Bottom Action!

game night, Scythe

Friday evening saw me get my favourite game of all time Scythe to the table with two good friends. What more could you want of an evening?

Whilst I was setting up Colin arrived. So I gave him the tough decision of which of the three Triumph tracks to use. Yes I had forgotten the fourth option of the random set up. But it was probably for the best. The other three are a lot easier to explain. You can see which way Colin went in the setup section below.

Once Marcin arrived we went straight into randomly choosing a player mat, followed by choosing our faction.

Whilst making our choices we enforced the banned combo rule for player and faction mats.

So this is how after randomly selecting a player board and then choosing a faction things ended up:

  • Saxony/Patriotic (Colin)
  • Rusviet/Innovative (Marcin)
  • Fenris/Industrial (Me)

I’m sure Marcin hate drafted my beloved Rusviets to spite me. There was a cheeky grin from him when I bought the subject up. It looked like I had no choice but go to my other favourite faction, Fenris.

One day I should branch out and play some of the others. But haven’t I already by choosing Fenris?

The rest of our set up…

We used the Modular board that once the home base tiles had been randomly placed had two tiles removed. Giving us a much more enclosed map encouraging interaction. No turtling here.

Obviously we used Airships. Plus any additional tiles or cards that the expansions added, along with all the promo cards.

Triumph Track: War

Resolution Tile: Factory Explosion

Airship Tiles: Hero/Bounty

Structure Bonus: Number of structures not adjacent to other buildings (your buildings or opponents’ buildings).

Poorly written summary of the game

I got off to a blinding start. Which was helped greatly by having an encounter token so close to my home base. Turn two I had my first mech out giving me leap. A handy ability to have as I was able to avoid the first conflict and blockade by Marcin.

I had all my mechs out so early. I was moping up encounter tokens to fuel my engine.

Sadly Marcin beat me to the factory and held it for a good time. I wasn’t in a position to challenge him.

I was using my factions tokens to pen Marcin in. I didn’t think it was fair to pick on Colin so early on in the game.

Eventually my engine just ran out of juice and I wasn’t able to stop Marcin stealing what little resources I had or amassing forces on and around the factory tile.

Without the resources I wasn’t able to use my factory card that I’d finally got. Even my plan to get the final encounter token and also use a resource on that tile controlled by Colin. Failed. Colin spent the resource before I got there, and also nabbed the token.

I did trigger the end of the game. But the first of my final two turns was a none turn as I couldn’t do anything. But I did end up with a couple of battles to try and cut down on the territory Marcin controlled. I was fifty percent successful on that front.

Final scores

It was a fantastic evening of gaming.

Oh why the blog post title? Well as Marcin was explaining/helping Colin throughout the game he kept saying “bottom action”. Which had my childish, mind in the gutter side in stitches.

Hotel Life

life, the universe, and everything, still alive

Still here with yet another life update post.

Been away on a union rep training course last couple of days. Which has been fun and informative.

Even been put up for a couple of nights in a Premier Inn.

I’m not sure the price difference between this chain and Travelodge is warranted. I see hardly any difference in the quality of the rooms.

I will grade the breakfast here as a 6 out of 10. Let down massively by the lack of fried bread and having hash browns.

But being in the hotel reminded me I do need to book a hotel for UKGE. The Travelodge we normally frequent is not its usual £35 a night at the moment. But double that. Have they cottoned on to the fact that UKGE is on and they can exploit us poor boardgamers?

Although there has been no gaming since Friday. At least there are plans for playing games this Friday in place.

Right catch you laters now I’ve let you all know I’m ok.

Brief club night report

Fenland Gamers, game night

I made a second club night last night.

It looked like there was going to be seven of us for the evening. However two turned up who hadn’t indicated they were coming. It also didn’t help that they came in and went out without saying a word! Turns out they went to get something to eat first. Would have been nice to know.

Whilst that was going on Marcin, Diego, and myself played Apiary.

The following is how the faction and hive mats went.

  • Sime & The Warre (Me)
  • Jemit & The Poppleton (Diego)
  • Iber & The Skep (Marcin)

I had a blinder of a game. I wasn’t sure if I’d done enough to overcome the early lead on the score track that Diego had taken.

But once again getting a lot of seed cards, playing combos, getting three planted, plus three honey comb tiles meant I had enough end game scoring going on. Plus I barely explored once again.

As the final scores show I did really well. Even improving on my previous 100+ score.

Diego’s score was better than my first time playing.

Our next and final game Vaalbara was played with now two well fed members. Diego rocked this one and easily won the game.

Whilst we got two games in, the other table managed to play one four player game of Amun-Ra.

It was a great evening.

Failed plans

life, the universe, and everything, still alive

It’s been a quiet week on the gaming front so far.

This weeks planned lcg/ccg/tcg game night on Tuesday fell through.

We were due to be playing Commander however the one flaw we didn’t foresee was the community centre would not be open!

Unbeknownst to any of us, having missed the change to the opening hours sign the community centre would be closed on not only a Monday but also Tuesdays now (except for the third Tuesday of the month for the open mike evening).

It’s not surprising as the business had been pretty slow on a Tuesday with them closing early. Which we were fine with.

Now we need to find either another night that works for everyone, or another Tuesday night venue.

At the moment current thinking might be every other Friday evening.

I have pre-ordered the new Dune Imperium Uprising. Which hopefully will be hitting stores this weekend. So maybe with me by the middle of next week. I’m excited to play this and see how the changes work.

The Two Towers expansion for LotR lcg was posted this morning along with the Deadpool and X-23 hero packs for Marvel Champions.

Obviously the Two Towers and Fellowship are something I want to play with Nathan. But I want to bring not only LotR but Marvel Champions to a lcg/ccg/tcg evening. I know FFG did these special scenario decks for LotR for cons like GenCon. Which were made available to the public. Sadly these are out of print and going for the usual stupid money. I know there are fan run cons for Marvel Champions where they have custom villian scenarios. These of these would be ideal for a game night but alas cost or lack of info means currently they are not an option.

Tomorrow is club night so looking forward to that. It’s looking like another low attended one. Numbers have dropped recently. I’ll be taking Apiary, Terraforming Mars the dice game, and Grail Cup.

So that’s the none eventful week so far.

Laters.

How I play Marvel Champions (and LoTR lcg)

LCG, Marvel Champions

After plans to get Marvel Champions to the table fell through earlier in the day. I spent the afternoon instead organising the collection instead.

For starters I had four character packs to “file away” along with The Hood Scenario pack. Plus the latest campaign box Next Evolution.

Whilst organising the new cards my mind wondered and made me think how I’m currently (the couple of times I’ve played it) and plan to use the game. It’s a bit like how I also use the Lord of the Rings lcg too.

A lot of the content creators out there on the various media platforms out there build their own character decks. They get a lot of enjoyment out of doing that. And to be fair I would too. After all it’s a side of MtG, Dice Masters, and Vampire the Masquerade Rivals.

However there is only so much spare time in my life. Unfortunately I don’t have any spare to dedicate to this side of playing these two lcgs.

Also I only get to play both games with other players who do not own a copy of the game, and are not into building their own decks.

So using the pre-constructed hero decks as you buy them allows me to play with others who enjoy the game but haven’t committed to it financially.

During setup I can say “which hero is your favourite?” or ‘who do you fancy playing?” Grab the decks and away we go.

Obviously before hand I can decide on the villian we are going to go up against and which modular scenarios (if not using the recommended) we are using. However I can also repeat the hero selection for the villian to and let the other player chose their favourite.

I like this grab and go, no thought needed approach too.

How do I thematically justify it?

Well Marvel used to print two comics that would cover this mix and match approach.

The first was Marvel Team-up. This would see two heroes come together to defeat a common villian. Usually these two heroes would be polar opposites.

The other comic they did and also ended up as an animated series on Disney+ is What if…? Which explores major moments in the Marvel universe and what would happen if they happened differently.

Both could explain why the heroes were together and why they were facing off against a villian they had never gone up against before.

Another factor in the not deck building is I only want to play the games with others. I don’t play solo, or only play solo. If I was playing solo I’d be more tempted to build my own decks. I don’t get much enjoyment out of playing games solo. It’s the social side I enjoy.

Anyway sorry to have bored you with that thought!

Third time lucky

Game day

The original plan for today was to play a four player game of Memoir 44. But for reasons (I say reasons because we have no idea why the fourth player never turned up) we only had three players.

Luckily I had decided to grab a back up plan for such a situation. Which we decided to go with.

So instead of Memoir we set up to play Apiary.

Below are the faction and hive mats that each of us used.

  • Utel – The Log (Jeff)
  • Iber – The Warre (John)
  • Carpa – The Langstroth (me)

I actually planted seed cards! The first game I’ve managed to plant any and I do four.

I completed my hive mat, and a frame. Plus upgraded my faction tile.

I think I explored twice during the game, and did one retrieval. After I got a tile that allowed me to retrieve a worker and activate a farm every time I did a research action I was researching a lot. It was getting me a seed card and victory points.

There was a moment early on when I did hate buy a tile to stop Jeff having it. If he’d been allowed to get it, along with his faction ability he’d have gotten two basic resources of his choice every explore action on top of everything else.

I triggered the end of the game, and below is how the scores stood after all the smoke had cleared.

Final scores

I have to say if Jeff or John had those scores in my previous two games they would have won. And Jeff did so much better than I did in my first play.

I’m just taken aback by how high my score was. Especially considering my first two plays.

A great afternoon though despite our original plan falling through.

A two player evening

dice masters, Dice Masters Cube, Dicemasters, game night, lcg/ccg/tcg game night

Last night I met up with Marcin to play some games. Which meant this was a third night this week that I’d done some gaming. Something that hasn’t happened in a long long time.

We started off with a game of 51st State. A game I haven’t played in a few years. I think the last time I played this was at a UKGE with my friend Scott.

We were playing Marcin’s copy of the game that is the Ultimate edition. Which is a pretty cool edition that replaces the Master edition. It has all the expansions, “upgraded” components, insert, etc. I was almost envious and regretting I hadn’t got this edition myself. But at the time it was announced and added to GameFound or whatever it used to be called I couldn’t justify the expense.

After a brief refresh on the rules we were ready to play.

I was off to a slower start than Marcin unable to get anything going resource wise until it was too late to stop or catch up.

By the time the game ended I had only gained 3 victory points to Marcin’s 25!

Next I introduced Marcin to the dark draft format for Dice Masters using my pauper cube.

The teams we ended up drafting were the following:

My Team

  • Gambit: Ace in the Hole
  • Green Goblin: Goblin Lord
  • Mystique: Ageless
  • Hawkeye: Longbow
  • Psylocke: Betsy Braddock
  • Wolverine: Wildboy
  • Professor X: Recruiting Young Mutants
  • Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme

Basic Actions

  • Rally!
  • Gearing Up

Marcin’s Team

  • Black Widow: Natural
  • Falcon: Samuel Wilson
  • Iron Man: Upright
  • Punisher: McRook
  • Loki: Trickster
  • Sabretooth: Something to Prove
  • Pyro: Saint-John Allerdyce
  • Doctor Doom: Reed Richards‘ Rival

Basic Actions

  • Smash!
  • Ambush

Game one saw Marcin use the Punisher to great effect. It kept chipping away at my health whilst I failed to really get a solution in place to deal with its threat.

Game two saw me do much better. A mixed attack of two Green Goblins, a couple of sidekicks, and a Gambit swung in to grab me a victory.

Our third and final game was over very quickly. This was the Green Goblin and sidekicks showcase. Which saw me swinging in with an unopposed 18 attack made up of five sidekicks, a Green Goblin, and a Gambit iirc.

The two games I won Marcin did get a Punisher out. But it was used less effectively. For some reason Marcin preferred Falcon over Black Widow.

In all the games I was using the crap out of Professor X’s global to move sidekicks into the prep area. In the first game I needed to do that to buff up Mystique. With the side benefit of it allowing me to ramp into a Professor X or Doctor Strange.

Marcin enjoyed the dark draft format. Which means the two people I’ve played it with it’s been a hit. Marcin also liked the cards in the cube more than the modern cube. They were less complicated. Easier for a new player to understand.

So a great evening of gaming.

Icarus I can see your…

game night

Tuesday I got to do some overtime during the afternoon. But I was finished in time to be able to play some Vampire the Masquerade Rivals with Diego.

I had none of my Rivals stuff with me. So was reliant on Diego providing everything. For this session we used the Justice & Mercy expansion that Diego had for the game.

This expansion has the Banu Haqim and Salubri clans. Our first game had Diego playing Banu Haqim, and myself Salubri.

Salubri is an interesting clan to play out of the box. For starters you get an agenda point at the start of each turn. So already the game starts with a 13 turn timer. Add in an attachment that allows you to tap your vampire for an agenda point that timer gets shorter.

Next interesting thing and probably more so than the first, is the fact Salubri can only have one vamp out at a time! When that vamp gets taken out you don’t loose the game, you get a chance to play one from hand first.

It’s actually a fun clan to play. I could see myself building a deck around this clan.

After Diego narrowly won we swapped decks.

Banu Haqim is a rituals deck with diablerie thrown in. Sadly for me, unlike Diego in the first game, I didn’t draw the ritual that allowed me to steal agenda points.

Which meant I wasn’t able to slow that 13 turn timer, or take out enough Salubri. So Diego got a second win.

I think this is the first Rivals expansion where both clans have been fun to play. I’ll have to get this expansion.

Wednesday saw me round Ben’s to play Apiary with him and Charlene.

Once again I lost. But my score was improved. I even got to the end of the Queen’s Favour track.

I still had a blast playing the game. I love that whilst playing you feel like you are doing cool stuff.

Ben’s amazing final flight

Our second game of the evening was First in Flight. A game about the early days of powered flight.

This has a cool mixture of mechanics. There is deck building and push your luck, a rondel with turn order. The later working similar to Tokaido or Glen More.

I love games that have asymmetrical variable player powers. And I played into mine of getting to look at extra cards whilst looking at cards from your deck to great affect.

In our game I was allowed to get several trick cards that allowed me to look at the top of my card and manipulate card order. Which allowed me on my final flight to get a winning distance of 48.

That final flight was funny because Ben had been getting all these powerful cards to improve his distance, had a more powerful descent card, and had mentioned this more than once during the game.

Sadly as you can see in the gallery above his final flight was very disappointing and very very funny.

I enjoyed First in Flight.

So Wednesday was a great evening of gaming.

The post title?

Back in my teenage years Iron Maiden released a single Flight of Icarus.

I was reading the heavy metal magazine Kerrang! at the time. Naturally they reviewed the single and there was one line that has stuck with me all these years later.

Which I thought would be appropriate for a post where I talked about playing a board game about man’s early attempts at powered flight.

Plans for my week off

life, the universe, and everything, still alive

After such a gruelling couple of months work wise I have a week of R&R.

Sadly it’s between paydays so I don’t have the funds to visit Nathan. Which I need to sort out as a priority.

In the meantime I do have some gaming arranged.

The plans start off with the weekly lcg/ccg/tcg game night. Not sure what we’ll play yet. That’ll be numbers dependent.

Then Wednesday sees me visiting Ben to play Apiary. Plus time allowing we might fit in a game of Terraforming Mars the Dice Game.

Thursday is going to be mystery game night. Marcin has arranged a gaming session. But what we are playing who knows. It hasn’t been decided yet.

So glad I have some gaming going on this week. Plus it looks like my shift pattern for next few weeks might allow me to get to club nights too.

Catch you in the next post.

Hive Mind

Fenland Gamers, first look, game night

After what can only be described as a disappointing month for gaming (I played a grand total of four games). I’m hoping November improves.

However this new month has got off to a good start with me able to attend my first club night for two months.

Sadly it wasn’t a well attended club night with only four of us making it. However that was the perfect number for a first play of my latest addition to the collection, Apiary from Stonemaier Games.

So not only were we playing the latest hotness (or one of them) but it was also a chance to play a game with Jonathan. Something we haven’t done for a long time.

Does it really need to be said about the production values of the game? I think by now it should be taken for granted that Stonemaier Games have produced yet another high quality game. For me considering the hive tiles and other tiles are cardboard a more durable solution to the hive mat and frames would have been nice. They seem too flimsy. I can see why they are this thin. And frankly I can’t think of a solution that’d work as well.

I love that included in the box is a new addition to a Stonemaier Games game a teach the game sheet. If I count the Swift pack included in Wingspan this is the second time such a thing has been included in the box. Granted they work differently. With the Swift pack taking players through their first few turns, and the teach sheet aimed at helping a player teach the game to new players. But it’s nice to see this sort of thing in the box.

The player aids are really useful as well, and hit the sweet spot with the amount of information on them.

We played using randomly chosen hive mats, and randomly chosen hive tiles from the marked starter hive tiles.

I love this game.

Apiary plays very fast. We learnt the game, and played the game in just short of two hours. A turn is amazingly fast.

The bump mechanic is great. I love how it increases the strength of the bumped bee.

You have a small bit of area majority going on with the hibernation mechanic and section of the board for end game scoring.

The various tiles you can add to your hive do allow some combos to kick off when you go to various spots on the board. For instance every time I did the grow action I got a free bee back from the pool (if I had any there) and a free frame.

I know there will be the usual criticism of this latest entry in the Stonemaier catalog of its “not balanced” blah blah blah. And to be fair to some of those making that comment depending on the game have a valid point. However Stonemaier Games actually listen and make adjustments based on player feedback, such as in Tapestry and the civilisation adjustments, or not allowing certain faction and mat combos in Scythe.

I’m not sure anyone can make that comment about Apiary at the moment because you’d have played a lot of games to see if that is the case. But I’m sure there will be a broken combo between the hive mats and faction tiles.

The handicap system used for getting over first player advantage is not bad with players getting a higher start on the score track.

The multi use seed cards are fun. Either being able to be discarded first one of the basic resources, played for the ability on it, or finally planted for an end of game scoring bonus.

Ok I didn’t do well on my final score coming in last. However I did do cool stuff (see my comment about tile combos above).

This is a fun game. Everyone enjoyed it. And that’s two players who coming into it had reservations about an aspect or two of the game.

I had a blast playing the game. It was a great game to share with Jonathan again. Oh and Marcin won.