I'm finally done with my own printing of Crystallo. I've tinkered with the colours and creatures quite a bit, changing them up to suit my available plastic gems.
In the end, I elected not to use any of the wide array of pinks at my disposal. I just thought there were cooler creatures that suited the other colours.

I also changed the basic crystals on the cards to red, green and blue, again just going for something more standard.

And of course, creating my own version of the cards, rather than printing out the official ones, has saved me massive amounts of black ink.

So it was time to take this to the tabletop. Or not.

As the rules say this thing needs a large footprint, I was unsure that my desk space would handle it. So to try it out, I went to ground. And it's a good job I did.

My first two cards were the shield and the helm, and I thought I'd not shuffled correctly, but it seemed ok after this.
Speaking of the helm, I messed myself over by rescuing the Frostwolf so quickly, preventing me from being able to unlock that card later on. Stupid.

I thought I was doing pretty well for the first half of the game, but started to really struggle when I got down to the last few gems.

It all came down to the last card. In order to release the last bond, which was for the Dryad, I needed a red 1 or a green 2 with my last card, but it didn't happen. Oh well.

After the game, I though back a little, not even sure if I'd played correctly. The rulebook's a bit fuzzy on exactly where and how you can overlap other cards. But after checking the BGG forums I found some questions answered by the designer.
In the end, I think I did it right. Which is a good thing, as I would have failed even with the cheating, making me feel even more stupid.

So I failed to rescue all of the creatures, and I got 4 treasures, giving me the title of Prosperous Commoner for my first attempt.

A few days later, it was time for attempt number two. I got a little unlucky with the draw I thought, as many of my opening cards had only three of four icons, and the treasure cards that came up were much later into the game.

Still, I got to the same point as the last game. I needed a blue 3 or a red 2 to unlock the last Phoenix bond, but unfortunately the last card was a green 3. There actually was a green 3 option, but it was impossible to place as it would have covered an already complete set. Damn.

As I didn't even claim a single treasure during this run, I ended up as an Impoverished Commoner. Pretty much like in real life, then.

There is a maximum of 3000pts per game of this, but in my first two attempts I have scored a 100 and a 50. I'm awesome at games.

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After what feels like years of waiting, I finally found a proper copy of Whitehall Mystery for us to enjoy.

Jesus, this game has been harder to find than Jack. Of course, not Jack the way I play him. Then it would have been easy to find...

It's been a long time since my copy of Pandemic got any use. In fact, my game was last used back in 2016, we've only played the game once using another copy. In that game, which happened around a year ago, I set the game up wrong with too many epidemic cards, so not only could we not remember what to do, we also got two epidemics on the trot which absolutely wrecked us.

This time, I set it up properly for an easy mode attempt. This was because two of the three of us were very out of practice, and the third player had not played before.

We lost our first effort through running out of cards, though we were not that far away from the final cure.

So we set it up again exactly the same, using the same roles, and we had achieved victory before even getting half way through the deck. This second run was notable for giving each of us almost exactly the city cards we needed to cure the diseases, and we didn't really have to struggle at all to try and pass them to each other like in our first run.

It's definitely still a fun game, and we need to find ways of getting it to the table more often.

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This next game has been available to us a very long time, but until recently it had never occurred to us to give it a go.

On my part, it's based on an IP that I have very little interest in, so I never really felt the urge to play it. And in recent years, from what I can gather, the TV show itself seems to have gone off the deep end.

The game is Doctor Who: Time Of The Daleks.

Before playing a new game, I will usually give the rules a read through, or at least watch a few Youtube videos to get an idea. But our decision to play this was random and unplanned. We grabbed it out of the cupboard, set it up and started to play. This probably wasn't the best idea.

The basic goal of the game is for at least one of the Doctors to reach Gallifrey before the Daleks do. This makes it kind-of co-operative, though the larger share of the spoils go to the Doctor that makes it there first, so it's also a little competitive.
I never really like games that have this mechanic. Just make it co-operative or make it competitive. This middle ground namby-pampy nonsense never does games any favour.

Now, I actually came to quite like the basic meat and potatoes of the game, how you have to roll these custom dice to match a certain amount of symbols in order to complete tasks or missions. Depending on which character and companions you have in play, you can modify, add and re-roll certain dice in order to give yourself the best chances of success.

But the main problem with the game is the rulebook. Outside of the dice mechanics, which themselves took a little bit of head scratching, the rest of the rules were awkward to follow to say the least.

But if I can find the time to sit down and read them properly, and maybe watch some vids, there might be some fun to be had here.

If we ever play it again, that is.

As is usual for me, I didn't do any painting all the way through the summer months.

But finally, over the last couple of months, I've been back with some sporadic attempts.

As the Evil Sunz still aren't finished, I've been painting some more of those little dudes. I shouldn't make any targets, as I don't keep them, but ideally I'd like to have them done by Christmas. That would be my largest Ork clan out of the way, with some much smaller and easier ones left to paint.

I've also randomly decided to work on some Blood Bowl star players, just to break up the constant red. I've painted my first Lizardman player in Hemlock, and am now onto the hulking brute that is Ramtut III.

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Though it would have been fun to see her frump some fools on the pitch, I no longer have plans to use my old Tifa keyring as Bertha Bigfist in Blood Bowl.

This is because I now have a 3D printer (if I ever manage to get it set up and usable), and a much more suitable model I've made on Heroforge.

So the question then became: what to do with that old keyring?

I've decided I am going to try and restore it back to how it was, with a little modification, and repaint it as a display piece.

So off came all that old dodgy green stuff from a decade ago. She'll also have to go into the dipping pot to get rid of the base paint I slapped on her back then.

Though I regret that earlier me ever dared to use any kind of modelling putty, I will still have to use some on this project, as I removed a lot of her hair to get the cloak to fit. And I can't have a Tifa figure without the hair now can I?

As I have so many little things going on right now, it might be another ten years before I get back to this. But she will not be forgotten.

I've played three games now of my latest board game squeeze, Jamaica.

In the first game, the winner scored a healthy 34, while I scored 8pts in 2nd, and our group was rounded out by another player on 2 or 3 if I remember right.

Three players also contested the second game, though the other two players were different. This time, I was the one bringing up the rear with just 3 points, while the winner had a similar score to the first game, and the 2nd place player was in the teens.

In our most recent game, we had a full compliment of six scurvy pirates. I was hoping I'd learned my lesson from the first two games and went for it. I did a little better, coming in 3rd with 24pts. But the winner was again in the 30s, while 2nd place finished just ahead of me on 26. The fourth player had 19, but I can't remember the fifth player's score. Sixth place this time went to an 8 year old who was playing for the first time, and she did better than I did on my first two attempts.

That's my gaming skill level right there.

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Pretty recently I got the chance to play a game I've wanted to play for some time, when the Scoobster and his wife picked up King Of Monster Island.

I really quite like the "King Of" series of games, so I was looking forward to the co-op version.

Though I'm not knocking the game, it seemed that we managed to succeed in very little time and with very little effort. Yes, we were running the easiest boss with the easiest options, but I'd have thought for three people so new to the game we would have had a little more of a challenge.

This thing definitely has potential, but I guess it will need more time to get into it and find a nice level for our ability.

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King Of Monster Island wasn't the only game of its type to get game time of late.

Six of us took to the streets of Manhattan to smack each other all up and around the place in King Of New York.

It was great to get this to the table again after some years of inactivity, though we still haven't managed to get any use of those power up cards.

While the other players all duked it out for control of Manhattan, I took control of Rob and went all Skynet, stomping around the city smashing buildings and killing all the 'umies. Fat lot of good it did me though, as I was nowhere near winning in the end.

Oh well.

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We sometimes like to poke and prod at games and make them playable in situations they shouldn't normally be.

Case in point, we found some old bits out of a 1980s copy of Trivial Pursuit, and combined them with a newer copy, so that we could play with 8 players instead of 6.

By the end of the game, I was one of only two players not to have collected all their cheese. At least the other player had an excuse, as nine out of ten of their questions were ludicrously hard.

I'm just dumb.