[Melbourne, VIC] 8 Mar 2014 - BOARDGAMES DAY!

This week's Fourth Player has a nice run down on the game's day. Including a big shout out to Bruce's daughter for her dastardly abilities.

I surprised her with that today.

I picked her up from a visit to her grandparents' and had a podcast on (as is my usual driving procedure).

The look on her face when she got called out was priceless.

It seems that the 4th of Jan is also a regular "Board Games Day" run by Games Lab. MO' PEOPLE MO' GAMES.

More people? I think I might be bringing at least 5 extras. This could be great.

Okay, so I know this is a real long shot, but does anyone happen to have the file for the Enhanced Edition of The Witcher 2 lying around that they could bring on a flash drive or something for me on Saturday? I mean the ~10GB one. I'm dying to play it over the holidays but my sad connection is struggling to get through any kind of download at the moment.

I mean, if I have any friends that could help me out on this one it's you guys <3

I can maybe dump off a Steam back-up of it, but I'm guessing you want the GoG installer?

Sounds like we'll have more people coming in from the Fourth Player side as well this time. And Paul will be running a Pathfinder intro game for people who want to try that.

I have some physical media of Witcher 2 that might work for you.

I might have as many as 10 people coming with me. I hope that is not too presumptuous.

I bought the retail game, just looking for the stand-alone patch. I tried getting it off an iinet server quota-free but it 404'd me. If I dig further on the CD Projekt site I think I remember they had it divided up into smaller chunks to download piecemeal but it might have been taken down by now, or I'm just really bad at looking for it.

Sounds like we'll have more people coming in from the Fourth Player side as well this time. And Paul will be running a Pathfinder intro game for people who want to try that.

If anyone wants to listen to an old episode where they talk about their beginner's experience in Pathfinder, you can click this conveniently placed link.

Hey folks, I'm hoping to convince some pals to join us on the day, but who knows.

I'm considering bringing some games, but wondering what will already be on offer, as I'd rather travel light on P.T.
Let me know if any of the following will likely be on the tables already:

Cash n Guns, 7 Wonders, and Love Letter, Resistance, Koi Pond (though the last three are tiny, so i'll likely bring them regardless)

Also, keen to get a first play in on Lords of Waterdeep if anyone is willing to teach a newbie, oh and Anders, is Spartacus likely? How long does it play again?

Cant wait.

I also want in on any waterdeep learning that may happen

I'll bring in Spartacus and Waterdeep.

Spartacus is 2-6hrs depending on how long we want it to go (can start anywhere on the victory track).

Waterdeep is very fast, probably only 1.5-2hrs for a learning game if you are familiar with boardgames and their systems.

And don't worry about being presumptuous and bringing people.

More people is good. Old, young, men, women, whatever. Let's all have fun together.

WeeMadAndo wrote:

And don't worry about being presumptuous and bringing people.

More people is good. Old, young, men, women, whatever. Let's all have fun together.

I think my Mum wants to come - but she will be stuck in Bendigo.

Great session today folks. Keen for another in about 4 weeks time or so.

Anders, I'd like to get some info on the existing boardgame groups if you have any, if there is a good one with auto mailouts for invitations we could merge with them, otherwise, we could start up a mail list etc. Seems like there are tonnes of untapped gamers locally, games lab seems like a really solid venue to stick with too.
Sourcing games for the tables or suggesting and lining up games to bring and play would be neat too.

Anyone who has ideas for resources to use to do this, let me know.

A fun combination of minor and epic today.

I think a bit of pre organisation of who brings what will help us keep a good pool of games for pickups etc. so we should compare notes for next time.

Otherwise - FB events are easy to manage. Games Lab themselves would probably be a decent source of new players. A little flier or card to hand out when someone makes a purchase that indicates they might be interested.

The only problem with the venue is it is bad for my wallet. I keep walking out with a purchase.

A post or two to seenontabletop.tumblr.com with some details might help advertise too.

I've been wrangling groups together out of people I know and have lucked out with crossing over with Meetings With The Board and, I believe it was a regular Saturday session that Games Lab runs that we crossed over with yesterday.

I'm happy to take on some organiser duties at the moment, but I will likely be leaving Melbourne mid-year so hopefully someone else would be willing to step up by then.

My recommendation would be that we keep it fairly simple. Either once a month - first Saturday for example, or on a four weekly rotation.

Fliers or cards are a good idea. If someone wants to get a quote on them or has a decent printer at home and wants to step up, then go right ahead. I'd recommend having them at Games Lab, Mind Games, Games Shoppe and Good Games. There's quite a few other locations in non-CBD suburbs too that could be covered.

Have a FB page or twitter where we just post dates and locations is probably a good idea too.

I also think having a list of games in advance so everyone knows what is going to be there to play is a good idea.

As organised on twitter:

February 15 from 10am at Games Lab in Melbourne.

Featuring the Spartacus super-game (6 players and starting early).

Looking forward to seeing everyone there again.

Had another super day last week. Thanks everyone.

IMAGE(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/842/1cug.jpg)
A fireworks display, built by Bruce, his daughter and myself. In this round it all went pear shaped early, but in the next we proved to be competent pyrotechnicians.

I didn't get in for more Waterdeep action, did you guys find it to be good work replacement?

For the next meeting, 15th of Feb is fine by me

First Saturday of the month clashes with my farmer's market, so my vote for an ongoing schedule is for a different Saturday or every four weeks As far as organisation goes, I'm not opposed to using facebook, dislike the idea of having to make a Google+ account.

For reference, the big meetup.com boardgame group is this one (too massive for us to merge with):

http://www.meetup.com/Boardgames-gro...

There is also this one, that has more going on on the tabletop RPG side:

http://www.meetup.com/The-Melbourne-...

Also for the pub/scrabble inclined:
http://www.meetup.com/Fitzroyal-Boar...

In the mid-eastern suburbs:
http://www.meetup.com/Billabong-Boar...

Honestly, don't tell anyone, but I'm not a huge fan of meetup.com, it has some good structure for organisation, but the comments system is crap and in two of the groups I'm in it's about a 50-50 chance that any particular event will fall apart. However, neither are run by awesome goodjers

P.S. I haven't gotten to looking up where and when it's available, but I'm already sold on that Witcher boardgame, even if it's terrible XD

We have guaranteed use of the upstairs event space, but it's a 5 buck per person "cover" to get in. Hope that's acceptable to folks, in order to guarantee our space and separation from Magic nerds.

No prob

Is now the time to start getting organised?

I can only do a shortish day and will need to be out around 3PM, so I will be on the doorstep at the start time.

We should have a list of our collections so we can arrange to have stuff that others may want to try or if you have a hankering to bust something out. I know we have a big Spartacus thing for this week but what else should we collectively bring?

Bring whatever you might feel like playing. I'm hoping Max brings Werewolf again, because I'm keen to do more of that.

I'm bringing a laptop with Nidhogg as an experiment, but only that and Spartacus, because I'm not in the mood to lug a suitcase in on the train again.

These days are one of the high points of my monthly calendar.

It's a good group when the 4 losers give the winner a round of applause at the end of a game that involves quite a bit of treachery.

It's a very nice group we've managed to assemble and I'm sad to be leaving it (this will be my last regular session due to a job transfer).

The next session is March 8, which is not only going to be us, but also Meetings With The Board and Melbourne Saturday Gamers running that day, so we should be able to have an excellent selection of games at any given time. And hopefully a huge game of Werewolf or similar.

Had a great day on the 8th, super sad to see you go, WeeMadAndo. I regret not duct taping you to a chair, or similar Also, I totally meant to take lots of photos, and forgot. Remind me next time please :3

I don't recall anyone announcing a date for April, does Sat the 12th work for you guys? I'll push for any date that you guys that couldn't make last time find the best. The week after, Sat 19th is Easter long weekend, I assume that's out because peeps will be doing the family/holiday thing. Thoughts?

Edit: Meant to post this a while ago, Meetings with the Board made their own Meetup group, just FYI. http://www.meetup.com/Meetings-With-...

Missing the last one sucked, so I'm keen for the next if I can make it. Between life and house hunting I'm pretty booked until after Easter, and even then my Saturdays are sketchy unless we've found a house by then.
So I'm no good for suggesting the next meet up, but maybe the one after?
Are we still aiming to tie in with the 4th player crew for these because they seem like fun folk.

Whilst having Troubleshot there is highly desirable, Easter is still ages away so maybe we should try for something before that. I will prod the fourthplayer lads and see what they think and we'll see what we can come up with.

12 seems like a good date to kick around as a starting point.

Ok, I'm sure you've all already seen Bruce posting on twitter anyway, but seems like we're all ok with joining forces with the 4th player guys. Since they're running Pathfinder on the 29th of March, let's jump on that. Maybe skip the 12th in favour of reserving energy for after Easter, then? See what happens, I guess.

Bruce wrote:

having Troubleshot there is highly desirable...

QFT! if he and Alastair can't make whatever happens after Easter, I think we will be bringing the boardgames to them on call

P.S. I'd like to brag that I played an epic three hour game called Shogun yesterday*, it's not really a wargame but there are territories you move into and control via battling little cubes in a neat dice tower. Even though I was pretty out of my depth I totally successfully invaded someone's territory this one time and pulled off one or two surprise moves. And my troops were well fed with rice After a close first half, I tied for last in the second half after not defending my important sh*t very well. Derp. It was great fun

Edit: Looks like the pics didn't work for anyone not using my computer, I'll try again
Board:
IMAGE(http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u440/Pants11/IMAG0441_zps592fa704.jpg)

Battle tower:
IMAGE(http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u440/Pants11/IMAG0442_zpsa7c21eeb.jpg)

*at the 'Godzilla Games' meetup at the Izakaya Chuji restaurant on Lonsdale St