Waterstones – Board Game Night

I was invited by Andy Hopwood to a new board games night ran by Waterstones book shop. I already had gaming plans for later that evening but as it was only on for 2 hours I thought I could squeeze it in.

To be honest I had mixed feelings about a big corporation trying to muscle in to the lovely board game community. This was not helped by them refusing to give me free tea and biscuits. Purchase! Ha! (Handbag vodka it is then)

However as it was the first one I thought id give it a go and see what it was like.

Its situated on the 1st floor of Waterstones on the High Street. There wasn’t any signs up so i had to ask where it was. When I arrived a couple of people had set up some games and I already knew Kitty and Andy so I went and sat with them.

At this point I remembered I am now an investigative journalist so put my investigative feet on and went and had a look round.

The games that had Waterstones had promised on the event photo, didn’t really compare to the actual stack that appeared to be available, which were all wrapped up. This meant that some keen soul had unwrapped Ticket to Ride not realising that wasn’t what you were meant to do.

I spoke to a girl who didn’t know anyone and she said she found out about it on twitter and came along and was invited to play a game by Paul, a regular at these events.

Paul introduced me to Greg who was running the event. This is where my opinion of the big corporate event changed.

Greg was lovely and happy to answer my many investigative questions. He works at Waterstones but wasn’t getting paid to run this. He had brought games that they sell in the shop from home for people to play. The idea is to get involved with the board game community and it will also help them to find out what games to stock. He hopes that eventually they will have games in the cafe that people can take out to play whenever they wanted to play. I very much approve of this idea.

Happy that “the man” wasn’t trying to profit too much from the community I decided to play a few games.

We played Linkee, quiz game where your team answers 4 questions and links the answers. and Dodeka which is Andys Hopwoods invention. Card game where you take coloured cards to increase your score and don’t take cards to screw over your friends. Our table consisted of people from several different nationalities, Kittys old Latin teacher and a mother and daughter. The daughter was my Linkee partner, her name is Sanj and she invited me to come to try out for her ladies cricket team at my old school. So that’s a future class sorted.

Four other tables had games being played which included games like Ticket to ride, Timeline, Dixit and Cash n Guns.

Overall I could see the potential of this event and hope it continues.

Rankings in comparison to Roller Derby

So as this is my first event i am going to rank harshly as i want it to be hard to get a brum nugget.

Fun – I had a lovely time and had fun but as it is only on for 2 hours it limits the amount of games you can play.

Value for money – Not only was this free but a possibility of a free mince pie

Join-ability– There wasn’t any signs up and there wasn’t a greeter to jump on new people and set them up with a game. This could potentially put off a new person that wasn’t confident enough to walk up to a stranger and ask them questions. However everyone I talked to was very friendly and eager to answer any questions so it’s a nice group of people. Although I am unsure how regular it will be.

No equipment is needed as they provide the games which hopefully the selection will improve later on. Greg needs to unfortunately buy himself more games;)

Spam-ability – I think I’m a bit biased about this as I’ve been to lots of different games events so I’d probably recommend a different one due to length and selection of games. However this is likely to improve in the future and currently I am unaware of a games night on a Friday so would go if I had nothing else to do.