Thank you all for helping to create such a great charity fundraiser for Oxfam Australia! Having 65 people was more than I hoped for, with lots of new faces and lots of old faces too…
Ease Boardgames Lounge proved a lovely venue for the occasion.
↓ Balancing bricks in Uno Stacko (Jenga meets Uno)
↓ Getting tongue-tied in Articulate
↓ Learning a new game! Ubongo
If, like me, you also know little about Ubongo, check it out here: Ubongo on BGG.com
↓ Ooooh! Shiny gems!! (Ubongo)
↓ Blokus Trigon! Like Blokus but trigon … triagonal … strategically placing your coloured tiles …
↓ Battling the Niagara rapids!
↓ Mr Jack, stalking the alleys of London
Mr Jack? It’s a two person deductive game where one player is trying to track down Jack the Ripper (the infamous 19th century serial killer), while the other tries to make sure he escapes.
See here for a Mr Jack Video Review
↓ Qwirkle! (Like Scrabble without letters – harder than you think!)
↓ Scrabble Trickster! (See my review of Scrabble Trickster – where you can break the rules!)
↓ Learning to play Carcassonne (building a map, adding pieces to your own benefit)
↓ Nargiza gives orders during Carcassonne
↓ New Niagara players!
↓ New Pandemic players trying to save the world together!
↓ playing Spy Alley (try to work out your opponents’ secret identities)
The Raffle
Many people gave very generously for the raffle, the prizes for which were the choice of either the strategy game Carcassonne, or the classic party game Pictionary, with a second prize of a bar voucher from the Swan Hotel where several of us run trivia teams each Tuesday.
It seemed like we’d come unstuck at the first hurdle when we couldn’t find the holder of the winning ticket … but then it transpired that it actually belonged to Nikki – one of my Trailwalker team-mates who was being the barrel-girl! Dear me! Naturally she passed on the prize and the subsequent winner was Siew-Li who said she was “instructed” to take the Carcassonne prize 🙂
A further surprise awaited us when we drew the second prize … only to find it was another of Siew-Li’s tickets!!! Graciously she passed on that, and the bar voucher prize went to Tay! Now you’ve no excuse not to join us at trivia!!! muahaha!
↓ One lucky prize winner
↓ Oxfam Trailwalkers Brenda and Deb playing “Would You Rather”, a game of tricky choices
↓ Backgammon!
↓ Just before she lost and kicked the table over?
↓ real Scrabble!
↓ Teaching Pandemic to new players
↓ Apples to Apples card game, debating about what is “dirty” or “charming” or “annoying” …
↓ All plotting to Kill Doctor Lucky
↓ Scattegories “Snap” (travel edition) … a bit like “I spy” ! 🙂
During Werewolf, the village threw around all sorts of accusations and insults. Bayden was definitely some sort of supernatural evil, they were sure … even if he wasn’t a werewolf, he must be something creepy… perhaps a vampire. Time and time again, folks tried to raise a mob to get rid of his menace, but somehow Bayden succeeded in begging them to not lynch him, hinting “you really, really don’t want to do that” … after all he was the Fortune Teller. Unfortunately the villagers didn’t pick up on his hints … but the wolves got his scent and killed him off one night before his secrets were revealed.
Some folks always try to convince the village that they’ve worked out what to do using some kind of logical argument … hmmm I find the villagers often get suspicious about long-winded arguments they suspect are really just to pull the wool over their eyes 😉
In the end, the villagers never really recovered from the loss of their fortune teller, and fell one by one to the werewolves in the night. Congratulations Luke, Adrian and Allison!
As there was a prize at the end of this, we took the winning werewolves and some of the remaining villagers to a “tie breaker” game of “Are You The Traitor?”
After a few rounds of Evil Wizards, paranoid Guards and sneaky Traitors, Allison finished the game with the highest score and won a brand new copy of the “Spaghetti Western” card game “Bang!”
Naturally this lead to a round of the game:
Thanks to:
Ease Boardgames Lounge for providing a lovely gaming environment where we could mix and move around freely. I’m sure we’ll be returning there later – possibly for every second games day – stay tuned! (In the meantime, why not drop in there yourself? It’s open 7 days a week, 4pm to 11 @ 118 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne)
Good Games for donating the games that we raffled off and gave as prizes: “Carcassonne”, “Bang!” and from the raffle in January – “Gem Dealer”. (They’re both a well-stocked games shop and a venue with lots of tables so you can play games as soon as you buy them! Check them out at Lvl 1, 365 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne)
Swan Hotel Richmond for donating the bar vouchers we gave as prizes. It’s a great little pub, and every Tuesday they run a trivia night which quite a few of us go to. Bring along your own team, or contact Cafe Games email if you’d like to be put on a team. Swan Hotel is on the corner of Swan Street and Church (Chapel) street, Richmond.
Biggest Thanks to YOU the game players for your donations!
Your money is helping impoverished communities around the world build a foundation for future independent living, free from handouts.
See here for some of the communities that Oxfam Australia is helping with your money: The Difference You Make.
Come again!
Oops, at the event I forgot to flog our club, Cafe Games. We run social boardgames events like this every couple of weeks in different venues around Melbourne. For information about how to get updates about upcoming events, and our Facebook page, check the details here.
I hope to see you all again soon!
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PS: 3D Slideshow!
my new camera actually takes 3D photographs, here’s a slideshow of some of the days photos in 3D. It’s the kind of 3D that doesn’t need special glasses.
- If you don’t know how to “free view” 3D (ie without glasses) this link might help you
- If you know how to do it, for the best effect, I recommend Parallel viewing, in a dimly-lit room, with the video made larger (go to YouTube and then “pop out”), and the resolution cranked up to the highest (480p)
- If you want “cross eye” method, it’s not as good, but available from a “3d” menu when you start playing.
- See also the last 3D slideshow at the end of our January Boardgames Day.
Cafe Games 
Wow, this event looks awesome! What a great way to get people together and have a good time. I never would have thought of having a massive board game event to raise funds for charity. Looks like the room you had it in was a little crowded, but I wouldn’t have planned for such a turn out either.
Glad to see that BANG! was one of the prizes. BANG! is a great game not for only its replayability and variance from game to game, or its great variety in strategy (see character guides for BANG! at here), but also for the easy manner in which you can mod it. There are a variety of house rules and variants to add fun to BANG!, and there have also been many custom expansions made, such as Death Mesa, El Dorado, O. K. Corral, and the up and coming Robber’s Roost. For information on BANG! strategy, modding, and house rules I recommend visiting The BANG! Blog.
Hello Martin, I think I’ve seen some of your posts on BGG, and briefly looked at some of your strategy notes. I’m afraid we don’t get Bang out as often as I’d like – there’s just so many fun games everyone wants to play!
Actually the event wasn’t crowded at all – the venue could take twice the number! It was nice to spread out though folks are gregarious so some folks just wanted to crowd together 🙂