Last night was one of the “every other Friday” nights for Fenland Gamers.

It was looking to be a very well attended evening. If the advanced maths were correct it was looking like twelve would be attending.

However reality, life and whatever else you can think of reduced that number down to six.

Although as the evening got underway we were not to know that. We thought it would be down to eight.

With Gavin drooling over the resin bloodbowl figures Colin had printed for him. Diego, Chris, Nino and myself started playing Libertalia.

For this game we used the stormy side of the game board.

I’d like to say I did a good job of explaining the rules but at best it was adequate. And that would be very generous describing it as so.

During the first voyage there were too many misplays that were my fault. An example of a major one being triggering the anchor abilities at the end of each day instead of at the end of the voyage. I don’t know why that was in my head that they did trigger them. But it was for whatever reason.

I won because of the tie break condition. But in reality it was a tainted win. The victory really should have been Diego’s by a country mile. He has the moral victory!

The next game we played was a six player game of Survive Escape from Atlantis.

Which meant reading very quickly the expansion rules.

I did a really shit job explaining the basic rules. No other way to describe it.

We forgot to put the squid out when a whale was added to the board. Not a big misplay. Just meant we never used the squid mini expansion.

I did get frustrated with a couple of the others during the game who insisted on reading what the red bordered tile did that they had just drawn, instead of rolling the dive dice and finishing their turn. And then reading the tile description. I didn’t hide that very well at all.

Despite the above everyone seemed to enjoy playing it.

I have to say I didn’t get much enjoyment out of last nights gaming session. Afterwards I felt down about it. Even this morning as I type this post I don’t feel any more positive about it.

It’s a combination of things about the evening I think.

The misplays during Libertalia upset me a little thinking about them.

Moving the wrong coloured counters, not seeing a word when reading card text. It’s easy to dismiss them at the time as mistakes. Let alone the anchor error.

I’m pretty sure others think I’m trying to pull a fast one during the game. But I’m not they are genuine errors made by whatever brain fart causes them to happen.

I’d like to say it’s just old age. But I’ve been doing that sort of thing all my life.

Last night there were too many happening early on in the game.

The poor attendance also got to me. Particularly the two that just didn’t say anything. Although one apparently did post rather late it turns out that they’d not be attending. That message wasn’t picked up until I got home.

It meant Gavin and Colin were kinda left out when we could have included them in the game of Libertalia, split into two groups, or played a different six player game.

Then there was the guilt trip I felt after Diego pointed out in a conversation with Gavin that we didn’t play any of the games he, Gavin and Colin had bought along. We just played my two games.

I know if everyone had turned up we would have had multiple games going on and they would have got games to the table.

But still there is no excuse for me “forcing” my games on them. I need to change and be more thoughtful of others and not so selfish.

I wasn’t on my A game last night. And it was bloody obvious to all and sundry.

At the moment I might step back from the fortnightly gaming, and have a little break from it. I’ll still organise adhoc sessions to play some of my bigger games. That’s if I can find others prepared to game with me.

As I said not feeling very positive about last night. That all might change between now and the next one.

But still all I can say about last night is the title of this blog post.

Last night was an adhoc gaming session to play Fields of Green that I had organised earlier in the week.

I like our new hosts, especially on the Friday evenings. I have tea with Mum before hand then have dessert (usually sticky toffee pudding with custard) at our hosts before the others turn up. Although others do also turn up and have food before hand as well.

Over at Sutton Bridge they have started three months of works (what exactly they are doing I have no idea) on the bridge, reducing it to a single lane.

The reason I’m mentioning this is despite being miles from Wisbech and Wisbech St Mary it did have a big impact on our gaming session!

Basically it meant lots more traffic going through Wisbech, so long queues. Plus the obvious long queues at the bridge itself, and rat runs. This meant that one or two attending were delayed by being caught up in this traffic chaos.

Three months of this.

Whilst waiting for those fighting their way through the traffic chaos Jonathan and I set up our respective games ready to start upon arrival.

In the meantime with Julie there as well we played a couple of games of Batman Love Letter.

I don’t know what weird alternative universe we went to. But Jonathan won both games. The first without Julie and myself taking a point. Jonathan never does this well at Love Letter.

Once Jeff and Mandy arrived, and had eaten. Julie, Jeff, Mandy and myself played a four player game of Fields of Green. Whilst Jonathan and Colin played a two player game of Railways of the World using the Mexico map.

Playing Fields of Green at the full player count meant we were drafting cards the regular way of choosing a card, and passing the remaining cards to our left or right depending on the round direction. I like this mechanic. It’s used well here. It has that 7 Wonders feel, but with farming!

It was close whether the table we were using was going to be big enough. It barely was. This game takes up lots of space.

One change I made from the rules was instead of a pile of equipment tiles on the table to draw from I used a spare Spirits of the Forest tile bag I had instead. I think this works better. Especially with limited table space.

We also for this game used the rulebooks suggestions on which piles and number of cards to draw each round. A nice touch for players new to the game. Although I had played once before, the other three hadn’t. So it made sense to do this.

As you can see I narrowly didn’t come last. Jeff and Mandy drew on points. So it was to the tie breakers to see if we could determine a winner. The first tie breaker was most locations in their farm. Which Mandy had. So was declared the victor. That’s back to back victories in the two games I’ve played with Mandy now.

Finally, one of these posts wouldn’t be one of these posts without the photographic talents of Jonathan closing it off. Here’s Johnny…

About two weeks ago Jonathan sought players to play Search for Planet X.

I was one of those that were interested in trying the game.

With enough people interested in playing a four player game a date and time was set, tutorials and apps linked to.

Last night was the agreed day for playing the game.

Jonathan and I met up about an hour earlier than the planned time to play the two player game Mr Jack.

I’d never played Mr Jack before.

We played the game twice. In the first game I was the detectives trying to identify and capture Mr Jack played by Jonathan. Then in the second game the roles were reversed and Jonathan was trying to capture my Mr Jack.

I really liked this two player deduction game. And not just because I won both games.

Our first game was longer than the second. But I did manage to capture Mr Jack. Whilst I won the second game with a great bit of misdirection and had Jonathan arresting the wrong character.

I do like how which character is Mr Jack is selected randomly at the start of each game by drawing a character tile.

I like the way actions/characters are chosen each round, and how it flips each round. So the detectives may choose first at the start of a round, then Mr Jack chooses twice, leaving the detectives one tile to play. Then it gets reversed next round. This is so tactical, especially if you need a particular character and you don’t get a chance to chose it before the other player. This happened twice in our second game. Jonathan kept choosing the character I needed to get an even earlier win!

I like how the number of lamp posts gets reduced during the early rounds. It makes the deduction harder. As apart from the Sherlock character and Watson they are the only way to eliminate suspects.

Yeah a nice game. Could easily see it added to the collection. It’s gone on the wish list.

After a small delay to the agreed time for playing the Search for Planet X we started playing.

Another game I really liked.

Now we know where I stand on games that are only playable with an app. I’ve rant lots about it in the past. I’ll happily play them but I won’t own them! Unless there is a way to play without the app.

Search for Planet X currently doesn’t play without an app. It works really well with the app. The app is put to great use providing clues.

This is a logic game pure and simple. Using clues given to you in the app based on the type of action you performed you deduce which sector Planet X is. You can see the starting clues I had in the photo above.

During our game I knew the planet could be in one of two sectors. After Jonathan revealed where the dwarf planet was in a peer review I knew exactly where it was. I just wasn’t sure what was on one side of it.

For me this game was a game of misplays! Well two to be precise. The first was playing the correct tile in the wrong sector. I misread my sheet. That cost me 4 points.

The second was forgetting I had to say what was either side of the sector with Planet X in. Which meant I was guessing one sector. That got compounded by forgetting there were only two empty sectors, and I’d already identified them! So there couldn’t have been a third.

That gave Jonathan a window to guess himself. Well he was kinda forced to. He knew I’d guess it my next turn. Luck was on his side. He guessed right.

Despite having worked out where Planet X was FIRST I came last. My mistakes were my undoing.

With the games played last night another two new to me games were added to the challenge.

I’m beginning to think I might have set the target for this challenge too low!

It’s insane or so I thought to have already played 13 new to me games in two months. I might have to revisit this and set a new larger target number.

If my fading memory hasn’t let me down I think I might have just looked at the last two years numbers before deciding on the target for this challenge.

Maybe I should have looked further back. But I think my thought process at the time was “who knows what this year will be like? The pandemic is still on-going.” So I decided to look at just the numbers for during the previous two year of the pandemic as my guideline.

I certainly think at the current rate of play the numbers I achieved in 2018/2019 are certainly achievable.

And here we are at the end of the post and the photos taken by Jonathan.