&D Dicemasters one at last years UK Games Expo, and a couple of Epic drafts (one with Nath and one at this weekly meetup).

I'm still kind of undecided how I really feel about drafts. I like them, nay enjoy them even. Do I love them?

Netrunner is a LCG where you pre-construct decks to play with. Everyone has the same pool of cards to build from. There are no blind boosters. So Netrunner doesn't lend itself to being able to do drafting like you can with say Magic the Gathering or Dicemasters.

So FFG came up with a solution to this that allows Netrunner players to draft.

Basically FFG sell you three decks that go together. The first deck is a base one that contains a draft runner id, a draft corp id, and a few core cards. Everyone gets the same cards in this base deck. The other two decks are made up of one for the corp and one for the runner.

Each of these two decks are made up of forty random cards chosen from a card pool of two hundred odd cards I believe. They are randomly chosen at time of printing at the FFG card printing shop they own in the US (they use this for the small run stuff like these draft decks, promo cards etc).

Starting with the corp deck you split the four cards into “packs” of ten by dealing from the top of the deck without looking at them or shuffling before hand. You then follow normal drafting rules using the four packs. You then repeat this for the runner deck.

After drafting you go off to your private spot to build a corp and runner deck from the cards you drafted. Having built your decks you pair up and duke it out as per normal in Netrunner, except you play to six agenda points instead of seven.

So having been through all of the above I played Ben. Our first game was my corp against his runner. Which ended in a victory for Ben. However I had an early Sundew and pad campaign giving me lots of credits, plus some ice out. Ben hit my snare in R&D. Unluckily he scored agendas that were in my HQ to get the win.

Our second game the roles were reversed. Ben had a scoring server iced up, had iced up his HQ and left R&D wide open. Ben had a card on his scoring server that he was advancing big time. It was either an ambush that was going to hurt me big time when I ran into it, or an agenda that gained extra points the more advancement tokens on it. It turned out to be the later, a Project Beale scored as four agenda points. I soon caught up scoring from the unprotected R&D. I was hitting R&D at least once a turn for free!

Ben installed a new card on his scoring server and advanced it once and iced up his R&D. Too little too late, I ran on his R&D, I couldn't break the ice or its subroutines, but there was no end of run, so I was through and scored the winning agenda.

So the evening ended a draw between myself and Ben.

It certainly was interesting drafting in Netrunner. Not having to worry about influence, or number of copies of cards whilst building your deck, certainly make for some interesting decisions and combinations.

For instance I drafted Wyldside, which gave me card draw, but also costs me a click. I ended up with Rachel Beckman (seemed to be a card no one wanted, I think due to cost, eight credit cost to install is expensive). With no pancakes to get the click back, Rachel Beckman is a costly but effective alternative in this limited card pool. You get one extra click to spend each turn, plus she gets discarded when you take a tag. So a little tag protection. The synergy didn't occur to me while drafting, but when deck building from my drafted cards.

Drafting I think makes a fun break from the regular deck building. I think it might be more popular if Esdevium/FFG didn't price the latest draft set so expensively. At the moment for those that want to draft the only way people can play it cost effectively is to buy the older sets.

Another great evening running.

Meat Damage

expansions, Fenland Gamers, game night, netrunner, painting

Easter Monday, a bank holiday in the UK, and the last day in a four day weekend that started on Good Friday. For some it's a religious holiday celebrating the death and resurrection of Christ, for others it's just a long weekend and an excuse to pig out of chocolate. On the chocolate front I pig out after Easter when the shops reduce the price of their Easter eggs, more sugar high for your money.

My Easter Monday afternoon was spent at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole at Chatteris.

I was there for an informal painting workshop that was being run. I was given a Warhammer tyranid that had already got a base coat on so was ready for painting to practice with. After doing a poor job painting the main areas, I got to try dry brushing. A technique I have wanted to get a grasp of. Yes I knew the theory of doing it. But needed the confidence to do it. Having the practice miniature and guidance was enough to help give confidence I needed.

Naturally I hadn't gone to the store empty handed. I had a small bag of games and decks with me also.

I had leant my copy of Get Bit! I'd taken along to a family there to play with. It was the least I could do having won a game of Fluxx with them. After the painting I got roped into playing a two player game of Get Bit! In the two player variant both players play two robots. The game was enjoyable, not earth shattering. It won't be leaving my collection soon, but only because I have very few games that youngsters can play.

Chris and I played our first game of Netrunner. It was my Shaper deck against his Jinteki Corp deck. Chris won this easily scoring agendas. He'd built up a nice scoring server that was well protected. I was getting cards in place, but economy was an issue this time for me this time. Not having funds to make runs because you can't pump your ice breakers isn't good.

Our second game saw his Kate deck against my NBN Corp deck. Turn one I set a trap for the runner in a single remote server, iced up R&D and HQ, on the runners turn they played a couple of cards, did a run on my trap and took a tag. “How many cards are in your hand?” I enquired not casually enough. I think the runner knew what was coming. Scorched Earth, BAM! Turn two kill!

Quickest win of my short time playing Netrunner. Wow that was like shockingly amazing.

We reset and played again. This time the game played out more like a typical game. Once again early on I had the cards to do the kill in hand. But the runner was more careful in avoiding tags this time.

My little “tricks” we're playing out. I let the runner score some one point agendas and getting Franchise City scored in response. The runner scored 15 Minutes, that went back into R&D on my turn. I was allowed to keep two Pad Campaigns in play, even with three agendas in hand and a Scorched Earth, I was still able to create lots of new servers. The bottom of R&D was getting loaded up with agendas thanks to Daily Business Show. The runner had even taken News Team as a minus one agenda point to avoid taking a tag.

The game came down to one final play, if the runner failed on the run I'd won, because I could score out the agenda. The first ice they hit was a Wraparound, which got +7 strength, breaking that with Crypsis emptied the runners pockets of credits. Next up Turnpike, the runner gets a tag – finally! Then he final piece of ice an Enigma that the runner was able to break. Bugger they were through and got the win. Next turn I could have played the two Scorched Earth to kill them, or scored the agenda.

What a fantastic game. Who cares that I lost, it was a blast.

After a flurry of text messages from Jonathan, our Pandemic Legacy evening was moved to Wednesday, and transformed in to a three player gaming evening.

Our first game of the evening was naturally Five Tribes, since in the text exchange Jonathan had said he wanted to play the game again. How much did Jonathan like the game? Well in a virtual shopping basket in a virtual store, in a virtual world, is a virtual copy waiting to be turned into a real physical item in meat space once a virtual button has been pressed, and digits representing money are moved from one virtual place to another. Or without all that waffle, it's sitting in his Amazon basket.

Once again Jonathan's tactic of buying items, ignoring the djinns or clearing tiles paid off and gave him the win. Obviously I'm really bad at this game and came in last by a point to Debbie. A single point!

We then switched things up by playing Five Tribes again but this time with the expansion The Artisans of Naqala. Wow this is a great expansion. It doesn't add tonnes of stuff, but boy oh boy. With the mountains and chasm more thought has to be given to routes, because these obstacles have to be gone round. The sixth tribe adds a new scoring avenue and power ups, the tent wooden token, adds a scoring booster. It's a very nice expansion that doesn't overload you with new rules to learn, it just fits very naturally with the base game.

Jonathan and Debbie's scoring just went ballistic this game, Jonathan burst through the two hundred points barrier. Debbie hit 179 points, while I managed to beat my previous score but was way way way behind the other two on scoring. So yes I lost again and Jonathan won.

We finished off the evening playing a couple of games of Batman Fluxx. I won the first game, while Debbie took the win for the second game. Like Love Letter with Fluxx you choose the theme you like and play that. Some slight changes to rules, the way things play, but you expect that. In Batman Fluxx keepers have abilities/rules that can be used. For example I think it was the Batmobile I could discard to gain another turn straight away at the end of mine. Or the Batcave increases the number of cards you can draw, hand limit, play by one.

I enjoy Fluxx, I like the changing rules and goals. It's not everyone's taste, I think the theme for tonight was right, and the others enjoyed playing it.

So a great bank holiday playing games, doesn't get better than that.