Gaming Blogs

On the 12-March, I hosted an evening, 4-player game of Small World.  The scoring ended up being quite close (well, the 3 of us who didn't win scored close to each other anyway!) Saturday the 16th was the monthly Grantham Friendly Gamers' all-day gaming session.  I managed to get in games of Canal Mania, Century: Spice Road, and Quacks of Quedlinburg. All were enjoyable although I did terribly at each =+) I'm also still grinding for XP a bit in Borderlands, but I do now have several good weapons (one combat rifle, one shotgun, and one sniper rifle are what I have equipped)

On Friday the 8th march, we had a 3-player game of Tiny Epic Kingdoms at lunch time.  This was my first play of this particular Tiny Epic title.  Although I enjoyed it, i felt that the (randomly-determined) starting region picked for myself put me at a disadvantage, especially with it only being a 3-player game, as it had 1 less resource producing area on it than the other 2 chosen starting region. I've also been playing some Borderlands and a bit of Terraria on PC.

On the 2nd, I had a day of gaming with 2 friends, hosted by me. First up was Pandemic: Fall Of Rome.  This is the 2nd variant, other than the original game, that I've played, and again it is different enough from the "vanilla" Pandemic to be worth a go.  Similarly to the original, some of the possible player characters have more useful special abilities than others.  We lost the first play quite badly, but fared significantly better the 2nd time around, and actually managed to beat the game! Then we played Voyages Of Marco Polo, a dice-placement game.  Again, it features player characters that each have a special ability.  The one I got (randomly assigned) sounded like it would be the strongest special ability, but in the end, I had the lowest score.  I do not think I made the best use of my character's special ability though, and would really like to have another play using the same character.  We'll see... Lastly we played Puerto Rico, it's kind of...

No board or card games played this week, but some more PC gaming - More of Just Cause 2 (exploring to find new locations), some Borderlands, a bit of Terraria and of Gene Forge 1 (an isometric RPG by indie publisher Spiderweb Software)

On the afternoon of Friday 15th-Feb, I went to the Ludorati boardgames cafe in Nottingham with 2 friends from work - we played 2 games of plain Endeavor, a worker placement/area control game.  I came second in the first game and won the second game. On Saturday 16th, was the next of the monthly meetings of the Grantham Friendly Gamers club, where I took part in a 5-player game of Agricola complete with the Farmers of The Moor expansion.  I think this is the 3rd time I've played Agricola, and I did improve once more on both my previous attempts, having both types of crop, every type of livestock, maximum amount of fenced area, upgraded rooms in my house, and 1 extra family member. Other than that I also played some Just Cause 2 on PC during the week.

On Sunday the 3rd-Feb, I had been invited along to a 5-player game of Keyflower.  I had never played it before, so it was a learning experience for me.  Apparently we had 1 or 2 expansions in use as well, that basically meant more possible actions available to us. There's a lot to pay attention to, and even though much of the time I was able to make the move I had been planning, I ended up not scoring highly - I think I came last! This is one of those games where you really need to always keep one eye on the end -of-game scoring.  There *are* various bonus scoring tiles you can obtain near the end of the game, but if you focus too much on trying to get 1 or 2 of those, you'll miss out on other ways of scoring that can get you more points. I enjoyed playing it though, the mix of mechanics (mostly bidding and worker placement) works well and there is a lot of variety in the details.

Did manage to get to the card gaming in Grantham on Wednesday the 30th January, I had a first go at playing Keyforge.  I lost very badly, and didn't enjoy the playing of it.  It's certainly a game where, to get the most out of it, you need to know your deck beforehand, and what it's capable of! I also got in a game of Star Wars Destiny, which we didn't quite have time to finish, but I was losing quite badly.  I just used my first (and so far only) custom deck I've ever made, which has an aggressive leaning, and my opponent had a "mill" deck (one built to exhaust your opponent's deck before all of your characters are killed) which was very well put-together.  My opponent quite quickly got to have cards in play that burned through my deck really, really fast.  i still had fun playing it though (and learning how effective a mill deck can be in Destiny!)

No board games played this week, but I have been enjoying getting a bit back into Terraria on PC.  It's just a lot of fun, it's only 2D as opposed to Minecraft's 3D (they are somewhat similar games, although un-modded Terraria places more emphasis on combat) but it's a very slick, polished game, and together with the physics it uses and the cartoon-y graphics style, it easily gets you smiling.

We had a 6-player gaming day on the 19th.  We played a 4-race Flamme Rouge "tour", and then a game of Viticulture: Essential Edition. I really enjoy Flamme Rouge - it does have a bit of an element of chaos to it (maybe "organised chaos"!) but there is a level of strategy to it too.  In the end, I finished 4th out of the 6th of us, which wasn't bad considering I completely messed up on the 2nd race.  As part the tour, our great host had also organised a couple of extra ways for our cyclists to earn points in each race - King Of The Hill, which awarded decreasing amounts of points as each cyclist exited any hill stretches on a race, and also Agressiveness, which awarded points to cyclists who finished each round of a race at the front of the pack. I didn't do so well at Visitculture, but I do prefer the Essential Edition (it adds a couple of expansions) to the basic, and really our host won the game massively ahead of the other 5 of us, who finished all bunc...

No board or card gaming done this week, but I have done a bit more organising of my Star Wars: Destiny collection.  Also been doing some PC gaming - I've re-discovered the joy of Terraria (it really is a lot of fun), and been continuing my second attempt at Borderlands (the first one), this time using a Hunter class character.  I have now found that actually, the good combat rifle I have obtained is the best weapon i have at the moment.  The special ability (a pet bird of prey that can help attack enemies) is also pretty cool!

Played a 5-player game of Sushi Go! on new Year's Eve, followed by an epic (~ 2 hours) 4-player game of Cards Against humanity, which took us right up to midnight! Have played a bit more of Geneforge 1, Just Cause 2, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and Borderlands on PC too - completed a few more settlements in JC 2, progressed a little more in the mission I'm currently on in Splinter Cell (called Displace International), and completed a few more of the early missions in Borderlands.

Not much gaming done this past week - a bit on Creeper World 3, Just Cause 2 and Borderlands (the first one) on PC.  Did get in some Avocado Smash - a pimped-up "snap" card game - on xmas day.  lazy times the rest of the week!

Despite the level of busy I have been in the run up to Christmas, I managed to have an afternoon of boardgaming on Friday the 21st.  We first played a 3-player game of Viticulture, a game where you run a vineyard.  I won by 1 point, but the other 2 had never played it before so it doesn't really count as a victory! After that, with the larger group who was there (from my local gaming group) we played a 6-player game of the hidden identity game called Avalon.  Myself along with the other evil player managed the win - sabotaging 3 of the 5 quests (although it went down to the 5th and final quest) We were helped along by the good player who was Merlin, disguising themselves so well that the other players on the side of good thought the Merlin player was one of us evil characters! I've also managed to get in some PC gaming - a bit of Just Cause 2, some time on Borderlands, and a bit further into Geneforge.

Oh well, another week skipped! I've had numerous non-gaming things going on during December. However on the 15th, i did manage to make it to the Grantham Friendly Gamers' last gathering of the year! This one was at Ropsley Village Hall, actually a short way out of Grantham. I took part in a small-scale (5 players total) Draft tournament of Star Wars: Destiny.  THis wasn't my morning - I lost both games of it I played! Although the second one was close (I was only 2 damage away from killing my opponent's last character) I also had time to fit in a game of Sagrada.  Well this really wasn't my day, I thought I did OK at it but fell to last place out of 6 players! I have also managed to do a little bit of PC gaming - a short run on Borderlands, and also on Geneforge 1

Hmm...somehow I've managed to skip a week! Not to mention this post being nearly a week late...anyway, didn't get much play during this dated week BUT I did host a 5-player boardgaming day on the 1st.  We managed a game of Lancaster (second time my copy has been played) which i managed to win, but it was close (points were, in reverse order, 53, 48, 44, 38, and 36) - It's basically a worker placement game with some extra mechanics added to make it interesting, and we got a game of Cosmic Encounter (which I was most definitely last at) - I'm not sure what to think of this one, there is a large selection of the alien cards to draw from (everyone gets one at the beginning, and each has a special ability) but in the game we played, there were 2 that seemed waaay more powerful than the others, making it feel unbalanced. Finally, we got in 2 games of Flamme Rouge.  Flamme Rouge is a card-based boardgame about cycle racing, it's really good fun and quite quick to learn an...

Over the past week, I didn't get so much game time in as during the week before. What i did manage was some more time in Just Cause 2 (love that title =+) - I managed to discover a few new locations, with help from the map, and even kill another one of the army boss characters.  My next step is to attempt the next Agency Mission, which I already unlocked a while ago but so far have not managed to attempt yet. I also had a few goes at the remake of Mickey And The Castle Of Illusion, re-visiting the level I most recently completed, in order to collect more of the gems.  It took a few attempts but I did manage it in the end.  There is still a playing card in it that i haven't reached yet though.

So the past week, I played a little more of Mark of The Ninja on PC, a stealth 2D platformer.  It doesn't have a full savegame system, but does have very regular auto-save checkpoints, so it's not a chore to play. You can use either mouse+keyboard, or controller, and i switch between these 2 methods depending on what needs doing in the current section of the level I'm on. I also did another run of a dungeon (read: grinding) in Torchlight 2, in the area I've actually completed but not yet moved on from.  I'm just trying to get my character's level up one more point before I continue my journey in the game! I made an attempt at making a custom track for the "flying" rollercoaster type in Rollercoaster Tycoon 2.  I've got a custom park started, in a scenario that has unlimited money so i can basically build whatever I want.  It didn't go well though, not even gaining a 1 for "excitement", but being mega-intense.  So i'm going to h...

On Tuesday I played a little more of Batman: Arkham Asylum on PC. It's easy to see why, when it was released, it gained glowing reviews - it's a joy to play (I recommend switching between controller and mouse/keyboard) and really captures the darker mood of the Batman world. On Thursday, I went to The Dice Cup with a couple of friends, and we played a game of Tiny Epic Galaxies , without any of the expansions.  Admittedly, I lost, but the scoring was close - 18, 21 and 22 points. Then on Friday, with my girlfriend and her son, I again was at The Dice Cup.  I introduced them to the joys of Star Wars: Destiny , a nice CCG that also uses dice.  I find it simpler to get the hang of than Magic:The Gathering.  Plus, it's Star Wars!.  For this, I used the 2-player starter set.  We also had time to have a go at Chronicles Of Crime .  This is an excellent, fullly co-operative crime solving boardgame/card game.  It makes good use of QR codes (every card a...

So, on Wednesday 24th, I played a 3-player game of Pandemic: Iberia , at a local boardgame cafe.  Prior to this, i have played "vanilla" Pandemic 4 times, and won on 3 of those attempts. Well, the Iberia version feels somewhat trickier.  We thought we were doing well with setting up our rail network and getting on with purifying water, but we had only researched 3 of the 4 diseases by the time the city cards ran out (hence ending the game) Yesterday, I was able to play 3 games: Coimbra - I found this very enjoyable, although it helped that I managed to get the hang of it early on, ending the game as the winner! we played a 4-player game of it so I was very happy with this result.  It has a number of gameplay mechanics to grasp, and i formulated a plan early on, basically maximising the victory points I earned at each move/action I did.  There's worker movement, card buying, and several resource income tracks that can also score victory points at the end.  A ...

Regular writing attempt #99 I really want to maintain my blog, so once more I'm going to make a concerted effort to post regularly! Simply as a blog/online diary, rather than anything more. So this past week, I've completed mission 4 (Manhattan) on Splinter Cell:Chaos Theory, admittedly following a guide online.  It took a while of game time in total but I got a reasonably high completion (I think i was rated 87%) I also completed the current mission on Company Of Heroes - I'm playing through the first of the single player campaigns.  This mission was the defence of Carentan, i think.  I'm enjoying the game a lot - it's an interesting mix of real-time strategy, but still with some tactical depth, including a genuine limit on the number of men you can have in your force, which really forces you to consider the best makeup of unit types for the current mission (or current stage of the current mission, as most comprise more than one) It *does* have in-mission savi...