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.

Friday evening once again saw The Luxe hosting The Fenland Gamers. Once again the evening was well attended. In fact if there hadn’t been a couple of last minute dropouts due to life stuff, we would have been up to three tables and our best ever attended session.

Before hand I had put a call out for interest in playing Civilization A New Dawn (CAND) with the Terra Incognita (TI) expansion. It would be tight but it should be playable in the time we usually have for a game night.

As normal I got to The Luxe ahead of time to get the tables set up, and because it was a “big” game I was playing start setting up the board.

Luckily I have organised my copy of CAND so that everything each player needs (other than choosing a civilization) is in one bag. It speeds things up both setting up and tearing down.

As a group we decided to choose our civilisations randomly from new ones in the TI expansion.

Then it was time to go over the rules. It wasn’t the best explanation, I was rusty (nearly 3 years since I last played it) and combat was left until one of us needed to do it.

TI changes things up pretty drastically for CAND. From setting up the board, introduction of fortresses and the objective cards related to them, exploring, districts, armies and combat, unique civilisation focus cards, new event dial, extended focus bar and government tiles. Oh and nearly forgot a fifth player (which should only be used with the expansion).

I enjoyed CAND. It did give that civ like experience in a streamlined game. And I really loved the focus track. However! With the addition of TI CAND gets taken to a new level for me. Spoiler alert, I won’t be playing CAND without the expansion. Yes it’s that good.

The unique civilisation focus cards make each civilisation feel even more unique than they already are. I love the growing map from exploration (something I forgot in game I could do). Fortresses were interesting. I liked that controlling them were victory conditions that if you lost control meant you lost that victory point. Which is the opposite to the other victory conditions, which once gained you don’t lose. So the fortresses become ways to deny an opponent from winning.

I liked the addition of armies and the tweaks to combat. It just felt better. It’s certainly an improvement. A big improvement. The government tiles are a nice addition, allowing a focus card with one on to be activated earlier but act as if it was one or two spaces more advanced depending on the tile. Districts is another great addition and can be very powerful when activated.

Naturally the event dial has changed to cater for the additions to the game. I also like how now when the appropriate space is reached on the event dial wonders get a trade token placed on them. This acts as a reduction to the cost of buying the wonder. When a second trade token will be placed on a wonder all tokens are removed off the wonder and it is discarded, and the one underneath revealed. I love how this means the wonder trade row does not remain static and stale.

As you can see from the photo above (I played red) I was cut off from everyone else. My path blocked by a fortress and a city-state. I failed on two or three attempts to capture the fortress (bad die rolls). My wagons couldn’t get passed the city-state. You can see why I’m kicking myself after the fact about forgetting to explore.

However despite not achieving a single objective and coming last I still had an enjoyable game. Jeff won. His civilisation ability would have been perfect for where I was on the board.

As is now the new normal for these club posts I end with a couple of photos taken by Jonathan.

Looking forward to our monthly meet up this coming Wednesday.