1st April 2026
The first day of April saw nine gamers helping a variety of creatures from Ants to Leviathans.
Chrononauts was the sessions short game letting 6 time travellers try to change history back to their own alternate versions. It is a game by the same makers of the Fluxx series so mechanics are similar and the gameplay as unpredictable, but with the addition of a timeline from the late 1800’s to the late 1900’s. Each person has 2 ways to win, making the timeline cards match their 3 specific key events in history or collecting a specific set of artifacts during their journey through time, like Shakepeare’s lost play or the Beatles comeback album. Hitler was soon being assassinated and un-assassinated multiple times, sending ripples through history (timeline card flips and patches), the Titanic didn’t sink but then exploded 10 years later and a lot of cake was eaten at a peaceful World Fair in Berlin. Eventually and almost by accident Neil claimed the victory when the timeline had been switched by others to match his secret goal.
Vivarium was a new game selected by 3 gamers as their next adventure as Victorian explorers in a newly discovered massive underground cavern cut-off from the world above for millennia and with its own parallel evolution. The aim to research as many of these new species as possible in 7 rounds. The cavern is represented by a 4x4 grid of cards; 8 creatures, 4 equipment and 4 missions. Using domino like tiles with the numbers 1 to 4 play is quite simple, swap one of your 2 dominoes with the spare one, make a set of grid coordinates with your 2 dominoes and claim the card at that position. Two times per round the players can claim cards and then count up to check the winner of the end of round goal (usually about collecting certain types of creatures) and repeat for 7 rounds. Scores are on the creature cards, for end of round wins, missions (2 secret and the rest acquired during the game) and gems which can be used to change the domino coordinates in game or power equipment cards or 1 point at the end. Neil was the best at achieving the end of round objectives but Steve had claimed a powerful additional mission card early on and used his gems tactically to acquire the right creature terrain types to match and his mission score gave him a convincing win and best explorer title.
Meanwhile, two new climbers joined Jeremy to brave the Leviathan Wilds and help out the blight struck creatures. This game has been played before at club in sessions 115 & 118, but the main aim is to climb these giant creatures and destroy the crystals that are making them go mad, all the while coping with the the creature lashing out and making sure you don’t lose your grip and fall off. Each climber has their own special skills, but you can combine this with a class to form your deck of cards that becomes your grip, you select one card from your hand of three to be your action points that you can use to manoeuvre and strike at the crystals, while the other cards can be used to invoke the skills to help you or others get out of tricky situations.
The first test was tackling “Storm” a large snake like leviathan than caused lightning to rain down! Jack chose to be Kestral - an athletic climber - and the Breaker class, Graham chose Cheer - a climber that loves Mushrooms (small instant boosts that can be found on the creatures!) - and combined that with the Gambler. Jeremy chose the Mystic - who helps climbers to regain their grip - and the Harvester class. As this was their first foray into climbing for some, there were a few close mishaps, with Cheer’s grip running out and needing to fall to nearby ledges or even back to the ground. It was also taking a long time to get to all the crystals, so the leviathan was getting extremely enraged and causing all the climbers severe damage and blight with Kestral taking the brunt of it being at the top most of the time, but some helpful support from the Mystic he managed to stave off disaster. In the end Cheer landed the final blow that destroyed the last crystal and let us quickly limp back home after “Storm” was released and went back into the clouds.
The team was up for another challenge, this time the “Deep”, another large snake, but underwater! So Kestral decided to take a “breather” as their jumping skills wouldn’t be needed. Jack chose Hornet - a ranged attacker - and the Magus class that powers up his skills. Graham didn’t like the random nature of the Gambler class, causing too many difficulties in the last confrontation, so swapped to Mender to give the team some healing support, but stayed with using Cheer. Jeremy liked the super-powered up skill that the Harvester class gave, and Mystic still seemed useful as support for the other climbers. With the team assembled, they dived into the sea to meet the “Deep”.
Hornet immediately got swallowed by the leviathan and ended up in its mouth, which was both fortuitous - being dragged beneath the waters, and ill-fated - as the next moment they were chomped by the creatures attack! As this was the very start of the encounter, the attacks weren’t yet enraged, so Hornet could weather this and tackle all the lowest crystals. Cheer and Mystic were slowly diving down to help, but Mystic unfortunately ran out of air a few times and got targetted by tail slaps, so was getting quite beaten up. Air bubbles were slowly floating to the surface from below, but it was sometimes tricky to catch them! Cheer deftly navigated to several lower crystals dodging the creatures attacks, whilst mending the other climbers wounds to keep us in the fight. This time, the combination of climbers and classes, and the training from the first mission meant that we saved the “Deep” with far less injuries and blight than the first one, so got to watch it swim away into the sunset, so to speak.
An enjoyable puzzler of the cooperative game, with lots of opportunities for “cinematic” moves - such as letting go from the top of the leviathan, destroying a crystal whilst falling past and then swinging safely to a ledge!
Arthropods were once again evolving with the hopes of claiming dominance in March of the Ants Evolved Edition, back by popular demand from the previous session. This time Iker and Simon were renewing their struggle, while new interloper Darren joined the Formicidae 4X. A quick briefing on the rules and then the insect nations were on the march, searching for new parts of the meadow to conquer. The first moves were fairly low-key with everyone hatching some ants and sending them into the Great Tunnel, with all 3 colonies heading in different directions to discover new ground and claim the food. Before the worker phase was over though, Iker had started to make moves towards the other territories, making it clear he was spoiling for a fight. Or two. There was some canny defending though, and Iker’s purple ants were thinned down before he gained a few footholds.
Each colony started evolving, with heads mutating for gains in battle and abdomens changing up to allow the precious food stores to go a little further. Even so there were a couple of stragglers left to starve. Darren’s black ants were heading South trying to keep a low profile, expanding rapidly due to having evolved the scouting ability to find alternate routes – drawing 2 tiles and choosing 1 rather than just drawing 1. Simon’s parasitic thorax was draining opposing larvae each round, and Iker was trying to offset his losses from constant battling with a bit of gardening to get cheaper cards. He also started becoming a bit more cautious after a few fights didn’t go as planned.
Simon’s yellow ants were deploying sensibly close to the Great Tunnel, ensuring he scored points for controlling adjacent hexes, and despite Iker’s exhortations the black ants were generally keeping to themselves, sending out raiding parties only in retaliation. The outer meadow tiles had started cropping up a little earlier than expected, due to Darren’s scouting having pushed several inner meadow cards to the bottom of the stack, but surprisingly no centipedes had tried to muscle in on the tunnels. Until they did. The yellow ants had obviously been tramping around a bit too heavily and attracted one of the many legged beasts, but it was fought off in a desperate battle.
It did seem to be the spear point of an invasion as 2 more appeared in different hexes soon after, luckily not having grown too big yet, and although they were defeated - many a brave ant was lost. As the game started to look like it was moving towards the final phases Iker jumped the gun and started trying to goad the yellows into taking down the black ants, who were looking like they were well ahead. Sensibly the yellows ignored all the shouting and went ahead with their own plan, knowing a confrontation would weaken them too much.
Simon did indeed take it with 43, Darren’s sensible strategy saw him make second place, but trailing behind at 27, with Iker on 23.
Animal Rescue Team was next up after the cavern exploring of Vivarium, sticking with the creature theme, but this time cooperatively rescuing animals from a disaster struck set of provinces. The game is from the makers of Pandemic and has some similar mechanics, this time the peril is the ever accumulating list of animals to be rescued before 3 main missions are completed. The mechanics and logical challenges are around the logistics of the rescues, a delivery based game, how to get the right mix of rescuers, equipment and vehicles to the right province to rescue the animals and then deal with the increasing load of rescued animals taking up space in the vehicles and shelters. In the initial animal rescue encounters Steve the fire rescue specialist was in demand and needed to be all over the map at once, which meant Neil the water rescue specialist and Kathy the rope specialist mostly being on transport duty and trying their best to bring the required other (non-player) specialists and equipment to the locations to increase their success rate at the rescues.
As usual things started escalating, on top of the cat, rabbit and dog (big and small) rescues, there were complications getting the slow horse box across the map, a tiger refused to be rescued unless tiger snacks were acquired and some lab mice escaped and needed a cage sourcing. Then some disasters struck, the car broke, a conference needed to be attended and a virus broke out at one of the shelters. Eventually enough of the critical mission components were sourced and a brief respite in the immediacy of the animal rescues allowed the team to focus on getting everyone to the right places with the right things and successfully end the game (apparently at this point additional staff from the neighbouring areas finally arrive to help, no animals are left un-rescued, the team can have a well deserved break). Despite the lack of otters (Steve’s favourite) it was a nice puzzly game, mostly plannable but with a few complications to react to with the events and dice element to provide a little tension and then jubilation as the plans all come together.
Next session is on Wednesday April 15th 7.30pm at the St Ives Corn Exchange. Bring some games to share on the night or check out the Discord chat to see what people are proposing in advance.
- Total Session Attendance: 9
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Board Games: 5