November Games - Part I

It has been a VERY busy month, so far, for gaming. We've played almost as many games in the first two weeks as we did all month last month! So Iv'e decided to split the months games into two posts. (Hopefully the second half of the month will be just as eventful!) 

Some of the ORIGINAL PLAN changed a bit because I started doing a thing at the beginning of November... and that took up a lot of time... it was clear that I wasn't going to get in TEN GAMES OF FATE. So I decided to switch that out and replace it with Century Golem: Endless World. 

We picked up Century Golem: Endless World for Amanda's birthday and have played a few games of it since... Need to play it seven times to get ten games in this year. I figured it shouldn't be too hard as the games are not terribly long... 

Also, in both of the latter two games in the series are included rules for alternate way to play incorporating elements of the earlier games in the series. So, Century Golem: Endless World has rules for the stand alone games, rules for combining it with the original Century: Golem Edition, rules for combining it with Century Golem: Eastern Mountains, and rules for combinding elements of ALL THREE. Thus, the plan was to play Century Golem: Endless World four times on it's own, and then one game of each of the variants! 

Friday, 5 November 2021

Friday night we played two quick games of Century Golem: Endless World. The first, Amanda just clobbered me! Like, 60-40 or something like that. I usually try to pick up extra workers, but I find in the two-player version of this game... they're not always super helpful.... a LOT Of the covered locations never get opened up and, often, in this first game, I found myself with NO PLACE TO PUT workers and had to gather them back up even though I had almost half of my workers that I could have played. 

I changed tactics in the second game and went for tool and lightning bolt cards (i forget their actual names and am too lazy to look it up) 

That was probably the best game I ever played - the points were almost reversed... 59-47.. 

Afterwards, we binge--watched ALL of Big Mouth Season Five! (it's only 10 episodes at 23 minutes each... we were done around midnight...) 

Saturday, 6 November 2021

Because I wasn't running a FATE game, Amanda suggested we play another two games of Century Golem: Endless World. It went much the same as the night before. She clobbered me in the first game.. and I barely won the second. 

Sunday, 7 November 2021

Sunday evening Amanda and I played Warhammer Underworlds again. After our last game, Amanda suggested we switch things up and she actually try playing a NEW warband!? So I suggested Lady Harrow's Mourngflight versus Thorns of the Briar Queen. I'd played both before - Lady Harrow once and teh Briar Queen twice. The one time I played Lady Harrow I totally beat Morgweath's Blade Coven. The Briar Queen beat them once, and lost the other time. 

Amanda took Lady Harrow's Mourngflight and just destroyed the Thorns of the Briar Queen - winning 14-5 - with a warband she'd never played and never really even looked through either deck - just played with whatever cards she drew! 

You can read the full report of the game here:

Night Vault: Ghost-on-Ghost

Tuesday, 9 November 2021

Finnegan and I played some 40k - like, not Kill Team, actual Warhammer 40,000! It was a small combat patrol game - and it even tied into our campaign taking place on Xoxigar Tertium! You can read some more about it here:

40K - Recovering an Aeldari Artefact.

Wednesday, 10 November 2021

Amanda got home late from work - because you always need to put in EXTRA WORK before you take a day off, apparently... but then suggested kicking off our extended long weekend with some Terraforming Mars... 

(to be honest, I kind of wanted to assemble the minis from the Kill Team: Chalnath box set I'd picked up earlier in the day... but I got to do some of that later in the evening and over the weekend, so...) 

I played Phoblog with a Metals Company and Biosphere support... I thought I did okay... took the Legend and Generalis Milestones and the Estate Dealer Award... ended the game with a Terraforming Rating of 42... got 12 Greenery down... 21 points from cities... 23 points on cards... but in just about EVERY category (except Milestones) Amanda was ever further ahead... 

She was playing Ecoline with Dome Farming and Power Generation. She got theEcologist Milestone, and the  Celebrity and Benefactor Awards.

Friday, 12 November 2021

Friday Evening, Amanda challenged me to ANOTHER game of Terraforming Mars!? 

She played Cheung Shin Mars with Early Settlement and Power Generation - took Gardener and Mayor Milestones. She funded the Banker award... but ended up losing as I added a CrAzY amount of money generation in the very last round, scooping the award. 

I played Mining Guild with Metals company and Io Research Outpost and took the Builder Milestone and Banker, Scientist and Miner Awards. I always seem to do well with Mining Guild - pairing it with the Metals Company and Io Research was just crazy good! 

I totally won this game, bit I will make no claim to it being that I've figured out the game or played particularly well... it really came down to some incredibly lucky card draws.... 

Saturday, 13 November 2021

Saturday evening we wandered over to our friend Kurtis' - who is just a few blocks away. We played three games of Century Golem Edition: Endless World. The first was just on its own. the next two we played using the rules that allow them to be combined with each other. 

In all three of the Century Golem Edition games there is an element of collecting Gems and then trading them to get the right combinations to buy points cards or tokens currently in the market. 

In the Original game this is purely done with Cards. You gain cards from one market that either produce gems or can be played to trade gems you have for a different combination of gems. 

Eastern Mountains gets a bit more complicated... There is a modular map made up of hexagonal tiles. Each tiles is either a village that trades or one of the markets where your gems can be traded in for tokens that give points... BUT points can also be gained through the process of building trading posts at each of the villages - the more trading posts you build the more points, but also if you do them in a certain order you gain other benefits, which might be MORE points or making your caravan faster or giving you a larger capacity for hauling gems... 

Endless World has a worker placement element to it... you place workers on the board to either gain gems or do trades certain cards In addition to giving points) give either some sort of benefit (more workers, or a discount in the number of workers required to activate an area or a bonus when you use and area or it might even open up trade areas of the board that are initially closed. But ALSO there is a  symbol on each card and there are tokens you can get that indicate points you get for having pairs of those symbols... at the end of the game... 

The first game Amanda and I TIED at 65 points!? I don't think we'd EVER had a tie before and the tie-breaker goes to the person that went last - of those that tied!? Amanda went after me, so she won! 

I totally forgot to take a picture of our first game. 

The second game we played combined Century Golem Edition and Century Golem Edition: Endless World. It was a really interesting game. Somewhat similar to both and yet quite different. Or you certainly had to think about different things and approach the game a bit differently... 

So this has the scoring cards from Endless World and the worker placement element... but the bottom half of the board - where all the trading locations are - disappears and you use the trading cards from the Original game - which are lined up with places on the board where workers can be placed. workers can be placed to use the card once, immediately, and then it is discarded... OR the workers can be placed to take the card into your personal "trade route: with are kept by your player board and act as an additional location that you (an only you) can place your workers to do the trade that the card allows... which is an interesting change... everything else is more or less the same. 

Amanda and I tied AGAIN at 55 points!? This time Amanda had gone first, therefore I won the tie-breaker. 

The third game combined Century Golem Edition: Endless World and Century Golem Edition: Eastern Mountains... which, again, had elements of the two, but was an altogether different way of playing... 

In this, SOME of the trade areas of the board are removed and is replaced with locations that allow your caravan to move or allow you to trade either where your caravan currently IS or at any place where you've set up a trading post. Setting up trading posts in sets of different types of villages (green, blue, yellow, and pink villages) gets you a bonus tile (the ones from Endless World - that give you the points for sets of cards with symbols) but this is VERY Hard to do - because it's a lot harder to move your caravan around, due to the limited spaces on the board and the number of workers required to DO it. 

In contrast, both of the previous games, it is very easy to pick up bonus scoring tiles - you do it as part of the action to claim a scoring card and every player almost always ends up with three of the bonus scoring tiles... How useful they are to you can vary (because you've collected the right sets of symbols) but it is usually a place where you can gain a LOT of points if you have your proverbial ducks in a row... there were VERY FEW points scored this way in this version of the game. Amanda and I only ended up with one tile. Kurtis had two, but only had one scoring pair of cards for each... 

I forgot to take a picture until they'd gone ahead and started putting it away. 

Amanda won this one, no contest with 57 points. Kurtis was only a point behind at 56 and I was a few more behind him at... 54 or 53...? 

Sunday, 14 November 2021

Sunday evening, Amanda and i played Warhammer Underworlds, playing with the same two warbands and decks from the previous week - but switching it up and playing the OTHER warband! I was a little anxious about this... Amanda had just hammered me the previous week and she had suggested we switch things up to see if it WAS that the warbands were just wildly unbalanced or a bad match-up... of if she's just THAT GOOD of a player and I just suck... 

You can read how that all went down in the game report, here:

Warhammer Underworlds: Nightvault - Ghost-on-Ghost REDUX

Monday, 15 November 2021

Ryan and Andy joined Amanda and myself for another game of Wingspan. They'd played once before, in August, and aren't regular gamers... but, man, Andy clearly picked it up and just did an amazing job filling his entire sanctuary/tableau/board! It was pretty amazing. I actually scored TWENTY-TWO points from bonus cards - which is an all time high for me... and then Andy counted up his and HE scored twenty-one!? He totally won the game, but it was all very close. Amanda, who only scored 12 from bonus cards, still put out a LOT of high-point cards, as did Ryan, so it all kind of evened out! SUPER fun game! Hope they can come back and play again a bit sooner! 

Wow... what a lot of games in this first two weeks! 

Checking in on the 10x10 Challenge....

1. Wingspan x27
2. Retro Loonacy x12
3. Warhammer Underworlds: Direchasm x12
4. Azul x11
5. Century: Golem Edition – An Endless World x10
6. Kingdom Builder x10
7. Terraforming Mars x9
8. Warhammer Underworlds: Nightvault x9
9. Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team x8
10. Necromunda Rulebook x6

We only need to play ONE more game each of Terraforming Mars and Warhammer Underworlds: Nightvault, two games of Kill Team, and four games of Necromunda!? AND there are still six weeks to go! Totally going to happen! 

Sure, two of those games are really the same game in two different SETTINGS... And Loonacy is a bit of a gimme, as it can be played in MINUTES... We could play ten games of Retro Loonacy in the time it takes to play ONE game of Terraforming Mars... still... we've played a LOT of games. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up playing Wingspan 30+ times by the end of the year... and we only got it at the end of April!? 

I've been really enjoying looking at everyone's Salute pics. Always looks like such a fantastic show! Might be fun to make the trip some year... Two really great collections of photos can be found on Ray Rousell's and David Wood's blogs:

Don't Throw a 1 - Salute 2021 - The Pics

Dear Tony Blair - Salute 2021 ... there and back again.

Also this week I finally had a look at Silver Bayonet, which had arrived middle of last week....

It's a game by Joseph McCullough (Frostgrave, Stargrave, Rangers of Shadowdeep, etc...) of Monster Hunting in the Napoleonic era! 

...and I totally went down the rabbit-hole on this one! I immediately started going through my collection of miniatures to see what scenarios I might be able to play right away. Looking at the first scenario - lots of wolves are needed. I have lots of wolves... but almost all of them were based for Hordes of the Things... so I started rebasing... but since I was bringing the foes up to current individual basin standards i HAD to do the same for all the heroes... and some other baddies... 

t became a whole thing... and that's where my morning and half the afternoon went yesterday...

Yeah, there are Highlanders in there... they will make up the core of my initial Special Unit! 

THEN, because I'm me, and I AM that special kind of idiot... I dug out some books that have been on the "to read' pile for-EVAR for some "inspiration"... I even ordered the Audiobook of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies from the local library to listen to while painting... because you know I will be painting MORE for this soon...

We might have to dig out Marrying Mr. Darcy again soon!