Wait I told you that!

Expeditions, game night

Last night saw Expeditions hit the table for the third time since it arrived.

I’m really enjoying the game. It’s fastly becoming a favourite of mine.

The game last night saw Julie, Dave, and myself exploring the frozen tundra.

The bgstat app randomly chose Dave as the first player. Which meant I got to choose first based on seating order.

This is how our chosen champions and mechs matched up after our choices:

  • Olga & Changa with Highlander – me
  • Anna & Wojtek with Odin’s Wrath – Julie
  • Vesna & Voltan with Tatanka – Dave

I really need to try another champion next time I play. But it’s hard. Olga is the champion of the Rusviet faction in Scythe. And we all know how I feel about that faction.

Whilst setting up the tiles, I particularly thought how cool that the two tiles that gave workers were on opposite sides of the board, with all the card draw clustered in the middle. This was going to force a splitting of the mechs depending on the plans of the players. No grouping, congestion here.

It was another game where I only refreshed once and that was early on in the game. And if my memory isn’t failing me Julie and Dave refreshed about three times each. The rest of the time it was the tile or card ability that was used.

We also saw less use of the sweep action to reset the face up cards. Which meant we saw less of the deck. That meant less of the cards I like to get came out.

Supplies for exploring

One thing I noticed at the end as I was boasting about my fourth and final glory star was how few cards I had left in hand. Not counting the two starting cards of the champion and their companion. I had two! The rest were either quests that I solved or items that had been to upgrade my mech.

The glory that I was able to boast about!
My end mech state

My victory was pretty comprehensive. I was particularly happy with the ruthless way I triggered the end of the game. My last turn saw me block off the second boast tile stopping Dave and Julie from getting a third glory token out.

Now I did help/advise both work out their best last turn to maximise points gained.

Final scores

It was at the end whilst packing up that Julie and Dave said that next time they knew to look for combos/synergies more.

Wait I told you that at the start. I pointed out during my early turns what I was looking for in a card! That I liked cards that gave me one of the main actions, such as move when I played it. It was particularly galling that Julie had said it as I told her, nah pointed to the cards that were out that fed into her mech ability of being able to use/get maps. Sadly I wasn’t able to do the same for Dave.

I ended up taking one of the cards seeing as Julie refused to act on my advice and go her own path.

I’ve played at different player counts now for each game, and I think it scales pretty well. Except when you have players inflicted with ap.

Turns are normally pretty quick, so little down time.

Although I think I’d max out the player count at four. I like that at the higher player count there is more blocking. Whether it’s intentional or not.

It was a fun evening and I loved that I got to share one of my favourite games to new players.

Wait did I just say it’s a favourite game?

Back to the game ranking app

bgstat, coding, gaming stats, ranking, stats, tech

Finally after at least a couple of years I have returned to the rewrite of the ranking code I wrote.

I got a new copy of the data from the bgstat app that I use to record my game plays. The app also the master list of all the games that make up my game collection. And syncs all of that info back onto the bgg website for me.

The point I’m making is this new data file is different to the one I originally got from the app some six or seven years ago. Back then it was just a csv file of the game plays.

Now its a json file that contains all the apps data. So not only game results, list of games, locations, tags, etc.

Luckily using Python as the language of choice for this project means there is a nice json library I can import in to do all the heavy lifting for me to read in and process the json file I have.

Sadly for me the json used by bgstats is not a simple format. It contains arrays within arrays! A nightmare to code to get to the information that I need for this project, even with a json library.

Now if you had asked me before I had started this second attempt at a rewrite that the bits of data analysis I’ve been picking up (different projects) would be of use here. I would of been a bit sceptical.

However using the pandas library I found out I could use pandas to extract these arrays within arrays to get the data I want into a dataframe.

Having the data in a dataframe opens up all sorts of cool data analysis stuff I can do.

So not only can I do the paired comparisons, and top 10 lists, but also produce stats that not even the bgstats app currently does.

A pleasant surprise

Dragonbane, LCG, Lord of the Rings, LoTR, new arrivals, RPG

This morning I got an unexpected delivery. I had zero knowledge about it. So I was curious to find out what was in the box.

Back at the start of the year during the whole WotC OGL fiasco Free League were taking post Kickstarter preorders on their Dragonbane box set.

Feeling a bit miffed at WotC at the time I took a look at it and decided to throw my money in its direction. And then promptly forgot about it.

Then around April time Free League sent a remind to people on their mailing list announcing the closing of preorders. I couldn’t remember if I’d preordered or not. I couldn’t find an email confirmation and there was no response from Free League when I contacted them to see if I had.

So I assumed I had not gone through with the preorder for whatever reason at the time. And thought nothing more of it.

Jump forward to UKGE. Before the show I had a plan to pick up some of the Free League bits I wanted like stuff for Vaesen, The One Ring, and Twilight 2000. And yes Dragonbane if it was there was on the list.

But the Amen-Re deluxe edition, and the luxury poker chips killed off that plan.

So I was very pleasantly surprised when I opened the package this morning to find a copy of Dragonbane inside.

It more than holds up to the high standard of the other box sets that Free League puts out.

You can get a free QuickStart on DriveThruRPG.

Tomorrow will see the arrival hopefully of a new living card game I’ve decided to get into to. No I hear you I don’t play Marvel Champions regularly enough. So why am I getting into another?

The whole LoTR MtG set, and the War of the Ring the card game got me yearning more LoTR.

So I investigated the LoTR card game by FFG. I knew there had been a revised edition released a couple years back. Which meant you didn’t need two core sets to play up to four players. Plus they were reprinting sets under the new model of a character box and a campaign box. Plus some of the more harder to get and out of print sets were getting this treatment.

So I caved and ordered the new revised core set, two of the four starter sets (dwarf and elf), plus the mission pack.

That should be enough to get Nathan and me started.

Who knows I might find the odd player at home too.

In Memory of Nan

life, the universe, and everything

Yesterday was the family memorial for Nan.

Luckily we avoided any family drama, so the afternoon remained rightly all about Nan.

Nineteen members of the family gathered at the Wisbech St Mary Sports and Community Centre to remember the life of Nan.

A couple of days earlier my aunt and mum had gone through a massive pile of photos and put together a couple of photo boards. Which we had on display alongside a couple of photo albums.

If any family member wanted a particular photo they were welcome to take it. You can see the three I particularly wanted in the gallery below.

My aunt had bought 20 rose bush plants for people to take and plant in Nans memory if they wanted to. A really nice thing to do.

It was a nice afternoon that I know Nan would be happy we had.

A big thank you to Terry and Diane for doing the buffet, and Paula for working behind the bar.

Next steps after free D&D

D&D, DM/GM Tips, RPG

You have played a game or two of D&D using the free resources and decided you like the game and want to get deeper into the WotC 5th Edition rabbit hole.

The obvious place to go next is to get one of the two starter sets or the essentials kit. But which?

You have to decide you want to create my own characters or not? If the answer is yes then the you go for the essentials kit. Otherwise you need to decide which starter set to choose.

Old starter set
New starter set
The two Starter sets

Both of the Starter sets are good. Both have similar contents (basic rules, set of dice, pregen characters, adventure book). So it’s down to the adventure and availability.

Obviously the older of the two sets will be (eventually) the harder to get. However the included adventure Lost Mines of Phandelver is pretty good, and later this year WotC are publishing an adventure book that follows on from it.

The new starter set also has a pretty good adventure called Dragons of Stormwreck Isle. The advantage of this set is it’s a bit more DM friendly.

If you went with the essentials kit you get basic rules that cover creating rules, set of dice, DM screen, blank character sheets, condition cards, map, sidekick cards, item cards, combat reference cards, and the adventure Dragon of icespire peak.

After you have finished whichever of the kits you chose you will need the D&D 5e holy trinity of the Players Handbook (PHB), Dungeon Masters Guide (DMG), and Monster Manual (MM).

After the holy trinity your options are unlimited. You can run published adventures official or third party. Or create your own.

However I would recommend the Lazy DM series as a supplement to the DMG. I look on these books as the stuff the DMG forgot to tell you.

I’d start with the Return of the Lazy DM. This introduces you to a way of prepping your session that I really like. It does cut down on the amount of time required to prep. You can read about the steps in the Lazy GM’s Resource Document (which is a great resource).

The Lazy DM Workbook is a great book to have to hand whilst running a session. It’s full of useful tables, and ten generic maps.

The Lazy DM Companion has great advice in it for running D&D, plus pages of adventure generators, and maps. This is an amazing resource for planning your session.

Finally Forge of Foes is all about monsters. It’s only pre-order at the mo, with physical and pdf available later this year. Kickstarter backers have early access to the pdf. Not sure if a pre-order also gets it. But this allows you to create your own monsters, improvise monsters at the table, has advice about running monsters. It’s the missing sections from the MM.

All four have sample pdfs available that are useful without needing the rest of the book. Mike Shae has demonstrated this on his YouTube channel.

Also the resource document I linked to above has some of the content from the books too.

#RPGaDAY Returns For 2023

#RPGaDAY2023, RPG

The post title says it all really.

I think it’s the tenth anniversary as well of this annual rpg event. Which I’ve been doing for four years now. Not always at the time the event was running because I missed it running.

Naturally I’ll be participating in this years celebration of all things rpg when it kicks off at the start of August.

Two venture in to the taiga

Expeditions, Game day

Yesterday I had to cancel the planned D&D session so I could look after mum. Friday night whilst I was at game night mum fell over and banged her head on the sideboard. I wanted her to rest, and make sure there was no concussion.

So yesterday evening I messaged Ben to see if he was free to play Expeditions this afternoon depending on mum and how she was feeling.

This morning after a gentle start to the day I checked on mum to make sure she was ok. Her head was still a little sore. Which was expected. But otherwise seemed ok

I’m still blown by just how quick the game is to setup.

Luckily no teaching the game was required as Ben had already watched the Watch it played video a couple of times.

So this is how our champions and mechs matched up.

  • Olga & Changa with Odin’s Wrath – me
  • Anna & Wojtek with Highlander – Ben

I’ll do the tl;dr first I enjoyed Expeditions as a two player game.

Obviously it felt a little different to the game Friday. Mainly because the board was less congested with mechs there was no blocking of spaces. Which on the odd occasion is done deliberately, but most likely by accident.

It was funny because Ben and myself didn’t have to do a refresh action until right before the end of the game was triggered. In fact the more powerful all three actions turn after the refresh was our final turn. As my three actions allowed me to get enough corruption tokens, and claim my fourth and final glory token.

How did we play so long before having to do the refresh? Tile and card abilities. They allowed me and Ben to stay out cycling our activated cards back to our hands more or less as regularly as we wanted without skipping a turn. Granted we don’t get that more powerful turn. But being able to get an action plus a recycle was more useful.

Once I triggered the end of the game and the final scores calculated I snuck in a victory.

Our final scores

We followed up our game of Expeditions with a game of Lakshadweep. This Indian boardgame had an interesting eco inspired theme. However it is pretty paper thin.

The art is very functional and children bookish. Which sums up the level it’s aimed at I think.

The game itself is very Carcassonne inspired with its tile drafting and placing on a combined area.

It felt very Carcassonne light.

The game wasn’t unpleasant but I’d rather play Carcassonne.

I had a great afternoon with a good friend. Who kindly listened to me unload about the mornings family missives. You don’t want to know.

A Journey Down Memory Lane

life, the universe, and everything

With my aunt and uncle back in the country and staying locally in the run up to Nans memorial next Thursday. They have been able to help Mum and me get on with sorting out Nans belongings.

It’s been a hard thing to do. Not just physically but emotionally as well. However it has been that emotional side that has been the main stumbling block over the past nearly two years preventing Mum and I making much progress with Nans stuff.

Even with my aunt and uncle here helping. It’s not been easier on that front. But it’s helped to have some-one else to share the burden with. We made some real headway over the last two days.

Whilst sorting out what stuff goes to the dump, charity, or to keep we came across a box that quite clearly was mine.

Inside this cardboard time vault were treasures that took me back to my teenage years and the early days of the British Home Computer boom.

If you remember when I wrote about playing the latest MtG set, The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth I shared about my history with Tolkien and when I first came across Middle-Earth.

Well colour me pleasantly surprised (whatever that colour is) when I opened up the box and inside were my copies of The Hobbit (Oric-1 version) and Lord of the Rings Game One (C64 version). Minus the respective paperback books.

Also inside this treasure trove of memories were the following three items pictured in the gallery below.

The Simon’s Basic was a cartridge for the C64 that allowed you to use a more powerful version of Basic on the machine.

It was this version of Basic that I wrote a game to teach the Green Cross Code for my O-Level computing project in.

It’s the project I also rewrote completely the night before it was due to be handed in. I did an all nighter. I was young. Didn’t know better.

I hadn’t realised what an impact I’d made with the game or my coding skills until decades later when my school friend Jon Ward returned to the UK for a visit. When we met up he remembered all this, bringing up the game and how good I was in the computing lessons. It was very flattering.

Author probably has the honour of being the first ever word processor I ever owned and used!

Finally the official Commodore modem for the C64. Mum and Dad got me that for Christmas. A decision they would later regret. Later being three months later when that quarters phone bill came in.

You see Mum and Dad had no idea what a modem was or that it used the phone line.

Try and imagine one morning waking up. That days post dropping through the letterbox before 8am. Yeah that’s how far back we’ve gone to a functioning, reliable (well compared todays offering) postal service. Opening up the post and seeing a bill from BT for over three pounds.

Yeah I’d hit the phone pretty hard. I’d developed a serious Compunet habit downloading demoes etc.

Well Mum and especially Dad were more than a little pissed off. Getting Dad angry was the quickest way to lowering your life expectancy.

Obviously my online activities were seriously curtailed from that point on.

But it was Nan that really saved my bacon (as she has always done). She let Mum and Dad have the money to help with the phone bill I’d rung up with the modem.

There were other gems in the box too. But I’ll save them for another day.

Friday Night Encounters

Fenland Gamers, game night, Stonemaier Games

Last night was once again a Fenland Gamers club night.

Last night numbers were slightly down. But we had enough for a couple of tables. One table played The Warriors board game. Which if you are under a certain age have no idea it’s based on a 1970s movie. Mind you Jonathan had no idea it was a movie either. I think the only person playing it familiar with the source material was Dave. I’d be interested in giving it a try. I do like the movie.

Our table got to play the latest hotness, the sequel to Stonemaier Games second biggest selling game (it was the top until Wingspan came out) Scythe, Expeditions.

Every copy of Expeditions has an achievements sheet included. One side are the achievements to record names against. The other side is an extract from a captains journal (see below).

It turns out thanks to a really observant individual on the games Facebook group that there are different versions of this journal page. In less than 24 hours the group has managed to identify at least 17 different ones (it may be all of them now).

It’s suspected there are 20 different journal pages. Jamey did say there was a hint to the number in the photo. Which I have zoomed in on below. Which seems to confirm the number 20.

What’s even cooler is that Jamey signed 20 of these sheets and they were randomly placed in copies of the game!

My copy of Expeditions was the iron clad edition, with the add-on metal coins. The difference between the iron clad edition and the standard are the amazing metal mechs instead of plastic ones.

The production of the game is up to the usual gold standard set by Stonemaier Games. The setup of the game is made super easy by the games insert. With a great storage tray that holds the coins, worker meeples, and map tokens. Thus can be taken straight out of the box and used on the table.

The art is just out of this world. Jakub Rozalski is just amazing. I love the whole world he has built with it. That 1920’s alternative history with the mechs. Love it.

Story wise Expeditions takes place after the events in Scythe and the Rise of Fenris expansion. We shift from Europa to “…Siberia, where a massive meteorite crashed near the Tunguska River, awakening ancient corruption.” It’s our job to venture North to investigate this meteorite crash.

There is a darker tone to the plot line and art. I’m trying to think of a way to best describe the theme/tone. I think Scythe meets Cthulhu might best describe it.

There are some Easter eggs within the game. It wouldn’t be a Stonemaier game without them. There are two cards named after other titles in the Stonemaier catalogue (Charterstone and Scythe). Plus Jamey’s two cats feature on a card (see below).

We started off as a five player game, however three quarters of the way through our fifth player had to leave.

This first game took three and a half hours. But at full player count (for the majority of the game), and two players that suffer from analysis paralysis is it any surprise?

Once setup Expeditions is a table hog, and was a very tight fit with five of us round the table.

However the game has a table presence that is made with the large metal mechs.

The base snaps didn’t fit perfectly on one or two of the metal mechs. But I think that might improve over time.

For those thinking this is going to be like Scythe, it is not. There are a couple of similar mechanics, such as not being able to repeat an action twice, the victory track and glory tokens, and there are mechs! This plays completely differently. There is no confrontation/interaction between players apart from blocking another player getting to a space by occupying it yourself.

I love how the card titles help tell the story of the game. But having multi use cards that you have to decide when to stop using them for their ability and turn them into say an upgrade for the mech, a solved mission or meld a piece of meteorite is a cool.

There is also having to know when to do a refresh action to move cards from your activated area back to your hand. It’s a tough decision. It’s all you do on a turn. But the payoff is getting a powerful next turn. Although I did find it more useful doing the refresh action on a tile instead once one was revealed.

Being able to utilise not only your Commander and their animal companions abilities, but also your mechs is really important. I played Olga with Changa, naturally. I also had the highlander mech which meant I could put gained cards straight into my hand.

If Marcin hadn’t triggered the end of the game I would have on my next turn. Marcin also went on to win as well. But the point difference between us was from him having vanquished more corruption than me.

I had a blast playing Expeditions and can’t wait to play it again. I think this will be finding a place in my top 10 games.