Yesterday really did turn out to be an awesome day. It started off me getting a coffee bought for me. Free coffee is always good. Then at break time there was chocolate cake and banoffee pie! from Doreen (mother of a colleague and friend who makes these to die for cakes) for the staff room. Yes I had both, it would have been rude not to. Both were amazing. But I handled the sugar rush that followed, I'm a serious cake addict so my fix needs to be larger than this.
When I got home two more kickstarters had arrived. One Night Revolution and Coup Rebellion G54 were in one box. Wow this version of Coup was a tad larger than the original. It certainly isn't portable anymore in the same way that Coup is. Coup Rebellion G54 is the sequel to Coup, and is stand alone from the original game. While One Night Revolution is a version of One Night Werewolf, but with some tweaks! Oh and naturally set in the Resistance/Dystopian Universe.
The Diamonster promo cards for Machi Koro also arrived, along with the final expansion that I needed (if we don't include the original Mutant Boss sculpt) for Run, Fight or Die, the Zombie Horde expansion.
The second Kickstarter to arrive was the long delayed and over due (although not by some Kickstarter projects standards) King of New York tee. Doesn't it look awesome? This just had to be worn for the gaming evening.
Fenland Gamers
Snowdonia a beautiful part of Wales. Sadly during the Summer so over crowded, it's hard to find that quiet remote spot away from the maddening crowd. But it is possible.
The Snowdon Summit is probably not my favourite, with the cafe and train line scaring it (despite the rebuilt cafe that is meant to be less intrusive). However its popularity can not be denied.
Last night Jonathan, Mat and myself got together to play a game of Snowdonia. Where we are trying to build that train line I described as a scar from Llanberis to the summit.
This was the first time any of us had played the game, which meant there was regular referring to the rules, and taking a round or two before things started to click.
Jonathan had two promo engine cards for the game, the kids favourite Ivor the Engine, and Jimmy and the Little Old Engine (a character I've never heard of). I think these are a pretty cool promos for the game really, and the publisher did really well getting permission to do them. Maybe I'll get Blood Rage when they produce a Noggin the Nog promo for it (I was more a Noggin the Nog fan than Ivor the Engine, but I did really like Ivor the Engine too).
The final turn of the game involved Jonathan stealing seven points from me by claiming a fourteen point rail slot that I was going for. I thought he didn't have the resources to get it! Mind you even I had got it, I still wouldn't have come close to coming second let alone winning. On that front Jonathan and Mat well and truly beat me.
So what were my initial impressions of Snowdonia? I enjoyed our game of it. But there is a but. I think I need a couple of more plays. It took me a little bit longer than I liked to get the hang of the game. I enjoyed the weather mechanic effecting what actions can be used, I liked the bag of resources with the use of white cubes mixed in that when drawn from the bag trigger certain events.
We finished the evening off by playing Lords of Waterdeep. With the amount of time we had left sadly we couldn't use either of the two modules from the expansion. It's well known how I feel about Waterdeep, and Jonathan and Mat had not played the game before, so after setting up it was time to teach Waterdeep.
Waterdeep isn't a difficult game to teach, and can be picked up very quickly. Which both Jonathan and Mat did.
I made a token attempt at trying to complete quests that would earn me extra victory points at the end of the game from my Lord of Waterdeep. Instead I kept going for high value quest cards, and trying to deny them from the others. Obviously this tactic was doomed to failure, even though it gave me the lead score going into the final round of the game.
During the final tallying of scores from the left over workers, money and bonus points from the Lords of Waterdeep cards that lead just slipped away. Jonathan just ran away with an amazing winning score in the one hundred and forties, while Mat got a comfortable second place, leaving me trailing far behind in last place.
Luckily Waterdeep didn't disappoint Jonathan and Mat. Which was my biggest fear. They enjoyed the game itself, and were impressed by the high quality of the components and packaging. Which to be fair is very good. Next time they both want to play with the expansions.
So free coffee, cake, stuff arriving, and an evening of great gaming. Yes yesterday was a truly great day.
Posted by me using my iPad and the Blogsy app