Category Archives: News

Boardgames in the News: KickStarting a Boardgame Café with Radio 4

Over the last few years, boardgaming has become increasingly acceptable amongst the general public and one consequence of this has been the continuing rise of the boardgame café. Boardgame cafés have come a long way since Thirsty Meeples opened in Oxford just three and a half years ago. In fact, one online map has the number in the UK now totalling over forty. There have been several articles commenting on their spread too, including an interesting recent article on Radio 4‘s consumer affairs programme, You & Yours covering crowd funding, boardgames and modern café culture.

Some of the boardgameing reports in the media have been quite poor, but this is one of the better articles. The reporter, Bob Walker visits the two boardgame cafés in Nottingham, Ludorati and The Dice Cup, interviewing both staff and customers who are clearly having a good time playing a range of games including Munchkin Zombies and while Risk as well as the inevitable Monopoly get a mention. More interesting is an interview with Peter Blenkharn from Inside the Box , a small company who are producing Sub Terra which has just raised £368,256 via KickStarter. There are a number of other interesting statistics quoted, for example, it is apparently estimated that the board and card game market in US is worth $1.2 billion. Bob Walker also talks to Matt Jarvis, editor of Tabletop Gaming Magazine, which was originally quarterly, but is now bimonthly due to increasing popularity. Matt cites a recent Tabletop Gaming Magazine report which claims that tabletop games made over $100 million last year on KickStarter, more than four times what computer games achieved in the same period. Much of this was raised by miniature games so the recent reprint of Kingdom Death: Monster alone raised over $12 million – the sort of figure that producers of Euro, or family games, would never dare to dream of – even the infamous Exploding Kittens only raised $8.7 million. Nevertheless, it is clear boardgaming continues to go from strength to strength.

– Image from a2milk.co.uk

Winter 2017 Oxford Meeples Big DoG

On Saturday, February 4^th, Oxford Meeples is again opening the doors of Wolvercote Village Hall to the general public once more and inviting people to join them for another Big Day of Gaming. As usual, the Oxford Meeples will be bringing a large number of their games, but everyone is welcome to bring their own too. The hall opens at 10 am with gaming starting from about 10.30 am and continuing ’til late. Entry is free, although donations towards rent of the hall and refreshments will be appreciated as always. Children are welcome when accompanied by an adult. Several of the GOATS are hoping to attend, but that will depend on weather and other commitments.

– Image from oxfordmeeples.org

OxCon 2017

This weekend is OxCon (distinct from OxCon, the Oxford Comic Con), a weekend of gaming held every January in The Mitre pub in the middle of Oxford. It has acquired almost mythical status since publicity hitherto has almost entirely been by word of mouth and often quite last minute. For those who are about on Friday evening there will be a meal at Pizza Express at 6.30pm and some gaming afterwards. As well as general gaming, there will also be the Settlers of Catan contest on the Saturday with a dexterity contest on the Sunday (to include games like Bandu, Rhino Hero, Riff Raff, and Rampage). Entry is £3 for students and £5 for non-students, payable at the door. Not sure how many of the GOATS will make it, that will depend on weather and family commitments, but it should be a good event.

– Image from pubsofoxford.co.uk

Boardgames in the News: Ant & Dec’s Trivial Takeaway

There has been a long history of trivia games including, including well known titles like Scene It? and Trivial Pursuit. There are a number of obvious problems with this sort of game. Firstly, it’s no fun playing when the “spod” in the corner always wins; this leads to the second problem which arises when one player decides the only way to win is to learn all the answers. Some games designers use ingenious methods to get round this problem. For example, the questions in Wits & Wagers have numerical answers that players are very unlikely to know, but can usually make an educated guess at. For example, “In dollars, how much was each extra paid to run across the beach and scream in the movie Jaws?” These questions don’t solve the problem in themselves, but in Wits & Wagers it’s not the answers that are really important, as players bet on each other’s suggestions with the pay out going to bets on the answer that most closely matches the truth, crucially, without exceeding it.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor domcrap

There is another way to stop the family’s “useless-fact sponge” winning every time though, and that is to add a sprinkle of wrong answers. This was approach accidentally exploited by Paul Lamond Games, maker of Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway: The Board Game. They mistakenly relocated Stonehenge in Somerset, misplaced the Moon by nearly fifteen thousand miles and killed off Albert Einstein six years early! Paul Lamond Games have agreed to provide replacement cards for all that want them, however, a better solution might be to cut losses and replace the whole game with something better like Wits & Wagers, Codenames or one of the thousands of superb modern boardgames that are now available.

Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway: The Board Game

– Image from paul-lamond.com

Boardgames in the News: Another Year, Another Take-Over

For many, Asmodée is the boardgame equivalent of the Borg, so it should be no surprise that the New Year brings yet another Asmodée take-over story. This time the targets are the German publisher and distributor Heidelberger Spieleverlag, the French/Spanish company Edge Entertainment, and the Spanish distributor Millennium. Heidelberger are the German production partner for many companies that are better known in the UK including Fantasy Flight Games, Czech Games Edition, Iello, Indie Boards & Cards and Ferti; they specialise in fantasy, science fiction and horror Games as well as being the distributor for Alea Spiele in Germany. Edge performs a similar function within the French and Spanish games markets while Millennium is primarily a distributor, but has also produced French versions Citadels and Sutter’s Mill. The connection between them is that they were all foreign language partners for Fantasy Flight Games who were bought by Asmodée two and a half years ago. So, these acquisitions give Asmodée complete control of brands like Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game, Android: Netrunner, Cosmic Encounter and Arkham Horror.

– Image from asmodee.de

The list of Asmodée’s “partners” is extensive, so the question is, who will be next?

Christmas GOATS – Calendar Update

– Image from ranworthsquareprimary.co.uk

The Calendar has been updated, but here is a quick summary of the key dates for GOATS and Didcot Gamers:

Christmas 2016
Tuesday 13^th December 2016 (Last normal meeting of the year)	Games from 7.30pm at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale.
Friday 23^th December 2016 (Didcot Gamers at Home)	Games, but not at The Loop.
Wednesday 28^th December 2016 (Extraordinary Wednesday GOATS)	Games from 7.30pm at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale as usual, but on a Wednesday.
Thursday 29^th December 2016 (GOATS do the Quiz)	Quiz Night at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale from 9pm, with possible food before hand.
Saturday 31^st December 2016 (New Year Party)	Games and food from 7pm at Barney’s House.
Friday 6^th January 2017 (Didcot Gamers)	Games at The Loop in Didcot (back to normal).
Tuesday 10^th January 2017 (boardGOATS)	Games from 7.30pm at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale (back to normal).

Boardgames in the News: How to Beat Your Husband at Boardgames

According to an article published in the Medical Journal of Australia’s Christmas issue,¹ the trick to beating your husband at boardgames is to play Australian Rock Music. The study was carried out in May by Daisy Fancourt and co-workers from the Centre for Performance Science at the Royal College of Music and Imperial College London and won the journal’s “Christmas Crackers” competition. Three-hundred and fifty-two members of the public were randomly chosen to listen to either the sound of an operating theatre, rock music or classical music while using surgical tweezers to remove three of Cavity Sam’s organs from the game Operation. Researchers recorded the time taken to remove the pieces; the number of mistakes made in performing the surgery, and any perceived distraction.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor IronMoss

The researchers found that rock music (specifically the Australian AC/DC) impairs the performance of men, but not women when undertaking the “complex surgical procedures”. It leads to increases in the time taken to operate and a trend towards more surgical mistakes. Classical music, on the other hand, was associated with lower perceived distraction during the game, but this effect was attenuated when factoring in how much people liked the music, with suggestions that only people who particularly liked Mozart found it beneficial. The authors concluded, “Men are advised not to listen to rock music when either operating or playing board games.”

¹ Fancourt, D., Burton, T. M. W. & Wlliamon, A. Med J Aust. (2016), 205(11), 515; doi:10.5694/mja16.01045.

Christmas GOATS – 2016

For the last few years, on New Year’s Eve, we have had a bit of a party in a private house with a bite to eat followed by games. These things rapidly become “tradition”, so this year we are once again holding the now “traditional”, New Year’s Eve Games Night. In the past, because of the way the holidays have fallen, this has replaced a normal Tuesday games night, but this year, we will holding both! So the next two meetings will be, Wednesday 28^th December, at the Horse and Jockey pub and Saturday 31^st December, at “Barney’s House”, sorry – wrong link, “Barney’s House”. The pub is also holding their usual Thursday night Quiz, and some of us will be going along on 30^th to make up a GOATS team. These are in addition to the normal meeting on 13^th December and 10^th January 2017. More details will follow nearer the time, but we look forward to seeing everyone at New Year.

– Image from youtube.com

Boardgames in the News: A Good Feed

Some people follow blog using Twitter, FaceBook or Tumblr., but for those that don’t use these social media channels, keeping track of posts to the boardGOATS page can be a pain. There is a fourth alternative though, the RSS feed. RSS uses a family of standard web feed formats to publish frequently updated information. Subscribing to a website RSS removes the need for the user to manually check the website for new content. Instead, their browser constantly monitors the site and informs the user of any updates. The browser can also be set up to automatically download the new data for the user. The boardGOATS feed is boardgoats.org/feed/. To subscribe, click on the link and follow the instructions at the top of the page.

– Image from slack-edge.com

Boardgames in the News: Mark Watson’s Inner Child

As has been well documented, as adults playing boardgames has become increasingly acceptable, there have been more frequent articles in the national press. This includes a regular column in the Guardian as well as television features. Most recently, a documentary on our “Inner Child” presented by the comedian Mark Watson was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday. The program starts discussing adults sliding down slides and swinging on swings and moves onto a visit to the boardgames café, Draughts, about two minutes before the end. It is just a short segment in a longer program, but Perudo, Nautilus, Hey, That’s My Fish!, Knit Wit get a mention as well as more well known games Kerplunk, Hungry Hungry Hippos and Articulate!.

– Image from bbc.co.uk

The whole article will be available on the BBC iPlayer until the middle of December.