The Game Shelf On Tour - Vancouver

This weekend was my third visit to Vancouver, but my first as a gamer. Vancouver is probably my favourite city in the world and on a sunny weekend in May, I was keen to enjoy some time outdoors, but in between a lot of walking I managed to plan a route to visit a lot of board game spots. As a lone traveler, I couldn’t take advantage of any gaming opportunities, but nevertheless, it was fun to check out a few stores and pick up a couple of souvenirs.

The Yellow Meeple's First Impressions:- 16th April 2018 at The Ludoquist

This blog is by no means my first impressions of The Ludoquist. We visit the board game cafe in Croydon quite a lot, with different groups of friends, and, of course, Amy works there. However, it's the first time we've been by ourselves and set aside a day for gaming. I've been keeping  a list of games on the shelves that I wanted to play and we managed to cross of quite a few. We identified some great new games as well as avoiding a few bad purchases.

I won't feature all of the games we played, but here's some of the Yellow Meeple's first impressions;

The Game Shelf's Definitive List of UK Board Game Cafes

We love board game cafes! 

I know that the board gaming community can sometimes be split on this issue. We have a big board game collection, we have each other and other friends to play with, so why would we pay money to go to a cafe and play games, as well as probably spending extra money of food and drink?

My main motivation is for visiting cafes that have large board game libraries and have games that I want to try before I by. This means that I'm way more likely to visit a cafe if they list their game collection online. It also means I'm way more likely to play shorter games at cafes that charge a cover charge for a limited length of gaming time, so that I can get the most 'value for money' out of the games I play. 

Besides our 'work' visits where I'm on a mission to try new games, we also use board game cafes as a place to meet friends to catch-up over a few drinks or a snack and we often visit cafes whilst we're traveling around the UK or elsewhere when our board game collection is not at hand. And that's the reason I want to start this list. As we visit more cafes here in the UK I'm going to record some of our thoughts but otherwise I just want to keep this as a list and resource for gamers.

The Yellow Meeple's First Impressions:- 11th November - 12th November

This first impressions blog covers a whole 2-day period! That's because we had the chance to play new games at two different board game cafe's this weekend. We spent Saturday afternoon at  the Ludoquist in Croydon, who are having an amazing first week - so amazing that it's hard to find some table space! Then we spent Sunday at Draughts in London. Both occassions were with friends, so we did a mixture of sharing some games we already know and learning some new, lighter games at the table.

It was a busy weekend, so here's the Yellow Meeple's first impressions;

The Yellow Meeple's First Impressions:- 19th - 22nd October 2017

Last Friday we had a 6 hour gaming marathon at Thirsty Meeples in Oxford where we played new games for the whole session. In addition, we came home from our week away to a small pile of new deliveries, so this week's first impressions could be very, very long - so I'll keep my thoughts on each game brief. In our time at Thirsty Meeples we only played one game that's jumped straight onto our wishlist and, as is always predictable, it's one that's a little hard to get hold of!

So, here's the Yellow Meeple's first impressions;

The Yellow Meeple’s First Impressions from Thirsty Meeples – 14th February

So Amy’s birthday surprise for the Yellow Meeple was a trip to Thirsty Meeple’s board game cafe in Oxford. I don’t particularly like to be limited to exactly 3 hours of gaming, but we crammed in as much as we could – specifically trying quick games or games that I was considering buying. It was definitely a mixed bag and I’m glad I had the chance to ‘try before you buy’.

Here’s are Yellow Meeple’s first impressions;

The Yellow Meeple's First Impressions of New York City

We spent last week in New York City. We did all of the usual sight-seeing, but we are geeks at heart, so as well as visiting Barcade and the Brooklyn Brewery (This Yellow Meeple is a beer geek too!), we tried to see as many board game stores and cafes as we could.

We were staying in Brooklyn Heights, so our first stop was the Brooklyn Strategist. This is a shop/cafe which seems to run a lot of gaming events for local kids (and some for adults too). They have a small board game library which had some tempting titles and a small collection of games for sale. We didn’t have time to stay and play, and unfortunately they didn’t have the X-Wing ships that Amy wants to buy next.

Next we visited The Compleat Strategist in Manhattan. I am not sure if this is a sister store, but it is HUGE and it is just a store, with no space for gaming. I could’ve bought so much in this shop, but instead I was very cautious and only bought Tides of Time from Portal Games. The rest of my spending had to wait until the end of our trip! The same was true of the TwentySided Store, which again had a few tempting things to buy, but nothing at the right price compared to what I could get in the UK.

Finally, our plan before heading to New York was to spend a day at The Uncommons board game cafe, and so with a forecast of showers, we decided to spend 8 hours straight at this great cafe. The food and drinks were good and reasonably priced. The cover charge was great value at just $5 to game for as long as we liked and the library of 750 games was enough for almost any gamer’s appetite. Below are the Yellow Meeple’s first impressions from a day spent at The Uncommons!