I think I’m now down to a select few people who even pay
attention to my invites and emails about board game group. It’s a shame, but I
think when I changed to Monday evening I lost a few people. I don’t have many
free evening but perhaps I’ll set up a poll to see when people think they can
actually play games in any given 2 week period and hope that one turns out
better than my standard 3 or 4 attendees. Nevertheless, this week I had a
really nice time and we played a lot of games.
Week 9
Number of Attendees:
4
Games Played:
Dingos’s Dreams, Sushi Go, Codenames,
Karuba, 6 Nimmt
The Challenges
Dealing with
different arrival times
The night started with just two of us, so finding a quick
game for two people was the first challenge. I settled on Dingo’s Dreams, a game that I only had to give a rules refresher
for and one we only had to play one round of. As is predictable someone turned
up just as we finished the teaching. We ploughed on but then moved on to
3-player Sushi Go. Inevitably our
fourth player arrived just as I finished teaching that too, but they watched
the first round then joined in - not technically fair, but actually the points
didn’t work out too skewed at the end of the game. With a few more players it
would be better to start with something like Codenames where dropping into the game is easier – if anyone has
any other recommendations for games that work in this way, that would be very
useful!
The Successes
Bringing a friend
Bringing a friend from outside work a definite plus this
week. She had a really great time and wants to come again, plus it meant the
evening lasted longer and we could play some higher player count games such as
Codenames. The only downside was that I think others from work thought they ought
to leave relatively early to allow us to have food. It wasn’t a problem but I
think people might have stayed longer otherwise.
Someone decided to
buy a game on the spot
I once again brought out Sushi
Go this week. The cute, tasty looking Sushi seems to be a definite appeal
for new gamers. In addition, everyone picks up the game really quickly and even
as an experienced player I am rarely the winner, meaning everyone is very
quickly on the same playing field. We played it once, played it again, and
playing it a third time was actually vetoed by another player who likes to try
more new games. The newest member at the table decided to buy Sushi Go immediately!
Two people have
pinkie promised me that they’ll come next time
I always invite my close colleagues to board game night
because they’re always interested in what I’m doing and in some ways I think
they’re keen to support me. I never expected them to become my regular
attendees and in fact wanted to get more of a range of people to come along
from other parts of the office. However, there is one colleague who has always
been interested and never turned up. This week I believe he was forced by
someone else to promise me he’ll come along next time and of course I expect
the enforcer to come along too!
Lessons for Next
Week
Longer games
I’d really like people to stick around to play something a
bit longer. We seem to get stuck on the filler games and have barely even
touched traditional gateways like Ticket
to Ride or Carcassonne. I was
happy to get Karuba played this week,
but that was only with my friend from outside work, and really falls into the
filler category for me too. Next week I think I have more new players so I feel
I have to use games with a low time commitment, but after that I’m going to try
and focus on something bigger.
No comments:
Post a Comment