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Don't fret if you're visiting for the first time and the blog seems out-of-date. We still meet, regular as clockwork; we just don't blog about it every time!

Tuesday 17 January 2012

BBGG7 - What a night...


Everyone here is a BBGG-er
Last meeting was massive - a grand total of 27.  I would say I can't believe how many people turned up but I organise these things so I can.  However, it was still surprising and still gratifying.

Welcome to all our new faces - lots of you from Couchsurfing, a few from Gumtree and a hefty injection from Bath Gaming  Guild.  Very happy to meet you all and you are all welcome to return, on account of being fun, happy people.

It was so big that I can't do my usual rundown of what we played - I can name-drop but I can't give too many details.

Also, I've lost my bit of paper that told me the majority of games played. Please, please comment/email me and let me know so I can add them in.

I can tell you that we have three games of Settlers of Catan going on at once.

Jenga moved around from table to table as new people joined and warmed up... Some of Bath Gaming Guild kicked off with something strategy-based that took most of the evening.

A game of Mancala went on across the way as did a very amusing game of Yes or No! which sounds simple but is surprisingly hard; players recieve a set of questions that they must answer without saying yes or no.  The questions are tailored to increase the difficulty of how you answer and it is quite amazing how trained you are to tag yes or no in front of your answers.

A game of Mental Floss was present too - this was fun insofar as it was trivia-based and I think, to an extent, it had the edge on Trivial Pursuit.  The way the question mechanics worked was more variable and the trivia was more wide-ranging.  It was also better than Articulate insofar as it was less 90s/Anglocentric which always a problem for our non-English players or those under...I don't know....22.  Describing who Des Lynam is is no mean feat, I can tell you.

Multiple Catan
The last game I was involved in was Small Worlds, another landgrab/strategy based game.  You played a variety of races all competing for a land too small for the amount vying and had the interesting feature of the potential to fairly quickly cycle through races.  The more land owned, the more victory points, and should you abandon a race in favour of another, that race's owned land would continue to benefit you until taken over.  By this point, I was just straight-up drunk and my tactics weren't quite as sparkling as they could have been but I still really enjoyed having a playthrough.

I noticed the Couchsurfing contingent playing a real variety of games, some card-based, some involving little plastic doohickeys: further information would be grateful received.

The night tied up at closing time as usual with a good deal of us still there.  Bath Gaming Guild enjoyed joining us and we enjoyed having them.  We had a talk about how to integrate and the consensus for the moment is just 'see how it goes'.

They meet every Tuesday at the St. James' Wine Vaults (as long as the room-booking goes alright) so for the game-hungry amongst us, an opportunity to play every week with a choice of locations awaits you!

You can get more info and contact the Guild here - they're really friendly and play a really wide range of games.


Next BBGG meet on the 24th January, see you all there!

Saturday 7 January 2012

BBGG6 And a Happy New Year to you all...

Happy 2012, my dears and welcome back!

As we all know, we meet next Tuesday on the 10th to resume our pints and points.  Am looking forward to this very much and expect to see some new faces too.

Have been getting myself into a right old slack state and am here to rectify this.  Without further ado, BBGG 6....

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The 20th December was a lovely meet.  I, for one, was full of the joys of Christmas and the pub had a lovely festive air to it.  Our group was a little smaller in number than usual but I was touched that so many of you came despite us being so close to the holidays.

The Bell were strangely eager to put up our trestle table for us and we chose to pop it on the raised dais bit by the door which felt kind of awesome (although my internal teenager was embarrassed at being so prominent).

This week's games were strongly word-based although we got out the Jenga for a warm-up as per usual.


Prior to getting started, we were very much distracted by Phoebe's darling Christmas gift to us all of some high-quality fudge - she is an absolute sweetheart and the fudge was like none other I have ever tasted, from our very own Fudge Kitchen down by the Abbey.  Very, very, very nice.

So, on a sugar-high and with happy tummies, we got on with our tasks at hand.

The group to my right played Bali.  I was not privileged to join, being too distracted by fudge, but they seemed to enjoy it.  It consists of lettered cards being played a bit like Solitaire - It was reported that you were also allowed to take other people's stacks.  They played through and didn't seem too sad to have done so.  My group faffed around with fudge and sideways-5-block Jenga/balance-the-Jenga-in-unrealistic-patterns for a while but got onto Kan-U-Go after a while.  This is basically Scrabble without the board, in card form, with a limit of 3-letter words, although we bent the rules to move up to 4 letters...It was alright.  No great shakes but didn't come away feeling like I'd lost 20 minutes of my life either.   The other group moved onto Syllabex which again, is Scrabble-esque but involves forming words out of 3-letter syllables.  They reported this to be fairly enjoyable but just not too great in terms of game mechanics.

We played a few rounds of that great favourite, Articulate and also went through a stocking-filler type game where you chose the right definition for a word from four possibilities.  We weren't really gaming per se at this point but we still had the element of competition.  I always like a bit of learning thrown into any situation and found the unknown words to be passably amusing.

The night came a close here - somehow 11pm had swung around quietly and we went our separate ways off into the night, full of fudge and pints and points.  It was a good evening.  Plenty of laughter and good feeling, as always, and it felt like a comfortable, warming and reassuring end to BBGG's 2011.

I sincerely look forward to seeing you all on the 10th January, hearing what Father Christmas brought you and symbolically melting that seasonal hoarfrost on our eager card-picking, dice-shaking, question-choosing fingers.

With a bit of  fashionably-late, soppy and seasonal love - Merry Christmas and Happy New Year...

Sarah xx