5th August 2026
More adventuring this session, through history, fantasy and space with longer games featuring Dragons, Sandworms, Vikings and miniature fantasy nations.
A club classic Kingdomino (now played at 18 sessions) was the first short game out with 4 players getting 2 games in. New player Jemima had a good first game, dominating the scores with her extensive mines, but Emma just pipped her in the second game with some big scores in a couple of terrain types.
My City - Roll and Build was back for another go, this time a starter game with 6 people. We played the first two episodes of chapter 1 which just introduces the dice and the different buildings. James, Jeremy, and Natasha all got the same score of 16 on the first scenario, but the second one proved more tricksey for everyone and so the scores rather differed. Richard just pipped James by 2 points and took first place with 41 points (for a combined episode 1 and 2 score).
Whilst four of the players departed for other games, James and Jeremy (whilst waiting for Simon to arrive) decided to play the last episode of chapter 1 which introduces the well. Whilst a fun time of building buildings was had, James was the clear winner this time, as he pushed his luck at the end rolling the building dice and getting 2 single buildings helping him to easily fill in his map and come top.
Following a session at the pub last Wednesday new players Ian and Dan expressed a desire to play Dune: Imperium Uprising again. Unfortunately, Dan couldn’t make it to the Corn Exchange but Dave, Iain, Tasha and Richard sat down to play instead. Tasha and Richard were new to the game so there was a bit of a teach required prior to starting. The game flows very well but there are a lot of symbols and board spaces to explain, plus a few perhaps overly fiddly rules involving maker hooks, shield walls and sand worms.
Richard and Tasha picked the game up quickly and Richard (focusing on fulfilling contracts) started to move up the score board with Dave and Tasha in pursuit. Dave purely by accident ended up with vast quantities of spice and so was able to buy huge armies to compete in the end of round battles. Unfortunately he was a little overcautious and tried not to over-commit troops meaning that he was pipped a couple of times by other players using combat cards. The game was also a little unusual as the card market got clogged up early with very high cost cards meaning that players were unable to improve their decks as the starting cards don’t offer much in terms of buying power.
In the end all players agreed to scrap the market cards and deal out new ones which helped move the game along. There is an optional expansion that gives players a single atomics token that they can use once per game to clear the market. This will be included from now on. Sometimes the game can run a little long and as a result they were the last table to finish. In the end Richard took the win on 11 points, with Dave and Tasha tied on 8 and Iain bringing up the rear on 5.
Wyrmspan was selected again for its sixth club outing. Three players were soon excavating, enticing and exploring the caverns and collecting dragons with varying abilities. The rounds focused on shy, then large, 0 or 1 egg slot and finally 4 point or higher dragons, these scores didn’t really separate the players out much but Jemima was just in the lead.
In the end it was dragon specialities that made the difference with Emma doing well from end of game abilities and eggs, Jemima from high scoring dragons and Kathy just taking the victory helped by 20 points from tucked cards.
he always popular Vikings were out again, this time in their role as Explorers of the North Sea, following Garphill Games’ progression through shipwrights and raiders. This is a delightful little pick-up and deliver type game that uses tile laying to build the map and incorporates some area control elements alongside the all-important animal meeples to fill your longship. Players have 7 Vikings, 2 of which start in their longship (which has 3 spaces) and a Captain card which grants a bonus to certain scoring objectives, and a hand of 3 map tiles. Each turn they will lay one of their tiles, expanding the world map as they explore, then take 4 actions and draw a new tile. These include loading/unloading the longship, moving the longship, moving Vikings over land, transporting animals over land and building outposts. The 48 hex tiles have to be laid adjacent to another with sea connecting to sea and land connecting to land (as you’d generally expect) and they act as the game’s timer, with the game ending on the turn the last tile is played.
There are a few rules such as animals can’t load or unload themselves, or sail the ship themselves apparently, and Vikings can’t swim. Certain cards may have a settlement pictured, in which case a random strength counter is added, and if a higher number of Vikings are gathered at the settlement it is captured. There may be a ship on other cards, and these get allocated a random ship token - if you sail into the same tile the token is flipped and you either destroy the ship (hurrah!) or you destroy the ship (hurrah!) and a Viking dies (for Valhalla!). A dead Viking scores a point, but it does mean if you only have 1 Viking on board you can’t enter that tile as a ship always has to have at least 1 Viking in charge. If there’s only animals on board there’s the risk of it all becoming a bit “One sail bad, no sails good.” Cards will also have animals depicted on them, and when they’re played said animal is placed on that tile – horses, cows, pigs, sheep, goats and giant terror-chickens according to the meeples. Players are sailing around collecting animals to be brought back to the mainland (where the other 5 Vikings are milling around, drinking mead and shouting at the other clans), claiming settlements, sinking boats and dropping the odd Viking off on islands to colonise. Claiming an island requires one clan to have more Vikings on the island than other players, and the island must be complete – if you haven’t explored the whole island who knows what could be there (could even be Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas). With only 7 Vikings choices must be made.
Jarl “Sigrid” Steph gave a quick teach to Darren “Purpuri Smultringer”, Tess “Thosdottir” and Neil “Draugr-mull Njall” and then the longships set sail to discover the weirdly populated isles of the North Sea. The winds blew strong and fair, and each of the clans was soon sailing around their newly discovered lands looking for plunder and livestock. A couple of islands were found in places best left unexplored – although the map can curve behind the initial Mainland card if desired, no tile can actually touch the Mainland itself, so placing a bit of land almost adjacent meant that the island could never be fully explored and thus completed. Nevertheless several small islands were coming out of the mists with one major one forming in the centre – much to Steph’s dismay who had been hoping to close it off into a smaller one she could claim. Darren had found a pig and was quite literally bringing the bacon home, while Tess was heading far from the mainland looking for loot. Neil was first to raid a settlement, an act he evidently enjoyed as this was to become his main plan, and Steph was sinking ships. As the major island continued to grow Neil was working his way up its coast, raiding settlements and claiming points at an alarming rate.
Darren had set up a peaceful little island colony that suddenly got invaded by a detouring Steph, Tess had built an outpost on a far-flung island and had a presence on several others that were near completion, and Neil was pillaging settlements left, right and mainly centre. With a good presence on the biggest island Neil was looking for the one piece that would enable him to complete the island for some tasty points. Alas, the couple of tiles that would fit nicely were in other people’s hands, and they weren’t going to finish his island for him. There was a bit of last-minute animal delivery attempts and hasty route calculations as the players realised the end times were almost upon them…and then they were. Neil’s raiding had been successful, and he won the game with 31 points. The others were all very close…to each other at least, with Steph and Darren both scoring 24 and Tess 23.
It had been a quick game, so the pieces were reshuffled, the mainland flipped to the other side, new captains chosen (this time with declarations to actually try and score the objectives that each captain gave bonuses for) and a-viking they all went. This time around there was a bit more focus from everyone on getting small islands completed and staffed by lonely Vikings, and a few more animals actually made it all the way back to the Mainland. A few settlements were raided, but again Neil managed to get a bit more raiding in. Darren managed to get a lucky streak across several enemy ships – although a re-shuffle and re-attempt had to be made after his first foray proved to only have a solitary Viking and his pig commanding the boat. An illegal outpost was also built by Neil, but some hasty planning meetings at the local council offices managed to get re-development permission for the initial build and free up space for the interloper. Things looked a little tighter, but there was one far-off island that was fairly brimming with ripe settlements just waiting to be plundered, and Neil had a glint in his eye as he looked it over. Tess seemed to be secure in her little archipelago of islands, but failed to notice a little purple longship sneaking that way in the closing moves. Neil was struggling to find the one route that would let him take all the plunder, and Darren made a fatal miscalculation that again let Steph take control of islands previously thought safe. A jump in scores for everyone in the second game, but once again Neil claimed victory, this time with 39. Steph, Tess and Darren came in at 32, 31 and 30 respectively. A very fun game, with easy rules and fairly light game-play, but with enough going on to keep you interested and thinking. Fill your horn with mead – or tea – and raise a cry to Valhalla! Long live the Vikings!
Simon W. brought a recent new arrival to play, Notebook Nations. This is a new 4X-lite game self published through Kickstarter (with one of the quickest delivery times ever, many kickstarter projects can be measured in years rather than weeks). The 4X style of game involves Expanding, Exploiting, Exploration, and Exterminate; they are usually highly confrontational games with different factions (unique powers/advantages/disadvantages) and victory comes through either some sort of victory point/goal/objective system or eliminating all other/another player. They are distinct from wargames, although many 4X games have a substantial combat/conflict component, they also have a large economy and science/research system; the boundary between these genres can be a little blurry but we won’t go further down that rabbit hole.
Notebook Nations is an attempt to streamline this style of game, which typically can be 3-6 hours (or 8-10 hours for the likes of Twilight Imperium and other monster games in this genre). The claim this was a 90 minute game is probably true… but for this first game, which also required a few online searches to check some rules, we were closer to two hours, may be two and a half; and that was playing to three Victory Points (options are one/three/five).
Jeremy and James T. volunteered to help Simon W. have its first play, choosing among the four base game factions (there are eight available, the other four in addon boxes). The movement is rather reminiscent of early Civilization computer games, on a square grid. All the actions are quite simple, but as the game goes on you start to have lots of choices about timing (you activate everything on your turn, even new units you build that turn).
Combat is entirely deterministic, which for a streamlined 4X is sort of essential (in longer games the randomness can “even out”, but in a short game it would likely be highly unbalancing to the game); in fact there is only one random thing, the hidden events.
Each faction has a main unit, call the avatar, who can build buildings outside towns. Towns let you build other buildings, but quickly run out of space, so you need new towns. Research opens up unit types, and other bonuses, as well as victory points.
There are three types of victory points, and you can only score two of each type (so in a a three VP game, you will need to score at least two different types). There are military, science, and culture VPs; for using units to sit on opponents town halls (the centre of every town), and to climb the science and culture tracks. The different factions might have a general steer to some of these categories, but actually the asymmetry is quite light (different unit counts, but the same types, and two unique buildings each).
The game was a bit clunky, but that was a lack of familiarity with the rules… and the implications of some of the rules (especially movement and spawning new units). As with most 4X victory point games, it is really a race to the finish so you need to work out how to get points quickly without leaving yourself vulnerable to another playing hindering/stopping your plans. There’s a really nice initiative system, each round the players select the order of activation… going first or last has advantages, plus the bonus resource for some of the initiative spaces. Overall, a nice little 4X game… will not be for everyone, but for lovers of Eclipse, Twilight Imperium, etc. a lighter game for the shorter night.
It came down to a tie breaker, with Jeremy and James T. reaching three VPs on the same turn, but James winning the tie break.
After Wrymspan concluded and all the other long games were still in progress, the girls decided to head off down the tavern to discuss their recent adventuring exploits in Braggart. A simple card driven boasting game to end the night, now on its 17th club play. Players need a minimum of two cards (deed and foe) to tell a story but can add scene and result cards for additional flavour. Then the others can challenge their extraordinary tales with liar cards and swap in less impressive activities. So an epic battle with the mother of all dragons can be reduced to wetting yourself in front of Johan the friendly trader. After numerous trips for all to the bar (to refill with more story cards) it was Emma who had the best run of tall tales to become adventuring champion (or best liar).
Next session is on Wednesday August 19th 7.30pm at the St Ives Corn Exchange. Pop in to the Discord servers a day or so before and see what games are being discussed and book a seat if one tickles your fancy. Or just turn up on the night and go with the flow, there are always lots of games to suit all tastes or a chance to try something new.
- Total Session Attendance: 14
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Board Games: 7