This weeks gaming

Fenland Gamers, game night, Rivals, Vampire the Masquerade Rivals, vampire the masquerade: rivals

Thursday morning was another Rivals session round Diego’s.

I had floated the idea two or three days before that we might build our own decks to play with. However it turns that idea was a bit optimistic taking into account work/life stuff and being knackered! So precon decks it was.

This time it was a battle of the clans from the two expansions. I was playing Tremere from the Blood and Alchemy expansion. Whilst Diego went with Gangrel from the Wolf and Rat expansion.

Tremere vs Gangrel

Our first game was probably our fastest game ever.

Diego won the roll off with my who goes first dice. Which meant I drew 2 vampire cards. One of those was Grigori.

Naturally to make best use of his leaders ability, agenda and haven Diego needed vampires in the street. Which would play in to Sonja Valentine’s ability.

With me putting out Grigori on my first turn. I was soon replacing the Gangrel blood on his leader with Tremere blood.

My leader (right) and vampire I played first turn(left)

The blood on his leader got less and less from activating abilities, it eventually got to the point where the only blood keeping his leader alive was my Tremere blood. Whilst this was happening I was thinking to myself “don’t play a vampire, don’t play a vampire”. All the time keeping my best poker face on trying not to show I was about to deliver the winning blow.

In my hand waiting for that moment of there to be no more Gangrel blood on Diego’s leader, and only my Tremere blood was Extinguish Vitae.

Diego finished his turn. Sonja replaced the final bit of Gangrel blood with Tremere blood. Then I took my first action which was to play Extinguish Vitae. I had defeated Diego’s leader and his only vampire to get the win.

Game two Diego had learnt his lesson and would not be making the same mistake.

The second game was very much more of a fight with the two of us trading blows looking for that moment to grab victory. The game ebb and flowed between us both having brief moments were one of us might have a slight advantage or we’d start gaining a bit of momentum before having our plans foiled by the other.

I think it helped in this game that I didn’t find Grigori, or that I didn’t draw that many ritual cards. Although I did get a Seek Knowledge out early on to give me some extra card draw to try and find answers!

My downfall in game two

In the end my undoing was “self inflicted” when I forgot about the end of turn trigger on the ongoing event The Hunger. I only had three prestige left, four vampires out, none at full health. Even if I had remembered I wasn’t able to mitigate the loss of prestige.

But a great morning of playing Rivals. We just need to get others interested and playing.

Last night was the last fortnightly Friday gaming session of 2021. Once again it was really well attended. Which is great to see.

I hadn’t planned on bringing any games to the evening. But my judgement got the better of me, and I threw in two or three “filler games” just in case.

It’s a good job I did. We were short of games that played at the higher player count.

We had two tables split as a group of five and a group of six.

Our table started off playing a very new arrival (came Tuesday if I remember correctly) Dune Betrayal.

A Resistance style game with a Dune theme. What’s not to like about it? Well obviously a lot if you are not a fan of the books/films, hidden traitor style games or sci-fi. But other than that nothing!

Obviously this was a “learning game”.

I have to say compared to Resistance (which you will naturally do) Dune Betrayal does seem over complicated. And I think even if you haven’t played Resistance that it would seem that way too.

However the mechanisms used in Dune Betrayal do get round that who to pick with zero information for the first mission that Resistance has.

Despite the feeling of being over complicated I do like the round structure of having three rounds drafting action cards, then two targeting rounds before all is revealed and scoring takes place.

What I like about them is that each round players are possibly revealing which side their identity is on by which action cards they are taking, and also who they are playing target cards on or not. Even by whose trait cards they look at.

And I do like that once a trait card has been seen it gets secured/locked so no one else can look at them. Plus you have no idea which of your two trait cards the person has seen.

I think like others of its ilk, this game is reliant on who you are playing with. Get the mix wrong and the game is not a fun experience for anyone.

Sadly for the bad guys House Harkonnen lost both games. Which obviously means House Atreides won both. I was on the losing side in both games.

Our tables second game of the evening was For Sale.

I’m so glad I added this classic to my collection. It’s just out and out fun.

Plus I’ve played it twice now, and won both games!

For Sale Results

We finished the evening with a game of No Thanks.

Another fun classic. We played two rounds.

No Thanks Results

The other table played Jamaica and Love Letter 2nd Edition (it supports up to six players). A big thank you to Diego for leading that table.

I think it can safely be said the Friday gaming has ended on a high.

Next up the Christmas Eve Bohemian Villages Championship. The banter/smack talk ramped up last night. It’s going to get worse over the next few days.

Update on planning session 8 #7

D&D, RPG, session planning

As is customary with these session planning posts here is the obligatory bit of house keeping I need to do.

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.

Will we ever start up our campaign again? That’s the thought going through my head at the moment.

After an attempt to get everyone to agree and commit to the 5th January, we finally settled on the following weekend of the 15th January.

However! Yeah you knew that was coming. That date is looking very unlikely. But the reason would fall very easily into the “no one saw this coming” category. Sadly life threw a pretty major curve ball at a member of our party which means they may not be able to make this date or any other for a while. It’s more important that my friend takes the time (however long) to recover. The campaign and gaming will be there waiting for when they are able to join us again at the table.

In the meantime using the medium of our messenger group I have warned everyone (without going into details) that the 15th is unlikely to go ahead. However. Yep I used a however with them too. Those of us that could should still meet up on the 15th and do a one shot. Which could still be D&D based. Or as I suggested in another system such as (and I just listed two or three that I own) Paranoia, and Twilight 2000.

In the last day or so Matt Colville and his awesome band of merry people that are collectively known as MCDM have released a new pdf for a beastheart class and monstrous pets!

It has amazing cover art. Very old school in style and feel. I love it.

The whole premise of having monsters as pets and rules to use them sound cool and something I could use straight away in our campaign (if we were actually playing again).

The new class I can take or leave. It will be an option in a future campaign if a player wants to use it. My imagination wasn’t sparked into life by it as the illrigger class had done.

But what did get me excited was when Matt talked about the sporeling companion and showed a render of the mini they had done for it.

A mini you could order from them along with five others they had done.

Immediately I thought “the party are going to get a pet and not know it”. I liked the idea of them coming across Mot the sporeling while they are in the lost Ironstar mine. I just have this image of him following them around the mine just out of sight. Or hiding very badly when they look his way.

And yes I ordered the mini.

That’s all for now on session planning. No real progress at the mo for getting back to the table, and yet more ideas to use!

Countdown to Bohemian Villages Championship

Fenland Gamers

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.

Tapestry of Dragons

Commander, Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night, magic, MtG

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.

Tapestry

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.

Photos taken by Jonathan

Some food for thought on VtM Rivals Website plus other places

rant, Rivals, Vampire the Masquerade Rivals, vampire the masquerade: rivals

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.

  • Articles about game play, such as new mechanics (extra actions for example), deck building, how to play the precons (I know it’s rough and not well written but something along the lines of my Toreador deck post, and yes I need to write the others).
  • Articles about the Prince of the City events. Not only a tournament report but a follow up article breaking down the deck stats gathered at the event.
  • Articles sharing and summarising rules and faq videos like the one that went up this week.
  • Articles highlighting community groups.
  • Card errata articles (often covered in twitch streams and discord!).
  • Articles on lore.

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.

Some gaming

Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night

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.

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.

Final scores for Adrenaline

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.

Final result of Rivals

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.

Final scores for Fields of Green

Ok having played a new to me game my challenge stats have been updated. So let’s share that progress.

My current challenge progress

Finally it’s time to end on the usual high note of Jonathan’s photos.

Photos taken by Jonathan from last nights gaming session.

Tired and on autopilot, that’s my excuse…

apps, star realms

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.

Mining for stuff in Cornwall!

Fenland Gamers, game night

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.

  • Jonathan rules lawyer at large!
  • Winner,winner, chicken dinner

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.

Photo taken by Jonathan

Pity Win

Commander, Fenland Gamers, game night, magic, MtG

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.