Friday evening saw an impromptu gaming session with Jonathan. Don’t worry this bit is going to be short.

Our first game of the evening was the current hotness (and at the moment Jonathan’s and mine prediction for game of the year! And let’s face it this game has set the bar pretty high for the others coming out this year.) Wingspan. I actually started off with a hand of all five starting cards, which meant no resources. All of the cards were one or two resources to play, plus the buzzard was a zero cost card to play. So my first action was playing that buzzard. Jonathan started off very slow, and never really did get a lot of birds out. But even so, the gap between our final scores wasn’t massive. I took the victory by five points.

Our second game of the evening was the Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth game.

This is a licensed game that Osprey Games has produced using their other game The Lost Expedition as the starting point.

I liked The Lost Expedition (which I got at the UKGE last year) although it is brutally hard to beat.

In this update basically, we have a theme that I love (I’ve been reading Dredd for decades). And a theme that is being used by Osprey again later in the year when I believe they are releasing a Judge Dredd version of Wildlands called Judge Dredd Helter Skelter (and also why I’m selling my copy of Wildlands. I like Wildlands, but if I have to choose between a fantasy theme and Judge Dredd then JD wins).

The actual theme, art and storyline work very well together in this game. It would be fair the theme and art would have done nothing for Jonathan. It’s sci-fi. Not his cup of tea as us oldies would say.

Production wise they have got rid of the insert (that didn’t handle sleeved cards), added a storage box to hold the tokens and meeples that also acts as a divider in the box to help organise the cards. The cardboard tokens are a bit thin for my liking. I’d have liked something a bit thicker and robust. But at least the box now holds all the cards sleeved nicely.

You now have three modes of play. Solo, co-op and competitive. Which is nice. Jonathan and I only played a co-op game. It’s also nice that the game has that race element to it where you are racing the villains to get to Max Normal who is hiding in the Cursed Earth somewhere. Plus there is a mechanic where you battle a villain if you end up in the same region as them. Which we didn’t get to try out. We never caught up with the villains.

Having not played The Lost Expedition since the expo, we were rusty on the iconography. So we had to keep referring to the rules to refresh our memories on the ones we couldn’t remember but also on how the new icons worked also. The Psi icon was particularly interesting as a mechanic, and gave a hard choice. You would basically be adding an additional card to the encounters, but the choice was did you do it blind turning over the top encounter card and add it, or take a hit on Anderson (I think it was health) draw an encounter card each, make a case for playing the card you had drawn to be the one added to the encounter row over the other players card. Then adding the card decided by the players, discarding the other card. So a little control over your future!

Like it’s predecessor this game is brutal. But I enjoyed it. Need to try the competitive mode next.

Our final game of the evening was Hanamikoji. We rattled off four plays of this. It’s still a great, quick, two player game.

A great evening of gaming with one of my fav people to game with (the others know who they are) at a great host The Luxe Cinema. Who must have been fed up seeing me that day.

If you haven’t guessed the title of this post is a big spoiler for what follows.

Yesterday was Standard Showdown day once again.

I decided to play my Simic deck. The decision was mainly based on the lack of movement in the local meta. A minority of players are trying new decks. The majority are using the same deck week in week out, with the odd change once in a while. Which to be truthful is a bit boring.

There was only one game I felt a little guilt over. That was round 2 when I played a newish player whose deck really wasn’t competitive with the decks I knew most folks had. I think their deck was a slightly modified Planeswalker deck. It certainly wasn’t a fair match up against my deck. Counter, counter, smash. That’s my game plan. The guys deck was not going to disrupt that plan. It was a quick game.

Having won the first two rounds, I was worried about meeting Andy Hall in round 3. Or round 4 come to think of that. But John did me a solid in round 2 by beating him. A shock victory. But one that meant if I kept winning we would be unlikely to be matched up.

Round 3 did see me play against his son though (his son had won FNM the previous night). I wasn’t much concerned about this match up. I’d beaten it previously with this deck. I thought it’d go 2-1. But I aced it with a clear win.

The final round was against John and his merfolk deck. This could have gone either way. Probably the least confident of winning for the day. Plus there was a little pressure to win. If I lost, then it would be all down to the WotC algorithm once again to decide the top four or five. And based on it’s workings I wouldn’t finish top. I needed a win.

Game 1 I won comfortably. Game 2 was quick and John’s deck just overwhelmed me before I could counter anything or get bodies out. We had a decider. Which went my way. I got to the start of an oppressive board state. That had oozes out that were growing quicker than his merfolk, Krasis on the board, counterspells in hand. And mana.

Unusually Vivien Reid actually hit the battlefield four times yesterday, and got me creatures, and just as important allowed me to trigger her ultimate. So I had that emblem out. I hardly get to play her, having just the single copy in the deck. So it was nice to get her out and doing her thing.

I was the only undefeated player yesterday. And I think it’s the first time I’ve gone undefeated also.

There was talk about levelling the playing field out so some of the really new players could take part. The idea of just welcome packs, or just Planeswalker decks were floated. But there is in about 3 weeks a natural time to do something like this when the new Challenger decks come out. So that weekend will be Challenger decks only I believe.

Standard Showdown Stats

Standard Showdown Participants: 10

Rounds: 4

Round 1: Kar-Fai (Red burn/aggro)Win 2-0

Round 2: Win 2-0

Round 3: Nathan Hall (Golgari)Win 2-0

Round 4: John (Simic merfolk) Win 2-1

Record: 4-0

Final Position: 1st

Prizes: 1 participation pack, 2 boosters for winning and a Standard Showdown pack (foil Assassin’s Trophy inside).