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.

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.

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!

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!

We finished the evening with a game of No Thanks.

Another fun classic. We played two rounds.

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.