Because I've been concentrating on Gameblast, my general games blogging has suffered.

This goes all the way back to 6th February.

Matt came round and we played a couple of 2-player games.

7 Wonders Duel is a 2-player only variant of 7 Wonders. It shares a lot of similarity with that game, but where it differs from the original is in card-drafting. That is to say that 7 Wonders Duel has no card-drafting at all, it would be a bit silly in 2-player game.

Instead Duel uses cards laid out in one of several different 'array'.

Imagine the cards laid out in rows in a pyramid shape, each row having less cards as the pyramid rises, until at the top where only one card is laid.
Now imagine the alternating rows being face up and face down.
Now imagine the tops of the lower cards covering the bottom of the cards above.

That's how cards are laid out in 7 Wonders Duel: It requires a little prep, but not as much as it sounds above.

I guess that this is designed to replicate or replace the drafting mechanic.

When drawing a card, you can only draw a card that has no other cards on it. Thus might be forced to take cards you don't want (or are unknown) to get to the cards that you want.

The rest of the game is more or less the same as the full game. The cards you acquire can be used to generate resources to buy other cards to generate even more resources. There are also scientific, civic and military cards to collect, etc. You create wonders and play over 3 ages.

One area where something new is added is winning conditions. Normally you score when the final round us over: Now if you acquire a certain number of scientific advances, then you score a scientific victory. Additionally; the game has a military track, acquiring military cards moves a marker along the track, move the marker far enough and you score a military victory. 
Both of these victories can be achieved before the games traditional ending and add a new dynamic to strategies you can adopt.

Overall, 7 Wonders Duel replicates enough of the original to be similar but is its own thing. However, if I had to choose between the two, I'd choose 7 Wonders every time. Just because it supports more players.

The second 2-player game of the night was Raptor.

Have you ever wanted to play a band of scientists armed with tranquiliser rifles and flamethrowers?
How about a raptor with a taste for human flesh?
If so, then read on.

Raptor takes place on a square-gridded game board with some added scenery. Each player also has their own little board and small deck of cards.

One player takes the role of a group of 10 scientists. This player's objective is to tranquilise either 5 baby raptors, or the mother raptor (which has to be shot with 5 darts).

Player 2 players the raptors. Their objective is to get all of the baby raptors off of the game board, or as is most likely more satisfying, eat all the scientists.

There are 2 types of action in Raptor, those determined by your cards and those determined by your board. Each player has different actions.

Play proceeds as follows:

• Each player draws a hand of 3 cards from their deck of 10 (IIRC). These cards allow you to perform a specific action. Each card also has a numeric value from 1 to 9.
• Each player plays a single card face down, the both players reveals their cards simultaneously.
• If both cards have the same value, both are discarded and no action occurs.
• The card with the lowest number gets to act first and carry out its action, then it is discarded.
• The card with the higher value is not played but is discarded! This earns the card's player a number of points equal to the difference between the two cards. So if you played a card with a value of 7 and you opponent had played a card worth 2: Once they had taken their action you would get 5 points. You personal board will have list of actions that you can spend these points on.

That's pretty much all the rules. 

The card playing mechanic is interesting but potentially frustrating. I seem to remember that some actions are same on both the cards and the board and that each also have a couple of unique actions. I also remember several actions appear twice in the deck, but with higher and lower numbers. If you really want to do something on the card, you play the card with the lower value.
There's also a card that allows you to shuffle your discard pile back into your deck - with a value of one.
There's also a card that does nothing but has a value of 9 - one to play when you hope your opponent is going to play a low value card and you want to do actions listed on your board.

And that's the thing: Your actions may be completely dictated by the actions of the other player. So for someone like me who's a planner it can be frustrating, unless you know all the cards well and have good read on your opponent.

5th February.

2nd game of the night at 'The Sovereigns'.

Loot is a little card game by Reiner Knizia about chasing wealthy merchant ships with your pirate boats.
Perhaps this game should be combined with Century Spice Road which we had just finished playing!

Loot is a fairly simple looking game with some hidden depth.
Loot has different 4 types of card.

• Merchant Ships, valued from 2 to 8 'gold'
• Pirate Ships, their strength ranges from 1-4 'skull & crossbones and they come in 4 colours.
• 4 Pirate Captains, in the same 4 colours as the pirate ships.
• 1 Admiral.

​Everyone starts with a hand of 6 cards.
During your turn you check for winning battles, (more on this below). Then you draw a card or play a card.
What cards you can play depend on what's already been played.

• You can always play a merchant ship.
• You can only play a pirate ship if there's a merchant ship for them to plunder. If there's more than 1 merchant ship in play, you can choose which to attack, you can even attack a merchant ship you played yourself. If someone else is attacking a particular merchant ship that you want to attack, you cannot play a pirate of a colour they have already played, (so if someone else is attacking a merchant with a blue pirate ship, you can't attack the same merchant ship with a blue pirate). If you've already played a pirate ship, you can another of the same colour to reinforce your attack.
• You can only play a captain on a pirate ship you've played, the captain's colour must match the colour of the pirate it is being played.
• You can only play the Admiral on a merchant ship that you played.

If you can't play a card, you must draw or discard a card, you can never discard a merchant ship.

Right at the start of your turn, you check for winning battles. This involves looking at all the merchant ships in play, if your pirate attack against a merchant is stronger than any other pirate's (or is uncontested), then you claim the merchant ship - all other cards are discarded. If the attack strength of 2 or more players is identical, then there's a stalemate and the merchant has not been captured by anyone.
Pirate captains and the Admiral act as a trump cards and win a battle, regardless of the attacks strength of other players.

Play continues until the deck is depleted. The player that captured merchant ships with the highest combined value of gold wins (any merchant ships in your hand at the end of the game are deducted from your final score).

And that's pretty much it. Good, clean, wholesome, pirating fun. A great little filler game, quick to play and easy to learn. With enough strategy to keep it interesting.

5th February

Another Tuesday night at 'The Sovereigns'.
The ladies bathroom was closed and most of the pub smelt of poo! But board gamers are a tough as it gets. So we endured and played on.

The first game of the night was 'Century: Eastern Wonders'.

This is the 3rd 'Century' game I've seen the other two are:
Century: Spice Road.
Century: Golem Edition.

I've played Century: Spice Road previously and it was alright. It was sort of a deck building Resource trading/management card game. But a specifc random element in the game 'Really pisses me off to no end!' But enough talk of a game that I'm not actually blogging about.

So Century: Eastern Wonders is a sequel  of sorts to Spice Road game and contains rules for combining both games into a single game. Curious - but something for another time.

In Eastern Wonders, you control a merchant ship that travels around, trading spices for profit.

The first thing I'm going to say for this game is that even though it's more or less just a bunch of boat shaped meeples sitting on tiles - it is quite a pretty looking game. Unfortunately I didn't get a good photo of it.

On to the gameplay.

First; let me explain the different spices.
There are 4 types of spices, ranked from least to most valuable they are:
Yellow - red - green - brown.

In your turn you can move your ship 1 or more spaces, then you can perform 1 of 3 actions after moving.

• Harvest: This allows you to collect 2 yellow cubes from the bank.
• Market: If you are on a market tile (which you will be most of the time), you can trade spice cubes. Different market tiles allow you to carry out different types of trading. For example, you could trade 2 yellow cubes for a 2 red cubes (which are more valuable) on a particular tile. On another tile, you could trade 2 red cubes for 2 yellow cubes and a brown cube. Or a tile might allow you to turn a brown cube into 5 yellow cubes, etc, etc. So by travelling along particular routes you can create trading loops to increase your spices. Why are spices so important?
• Port: This is why spices are so important. The game's playing area has 4 ports, generally each port contains a 'Victory Tile'. Each victory tile has a cost (E.G. 2 red and 4 yellow). If you are on a Port tile and play the 'Port' action and have the necessary spices, then you discard those spices to acquire a Victory Tile. Each Victory Tile has victory point total (the highest I've seen is 20 Victory Points). victory points win you the game. Then a new victory tile with a different cost. There's also a mechanic where a port can become temporarily inaccessible.

There are some other mechanics, such as 'outposts'. Each player has their own board. On their board are 20 outpost markers arranged in 4 rows of five. In order to use the market action on a tile, the player must place a outpost marker on the tile.

However, there are specific rules on how out post markers are removed from a player's board and placed on a market tile. Each market tile has a spice symbol (yellow, red, green, brown) and each of the 4 rows of outposts has a corresponding symbol.
Thus: If playing an outpost marker on to a market tile with a yellow symbol, it must be the left-most outpost marker from the yellow row that is placed on to the market tile.

This is important, as how markers are removed from your board makes difference.

• The spaces further to the right side of the board have numbers, these count as victory points at the end of the game. So playing outpost markers from one type of spice will earn you points.
• Removing an entire column of spices earns you an upgrade to your board. This can be extra movement, extra cargo hold space, improved harvesting etc. So there's also a reason to place markers from the spices evenly.

And that's good. There's more than one strategy you can pursue to earning victory points. And there always seems to be a meaningful decision to make. Sometimes you just need to recognise and adapt your tactics when circumstances change.

And that's it. I enjoyed Century: Eastern Wonders enough that it goes on to the 'would like to own' list and I may revisit Century Spice Road in the future with a different mindset.

Dang! Just realised; I blogged a game tabout spices and I didn't make a single reference to 'Dune'. Well The spice mu - ah too late, screw it!​

Saturday 2nd February - evening.

Time for the 2nd RPG session of the day.
In the evening we started play-testing a new campaign in a setting called Oubliette.

Oubliette uses The Black Hack rules and was run by Matakishi.
At the start of the campaign we start in some sort of underground complex with no memories of our previous existence. This means that we begin the campaign with no stats, and 'discover' our abilities during play. - In other words when we need to use a stat, then we generate it.
Also;  as play progresses, we accumulate 'class points'. Thus by behaving like a thief, you accumulate thief points. The, when we exit the initial dungeon, the highest points we acquire will determine our class.

I've heard of other games which do similar things and have players start a '0' level and then generate a character during play. It's even an idea I've mulled over a couple of times.

I'm not sure how I feel about it. Matakishi explained a little of how our actions would influence our classes. This meant that we could 'game the system' to get a spread of different classes.
If we hadn't of known this then we might have ended up with a skewed set of character classes.
Matakishi has written an in-depth report about it here.

Personally, I'm not sold on the idea, nor am I entirely dismissive.
I look forward to the rest of the campaign though.

Saturday 2nd February.

The snowy weather delayed 2 players, but did not deter us on this Saturday lunchtime at 'The Sovereigns'.
​Our 50 Fathoms session kicked off a little late, but play was resumed in Brigandy Bay.

We did some investigating and discovered that the person to talk to about the abnormal amount of rain flooding the already flooded Caribdus as 'Tressa The Red'.

We also encountered a young woman called 'Annie Mason' trapped in a life of unsavoury work in a house of disrepute.
Annie had spotted us and offered us 300 pieces o' eight to help her escape her life. We, being fine upstanding individuals decided it was a good deal.

After some distraction, misdirection and fighting we fled Brigandy Bay with Annie aboard Delilah.

We made good time to 'Shark Bay', another lawless settlement. The Shark Bay harbour is a strip of docks and warehouses close to the sea, whilst the main settlement sits on a high precipice well above the docks below.

We entered town with an eye to make some money.

Using the money we earned from Annie I haggled a bargain price on some goods that were loaded on to the Delilah and would fetch a healthy profit elsewhere 
'Backstab' Baxter went gambling and incredibly; struck it lucky and came back with his pockets filled with coins.

After this we struck out of Shark Bay looking for new opportunities.