Jonathan has bought a trophy for our “annual” Bohemian Villages competition that is held on Christmas Eve.
Finally our friendly rivalry over this game goes to a new level of bragging rights.
As current champion I am the bookies favourite to retain the title.
Naturally, and you have been warned, there may be more smack talk as we get nearer to the day.
Friday evening saw some Commander action taking place. This time it was against some ex-students.
The first game we played saw me take my Eldrazi deck out for a spin. But it was too slow, and none of us could stop Bob doing the inevitable and defeat us all. Once he had his Emrakul, The Aeons Torn out it was game over. I wasn’t finding any answers. I definitely wasn’t getting to my big Eldrazi hitters. All we could do was say “gg” through gritted teeth.
Our second game saw my Ur-dragon deck hit the table. Two cool things happened in this game. Firstly I got to play Tiamat. Which is an obnoxious card to play. Being able to get from your deck your five most nastiest dragons is obscene. It puts a big target on you as your opponents know what you just got.
Secondly despite having over 100 life I was still able to have my dragon horde swoop in and kill Bob. Giving double strike to them all really helped. Sadly only 20 points of that damage was Commander damage. Despite me trying to find a way to get that final single point of damage.
Taking Bob out meant I was also dead. But there was nothing I could do to stop the silly number of hydra tokens that were coming my way.
It was a fun evening of Commander. But my losing streak was continuing.
Saturday saw not only Diego playing Tapestry but Jonathan joined us as well.
Both had not played before. But that didn’t scare me off from teaching the game with Plans and Ploys (P&P), and the Arts and Architecture (A&A) expansions thrown in to the mix.
I had rigged the tech and tapestry decks so that we got to see the new cards from the newest expansion A&A. Plus we only chose civilisations from the two expansions. I also didn’t use the advanced capital city mats from A&A. However I did shuffle up both sets of landmark cards from the expansions before drawing four of them.
Even taking into account the above setting up, plus the addition of the fifth track and masterpiece cards. I don’t think with the expansions added into the mix there was too much additional stuff, or over complication to the game to make it too much for new players to take in.
I specifically advanced on the new Arts track because I wanted to see it in use, and try the new masterpiece cards.
I have to say I liked the new masterpiece cards. But not the card size! Can’t sleeve them unless I cut some sleeves down.
Loved being able to use the inspiration tiles to upgrade one of the resource tracks.
I was already a fan of the landmark cards after they were introduced in P&P. So having more of them is just great.
Another thing I like about the arts track is that you choose which type of income building you move to your capital city. It made hitting the landmark card trigger I had very easy.
I need to sleep on the above and get some more games in so I can expand on those very basic initial thoughts above. At the moment there is a germ of a thought that the above is too powerful. But is it? Does it balance out if others are also doing it?
I think this was the most I’d done completing rows and columns in my capital city. It felt pretty cool. It certainly looked pretty cool.
I knew Diego would like the game. But would Jonathan?
He did indeed like it. And that’s despite getting salty over the dystopia tapestry card I played allowing me to grab any landmark on the landmark board. Naturally I went with the tallest (on the off chance there was a tie for first place).
Plus the end of turn trigger for one of his landmark cards was an issue. Jonathan will explain better than me in the comments his issue with this. For me it was not an issue.
Anyway here are the final scores showing I had indeed broken the week long losing streak I’d been on.
You know how this post is ending.
In the last couple of days Renegade have been taken to task over on their Vampire the Masquerade Rivals discord server for (and I’m paraphrasing here) not showing much love to the official website and forums (there was other issues with the card database but I think that’s a subject for another post). Which in turn gives a misleading impression about the game being unsupported.
It’s fair criticism.
Now we know that Renegade staff are busy folks. They probably wear many different job hats. The world wide shipping problems can only be adding to their work load. Plus add on top the ever changing, fluid even, global event and all the curve balls that throws at businesses and it’s staff. Life at Renegade (and many other companies) must be stressful and interesting at best.
Before I go off on a “rant” I would like to praise Renegade for how accessible they are on discord and twitch. They really do engage with the community on those platforms really well.
However. There is always a however. Not everyone is on those two platforms. Despite being on the other platforms, users of those platforms are left feeling at best second class and at worst ignored. Considering one of those platforms is their own website and forums, it’s shocking.
Let’s face it new and prospective players to the game their first port of call on line isn’t the games discord server. It’s more likely the official website (or bgg), which has been pointed out above that impression isn’t good.
For me the template or example websites Renegade should be looking at are the Wizard of the Coasts ones for Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons, plus the D&D Beyond site.
Here are the sort of things I’d like to see going up on a more active official website.
Granted this sort of thing is a lot of work. But it’s work that can be shared around. It’s work that the community manager could be co-ordinating, and creating some of.
Why some-one is not actively monitoring and responding on the official forums is beyond me. If they can do this for discord, then not doing their own forums is shocking, and they have no excuse. You either up the game on the forums or close them down and direct players to discord.
In an ideal world I’d like to see Renegade streaming Vampire Wednesdays to Twitch and YouTube simultaneously (it is possible, others do it). Or have the Twitch feed uploaded to YouTube within 24 hours of streaming (something that rarely happens). Plus actually interacting with comments left on their videos. Do you know how quickly the Facebook live videos Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games streams get put up on YouTube? Granted they are unedited. But usually within one or two hours.
This isn’t a job application. Although for myself and many in the Rivals community it’d be a dream job. It’s an open plea to Renegade to up their game for a game I and many others love playing. It’s a call to action for Renegade to engage with players on other platforms. To treat them the same as those on discord and twitch.
Hopefully they will listen.
Last night was the monthly club meet up for December.
Unlike the Friday session numbers which have been incredible (for us) this get togethers attendance was on par with previous ones.
We split into two groups of three. Which saw Gavin, Colin and Jonathan playing Ticket to Ride, followed by Love Letter: Batman.
Whilst Julie, Macin and myself played a game Macin bought along Adrenaline.
The boardgame stats app reminded my it was way back in 2017 when I last played Adrenaline.
It was nice to have this back to the table.
Naturally a refresher was needed on the rules. But things soon came back to me, and we were all running around, shooting each other with cool weapons, picking up items, and trying to get the killing shot.
Adrenaline is as fun as I remember, and I’m glad Macin bought his copy along.
This morning on my day off I got to play a game of Vampire the Masquerade Rivals with Diego.
Today it was the two new clans from the new Wolf and Rat expansion doing battle.
Diego chose the nosferatu deck, whilst I went with gangrel.
I got off to a good start but seemed to run out of steam in the middle to late game.
Although I did burn one of Diego’s vampires. Which was pretty cool.
However the nosferatu agenda is pretty powerful, and soon allows them to catch up any lead others might have, and then pull ahead.
After being beaten by Diego we had enough time to do a learning game of Fields of Green (the game I bought off Gavin last night).
I got Fields of Green over Amongst the Stars because of the theme. With the farming theme I’m more likely to get it to the table with Jonathan. He doesn’t do sci-fi (amongst other themes).
I really liked this engine builder.
A two player game is slightly different to a regular three or four player game. So I’d like to try the game at its higher player count.
It plays quite quickly really for two players. But with the higher player count a draft mode is added at the start of each round. Which I’m sure will extend the play time.
But there is a lot to like about the game, but I’ll talk more about that stuff after the next play.
In the meantime the final scores below will confirm that I’m on a three game losing streak at the moment.
Ok having played a new to me game my challenge stats have been updated. So let’s share that progress.
Finally it’s time to end on the usual high note of Jonathan’s photos.
Below is a very short video I posted on Instagram today of a MASSIVE misplay in a game of Star Realms with my friend Freddy.
Instead of just smashing face and claiming victory I just…
Well I can’t explain it apart from I’m tired, and was just in autopilot mode taking my turns in the games I’m playing.
Look it’s been a looong day ok?
Just saviour the moment of this epic misplay below. If I get another turn and win there is no justice in the world. I don’t deserve to win after this.
I hope you had a chuckle at my expense. It’s the least I deserve.
UPDATE: 2 hours after posting!
I did in fact get another go! And this time I was ruthless and finished the game off.
So my epic misplay that we all had a good roflmao moment with went unpunished.
Ok here we go.
Once again just the gaming stats for last month taken from the boardgame stats app I use.
Enjoy.
Plus how I’m doing with the challenges I set up.
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.
Last night saw a Commander session at The Luxe with myself, Diego and new member Sam battling it.
Whilst Diego was playing with some of Sam’s decks. I played my Ur-Dragon deck that I hadn’t played in a long long time.
Some new cards had been added during that time, such as Tiamat, and one or two Nicol Bolas cards. So the deck was long overdue an outing.
The first game of the evening was over pretty quickly. I hadn’t hit my land drops, didn’t get to any of the mana rocks or ramp. Diego was doing much better with the enchantments deck he was playing, however neither of us had any answers to the problems Sam was presenting on the battle field. Especially when damage was getting doubled.
I stuck with the dragons for game two. Sam went to a new deck, and Diego stuck with the enchantments (I really should have made a note of the Commanders, next time).
By all rights I should have lost this game. However thanks to mercy or pity (take your pick which) from Sam I didn’t. I was down to 8 life. Sam needed help taking on Diego. So a deal was made. I wouldn’t attack him if he let me live.
That bought me time to get pieces into place and get dragons on the battlefield. My dragons would be coming in with haste and dealing damage based on the number of dragons I controlled to a player or Planeswalker. So when Sam finished off Diego I was able to play some dragons and chip away at his life, and then swing in for lethal and victory.
The final game of the evening I broke out the new Eldrazi deck. Sam and Diego swapped decks also. They both had life gain decks. Both adding counters to creatures. But the one Diego was playing was generating counters and tokens like crazy. On top of all that life gain.
I was going under the radar for much of the early game. I had plenty of land but no cheap creatures to get out. Rounds 6 and 7 were the earliest I was going to get anything out. Field of the Dead was going to help me get some 2/2 zombie blockers out.
Despite drawing Helm of the Host turn 2 I sat on it for most of the game. It might have given a big hint to my game plan and put a target on my back.
I was forced to play my Commander so that I could trash my land that enabled me to fetch a colourless creature. This deck isn’t built around playing the Commander. It’s a nice +1/+1 effect if out. But not a crucial part of the plan. However as I said I was forced into this because Diego was getting out of hand, and his flyer with 19 counters on could kill me his next turn. So I went and got Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre and took it out. Diego swore he wasn’t going to do that, but attack Sam with it. But previous turns that creature had been used to attack me. I wasn’t convinced.
Some how I got another turn and that’s when I played Helm of the Host and attached it to Ulamog. The token then swung at Diego. It was pretty much my last act of the game. Diego crushed me on his turn.
It was then a battle of the life gain decks. Both Diego and Sam broke the 100 health barrier. Neither were showing signs of getting the killing blow. The film for the evening had ended and the poor staff of The Luxe were cleaning up. A draw was called.
It was a fun evening. Sam’s decks were awesome and scary at the same time. Especially the one Diego was playing at the end. Can’t wait to play some more Commander.
Life has changed a bit since Nan left us. I have a part time job now that sees me start work at 5am. But finishes midday (at the moment) which leaves me the rest of the day to be there for Mum. So you can imagine I’m pretty tired by the evening and usually asleep by 7pm!
This week has been particularly tiring as I worked what I dubbed the long week so that I could be around today when a second stair rail is fitted to Mums stairs to help her get up them.
So I’m pretty knackered. And it might be understandable why there has been no posts during the week.
Gaming wise obviously I’ve not played anything since last Friday. However there have been some arrivals.
Last weekend saw the arrival of the latest and second expansion, The Wolf and The Rat for Vampire the Masquerade (VtM) Rivals.
It’s arrival bought a new dilemma on how to store the game and both of its expansions. The core game box is no longer large enough to hold everything. So I started thinking about alternative storage solutions. High up on the possible solutions were the MtG storage boxes for cubes or lots of Commander decks. And that is an option I may eventually go for. However I decided to repurpose my quiver that was currently home to various rpg decks for the new home of my VtM Rivals cards.
There’s room for the third expansion (currently in production) so it’s bought me a little time before I have to get a second or alternative solution.
Naturally tokens for the game are kept separately now, and I need a folder to store the rulebooks. But that’s just how things are. Although I should look into some stickers to decorate the folder.
There was one hiccup with this preorder of the expansion. The promo Tamaska & General Flint Alt Art Cards were included. But the Victor Temple Promo card wasn’t. Apparently it hadn’t arrived in time to be sent out with the preorders. Which I’d argue that Renegade Studios knew and should have been proactive in letting customers know before shipping started. The promo will be sent out at a later date. So we will get it. But when, who knows? I’m more concerned that it will be packaged properly and not destroyed in the post. Plus this is extra expense for Renegade.
On Monday the first three organised play kits for VtM Rivals Season 1 arrived. I’ve not even opened the box for those yet. I suppose I should do just to check over the contents. Depending on how next weekends learning games go, I might be able to start to organise some events!
The start of the week saw the launch of an EU specific web store for Stonemaier Games. Which meant my Champion account was moved over to that web store, and all my orders will be through there now. And to celebrate its launch Jamey gave EU customers an extra 10% off if they used the provided promo code he emailed out.
Champion discount and a further 10% off! Ok the temptation was too great. Before I knew it the spiral bound version of the Scythe Complete Rulebook, some of the plastic token storage containers, and four of the double sided neoprene Wingspan player mats were in my shopping basket.
Why four mats and not five? I don’t intend to play Wingspan at five players ever ever again! Famous last words I know. But if I only have four player mats it’ll be hard to play at the higher count.
Yesterday also saw the arrival of another preorder. This one was for the Cyberpunk Red rpg.
Inside the package was the Cyberpunk Red Data Pack and Netrunning Deck. I’ll look at these in more depth in another post (possibly if I remember).
So that’s all the stuff that landed this week. Thanks to the randomness of the whole shipping crisis currently going on who knows when my preorders for the Arnak or Imperium expansions will appear. Potentially The One Ring second edition Kickstarter might arrive before Christmas too.
Anyway it’s a Commander session this evening that I’m very much looking forward too.
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.
