Gaming Blogs

Another of the games from my "list of shame".  I bought this not too long after it was released, and it included a bunch of DLC.  The little i saw of it (at the time, on the videogaming TV channel GINX TV, which although a bit light on content is sorely missed!) suggested it as a first-person heist simulator.  That was enough to get me to buy it when on offer. Sometime later I also read a bit about it in a gameplay guide, which further suggested it to be a heist RPG, with skills and equipment and cosmeticsa for your character, that could be levelled and earned. Well, now I have actually had a play of it (I completed 1 easy-level heist, with a friend and 2 AI players) I know it really is nothing like that.  It has the FPS + RPG elements, yes, but it plays like a zombie horde shooter that has just been re-skinned, with the enemies becoming various types of law enforcement, with varying levels of weapons and armour. There is even a kind of respawn system within heists, ...

Star Wars: Legion is a tabletop miniatures game, set in the continuity of Star Wars, made by the company Fantasy Flight Games.  I did have a bit of a play of a beginner setup at the UK Games Expo last year, with my good friend Craig.  But it wasn't really a proper go at it. Fast forward a load of months, and Craig decided to "pull the trigger" and buy the starter set.  This was just before the whole Covid situation hit the UK, so we only managed to get around to having a proper game of Legion last Monday, the 10th August. I chose to lead the Rebel scum, and Craig was the evil Empire.  We chose to play the beginner scenario, with only some basic terrain (barricades) in specified postions, and our squads of troopers and our vehicles did not have any special weapons/other equipment. Legion is elegant - not too complicated - by just using several different colours of dice (separately for attacking and defending) rather than a load of tables you have to consult.  So ...

I actually also have the first PC Blood Bowl game, but I never got around to playing it.  So, Blood Bowl 2 - a few of my friends were setting up a small PvP league to have a go at, and I decided to join them.  There were 5 of us human coaches, plus one AI.  I decided to give the Skaven a go (a populous race of ratmen) as they are my chosen faction from the Warhammer world, and what little I knew about Blood Bowl is that it's a violent version of American Football, set in Games Workshop's fantasy world of Warhammer. This soon revealed itself to be a mistake - In Blood Bowl 2, the Skaven are quite specialised, excelling in speed (how far their players can move each turn, and how good they are at dodging opponents' attacks, known as Blocks in the world of Blood Bowl) but being quite weak and "squishy" once an opposing player gets hold of one of them. In addition to this first mistake, I opted for an automatically-generated team.  This turned out to be another mistake...

 Right, I'm going to try and write one post per week, actually writing about games I'm playing (viedogames, boardgames, and tabletop games) rather than simply listing them!

No boardgames played these past 2 weeks. I have been playing The Secret Of Monkey Island, Borderlands, a bit of Terraria, Geneforge, and Splinter Cell:Chaos theory over this period though

Got a number of games played this week - Plague Inc: The Board Game on Tuesday 25th.  This was the June meetup of the Bingham boardgames group.  We played the full 4-player game; 2 of us had never played it before.  It's kind of like a "reverse Pandemic" but also competitive, not co-operative.  You're trying to spread your virus or infection, but if you do this too much too early, it limits how many areas of the world you can infect and therefore how many victory points you can earn.  I ended up 2nd in this game. On the Saturday, the 29th, the main game we played was 6-player Dominant Species.  I did very badly for the first half or so of the game, but managed to c\law my way up to finish 3rd place, thanks to some fortuitous end-of-game scoring. We also got in one game of Tiefe Taschen, which I won, and 3 games of The Resistance: Avalon.

3 weeks of not playing any boardgames! a bit of PC gaming done though...

I played my first ever game of Root on Tuesday the 28th We played a full 4-player game, with the owner teaching us and taking us through the actions available to each faction. We drew factions randomly at the beginning, and I got the Raccoon, who is different to the others in that it is just a single character. I did enjoy it, though I didn't score much, and again this is one I'd like to play again. On Wednesday i made it to the weekly Star Wars: Destiny session in Grantham - I actually don't always log this in BGG - and had a go with one of the current set's starter decks. Now, form the 31st-May to the 02-June was the UKGE in the Birmingham NEC, this year I attended the Friday and the Saturday, with a gaming friend from work. On the Friday, we got to play Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress (which I actually have but had not yet played) and this was great, i really like it.  We also played a bit of the X-Wing Miniatures game, as I had not played before and it wa...

No boardgames played this week! I've been playing a bit of Terraria and Borderlands on PC though...

Saturday the 18th was the May meetup of the Grantham Friendly Gamers. Most of my time there on this meetup was playing a 5-player game of Rising Sun.  I didn't do well -after the end-game scoring was done, I was 2nd-to-last.  It's a game I would like to try playing again.  As the guy who taught it mentioned at the end, we didn't really latch on to the intended way to play it, which is supposed to involve deal-making/bartering (of course with some back stabbing!) It has some nice minis too! OI also got a short game of Winners Circle.  This is a horse-racing betting game.  I managed to win this 2-race game (we didn't have time for the final 3rd race!)

Again, only the one boardgame played this week - a 3-player game of Quacks Of Quedlinburg. This was, again, on a Friday lunchtime at work.  Unfortunately one of us had to leave for a meeting before we had quite reached the end.  We all enjoyed it though.

3 of us got in a lunchtime play of Azul at work on the lunchtime of the 3rd.  I managed to gain a decisive victory! Going for diagonals was my main strategy, even though I wasn't 100% clear how the end game scoring works for completed diagonals...and we were playing the "basic" version, where everyone has the same patterned board to try and fill Also been doing a bit of PC gaming...

Just the one board game played this week, and it was a real doozy - A Feast For Odin! this took us a good 4 hours to finish, although 3 of the 4 of us were completely new to it...and it's one I'm likely to buy at some point.

On Wednesday 17th April, 3 of us went to Ludorati after work for some gaming.  This time, we played a single game of Terraforming Mars.  This is an interesting"engine bulding" type of game, where you need to get cards into play, as well as placing several types of hex tiles, in order to earn "TR" (Terraforming Rating) TR is basically victory points, the aim being to earn the most.  The cards you can get into your hand, and then play, represent various terraforming-related "projects", there are 6 resources each player has to manage their production and spending of, and in addition the game end is set by 3 different measurements, all of which need to be met before the game can end. These are: Oxygen level, Temperature, and Ocean size (Oceans being represented by one of the hex types) There are various set ways of earning TR points, in addition to what you may be able to earn from various of the project cards.  Also, each player is assigned one of the terra...

On Sunday the 7th April, a few of us from work had arranged to meet up at the boardgames cafe Ludorati in Nottingham.  Unfortunately, in the end there were only 2 of us. We still got a game of Eldritch Horror first, it took us about an hour and a half including the setup time (which itself was about half an hour) It's a big game to setup - a number of different decks of cards, and lots of piles of various counters. I've written a full review which i intend to post up here soon.  Needless to say, we were doing well for much of the game, but then it started falling apart and in the end, even if we hand't lost one of the 2 main "mysteries" that we'd investigated, we would not quite have been able to win (we would have gained the 3rd and final necessary mystery *after* our Great old One, Azathoth, had awoken and therefore ended the game. the other game we played was Kingsburg, it *is* a competitive game to a degree, but it's more about trying to build up y...

No board or card gaming done this week.  I have been playing some more Borderlands on PC though, and also trying a few of the classic games on my Retro Pie setup, which is better than my first attempt at setting it up, thanks to a friend from work. I've tried a few arcade games, and one or two SNES games and Mega Drive games.  I've "discovered" an arcade game of The Simpsons that turns out to be an actually quite difficult side-scrolling beat-em-up! I've also had a quick go at one of the Aero Fighters games from the Neo Geo, and Cadillacs And Dinosaurs, also a side-scrolling beat-em-up arcade game (there seem to be a lot of those!)

Tuesday 26th March was the next meetup of the Bingham gaming group.  We ended up playing a 5-player game of Architects Of The West Kingdom. This is a very enjoyable, worker-placement game, and i managed to come second in victory points. On Thursday 28th March, I once again hosted a shorter evening's gaming.  This time, we played a 4-player game of Stone Age.  Again, this is a worked placement game, with an element of chance (all of the spaces that give you resources rely on dice rolling to determine how much of that resource you gain from all the workers you have on that space) and although I was behind for most of the game, victory-points-wise, when we completed the end-game scoring, I managed to jump ahead, beating the 2nd player by about 4 points.  I really enjoyed this game too.

Played 2x 3-player games of Century: Golem Edition on Monday 18th March.  For this session, I was introducing it to 2 newbies.  We chose it as it's simple game to learn, and quick to play.  Previously I had only played the normal edition, but in this case, Golem Edition is actually the exact same game, simply re-skinned. I made it to the Wednesday card gaming session in Grantham on Wednesday the 20th.  I've got to improve my Star Wars:Destiny custom deck, as it doesn't do well against decks with cards from the later sets (mine currently only has cards from the first 3 sets) and then on Thursday 21st, we managed to get in a 3-player game of Sushi Go Party! at lunch time.

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.