Last night saw me staying up way past my bedtime playing boardgames! Oh what a naughty stop out I was.

Ok let me explain.

Now that for the foreseeable future I have gainful employment which requires me to start at 5am (or 7am on a Sunday). As you can imagine I go to sleep around 7pm (Nico and Loki permitting!). Which coincidentally was the start time of our gaming session last night. But careful planning meant I knew I didn’t have to be up before the crack of dawn, and in fact could sleep in.

All I had to worry about was not falling asleep at the gaming table. After all with Jonathan and Jeff my opponents for the evening who knows what they would have been egged on to do by Nathan.

Our game for the evening was Tinners’ Trail. And like every learning game and first plays we do, we threw caution to the wind, ignored common sense, good practice, and read the rulebook at the table for the very first time.

Look when we read the rulebook out loud at the table, this is no Friends Reunion table reading of an old episodes script. It’s a hard thing to do. You are reading aloud, possibly paraphrasing, trying to parse what you are reading, trying to listen to the others at the table, answer questions. You get the picture. It’s like a Jim Davidson comedy routine waiting to happen.

But sometimes this is the only way we can do it. We let people know in advance it’s a learning game and all that implies. It’s why usually it’s a separate session from a regular club night (although as you know that’s not always the case). Those of us attending accept this and any other caveats.

Onto the game itself Tinners’ Trail.

Basically the game is about mining enough resources to sell, and then with that money buy victory points. And you do that over four rounds.

But it’s how you get those resources and how much they are worth that’s the interesting bit.

I decided very successful to drain Jonathan and Jeff of their opening cash and action points during round one so that I could pick up mining areas cheaply, and boost my cash balance. So I used my cards to help bluff and put my plan into action. Another element of this plan was to push up the bidding so the winner spent more. It’s that push your luck element of knowing when to drop out before getting stung paying over the odds for a rubbish plot. Which Jonathan did fall into the trap of once or twice, as did Jeff.

By the end of the first round I had no cards left. It wasn’t a drawback for the later rounds. Or it was, or should have been but I wasn’t punished for it. This is quite an aggressive thing to do that could back fire. Luckily in this instance it didn’t.

I like how the price for the two resources is determined at the start of each round by rolling three d6 dice (although they were not proper numbered d6). Which means that it could possibly be more practical focusing on mining one resource over another because it’s worth lots more.

Recently games that have a fixed number of rounds like Lost Ruins of Arnak or even Wingspan have left me feeling I’d like one or two more rounds. But Tinners’ Trail felt just the right length.

What you do get left wanting more of each round is more action points to spend so you can do more. But I also like that whole you have ten action points, here are the actions you can do and the action point cost of each. It makes you focused and trying to work out the optimum order to do them in.

I also like how resources within an area you are mining are limited. So you have to manage when the optimum time to mine them is based on their market cost.

Naturally there were one or two misplays and/or mistakes. But that’s something you accept is going to happen in a learning game. After all it’s a learning game!

But the important thing is I won. Quite comfortably in the end.

Tinners’ Trail is an enjoyable game. I’d definitely play it again. Would I be as successful next time? Who knows.

And before we finish with the last bit of the post the photo by Jonathan from the evening. I’d like to say a big big thank you to our hosts The Luxe for being so splendid.

I think if my maths is correct (and I’m sure Jonathan will confirm or point out my glaring mistake) we had 11 at last nights Friday gaming shindig. Which potentially makes it the best attended gaming session so far.

However being victims of our own success and our hosts cutting down on the available area we could set up and play in (they had cordoned off an area for their Christmas tree and seasonal decorations) things were a little cramped around our two tables. Luckily we didn’t need the third table up as that would have been an issue.

We settled on two gaming tables of a group of five and a group of six.

Jeff, Nathaniel, Rachel, Marcin and myself made up one table. So whilst the others played some game or other on their table, we played King of Tokyo Dark Edition.

I love the art in this new edition of the game. But then again I liked the art of the original version. Although obviously the colour palette used in the all new art work is darker.

The new wickedness mechanic is an interesting addition. It adds a new way to power up during the game. I didn’t manage to get one of the new wickedness tiles. But the ones Rachel and Nathaniel got looked like pretty cool bonuses to have.

The components in this edition live truly up to the deluxe description. The lightning bolt shape of the energy cube, the shaped tokens, the embossed box.

It’s a really nice edition of the game, and it’s still fun to play. But you have to like take that games, the Yahtzee mechanic, and player elimination.

In our game Marcin managed to get a points victory by hitting that magic number of 20.

Our second game of the evening was a learning game of Vampire the Masquerade Vendetta. And I mean learning game as in a live table reading of the rulebook as we set up and tried learning the game.

Vendetta is at its heart an area control game. But with a twist! Each player gets a random vampire clan that has a unique deck. And although everyone starts off with the same two named cards. What they actually do is different for each player. Then at the start of each of the three game rounds you draw two cards from your deck, select one to keep and one to put at the bottom of your deck. So slowly over the rounds your hand size gets bigger giving you more options each round.

There is however a catch! In each round you don’t get to play all your cards. You are always left with one card in hand. Which is cool as it means your opponents aren’t sure exactly which cards you have played. Especially if you also played cards face down on your turn. The bluffing you can do in this game is incredible.

I love all this. But also how you build up a picture of what cards your opponents have, but you never have a complete picture as there is always that new card you have no idea about.

I think a player aid would have been useful for players to remind them of the round structure. But that’s a minor quibble.

As you can see I ended up Prince of the City.

Breaking from the new normal of finishing the post off with some of Jonathan’s photos from the evening (I’m not sure he took any) I’ll finish with an update on the progress made on the three challenges I set my self.

UPDATE 22/11/21: The natural order has been restored! Plus there is a great comment from Jonathan on this post too.

Our second monthly meet-up since club gaming sessions started back up happened last night.

Earlier it looked in doubt whether Jonathan or I could make it! For me it was dependent on whether mum felt up to dog sitting. She had been looking after them for most of the day while I was at work. Oh yeah I have a part time job that I started this week.

Luckily things worked out for both of us to be able to attend. Unusually for me I was the last one to arrive at The Luxe. Despite being on time. I’d been caught up with phone calls with family and friends, plus catching up with a neighbour after delivering a parcel that had been left with mum for them. So I wasn’t late, just not my usual early self.

There were 5 at the table and it was decided to play Wingspan “fully loaded” (all the expansions). I know Jonathan and I had both said we’d never play Wingspan at its full player count again. But here we were setting up for 5 players.

After a rules rundown for Colin who hadn’t played the game before, we started play.

I’d forgotten how long a max player count of Wingspan can take. I think including setup (which is pretty quick), rules explanation, the total time playing was a tad over 3 hours.

To be fair it didn’t seem that long.

But it’s funny to think it was only the previous Friday that we did a 4 player Civilization A New Dawn game in less time than this fully loaded 5 player game of Wingspan. I think Tapestry was around this play time as well. However Jonathan won’t play those games. The theme, and type of game aren’t ones he enjoys. And the duration of last nights game I suspect pushed the limits for Jonathan.

It certainly did for me, but for other reasons. I’d told mum I’d only be a couple hours! So I did have to apologise when I got home. The saving grace was she could have an easy day to day and not get up early.

The final scores are below. As you can see it was a very comprehensive win for Diego. And done in such style by achieving the holy grail of our two achievements for playing Wingspan of filling up all the spaces on the player board. But not only that Diego got the other achievement as well of getting a score over a hundred. And I think this was also the first physical game to break that barrier. So bravo Diego.

And finally we finish with Jonathan’s photos of the evening.

It was a great evening of gaming, great banter, great fun, with great hosts.