As a Twitter and Facebook follower of Wil Wheaton, I was quick to get excited when he announced that the first International TableTop Day would be March 30, 2013. I told my gaming group about it and at first we were going to plan our own event until we found out that TableTop Game & Hobby would be hosting an event in their game room.
On Saturday, five of us met for breakfast to fortify ourselves for the long day ahead. The store had announced open play time from noon to midnight and we were pretty sure we'd be making a day of it.
We got there a little before noon, met up with our sixth player/game master and started with A Game of Thrones - A Dance With Dragons expansion. Most of us had played the game before, but it took nearly an hour to get set up and ready to play. This expansion is a six-turn game, but with six players it still took quite a few hours and much backstabbing for a winner to emerge. We had more fun than you'd think from looking at this picture.
The game room and store were full all day long, which did not disturb the shop cat in the least.
We took a brief food break between games and returned to play the classic (1985) game Warrior Knights. Only one of us had ever played before, but we got the hang of it and played a full round with only a few minor modifications to keep it from taking too long. (For example, we chose to skip a cholera epidemic that would have made us have to roll a die for every band of soldiers and mercenaries in our hands to find out who lived and who died.)
We wrapped up the game around 7:30 p.m. Some of our players left for the evening and a couple of others went in search of food while I started unpacking a brand new game of Space Cadets that one of our group had purchased at the store earlier in the day.
To get back to our complement of six players, we added two guys who had come to the store just to check things out and were hoping to be able to join a game. I hope they weren't too disappointed in how long it took to get set up and playing.
There are a lot of moving parts to Space Cadets—literally and figuratively—so we weren't able to get in a full game before midnight. Yes, midnight. However, we played enough rounds to be able to accomplish the major objectives in the game once, so at least we know how it works now.
The whole day was SO MUCH FUN! I couldn't believe I'd played games for twelve straight hours. I ended up buying Smash Up, which I had been wanting for months, on sale. The store must have gained so many new customers that day.
It was great to get to see so many friends (with the rotation and visitors, a total of eight) and get to challenge my brain all day long.
I hope this ends up being an annual thing.
I hear @wilw is going to be at the comic con in Kansas City this weekend. FYI!
Posted by: Naomi | April 04, 2013 at 04:52 PM