From time to time instead of writing a new post about something I’ve already written about I have been known to actually update the original post instead.
My post that shares some recent videos from Arcane Library and Sly Flourish about generating ideas for adventures using random tables is one such post. So if you want to see the update just click here.
As the above image demonstrates I did in fact cave and get Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons. I can’t wait to use it within my campaign. But first we need to get our sessions started again. No new date has been set yet!
In other news FFG in partnership with Dark Horse Comics are releasing a third art book in their series based on FFG intellectual property called The Art Of The Android Universe.
The Art of the Android Universe will be “showcasing the design and art from the hit table top games set within the Android Universe!”
Cool I’m a big fan of the Android universe. I have been ever since I first got into playing Android Netrunner. I just love this vision of a cyberpunk future that FFG have come up with.
This art book will be a great resource for GM’s wanting to run an adventure in the Android universe. I’m pretty sure it will compliment The Worlds of Android book very nicely as a source of inspiration.
The Art of the Android Universe is due out according to its Amazon UK page on the 16th December and will be £33.99.
EN Publishing have just announced that their license to publish 2000 A.D. related products is coming to an end.
No real reason is given in the announcement. However we can speculate as to why until the sun goes down and still not know the truth. So I’m not going to even try.
What I will say is that this is a bloomin shame. I really liked the WOIN system they based everything on. I loved that the source books followed major classic story arcs.
However you will still be able to buy the current 2000 A.D. related products until March 2022, remaining stock levels permitting of course. Plus from Dragonmeet time next month there will be a half price sale on the rulebook.
SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.
So this weekends planned session has been cancelled due to lack consensus as to which day it should be. At the moment no new date has been suggested or agreed on. Which is very frustrating.
I’ve not so subtly prodded the group in our Messenger group about this. So it’s wait and see to whether anyone or all of them will come to a date they all agree on.
I think I’m ready. I just need to go through the Lazy DM steps before hand.
I’m still dithering over whether Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons will be added to my library of D&D books. I know the adventurers have met the Red Rage of Mintarn. But do I plan for them to meet more dragons in the future? I certainly think they might have an encounter with a dragon turtle whilst at sea. And there is the germ of a plan for running the Jim Murphy Undead trap. Which will involve, possibly, an undead dragon skeleton. Just to make things interesting.
But do I need Fizban’s? Need? No. Would like? Possibly.
I’m sure I’ll get it. The question is just when.
In the meantime I’m left wondering if our campaign will manage to start again. I think it’ll be lucky if we do get a session before Christmas now. Then obviously the seasonal event kicks in which takes us into next year. Maybe I’m being too pessimistic and need to be more optimistic.
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.
Final scores
And finally we finish with Jonathan’s photos of the evening.
Jonathan’s photos
It was a great evening of gaming, great banter, great fun, with great hosts.
Since it has become possible to game in person again there have been more and more opportunities to get games and expansions bought during the lockdowns to the table.
A while back I did a post about what I had acquired during that period and looking forward to getting to the table. And I have managed to get some of those games to the table. Which the gallery clearly shows below. However there are still a few that have not been as lucky.
But I decided while starting this post to turn getting the games/expansions to the table as a challenge within the Board Game Stats app that I have been using for years now.
What shocked me whilst setting up the challenge was the number of games/expansions that found their way into my possession in that time! I’ve given myself a year to complete this challenge. One or two of them are big games that will be harder to get to the table and thus will need longer to plan for.
But I did setup a second challenge with a closer deadline to play 15 new-to-me games by the end of the year.
As a one off below is the complete list that makes up the pandemic challenge.
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.
Who got what civilisations
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.
The other table. Photos by Jonathan
Looking forward to our monthly meet up this coming Wednesday.
I should have posted about this a couple of days ago, but I’ve been concentrating on getting ready for an interview. Which went well, and means I now have gainful employment.
However it really hit home that Nan is no longer with us when I couldn’t share the good news with her. She was the first person I wanted to tell.
I start this Saturday.
Now onto the reason for this post. Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games has announced the second expansion for Tapestry called Arts and Architecture.
Image taken from the Stonemaier website
Over the next 2 weeks Jamey will be revealing details about the new expansion. The review embargo lifts on the 16th November. Then on the 1st December preorders open up.
This new expansion has been designed by Mike Young and Jamey Stonemaier.
So what does this new expansion contain? On the official web page it lists “new capital city mats, a new advancement track featuring new types of cards and tiles, plus more civilizations, tapestry cards, tech cards, and landmark miniatures/cards”.
In a recent live cast on Facebook Jamey confirmed that you can play with the new stuff without the 5th advancement track if so inclined. Any new cards that refer to it can be ignored, discarded, and then just draw a new card.
Photos taken from the Stonemaier Facebook page. Photos taken by Tim Chuon.
There is a new 20 sided science die to cater for the additional advancement track. As you can see in the photos above the new landmark models look amazing.
Those small purple cards are masterpiece cards and associated with the new advancement track. Sadly they are not a regular card size (by that I mean 63.5mm by 88mm) so until we know the dimensions (we will find out in the next design diary) we won’t know if we can sleeve them. I hope we can. I have all the other cards in the game sleeved. And when I find a way to sleeve the cities, civilisations and player boards I will be doing those too.
In the same live cast as mentioned above Jamey did say that a third expansion for Tapestry is dependent on how well this second expansion does. Going by the excitement of the Tapestry Facebook group it will be popular with the existing fan base. But generally expansions tend to sell a fraction of the base games numbers. In the past I’ve seen figures between 10 to 20% of the original games sales. I’m also not sure how well Tapestry has sold. I don’t think it has hit Scythe numbers, and definitely hasn’t got close to the heights of Wingspan. Tapestry has been a very strong marmite game with players. I fall into the love it camp, as do the two new players I introduced to the game last weekend. So I’m hoping that we do see a third expansion. But if not I’m content with what we have already.
You can find links to design dairies (as they are released), reviews, etc on the Stonemaier website HERE.
Well the plans for getting Tapestry and it’s expansion Plans and Ploys did change. One of the players had to drop out. We knew it was a possibility. One we hoped wouldn’t happen, but that’s life in the current world events. It was out of the control of everyone.
However as Confucius said ‘The green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm.’ a last minute plea for players was answered with a maybe. Our plan was still alive but we wouldn’t know until mid day if it would survive.
But survive it did, so Marcin, Julie and myself met at The Luxe to build our civilisations and see which one would be the victorious.
I had one aim in this game. I wanted to get into space. I’d never done it before and it was something cool I wanted to do. Even if doing so meant I didn’t win.
Naturally the Plans and Ploys adds more tapestry cards, more civilisations, more technologies, more tiles. And that sort of stuff is always welcome. However the new landmark cards I liked. All three of us got our personal landmarks out during the game. Which was cool. I liked how they gave you something to possibly aim for.
I think the title of this blog post and the Confucius quote best describes my approach to Tapestry when playing. You need to be able to adapt to changing circumstances, mainly from the tapestry cards you draw or play. At one point I was planning to play one tapestry card on my income phase however because of a conquer action that Marcin took I decided to play a different tapestry card to exploit that instead.
I managed to draw a few tapestry cards early on which included two trap cards. Which I did use. The first time I used one was with Marcin attacking the central tile that I controlled. Sadly he had one of the new cards that countered a trap card! Foiled. However the second time that Marcin tried taking over one of my lands the trap card was successful.
Somehow my civilisation did manage to get into space and discover a monolith (one of the new tiles). All very 2001 A Space Odyssey. But so cool. Getting into space didn’t disappoint.
Marcin was the first of us to do the final income round, and in doing so set the score of 136 that Julie and I had to try and beat in our final income rounds.
Julie was next and did really well to get over 50 victory points to take her into first place with 138 points.
Then it was my turn. For the majority of the game I had been languishing well behind the other two. My final two ages saw me catch up and move into second place. But could I get enough points to win? I wasn’t sure I could. I thought I’d end up last. However after my final income round I slide into first place by a point.
It was a very very close game in the end. But whether you win by a single point (as I did today) or by a country mile it’s still just a win at the end of the day.
Final scores
Just realised as I write this post after the fact I missed 10 points for reaching the end of a development track! Doh!
It was a great afternoon gaming, great to get Tapestry to the table again, great hosts, and great friends.
Oh the title of this post I took from S.W.A.T., it’s what the team leader Hondo says to his team before they leave the tactical vehicle to respond to an incident.
Wednesday saw Diego and I go head to head in a 2 player game of Vampire the Masquerade: Rivals. In this game we played the two new clans Tremere and Thin-bloods from the first expansion for the game Blood and Alchemy.
I played Thin-bloods, whilst Diego went with Tremere.
It’d been over a month since we last played. So we were a bit rusty on the rules! Plus add on the fact these were completely new decks that we hadn’t even looked at before hand. It was no wonder that this one game took a couple of hours!
It’s obvious that we were not playing the decks optimally, having to look up rules, made misplays, definitely had rules mistakes. But we had fun.
I enjoyed playing Thin-Bloods. You definitely need all your vampires out and attacking en masse. I liked the gaining an extra action on a turn ability that certain actions/cards gave. I also liked the -1 token and using that to reduce the blood potency of opponents vampires. It’s definitely a fun deck to play.
In the end the game went to the wire with either of us being able to get the win. Both of us missed opportunities to grab victory. But sadly for Diego it was me that made the final break through and won.
The next expansion The Wolf and The Rat is now up for preorder on the Renegade web store. This expansion adds two new clans Gangrel and Nosferatu. Plus preorder bonuses of Tamaska and General Flint Alt Art Cards, and until the end of October a Victor Temple Promo card (previously only available at GenCon). Naturally this has been preordered.
I have also ordered the first three organised play kits for season 1. Apparently a season runs from GenCon to GenCon. Once the kits arrive I’ll give me views on them and where the kits are going.
There are plans afoot to finally get Tapestry back to the table this weekend.
During the global events of the last 18 months or more Stonemaier Games had the first expansion for Tapestry Plans and Ploys come out. Or more accurately it may have been just before. But that’s not important. What is, is that those events got in the way of any plans to get Tapestry and the expansion to the table.
After making arrangements to get Civilization A New Dawn with its first expansion Terra Incognita to the table at the next Friday gaming session (it’s going to be tight fitting it in) I knew I had to make an effort to get Tapestry to the table too. TI4 and it’s expansion is going to require military precision planning, so that won’t be soon.
So a shout out went on the clubs discord server for interested parties. Plans were made, written in pencil, and reliant on circumstances beyond our control.
At the moment it’s looking good. But until we are all sitting round a table, game setup and we are taking actions whilst enjoying beverages purchased from our amazing hosts The Luxe cinema I won’t believe it’s happening!
