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!

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

Isn't this beautiful.....

I swear I'll write up BBGG6 soon and all that but first...look!!

Home-made wooden Settlers of Catan!  For God's sake someone bring it along next time, I'm jonesing..

Apparently the crafter in question was inspired by boardcrafting.com.

Just beautiful.....

BBGG5!

Hi all!

Apologies for protracted absence of updating - it's almost like I've been horribly rundown and ill with a sickness virus followed back-on-back with a chesty cough that left me weak and crap unless I stayed in bed all the time whilst still having plenty of other commitments to try and complete!

Determined as I am to not embarrass myself by having #6 roll around without completing this post, I am here to give you a goodly fifteen minutes of my precious time to make an account of our lovely fifth meeting.

As I mentioned before, week 5 saw the Bell provide us with a lovely long trestle table to game on.  To my great relief, it was not obtrusive and embarrassing and all take-up-all-the-pub-ey, it actually worked pretty nicely!  We started with a bit of Jenga and Shithead as always and quickly moved on to our more serious games. Plenty got involved with a good, spread-out game of Carcassonne, possible now that we had the table space whilst the others played some Scrabble and another table did a bit of Blokus.  I lost horribly at Scrabble.  This losing fluke is becoming a streak. I think I might need to rethink my official stand on 'How Good I Am At Scrabble' - it's not holding up empirically.

Around about this time, a lady came over with a posh-looking camera and tripod and started setting up.  To our great pleasure (fear? I don't know), we found out that the Bell had asked her to take some proper photos for their website.  These don't appear to be up just yet but I look forward to seeing them and doing a bit of linking!  This made the whole gaming feel very proper and I am very happy to have this liaison with the Bell - we're good for each other.

After photos, Scrabble and Carcassonne, I remember being involved with a game of which I cannot remember the name.  It was a charming, mid-20th century, child's game that was sort of like Ludo except that you had to capture pieces to get them back to your area.

We also saw some new faces, who were very welcome and we also had an extra game going on during all this.  I don't know the proper name for it but it's sort of similar to Chinese Whispers.  You take a notebook, someone writes a scenario, then someone draws a picture of that scenario, then someone writes an account of the scenario drawn, then someone draws that, and so on and so forth.  Very amusing, would highly recommend for Christmas with the family.

BBGG5 ended abruptly with everyone sort of disappearing at once after last orders whilst I and another stalwart joined some other friends for a protracted argument about the game-play mechanics of dominoes.


Next session will be on the 20th December at 7.30 as always.  Following this, we will have our Christmas hiatus and game on in the New Year!

BBGG4 - Now with guest co-authoring, you lucky devils!

Due to my recent employment (woo!), I couldn't make BBGG4 on time (don't panic, cherubs, this won't be a regular occurrence)!  I joined around 9.15pm to see a host of chancers, trying their luck, all without the gamesmistress!

Ian, one of our stalwart members, who has the privilege of being one of the few to attend every single week (applause and plaudits and approval!), gave me a rundown of the evening's events.

The majority of members started the evening with a warm-up game of Fluxx, that fiendishly tricky game (in the editrix's opinion anyway) where the rules change constantly.  After this, they settled into a long game of Apples To Apples.  This involves picking items, people and places that best fit an adjective, and everybody relished the opportunity to argue their case to the judge. Meanwhile, another table in the corner got on rather more quietly with Blokus.



At this point, yours truly arrived and had a lovely chat with the manager of the Bell who thinks we are just delightful.  We regrouped with half of us forming teams of two for a Trivial Pursuit, and the other half cracking open a deck of cards. The Ticket To Ride afficianados took their game outside to the bigger tables, TTR being a rather large board.  Luckily, one Trivial Pursuit team just managed to get a full set of cheeses before the lights started flashing and it was time to leave once again, having played our hearts out to closing time.  Fun was had by all, as always.

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Having had a nice chat with the manager, next week we are going to try out getting in a long trestle table so those of us with big boards can play more easily.  I know several people have wanted to play Carcassone but this has been stumped by small tables.  So, next time, let's bring our bigger games along and see how it plays out.  Could be fun sitting in rows, might be a fun-stifler; let's see.

BBGG3 - Now with special guests!

Tuesday the 7th saw another splendid turnout with many new faces as well as our trusty stalwarts - those of you who couldn't make were missed.

This week, we had the tremendously exciting special guest, Paul, who brought with him his business endeavour; Namely, the UK distribution of King's Cribbage.  This is a nifty Cribbage variant that takes the layout of Scrabble and combines it with tiles that allow you to make Cribbage hands.  For those of you who love numbers and strategy, it's a winner. Players reported it to be challenging and complicated ( in a good way) with plenty of forms of hands to be played.

Prior to this, we started off with the classic warm-up of Jenga which conveniently toppled just as Paul and his daughter Corrina joined us.  Players got into two groups and got games underway.  Meanwhile, I and the later attendees set up a hand of warm-up Shithead at the other end of the tables.  I lost - how sad!  Too much chattering, of course.

After King's Cribbage ended, we came together for a mass game of Trivial Pursuit.  This too was a variant; a new version where you bet on how likely it is that someone will answer rightly or wrongly.

In teams of 3, we bet on the answering of things like the Science and Nature of Poison, the History of the Olympics and the Art and Literature of Butterflies (did you know Madame Butterfly is set in Nagasaki?  I didn't, much to my team's detriment).  We also learnt the valuable lesson that I can't call a bet to save my life - Never trust me.  Always do the opposite.

We didn't get to finish this as once more, we were cut short by the pub closing.  Another fruitful meet, in terms of new faces and new games; my love to you all for coming xx

See y'all 22nd November at 7.30pm at the Bell on Walcot Street for more chancey risk and skill-making!

Set down, throw down - A second successful meet!

Tuesday the 25th October brought us new faces, new games and, most importantly, the novelty of hot chocolate mixed with rum, speedily imbibed by some gents who clearly knew where they were going in life.

The night started meekly at 7.20 with 5 of us and quickly grew to a sprawling two-tables-worth.  There was a mass, warm-up play of Jenga, where I discovered that the majority of BBGG like to live on the edge and remove both sides of the bottom layers first - far too close to the edge for my liking, I prefer a more cautious game with longevity in mind, but there you go, different horses for different courses, innit loves?

My memory gets a bit hazy at this point (I was barely through one pint, there's no excuse) but we were definitely joined by several more folk and a game of Articulate sprung up.  I definitely saw a bit of Carcassonne (Two people brought this along). I think another round of Fluxx (the Zombie variety, this time) on the right-hand side too. Around this point, a rogue table of 4 presented itself to me from across the other side of the pub.  After a beckon or two, they came to join us, bringing with them Blokus and Ticket To Ride and the rum/hot chocolate combo.  I sat down to a very engaging game of Blokus that was then replayed by folks at the other end - certainly recommend it.

I think at this point, we'd just about reached our height of 19, bolstered by some of Bath Anti-Cuts Alliance whose meeting had finished.  There was a settling down into Ticket To Ride at the far-end (we were 5-table's-worth by this point), a game of Scrabble in the middle and a couple more rounds of Articulating if my memory serves me correctly.

As before, we were there til last orders and some of the last to leave.  The Bell was accommodating as always with turning up lights and shifting patrons (so sorry, not my idea).

Next meet is Tuesday the 8th November at 7.30pm at the Bell, Walcot Street, Bath.  There are rumours circulating of a special guest - details to follow.......