St Mary's Social Afternoon - Week 4

Well it was a riotous and fun filled afternoon of board games, the numbers were slightly down over previous weeks with only 13 people; a couple of people were unfortunately kept away by health issues.

Games played this time round included:

Incan Gold – A very good new addition to the games collection that is ideal for large groups (up to 8 players) and wide age ranges. It reminds you a little of the Indiana Jones films where the treasure hunters explore deeper and deeper into a lost Incan temple. The further you go the more treasure you find but you only get to keep it if the monsters in the temple don’t scare you and send you fleeing from the temple dropping all your loot as you seek to escape. This was played by two different groups, during the afternoon and one was a very noisy affair, in part because all the adventurers except Jennie had fled the temple. This left Jennie to continue exploring on her own with the potential of gaining lots of treasure all for herself. As she pushed on she found a vast wealth of precious gems that would have ensured she won the whole game. However sadly for Jennie she

UK Games Expo - Day 2, Saturday 5th June 2010

Well after a good night’s rest (hmmm finally going to sleep at 1pm, woken up at 2pm by a friend currently in the US forgetting the time zone difference or was that getting his own back for my earlier text in the middle of the American night - so at best 4 hours) off to the show across the road with the aim of beating the rush. An idea obviously shared by a number of other keen punters as the queue went round the block. Thankfully the pre booked ticket collected the day before soon had Paul, Stewart and myself ushered through the throng.

Early purchases
After a quick look round (avoiding the Daleks and Imperial Storm Troopers) I bought the first game of the day. As Tim had indicated the night before Patrizier (the English game being Patrician) was being sold for a mere £8 (from JKLM) albeit with the rules in German (the English ones being on BoardGameGeek, I hoped!).

The participation games (in the Kniziathon & Mynd Games area) were yet to start so more browsing led me to a couple of fantasy artists (Ralph Horsley being one) and their stunning work albeit not necessarily something I would want on the wall at home. A second look at the bring-and-buy stand highlighted once again how far games had moved on since I started. At one point I suspected that my wife had arrived via the Tardis to sell off some of my older games, things like Azhantai High Lightning, Machiavelli and a number of others. Maybe when I get home I will I will box these up and archive them to some dark corner rather than waste good shelf space with games that whilst good are not the types of game either I or our group enjoy playing and whose boards and components look rudimentary and amateurish compared with today offerings.

Working with children

One of the nice things about the show was the opportunity at every corner to play new games and meet new people. In particular the effort put in by Nigel Scarfe of Imagination Games to run an area devoted to children’s games I think is worthy of note. Not surprisingly there was a huge amount of energy and a great buzz through the morning with an awards ceremony in the afternoon. Meeting Nigel was one of the highlights of the weekend for me, hearing about the work he has been undertaking in taking games into schools, libraries, old people’s homes and more and the tremendous reaction he has been getting.