Charterstone

Pretty much all my tabletop game playing takes place within a group of people that are essentially members of my extended family. I have been wanting to expand out of that bubble, and get a regular gaming group going, as a wider experience of playing games is obviously an important part of designing games. Some good friends of mine run a game store,  The Magic Vault, that has a large focus on public table space and private rooms for playing games, and have always made it clear that the more games being played there, the better. And so, it was just a matter of me finding some time and getting myself organised.

I thought about organising a Legendary evening, because there is a lot of scope for variation in the dozens of games and expansions released by Upper Deck, but leaving it open to just see who might turn up seemed fraught with the possibility of disappointment. I thought a better option would be to run through the campaign of a Legacy game, and get people invested in a series of games from the get go. This would give people a reason to turn up regularly, but also cap the commitment to a certain number of weeks. We could then break for a while, or if people were interested, grab another Legacy game and continue. The first Season of Pandemic Legacy seemed like a good choice to start. A minimum of 12 games, with the opportunity to repeat some if we get defeated, and a second Season to play if we enjoyed the first. But then my eldest daughter bought home Charterstone when she came to visit at Christmas time.

Charterstone is a Legacy worker placement game, that has a much lighter theme than Pandemic. It’s bright and colourful, and is accessible for all ages. The family played through the first 6 games of the campaign before the my daughter and her husband returned home, and an Easter visit seems quite some time away before we could continue. So picking up my own copy of this, and sending an open invitation out through The Magic Vault Facebook page seemed like a great way to meet some new players. I’d play as a different Charter, different options would be chosen as we went through, and I would know to avoid some rule mistakes we made during my first play of the game (oops). It went quite smoothly, 3 people answered the call, and we played our first game last Friday Night.

We all had fun getting to know each other, and the game, and we’re looking forward to next Friday. We still have two empty spots, so we’ll put the call out this week to see if anyone wants to join us for the rest of the campaign.

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