International Tabletop Day 2015

Yesterday I celebrated International Tabletop Day with my gaming group BoardgamingInc.be at café Thembi in Maastricht. We usually go there twice a month on saturdayevenings, but for this special occasion, we had organised a full day of tabletop gaming!

Obstgärtchen

We started at 14.00h as soon as the café opened its doors. One couple brought their little one, who played Obstgärtchen. Really cute!

As more people entered, the pile of games grew. Far more than we could hope to play that day.

No lack of choice here!

King of New York.

The art of this game is fantastic!

Thembi is a great location, plenty of space, good food, and a huge choice of spacial beers!

We split into two groups, playing Mysterium and King of New York.

Mysterium is a great game where players are psychic investigators, trying to figure out "whodunnit" by receiving visions from the ghost of the murder victim who haunts the house.

The housecat enters...

And takes her place on her blanket.

"I'm watching you..."

In Mysterium the "ghost" player uses Dixit-like cards to depict the visions the investigators have.

We had a lot of fun with that game.

Next we played Lords of Waterdeep, a worker placement game set in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy world. The theme is great, and it's not very difficult, so despite the fact I'm not into worker placement games, I got the hang of this rather quickly, and the theme kept me interested.

A better view of the board.

The other table played Roborally next.

In this game, you program little robots to move in a certain order, and then you see where they end up on the board.

A third group played Qwirkle, which is a tile-laying game where you must match colours or symbols to form a row of up to 6 tiles. You score points for each row you make or add to.

Time for dinner! We had arranged for the group to stay for dinner, and it was delicous.

Big success!

After dinner, we split up into three groups again, and I took out one of my favourite games: Escape! the curse of the temple.
This is a real-time dice rolling game of exploration and trying to exit the collapsing temple, all within 10 minutes.

All players have 5 dice, and must try to return green jewels to their rightful spots in the temple, by exploring new rooms, rolling dice constantly to add rooms, move and get rid of the jewels.

You win once all players have exited the temple before time runs out, and lose if you don't. In a quick 2-player scenario when a few players stepped out for a bit, we lost fairly quickly when we rolles nothing but cursed dice (which you can't roll anymore unless you roll a golder mask).

Next to us, people were playing Tokaido, a vey zen game about a pilgrimage along the Japanse coast.

The pilgrims stop at various places to collect cards. Some have food, some have panoramic views etc. I'd love to try it out sometime.

The third table played Among the Stars. Never played it, but I think you build your space-station by laying these cards.

After Escape, we played Takenoko. Another Japanese themed game about a gardener who must grow bamboo for the pandabear that was given to the emperor of Japan by the emperor of China. You place land, irrigate it to grow bamboo, and let the panda eat bamboo, all to score points.

The components of this game are amazing. It's a light game, doesn't take too long, and is lots of fun.

Here people are playing Smash Up! A fun card game with all sorts of monsters from modern pop-culture.

And Yellowstone Park. A cardgame of a board.
By them, it was time for us to go home, but a few hardcore players stayed until the wee hours.

It was a great success, and our gaming club gained quite a few new members that day.

So, what did YOU do on International Tabletop Day? Please leave your comments!