Sunday afternoon saw Charlene, Ben, and Harrison met up with yours truly to play some games!

We started off with Tapestry and both expansions. Yes an “all in” game using the new Tapestry neoprene playmat that Stonemaier sell.

It’s a beautiful mat.

You can see below who played which civilisations. We did apply the appropriate civilisation adjustments from the Arts and Architects expansion.

Now I should really be posting the three minute video of Ben taking one of his goes. But that’d be cruel. But he was beautiful minding it at the time.

In the end Ben’s Futurists ran away with the victory. Falling short of breaking the 300 point barrier. But still a final score of 282 was pretty impressive.

Our second and final game of the afternoon was another Stonemaier game Red Rising.

Back when Red Rising first came out I wasn’t grabbed by what I saw of the game play. At the time I thought the game wasn’t for me.

Reflecting on this I think it was I had one image of what the game would be based on what Jamey had initial described the game as. Which I thought sounded right up my street. Then the actually game play details game out and it wasn’t what I thought. Feeling a little disappointed I decided that this wasn’t a game I’d enjoy. So I never got it.

However now I’ve played Red Rising all I can say is I was wrong. This is very much a game I enjoy.

I liked it a lot. So much so my next order from Stonemaier will indeed include Red Rising (ok I took a break from writing this to order it, along with the playmat!)

This was a lot of fun. How many more ways can I say I liked the game?

I loved that each player had a unique power.

I thought the hand management side was cool. Towards the end I didn’t want to play any cards as I wanted to keep them all. Mainly because they triggered off of each other for end game scoring.

I liked how once you play a card for its ability you then have the tough decision (potentially) of which card to pick up. The card you want may not be in the right column for you to get the reward you want. Then you have to decide which to go for.

In the end Charlene triggered the end of the game and got the victory.

This was the deluxe version of the game, and as usual the component quality was very high.

Monday was a gaming morning with Diego.

Our first game of the morning was Long Shot the dice game.

I really do like this game. I needed a game like this in my collection. If there was a choice between this and Camel Up, this would win hands down every time.

Next up we learnt Silver and Gold.

Wow. This is a fun, quick, flip and write.

It’s definitely not even close to being a heavy roll/flip and write.

This is a nice little filler game. Yep twenty – thirty minutes to play. That quick.

Diego just pipped me to the win.

Finally our morning of gaming was finished off with a game of Splendor Duel, and a big thrashing by Diego. Yep my streak of having never won a game of Splendor in all its forms continues.

A distinct lack of wins the last two days. But still had great fun playing with friends.