Yesterday was billed as a Tiny Epic Learning session. With the aim of playing learning games of Tiny Epic Quest (TEQ), and Tiny Epic Galaxies (TEG)  with the new expansion Beyond the Black (BtB). However long suffering readers will know I managed to get TEQ to the table a couple of times in the last couple of weeks. So it wasn’t strictly a learning session for that game.

This game of TEQ was the first with the new play mat. But I’ll talk about this at the end of the post. It was also Diego’s first time playing the game. Although he was roughly familiar with the rules having read the ones in his recently received copy.

I did it. I finally did it. I finally won a game of TEQ. Third time lucky and all that.

I had a massive last round scoring ten points, by killing two goblins and jumping a couple of levels on the magic track.

I still haven’t played this with more than two players. It’s lucky that the game plays well with two. 

Our second game of the afternoon was TEG plus BtB. It was almost all in, however we didn’t use either of the micro expansions.

Just like TEQ this was the first time Diego had played the game. The learning bit for me was the BtB side.

I picked up early in the game a pilot that when I harvested resources gave me two instead of one for that pilots ship. Which meant I was rarely running out of energy or culture. My secret mission was a fairly simple one to complete. All I had to do was have no ships in my home galaxy at the end of the game. Which ended up being the case. In fact on Diego’s final go of the game I had enough culture that I was able to follow two of his advance dice to claim another planet, and then follow a move to send my returned ship back out to full fill my secret mission. Both Diego and I went off exploring into the Black. It was just every time Diego did it he drew red cards with negative effects for him but lots of symbols. Whilst I drew green cards that gave me resources, but had less symbols. During the end game scoring Diego got an extra six points in total from having three of the majorities. The fourth we drew and got nothing for. In the end after triggering the end of the game I had won 26 points to 21. It was those follows during Diego’s last go that gave me the victory. Otherwise we would have drawn.

What did I think of the BtB expansion? It was ok. It didn’t wow me. The pilots and their abilities are interesting. But very dependent on which ones come out. I was lucky getting the one I did. The exploring part was ok, it has its push your luck element, which we didn’t really experience. The symbols on the bottom of the pilot and explore cards adds an interesting scoring element that could be enough for some-one to steal the victory. I do like having the more open score track. It makes keeping track of who is where and how close to the game ending you are. I’d most likely play with this expansion in future games. 

I have the play mats for all my Tiny Epic games. You certainly don’t need them. However you should get them. Gamelyn certainly know how to make great play mats for their games. They help with setup, especially the TEG and BtB ones with hints for how many cards go out for the different player counts. Naturally they don’t fit into the boxes. But they aren’t much extra to carry around really. They are of what seems a good quality. Plus they help protect the game while playing.

Thanks Diego for a great afternoons gaming.