by Will Brasher
Morning Conclave and those that may have been dragged here against their will due to the wonderful tagging system on BGG, talking of this... I have a poll for y'all...[poll=618522]
Seems only polite to ask people's thoughts on this rather than assume so, feel free to give me some feedback for the future of tags on the blog! Why do I care? I don't know... I guess I was taught to be polite and if I feel I'm annoying even a small group of people then I like to think I should at least consider their feelings... If tyou're reading this linked from my Facebook page and don't have an account on here then feel free to comment on my Facebook link to this blog!
On with Social Monday Session write up time! Before the session I got my blog going Monday and felt a bit of a headache coming on, potentially need new glasses? Who knows... I should at least look in to this I guess as it's been a while and I'm not getting any younger anyway popped a couple of aspirins and headed off to work...
/pic6515144.jpg)
Before I discuss the session itself there was an hour before it that I helped a few people, that would cover the pictures of P for Pizza and our new favourites Project L&Mijnlieff. Quick(ish) teaches all but the kind of game that keeps people going for a while and gets them hooked. I managed a reasonable boardgame wall tidy too and some upkeep on the boxes with a judicial bit of sellotape in a few places and some re-labelling of the category spotting on the boxes.
6 o'clock rolls around pretty quick and people trickle in...all in all we had three new faces join us so we managed to reach the heady heights of 11, then Hope and Adam also joined in after shift too so with myself that was 14 guests. This seems to be doing alright now! With the Birthday do next week I'm quietly optimistic that it might be even bigger... we'll see... I did have a message on WhatsApp that I missed as I was setting up to play a game as a regular was running late... I need to keep an eye on this as I need to be as inclusive as I can... So, what was played?
Well... I started with 3 and me... not knowing if others would show I set up my copy of Space Base. Whilst doing so a 5th player showed up (a chap who had been emailing my work email asking questions before attending, nice to see him turn up!) so we set up a full compliment, 1st time I'd played with that many, nice! As I was doing this the three teachers from last week wandered over from another table, they had not realised we were set up and gone to their own table to play The Quacks of Quedlinburg. One of them mentioned we didn't used to have this and thanked me for getting it as I said I would to them some time ago... it had always been on my list to get for the cafe so glad to see someone noticed it was a recent addition. I need to try and stop this happening, people coming in and going to the wrong tables... I guess signage for the Social tables would be sensible? I can rustle something up for after our special next week me thinks... anyway... result of our 5 player Space Base? John(new chap) got himself 24 points, I was on 26, Adil(email guy) 33, Felix(Hope's chap) 35 and David(regular) won the day getting to 40! Certainly not one we could have in the cafe collection, takes up far too much room and the chance it would be wrecked due to it's space is very high, shame as it's a great game!
As Stanley joined us, two new faces did too and he started showing them how Santorini plays... nice start! As they wrapped up the promised PARKS showed up with Ned from a few weeks ago on his own, without his partner. They started their play and I kept an eye on them, very nice looking game and as Colin showed up too they played with 5 players, just what Ned was looking for to see how it works with a full compliment. After the game ended I made sure to discuss with everyone if we should add it to our collection, it was a resounding yes but I was paid a superb compliment by a couple of them who basically said that the set up was quick but the rules teach was a tad long and not up to my standard... no offence to Ned meant at all though! I mean, I'm paid to be a good teacher of games so I guess I should provide quality!
The table of three who were playing Quacks came over and joined us and started learning Kodama 3D. As they were a decent amount through Hope sat with them to socialise which was amazing and this is the table that Adam sat on too and he taught them Tokaido after. Great to see other staff just join in after their shift, fingers crossed they do this more often.
As tables started wandering off we had a four player Battle Sheep followed by a three player OK Play on our table and then got joined by who was left from the other tables for a good sized Hues and Cuesas well. At this point my headache came back so I left them to it and had a wall tidy for the end of my shift and cleaned a few tables too as well as doing some spot sweeping of the floor. All in all a great session, looking forward to a bigger group next time, we already have 4 people marking it on the Facebook group as going and another 9 interested. Nice.
Tuesday comes around and I started with a chilled day at home and shopping... highlight? Got me a new bin for the kitchen... raided Mark's room and dressed it up as a wizard by using his Halloween costume... I am amused... in the afternoon went to see Dune for the second time at the cinema, that's rare for me.
/pic6515143.jpg)
After the film, popped by the cafe to learn a new game that we had donated by Wayland's Forge (our local neighbourhood games store) when I went to chat with them the other week, it was an old demo copy, win...The Downfall of Pompeii, and very nice it is too. I enjoyed it and it wasn't too hard to learn so I reckon I can teach this quite quickly. We'll see. After that the shift was ending so I taught/played Love Letter with Hope, Aarron, Mark and Charles. Great social game, just what we need to wind down after work.
So there we are... loving it, living it... things are growing nicely and I can't wait to see how the Birthday Bash goes.