#RPGaDAY2022 Intro

#RPGaDAY2022

It’s that time of year again where I spam you with badly written posts about RPGs based on a daily theme.

I nearly forgot all about it (again).

But a day late is better than never or months later.

Below are the planned themes everyone will be sharing about this year.

#RPGaDAY2022 Themes taken from https://www.autocratik.com/2022/07/announcing-rpgaday2022-in-august.html

Don’t forget people will be creating around these themes in many many different ways. Doing a search on the various social media platforms or just your favourite ones for the hashtag should reveal a wealth of amazing content.

As per usual for me, my participation in this annual event will be via posts on here.

Sadly for you. But lucky for me. I only have one day to catch up with. Which means today will be a very heavy post day for me.

So I better get catching up. See you in the next post.

July 2022 Gaming Stats

by the numbers, gaming stats, stats

I know a couple of days late.

But still better late than never.

Besides I have a great excuse.

No really I do.

I’ve been working, and I’m really tired!

Oh on the life front some brief news before giving you those delicious stats to pour over.

I was offered and accepted the job at the other store. The higher ups just need to workout between them when I can transfer over. As you might guess I’m rather happy about this.

Now on with the show.

The Top 9 Games I Played in July

Now for the stats.

Bgstats for July 2022

Finally the progress I’ve made on one or two of the challenges.

Gaming challenges progress

Same again next month?

Walk space toaster

Game day

The last time, in fact the only time, I got Battlestar Galactica (BSG) the boardgame to the table was back in 2017.

So it was long overdue a return to the table.

The driving force for getting BSG to the table this time was a request by Colin on the Fenland Gamer discord server that he’d like to try the game.

I have a copy, it’s on my big game challenge, so I setup an event to play BSG along with the Pegasus expansion.

In the run up to last Saturday (our chosen day of play) I sleeved the cards in the game, and purchased a 3ft by 3ft starfield art neoprene playmat.

Obviously I wanted to protect my copy of BSG (you should Google how much this out of print game goes for), and these were the measures I’ve put in place to do that. The playmat will also be used with Xia and Star Wars Outer Rim. The starfield pattern will be a great back drop to those games, plus protect the game boards.

Whilst setting up before the others arrived I got distracted by a full English breakfast for my lunch. But still I had the majority of the setup done before players started arriving.

I had been expecting seven of us in total to be playing. Which would mean we would be playing with the Cylon Leader variant of the game. However as with all things in life, stuff happens, and seven became five.

The plan for this game with the Pegasus expansion was never to use the New Caprica part of the expansion. I may play a game of BSG with it at some future point in time. However the majority of the games will be with just the Pegasus side of things. Which doesn’t add too much more to the game overhead wise. You get more of everything else. More choice.

So which characters did we choose? We went with the following:

  • Colin – ‘Chief’ Galen Tyrol
  • Marcin – Gaius Baltar (President) cylon
  • Syringa – Karl ’Helo’ Agathon cylon
  • Diego – Kara ’Starbuck’ Thrace / Lee ’Apollo’ Adama
  • Me – Helena Cain (Admiral)

Setup complete it was time to try and get Galactica to Kobold and throw a cylon or two into the airlock.

Galactica was soon surrounded by cylon basestars, raiders, and heavy raiders, whilst avoiding ever escalating crisis.

Apparently wanting to use my characters once per game ability of doing a blind jump (as long as the distance travelled is six or less) to escape an early cylon attack marked me out as a cylon!

Gaius wasn’t using his Quorum cards, so I instigated an election and had Helo installed as President instead.

Gaius took this loss of power badly and plotted away to regain it.

In the meantime as revenge Gaius tried to unsuccessfully remove Cain as Admiral. Whilst Cain returned the favour of failing to force Gaius out of the airlock.

However once the second loyalty cards had been dealt out, Gaius used his once per game ability to look at every players loyalty. He knew who the cylons were.

With that knowledge Gaius advised Cain to throw Starbuck out the airlock. To be fair Starbuck had been acting suspiciously. The vote did not go well for Starbuck, who took a walk in to space without a space suit.

Sadly Starbuck was not a cylon, and moral took a hit onboard Galactica.

Apollo stepped up to try and fill the shoes left by Starbuck.

After Apollo got Cain thrown in the brig. Helo took over command of the fleet.

But Helo had a short spell in command before Apollo wrestled command away from him. Followed by grabbing the Presidency. Were we seeing the start of a new dictatorship.

A missed guided dictatorship that still had cylons sabotaging things. And to cap to things off cylons had boarded Galactica wrecking havoc.

Eventually Helo and Gaius (just confirming what Cain had been telling them ever since being tricked into killing Starbuck) revealed themselves as cylons to finish off the downfall of Galactica.

It was close, Galactica only had to make its final jump to Kobold to win. But the cylons managed to ware down the ships resources to secure a cylon victory.

We had a blast. Lots of banter.

I really mustn’t leave it so long between plays.

However before it does get back to the table Xia and The Thing need some loving.

The expected call about the job never happened. So I assumed I hadn’t got it. Best prepare for the worst. It did take the shine off such a great afternoons gaming.

Devil in the Fenland Capital

Fenland Gamers, game night

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.

So tired

Uncategorized

It’s been a long and crazy nine days of work.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel.

I have two days off after today.

Two days of gaming.

I’m so excited about it.

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.

We go again

Uncategorized

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”.

A thought on the Hecata Deck

Game day, Rivals, Vampire the Masquerade Rivals, vampire the masquerade: rivals

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.

Wiener, wiener wiener, wiener wiener

Big Game Saturdays, Game day, game of thrones

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.

Keep rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, rollin’

Fenland Gamers, game night

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.

Wait what happened to the cake?

still alive

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.