13th May 2026
Eight stalwart players braved the perils of the Great Mayor Making Ceremony of 2026 and managed to fight their way upstairs past the chains and maces for some exploratory based gaming.
The evening started with Five Hunt A Monster, or 5 player Cryptid as it’s sometimes known. This game of deduction was last seen at the end of 2025 in Session 116 and thus making its 5th appearance. Players are trying to deduce where the cryptid is hiding on the board by asking about certain hexes, with each player having one pertinent bit of information. Maybe Steph knows it’s within 2 spaces of a ruin, whilst Neil knows it’s either in a forest or a desert. Reynaldo will then place the pawn on a square and ask one of the players Could It Be Here? If they place a disc, then yes…it could be there. If they place a cube then not only could it not be there, but Reynaldo would then have to place one of his cubes out in a space where he knows it couldn’t be. When a player thinks they have it narrowed down, they can confidently place a disc and declare they believe it to be there. If every other player places a disc on top of this then they have indeed found the cryptid. If one player places a cube, then all they have found is a melting footprint in the snow, and play continues.
Darren, confidence bolstered by beating the burgomeister’s bash, decided he knew where it was hiding during the quick refresher teach, testing this wild assumption with a few adjacent probes in the early stages. He then jumped in with an actual search of the area, only for Steph to gleefully add her cube and dash his dreams of clairvoyant victory. The game progressed in a most tricky fashion, with some canny negative placements keeping quite a lot of hidden information, well…hidden, well hidden in fact. Heads were scratched and chins were stroked, with several outbursts of “Why did you say no to that?”
Several other searches took place with no sign of the mysterious critter and the player’s stash of cubes and discs were running low. As the last pieces were being placed questions were asked of the rulebook – what happens if we have no more pieces to place. The rulebook proved as elusive as the hiding creature and gave no clue as to what to do in this rapidly approaching situation. As the last piece from one player was put out we all went back to our clue, to confirm we had it right, and then check our disc/cube placements to ensure we’d placed them correctly. And here we found that Dom had placed his previous answer incorrectly. Luckily this had been the last guess, made, switching his No to a Yes on Reynaldo’s search then progressed with the remaining players also placing a Yes, and Reynaldo claimed the victory, and made the headlines in The Fortean Times.
The table then split as Simon was due to arrive, with Janek having already arrived and set up his copy of ARCS (last seen, well, last session) and was able to brief new players before the start.
Arcs is Cole Wehrle’s (of Root, John Company, Pax Pamir, and Oath fame) space game. A trick-taking euro-wargame, it’s quite mad but quite brilliant. One new player joined for a four player game, so we opted for Base-Arcs (without Leaders&Lore). Sadly we had to stop at the end of Chapter 4, with a very tight three-way race at the top… and Janek just happy we were playing his copy.
The remaining four prepped their submarines for exploring the depths in Endeavor: Deep Sea last seen in Session 108. This is a follow on to Endeavor: Age of Sail by the same team. Over 6 rounds players are exploring the ocean deeps, journaling their discoveries and setting up conservation projects, all with the help of a team of experts they’ve carefully put together. Each player mat has tracks to mark Reputation, Inspiration, Coordination and Ingenuity, which record how powerful certain actions are as well as creating scoring brackets for end game, along with a Research track. Reputation lets you recruit more powerful specialists, Inspiration grants you action discs, Coordination controls how many action discs you reclaim each round, and Ingenuity lets you dive deeper and further as well as granting you access to more submarines. Research is used to pay for several actions. At the start of each round you get to recruit a specialist, gain new action discs and reclaim some from specialists. Specialists will have a disc space on the card, and placing a disc there during the second phase of the round lets you take the linked action – a pilot may let you move your sub, a navigator may let you use sonar to explore new areas, a researcher may let you journal your findings for points. However, once that disc is on the card it stays there, blocking that action and leaving you with less actions. High Coordination will let you take some of these back each round – it can be a brutal action economy if you’re not careful, especially as certain actions require a second disc to be placed on a relevant map tile as well as the specialist!
Players use their sonar action to place more map tiles, building out from the starting two, with 5 levels available and limitations on which levels can be placed from where you are. These may allow you to send out divers, start a conservation project, publish your journal or maybe something special. There are also various scenario cards that set up rules for scoring, and which get progressively harder as you work your way through them, with this game doing scenario 3 – The Oceanic Journal. This meant players were trying to survey shallow waters and send subs to journal in the deep waters.
Steph gave a quick rundown of the rules while Neil, Rich and Darren made pinging noises with their little wooden submarines, and then they were off to the briny depths. Rich and Darren both made quick progress on the Ingenuity track to get out a second submarine, hoping this would increase their capacity for exploring and charting. It did for Rich. Neil seemed to be doing well for gaining action points each round and Steph was boosting her Reputation in order to get a better class of crew on board her sub. Whale calving grounds were found and observed carefully. Submarines stopped for a while to gaze out at the wonders of the jellyfish bloom. Crew gaped in awe as a colossal squid was discovered. Explorers worked their way down into the abyss. All this was being recorded in journals, partly for points, but mainly so that Attenborough would have enough content for Blue Planet 5.
The observant reader will perhaps recall the note about action economy. Whilst teams blue, red and yellow (of course there’s a yellow submarine) were doing somewhere between fine and good, the purple submarines seemed to have entered a hitherto undiscovered realm of underwater molasses. Darren had got caught in a horrible loop with a low Coordination meaning he was only reclaiming a single disc each round for the majority of the game. This meant he had very few options for placing discs, meaning it was hard to get that Coordination up, and limiting what he could actually do. This is not a good example of a positive feedback loop. Rich meanwhile had a very efficient engine running and was proving adept at spotting excellent combinations of placements that generally meant he was still placing action discs well after everyone else had passed. Having free specialist spaces to place is a crucial aspect, having an abundance of action discs is of no use if you can’t actually place any.
The last round was soon upon the intrepid explorers, and with it came a minor upsurge for Darren as he was finally able to reclaim 2 whole action discs this time around. His joy at this was somewhat tempered by the fact that Rich was first to go in all the places he had his eye on, but it couldn’t be damped entirely. Here Rich’s engine came into its own as he chained plentiful actions together in a seemingly never-ending story worthy of Atreyu. And proved decisive in securing his victory, with 71 points beating out Steph’s 62. Darren managed some last-minute scoring to get out of the depths with 53, and first timer Neil came up for air at 45. Hopefully it’ll return in the near future so some of the later scenarios can be explored.
Join us at the next session on Wednesday May 27th at the St Ives Corn Exchange. Request games and book seats in advance of the session on Discord or just turn up.
- Total Session Attendance: 8
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Board Games: 3