February Back at the Celtic

Great to be back at the Celtic Club again, room to stretch out with a big group of people. Once again, it’s always great to see how people are having so much fun that after many hours when time comes to leave, folks feel like they’ve been suddenly and cruelly interrupted in the middle of their games 🙂

Searching for buried treasure on an exotic island in Tobago. (I’m not sure about driving jeeps all over the island though…)

That’s a wonky tree standing up in the middle of the table, and Luke is swinging a little axe towards it. The bark of the tree is dark brown, with the inner core being tan. You want to knock off the outer bark leaving the core in place – or else you get penalised. From the spinning tan piece in the foreground, it looks like Luke has just stuffed up! Toc Toc Woodsman – quite fun 🙂 Here’s a closeup

Rawwwrrrr! Gigantic monsters battle it out to be King of Tokyo

Ahh the good old colourful board of the Australian version of Cranium. Very hard to find these days, you know. Just like the modern black “WOW” version, with trivia, acting, puzzles, team work … but with an Australian focus 🙂

Qwirkle … need I say more? I’d fall over in surprise if we had a games day and no one played it. Here they seem to be expanding the four player game to six players. I wonder if there were any negative results? At least a shorter game I suppose. And less six-in-a-row “Qwirkles” ?

Six rival gangs of mobsters take each other on, equally offering threats and protection. Remember all allegiances are temporary … they last as long as they’re useful … that’s Family Business …

Mahjong tables!!

Scrabble Trickster – keeps being popular despite the reputation.

Wow, seems Bohnanza was really popular that day! You slowly collect matching sets of coloured cards, but might lose them unless you can arrange deals with other players. The exciting theme is that you’re growing crops of beans (“bohn” in German), but that’s hardly relevant!

More Bohnanza… distinctive by the two “rows” of coloured cards in front of each player. (Ignore the yellow “money” cards) Advanced players may have three rows.

Even more Bohnanza! Later, Luke (with the cap) wrote an eloquent review about the game: “Damn it feels good to be a bean farmer…”

Move over Indiana Jones! Mike introduces more people to archaeology in Thebes

Blokus, colourful, tranquil and strategic. But when you play next, make sure you check the floor afterwards – we picked up a piece later.

Genuine French people teaching the traditional French card game Belote (apparently it has similarities to both 500 and the French “Tarot” game)

Clint playing the map building game Carcassonne, done special “Clint” style

Antike – ancient cities and empires surround the Mediterranean sea. Lead your nation to expand and reach the pinnacles of civilisation!

Dixit Odyssey, seems folks love this just as much as the original! (But this version you can play with twice the number of players)

More Qwirkle!

Mahjong!

Ryan leads a group in a different style of Werewolf

More Dixit! At one stage there were two games going on, on adjacent tables!

Hmmm a busy looking game with lots of boats and buildings arranged along a river?

Dragon’s Gold, turns out fighting the dragon is the easy bit. Sharing the treasure? That’s another matter.

Ahh Rollick … folks who would never get up to act by themselves find they’re having a great time during this team charades. Notice the card on the left being held above the player’s head. Of special note was newcomer Greg and his clever way of conveying “magician”.

Ahem, I’m not sure I want to know what they’re acting out here. But here’s a video from another month of us playing Rollick at Cafe Games

Notre Dame! A board of interesting design as players strive to have the wealthiest and healthiest part of mediaeval Paris – all in the shadow of the grand cathedral.

Pandemic … we thought we were doing so well, working together to combat the deadly plagues sweeping around the world, we were just about to win … when we took our eyes off South America for just a moment … and it suddenly exploded with disease … and we were lost …

Well, well, Cards Against Humanity. Not for the straight-laced or the faint of heart. The game play is just like the family-friendly game Apples to Apples, but often the cards are highly offensive. Many are quite bizarre. But always hilarious. Here’s an video of four drunk guys playing it. Not one to play with your kids. Unless you do. It’s hard to find a proper version of this game, but follow the links and you can print out your own copy.

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Cafe Games Video

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Comments

(Feel free to leave your own further down, but here are some already received)

• Daiva D

  Great fun (as always) … got to play several new games & had a great time.

• Julia

  Really great, friendly group of people! Thanks to everyone who taught me new games — it was so fun to play a heap of diverse games.

• Dinusha

  My friend and I had a great time! We stayed for 7 hours and played quite a few games I’d never heard of, while meeting a bunch of awesome people. Will definitely try to make it to the next one!

• Leo

  Fun and fantastic day 🙂 Shame that I didn’t survive as a werewolf.

• Soan

  Again an awesome event. Wish I could’ve stayed longer.

• Sarah

  Brilliant! Played a tree-chopping game (not sure what it was called) two games of carcassonne, and a game of werewolf. Very much recommend this event to others for the future.

• Eileen

  Had an awesome time once again. Was great meeting new friends and playing all these games I’ve never heard of before 🙂

• Kathy

  Good day, lighter weight games played this time.

• David

  I really did enjoy this month’s Big Saturday Boardgames Day. Being back at The Celtic Club on a Saturday was excellent, heaps of space to move around, plenty of tables and chairs upstairs and there were close to 100 people, who floated in and out as the day went on, totally awesome!

• Shane

  This was yet another amazing Meetup. Christopher never fails to put on a good show 🙂 Heaps of exciting people including a very nice red-haired scientist and a very well spoken Seer. You both know who you are. Totally made my day 🙂

• Andrew

  Yeahhh! Greatt

• Geoff

  Enjoyable games and friendly people, as always.

• Greg

  My first meet up event. Great fun, welcoming and really well organised.

• Solomon

  always alot of people.

• Alison

  Lots of fun, as per usual and my friend thought it was great too. Five games in 4 hours or so..thanks to all