Friday was indeed another Fenland Gamers club night.
I’d been looking forward to it after a nine day tour of duty at work.
Earlier in the day I’d had an interview for a shift leader position. Which I think went well. But I’ve never really been that good judging how well an interview really went. I’m meant to find out on Saturday (today as I write this post).
After setting up the tables I treated myself to a banana split before anyone else arrived as a reward for surviving my tour of duty.
Our tables first game of the evening was a learning game of The Bloody Inn.
It was truly a learning game as we learnt from the rulebook at the table. The cards were unsleeved! We went with a short game (removing 22 cards for a four player game) because it was a learning game.
I love the theme of the game. It’s very Devil in the White City. Killing off your guests, robbing their corpses. It’s what attracted me to the game.
We all loved the game.
It’s kinda an engine builder with a little take that thrown in.
I love the multi use cards where you can use them to bribe other guests, build annexes to your inn, kill guests, and bury guests. And depending on the card played you might be able to return the card to your hand instead of the discard pile based on if its symbol matches the activity you are doing.
So you have a decision to make about the guests to how you are going to use them, assuming you are able to afford them. Added on top of you may want a particular guest, but if you take one of the others from a room controlled by another player you deny them money at the end of the round.
Which reminds me you also have to pay close attention to the cash you have. You need to choose the right moment to launder money, either turning it into cheques so you don’t loose money, or cashing a cheque so you have funds to pay accomplices at the end of the round.
Near the end of the game we were regretting not going with the longer game. But I have been sworn to bring it to the next meet up.
oh I won btw.
Our next game of the evening was 6 Nimmit.
What a fun card game. Quick to teach. Quick games. But also very tactical. A perfect little filler game.
This will be added to the collection.
This was a great evenings gaming. Just what the doctor ordered.
Friday is the Fenland Gamers fortnightly gaming night.
At the start of the week the boardgame Bloody Inn arrived and I’m hoping that I get it to the table as a learning game tomorrow.
Saturday sees Battlestar Galactica the boardgame hit the table with the Pegasus expansion. We’ll be playing a seven player game! Which means one person will be playing the cylon leader from the start.
In the meantime I am sleeving up all the cards in the game. Got to protect this classic out of print, never to be printed again, going for stupid money game. With that in mind I also have a three feet by three feet neoprene playmat coming. Which I’m hoping will arrive before we play Saturday.
Other arrivals this week sees the latest Vampire the Masquerade Rivals expansion Heart of Europe drop through the letterbox. This expansion consists mainly of a new City deck, one or two updated errata’d cards, and some new cards to expand the card pool a little bit more.
Also the second Alien novel Alien Inferno’s Fall arrived. The physical version has an exclusive mini adventure in it for the Alien rpg. That’s about it for now. More over the weekend as I play some games.
With having my weekend at the start of the week whilst everyone else is at work. Followed by four days of working evenings. Obviously there has been very little gaming this week, none in fact. This weekend I had to cancel the planned D&D session due to the fact I’d be working.
If I also tell you I’ve been finishing at midnight each day so far. Plus one of those days saw me starting at 9:30am (for a bloody long day). You’d be right in thinking I’m feeling a tad tired.
But I’m taking any opportunity at the moment to do overtime. Well overtime that fits in with my scheduled shifts.
With the new overtime system at work, plus the number of hours the store has available being cut. I’m not guaranteed the minimum number of hours I need a week to meet my bills.
So when overtime shifts come up that I’m able to do, I do them. Even if it means a longer working day. I need to have that cushion in case I have a week (or dread the thought weeks) I can’t hit my hours target in a month.
I hate that uncertainty that has been introduced. I’m not the only one.
Each month you are now wondering if you will have earnt enough to pay the bills, get to work (my petrol costs have doubled), eat!
You have to love deliberate corporate inflicted FUD.
On a positive note I know I am definitely free for the next Fenland Gamers club night, and also the planned Battlestar Galactica session.
What state I’ll be in is another story, as I’d have been working nine days solid at that point.
Anyway thought I’d give you a little life update in lieu of any gaming update. I’ve been too tired this week to finish my fourth post in the Portal series. It will be done. But sleep and stuff!
I’ll leave you with the inspiring words used by Stevie Gerrard (way back in 2014) and also the title of this post, “we go again”.
Yesterday the planets finally aligned so Diego and I were able to get the latest Vampire the Masquerade Rivals expansion Shadows and Shrouds to the table.
I was so glad we were able to do this. I have plans to build my first Rivals deck around Hecata and their torpor shenanigans.
But before I do that I really needed to play the precon deck as it comes in the expansion. Get an idea of how the clan plays, what sort of tricks they have up their sleeve.
Remember these two games were two player. So where the deck might be “weak” in a head to head game, it might be stronger when played in a three or four player game.
I went with Annika as my leader in the first game. If my memory doesn’t fail me the advice for new players playing the core precon decks is to use the six cost blood potency vampire as the leader. So that’s the advice I went with for my first play of the Hecata deck.
Now I will state for the record I had no idea what cards were in the library deck. I was playing blind!
All I knew going into these games was the Hecata deck made use of the new wraith mechanic. More on that later. Plus you wanted vampires in torpor.
Looking at Annika’s ability I was assuming there were going to be a few rituals in the deck.
However during our first game I spent more than an action or two drawing cards, or playing action cards such as Grave Robbing to draw cards hoping to get a ritual. I didn’t draw a single one.
An inspection of the deck revealed it had five ritual cards out of the forty that make up the library.
Our leaders for the two games
With two other vampires (Nathaniel and Bianca Giovanni) interacting with rituals in some way. You start to get the impression that having rituals out is an important part of the deck. Although there are a couple of action cards that do things with rituals that seem token gestures to that plan.
So I would expect to be hitting rituals a bit more reliably than I was. Especially when one of them (Summon Spirit) is one of the very few ways for a player to make wraiths in the deck.
I didn’t make any wraiths in this game. Although I did use the leader ability to burn the odd mortal in the street.
I lost the game due to having no more vampires left in my coterie. I’d spent too much time looking for rituals and making sure I had vampires in torpor. Leaving myself open to having pretty weak vampires left in my coterie that could be easily taken out.
For our second I changed my leader to Zahara.
I still didn’t hit a ritual until late in the game.
Although I did get Zahara cycling through torpor nicely to generate wraiths. The Haven Eternal Life Mortuary’s Leader Ability was really handy for doing this. A nice little synergy.
Agendas and Havens for the two games
Diego won with an agenda points victory.
In all the Hecata precon has three strategies it uses. Although thematic, I think it could have been more focused on say just two of them.
Having vampires in torpor with the torpor ability is cool. Getting extra value from them during the torpor/mend step is nice. At the moment it’s just a matter of building decks around the current torpor abilities. So I see decks that splash the odd Hecata vampire to supplement their main strategy.
Wraiths are an interesting addition. I’d like more ways to create them. But having a combo of cards that burn mortals, do something based on number of burned mortals, and create wraiths, the amount of initial cards is probably about right. Plus I like how this mechanic now makes burning a mortal by another player a harder decision for that player. They may need to heal badly, but do they really want to fuel these cards?
I’d also like to see more wraith abilities. At the moment they boost the stats of the vampire they are attached to. I’d like to see some that punish the attacking player. But the surprise element is cool.
To be fair to the deck with the number of action cards for combat I don’t think I was aggressive enough with the deck. I did like the reaction cards like Flesh of Marble that increase the defense of the vampire and change aggregated damage to physical damage.
I need to look at the other cards available but I think we might be seeing the start of a “blue” control style deck in Rivals. Spirit’s Touch interacting with another players library, or Clairvoyance looking at their hand. Mental Block looks fun and stops a player playing a card from their deck. All “blue” type things to do to another player. And I have been known to play blue type decks in the past.
Overall a fun deck, just not overly suitable for the two player head to head format.
Saturday saw the long overdue return of A Game of Thrones the boardgame second edition (that’s a mouthful to say) to the table.
The impetus to get it back was to play it with the third and largest expansion for the game Mother of Dragons.
I bought the expansion early on during the big global event if memory does not fail me on this. For sure it was during said event.
So at some point I was going to want to play this again.
To help encourage getting it back to the table I did add it to two of the gaming challenges I set up at the start of the year.
So a couple of months back I setup an event on the Fenland Gamers discord server. I had three players (including myself) able to commit to playing the game. With a fourth unsure.
We needed four players to be able to use the new map of Essos and House Targaryen. Which is one of the major attractions of the expansion.
In the days, even weeks before I did try getting the playmat for the game. Sadly there were none in stock, those on eBay that looked affordable had a massive (£70+ postage!). Even a couple of pleas on a Facebook gaming group went unanswered.
On the day the unsure sadly was not able to make it. But as I was getting that news and about to start putting away the extra map and Targaryen pieces in walked Jimmy and an unexpected Nathaniel. We had a fourth.
A brief note on setting up before the players arrived. Which you know I like to do. For this game I setup as much as I could before everyone arrived. However which houses were controlled by players and which were to become vassal houses couldn’t be done until everyone had arrived. Luckily everything a player needed for each house was bagged, decks ready. So once selected all they had to do was grab everything for that house. Then it was just a matter of getting the components needed for each vassal house from the houses components.
Whilst waiting for Jeff to arrive we started choosing our houses for the game.
I went first and chose Targaryen. I wanted this house in the game, the only way to guarantee it was to choose it myself.
Here are how the houses ended up being chosen.
Stark – Jimmy
Baratheon – Nathanial
Targaryen – Me
Tyrell – Jeff
The vassal houses were: Lannister, Greyjoy, Martell, Arryn.
Oh we were also using the Tides of War deck in combat.
Then battle commenced.
Despite repeated warnings throughout the game about Jeff and how he was clocking up strongholds and castles in the name of House Tyrell. Jimmy and Nathaniel kept attacking me whilst leaving Jeff mostly alone.
Then the moment came when I declared Jeff had won the next round. By then there was nothing they could do. They tried in vein to delay the inevitable. But their efforts were futile.
It was interesting that even at the moment I had declared Jeff’s impending victory he too had not fully seen it.
If only someone had warned them earlier!
All I did was sit back and watch events unfold as predicted, whilst inflicting a final bit of humiliation to Nathaniel as payback for the constant naval attacks by capturing the Baratheon castle.
I’m a fan of the earlier two expansions A Feast for Crows (four players) and A Dance with Dragons (six players). But for me Mother of Dragons beats them hands down.
The vassal system introduced adds a new additional tactical element to the game from choosing which house to take control of, to how you are going to use them that turn. Granted it adds considerably to the play time (there are rules handling if a player has to leave during a game, they also become a vassal!) The vassal system replaces the neutral force tokens of the base game, and I really do prefer it.
I liked House Targaryen and the dragons. Although it does add a rather big target to your back. I think Nathaniel and Jimmy were too focused on my threat with the dragons enabling Jeff to exploit that distraction. But they were cool to play and have their alternative win condition. Plus their specific Westeros deck did seem to encourage a bit of wheeling and dealing with the other houses.
The Iron Bank cards were interesting, although Jeff was the only one who bought one. I think more plays are required before I can make my mind up over these.
I like that you can use the other expansions house cards with this one. So if you only play Mother of Dragons they are not just collecting dust. Plus for now another reason to get the game back to the table!
Mother of Dragons will be my preference when it comes to playing A Game of Thrones. Unless time is tight and the player count matches up the other expansions won’t get a full outing.
I had a blast and can’t wait to revisit Westeros to get my revenge and recapture the Iron Throne.
Last night was the latest Fenland Gamers club night.
I got to try the heavy (in every sense of the word) flip and write Hadrian’s Wall.
Which was my thirty first new game to me that I’ve played this year. I find this incredible. At this rate I’m going to complete the challenge easily before the end of the year.
I love Hadrian’s Wall.
There I’ve said it.
We played on the standard (green) difficulty. For those into video games and have played the classic video game Doom, is the equivalent of “Hey, not too rough” in difficulty.
Like Three Sisters when you first see the two sheets you will be playing with it’s all a bit overwhelming. But after a brief overview it starts to make sense. Then after using your first couple of resources everything becomes clear.
Generating the resources needed reminded me a bit of Imperium Settlers/51st State. It also gives the game a little euro boardgame vibe. It’s kinda cool how at the start of each round/year players get the same resources based on the flipping of a card, and then addition resources are gathered depending on unlocked sections of your player sheets. Then as you spend those resources you get further ones to spend during the round. Any not spent get lost. Very Imperial Settlers like.
Hadrian’s Wall isn’t as combotastic as Three Sisters. But it has combos. It’s definitely a deep thinker.
If we were putting Hadrian’s Wall on a difficulty scale for Roll/flip and writes, it’s firmly in the heavier, more complicated camp. Not one you’d play with noobs.
Hadrian’s Wall Game 1 Final Score
I really really did like the game. It’s gone on my wish list.
Our second game was Dungeons, Dice and Danger using the Clumsy Cultists map. Which in Doom difficulty level terms is “
Charlene and myself both took a few hits from not being able to use a dice combo. Mine cost me the game by a point.
Dungeons, Dice, and Danger Final Score
Our second play of Hadrian’s Wall saw the difficulty level dialled up to eleven as we played it in hard (Red) mode. Aka it’s version of the Doom “Hurt me plenty” difficulty level.
What this means in reality is that during the year end of each round we are drawing more cards from the Fate Card Draw Pile. Which means we have to defend more attacks from those pesky Picts and potentially taking more damage in the form of Disdain.
Disdain is not good. It’s negative points at the end of the game.
Playing at this harder difficulty level with the greatly increased number of attacks to defend against certainly changed the focus of the game. You are spending more resources trying to build up the cohorts to defend with. Whilst still trying to do the other stuff like meet the criteria for the path cards you decided to score.
I did find the drawing of more cards exciting! Yes I’m that sad.
Hadrian’s Wall Game 2 Final Score
The games that made it to the other tables Transmissions (looks stunning) and Dice Theme Park (sequel to Dice Hospital).
A fun evening of a genre I really like. Off to Westeros later today.
Just a very very brief life update that acts as proof of life, and paper thin excuse for not posting.
The best excuse I can come up with for not posting is just plain tiredness.
I’ve finished nights now (yesterday). Which I think I’m going to miss!
They have been fun. The night actually went really fast. But the important bit was I was working with a great bunch of folks.
Heck we even got some gaming in during our breaks!
We haven’t been playing epic games of Twilight Imperium, or even light games that take an hour to play. Basically what would be called filler games by the board gaming community has been our jam. Something that can be played in half an hour, quick to setup and teach.
So we have played Bang!, Love Letter, and Batman Fluxx (with the house rule of if no winner after half an hour the game ends). Although we did also have a multiplayer game of Star Realms where two teams played against each other.
Plus! We have been playing a lot of Star Realms against each other using the app. I can only imagine the image we gave sitting around the table in the staff room engrossed in our phones not speaking to each other. However we are actually all taking our turns in the game against each other.
I now have a couple of days off so I’m hoping to get the next post about Portal finished (it’s about half written at the moment), play some games and tell you about that. Then it’s back to work for a day before having an early weekend (again), followed by more work.
I promised short and sweet, and this has been a bit longer than planned. Laters.
It was supposed to be the next Group 2 D&D session today. However due to that thing the government is in denial about and would rather you forget about, we were once again going to be down by 50% of the group.
So I suggested we play a three player game of Star Wars Outer Rim instead.
I knew that the other two had never played the game before. But that didn’t stop me adding in the Unfinished Business expansion.
After all it added more cards to the various decks that the game uses. More characters to play as. Favours (not used) and Ambitions. Plus Core World end tiles allowing the Galaxy to be crossed.
I was going to just use the extra cards and core worlds but after watching a review by Luke Hector I decided to use the Ambition cards as well. The logic being they would give new players a focus on what to do on their turns and for the game.
Here are the characters and Ambition cards selected.
Jyn Erso – Living Legend (Me)
Han Solo – Renowned Smuggler (Shane)
Maz Kanata – Crime Lord (Anthony)
We were playing first to eight fame points plus complete their ambition card.
After an early but brief lead on the fame points. I was trailing on that front until a late surge towards the end which put me in front again.
I was the last to upgrade their ship.
As for the new stuff. I liked the ambition cards, especially how they gave a direction/focus.
The core worlds certainly aided in making the outer rim smaller, and quicker to navigate from one end to the other.
In the end we ended our game not because of a winner but due to running out of time.
Although Shane and myself both had two ambition tokens on our cards, I had nine fame to his eight. So I claimed the victory. Another half hour or two turns I’d have won normally.
“It’s been a hard day’s night And I’ve been workin’ like a dog It’s been a hard day’s night I should be sleepin’ like a log” Beetles, Hard Day’s Night
Another week of nights, that was topped off with an eleven hour shift. Oh and a double sausage egg McMuffin on the way home (I deserved a treat for doing that).
So my first of two days off was spent mostly sleeping, but also in the evening playing Tapestry.
There had been two previous attempts to get Tapestry to the table but you know life likes to throw a spanner in the works from time to time.
Tapestry has been one of the more polarising Stonemaier games. But I like it as do the folks I play it with. Which is all that matters.
We were going to be playing Tapestry with both expansions Plans and Ploys, plus Arts & Architecture. Basically all in.
I really do like what the expansions bring to the table to Tapestry. In the case of Plans and Ploys, landmark cards, and more of everything else. And in Arts & Architecture a fifth advancement track (Arts), masterpiece cards, inspiration tiles, advanced capital cities, plus more of everything else.
More of anything is great as it adds to the replay ability of a game. But the other new bits add to the game but with very little complication or game play overhead. Personally I’d include these all the time. Even with new players. Ok I wouldn’t give a new player an advanced capital city. But otherwise I see very little to no draw back to playing with everything possible.
With so many tapestry cards in the game now we went with a suggested house rule by Ben that if you had to draw a tapestry card you drew two, choose one and discarded the other.
Also during setup I dealt out four civilisation cards to everyone to choose one from. Also for the same reasons as the house rule we went with above.
The following are the civilisations that we ended up going with, along with the drawn capital city and landmark card.
We also used the civilisation adjustments as given in the Arts & Architecture rules booklet.
Civilization Adjustments Used
Which meant Ben’s Historians were starting fifteen points down.
I’d never played Futurists before. So it was an interesting experience starting on the second era of all the advancement tracks.
With the civilisation adjustment I started with only two extra resources, not four.
With my advanced moves costing an extra resource to everyone else it meant I was going to my second and third income phase a lot earlier than everyone else.
But on the plus side I got an early mastery card and inspiration tile.
Luckily on my later turns during my third and fourth era I was able to generate more resources and do more.
Once again I did seem to focus on exploration and getting into space. Placing a tile did get me a resource. Which I needed to generate as my turns were more expensive.
My fourth era saw my spacefaring futurists turn their attention earthwards again and becoming expansionists with their plans grabbing territory. This enabled me to finally complete my landmark card. Plus using warplanes enabled me to capture the centre tile and get my second achievement. My first being reaching the end of the exploration track.
I did take the fifth and final income phase first setting the score that everyone else had to beat. A turn later Charlene did the same. It was very nerve racking as she clocked up the points getting closer and closer. In the end I had a waver thin lead of two points.
A couple of turns later Julie joined us in doing her fifth and final income phase.
More worryingly Ben was still on his third era! That’s two income phases of scoring. We all watched as he did his fourth income phase closing the points gap. He then started to “beautiful mind” his final era with the aid of his mentat (oops wrong game) Charlene to maximise his points. The gap closed a little bit more.
Then Ben went to his final income phase. That was enough to smash the total I’d set to win.
Our final Civilizations
Final Scores
What a great game of Tapestry. Loved the whole experience. Played with three lovely friends. There was a little banter. Heck Ben and Charlene have even been elevated to named players in the bgstat app now!
A great evening of gaming.
I did buy the stl files for some bases to all the landmark miniatures and asked Colin if he’d print them for me. Which he is doing. Sadly these were not ready for this game. But next time.
A 3D printer project for Tapestry!
The advantage of having these will be that with these on each landmark miniature when placed on the capital city they will occupy the correct number of squares.
I can’t imagine once fitted I’d remove them. So the lovely inserts that currently come with the game and expansions might become redundant as I believe they then won’t fit.
A third post on the Switch port of the classic video game Portal. What have you all done to deserve such punishment?
If you are just joining us in this self inflicted madness you can read the last postwhere I start to look at the Switch version, or the very first post of ramblings down memory lane.
More examples of the environment telling the story
I love the little touches scattered throughout the game such as the radio that plays the “Still Alive” music, or the humorous graffiti. Yes I’ve mentioned this previously. But these little touches that you are left to discover are such a great example of using the environment to help tell the story.
Is the game too short? It’s certainly one of the criticisms I’ve read recently when I was checking facts. Back when I first played the game I don’t remember feeling that it was.
But how do I feel about the length of the game now? I’m currently on test chamber eighteen as I write this third post. With nineteen test chambers plus two “levels” in total. You could say I’m almost finished playing the game.
I have to admit I’m a little surprised I’ve progressed so quickly through the game. Admittedly some of the early test chambers are very short and quick to complete.
Then again I haven’t been rushing to complete the game. I’ve been savouring my time playing it. Especially as my play sessions have been snippets grabbed here and there.
But Jeff after seeing me bang on about Portal bought it on Steam, and completed it the morning of purchase. Whilst his son has bought the Switch version and done the same.
This kind of took me aback a little that they completed it so quickly.
So there is no denying that Portal is a short game. Whether it’s too short is very subjective. I can understand players wanting more.
The game leaves you desiring more.
But I’d argue it’s better it leaves you feeling this than over staying it’s welcome.
Besides in the Switch version we have the bonus test chambers. Which adds another fourteen test chambers to solve. Plus for those curious or addicted to the game, you can replay it with the designer commentary.
Are these enough to answer the criticism?
For me the game is the perfect length to tell what story the game has. I think from the story point of view there is only so much foreshadowing etc that you can give. I think things would start to feel stretched, even forced if told over more “levels”.
Plus I don’t think that the story is strong enough to support being told over more levels. But I’ll look into the story in the next post!
