First Board-game Session at Trinity High School

[Spikey]

I was surprisingly nervous! Would I get enough students? (Yes, six)
Would I have too many? (No, thankfully!) Would it be ONLY the manga
club? (Well yes the core was there, but also two extra!) Would it
degenerate into a fight? (Almost – minor argument over Chess rules)

I decided to start the club off with Tsuro – I only discovered this
game about a week before the Gaming in Libraries session and love it.
It’s nice and short, really easy to explain and play and looks so
attractive and different. All the group enjoyed it – my only problem
was being interrupted right at the start by a member of staff wanting
something!

We played a couple of games and then two students went off the play
Chess and one of the others wanted to teach us all how to play ‘Go
Fish’ with the set of cards I brought. That part was actually one of
the best bits, with all of us including ‘Miss’ putting on silly
voices.

Next week I am teaching them ‘Zombies’, having forced long-suffering
spouse to play it at the weekend in order to get the rules right
before offering it to the kids. I’m giving ‘Killer Bunnies’ a miss
for a while though until I can work out EXACTLY how to play it.

My grand plan is to get the students playing the games comfortably
enough to be able to tell others the rules and set them up, at which
point I will offer them at lunchtimes from time to time which I hope
will generate more interest.

I have ‘The Resistance’ up my sleeve for another session and I have
just ordered ‘Carcassonne’ and ‘Hey that’s My Fish’. Interestingly
two of the girls who attended had belonged to a Mah Jong club in their
middle school and really enjoyed it, so I may bring my set in – the
only problem with that is that it can be a long game and we only have
just over an hour.

I’ll be really interested to see if any others at the session have set
up groups or used games in the library.

[Carl Cross]

Thanks for reporting back Bren. It sounded like it went really well.

Let us know how you get on with Zombies, a game I'm not familiar with.

I had a new game delivered yesterday too which I discovered from
Kevin's blog:

http://kevinandgames.blogspot.com/2011/01/review-braggart.html

Braggart is a light, simple game with a strong storytelling element.
You can play it purely as a card game or elaborate the narrative as
much as or little as you like. I played it with my 4 year old last
night and he grasped it easily and enjoyed it something he's not yet
able to do with Dixit. He also enjoyed just looking at the cards
afterwards.

I'm planning on playing this reading groups too. If only so I can
justify my "but it's for work!" to my wife.

Carl