Aftermath: July Games Library Day

Hello and welcome to the July Games Library Day Aftermath post. July was a special Games Library Day because it marked the first official partnering of the U-Con Gaming Club and the Corner Brewery. From here on out, we’ve got the Lounge area set aside for gaming on the second Sunday of the month (except for September, but we’ll crash the bar section like we did in the “old days”). Gone are the days of dodging wedding showers, tip-toeing through birthday parties or tangling with groups of people who host a tangly sort of event. I’m pretty excited about this, especially if the number of people dropping in continues to be as robust as it was Sunday. I didn’t do an official head count but I did notice we occupied all 9 tables quite readily. Could that be 20 to 30 people? Let’s call it so and move onwards!

OoooOOOoooo! Pretty, pretty official Games Library Sign. On an official Corner Brewery Events stand. *sniff* These Game Days grow up so fast. One day it’s you and some friends with a copy of Lords of Waterdeep and then before you know it, your baby Game Day has its own easel and sign. Also, yeah…Urbanization is on there twice because – OH LOOK OVER THERE; WHAT COULD THAT BE!

Why it’s two lovely people who have decided to crack out the brand-spanking new Games Library copy of Alhambra and give it a try. This month was “Play a new game” month which could be interpreted as Play A Brand New Game Fresh Out of its Box…

Or in the case of Kevin H. and Amy C., it was Play a Game You’ve Never Played Before. We played a couple hands of Fluxx the Board game which is pretty fun. It has a few issues, namely that the pegs for marking rules keep popping out of the board, but otherwise it is similar enough to Fluxx to be comfortable but different enough to be interesting. I will have to check and see if the Fluxx Board Game rules board will fit in a FormulaD holder deelie, for that would fix the AWOL peg problem. I also wonder if you can MacGyver up a fifth set of tokens and expand the number of players.

Matt Q. was super excited about Game Day because he could finally test out his copy of Sentinels of the Multiverse. He played it at May’s Game Day and liked it so much he picked it up to play it on Sunday. Apparently, they saved the world twice.

David S. has been working on this game design for a while now so he printed out the newest iteration and brought along. Invisible Hands has some rough edges but David has an awesome flair for flavor text. Plus, we were all amused by the “Maple Syrup” resource marker. The world has a finite amount of maple syrup and all the secret organizations want to get their hands on some.

Later on we cracked out the Library’s new copy of 7 Wonders. What’s a Game Day without a round of 7 Wonders?

April, Matt A. Nick H. and a fourth person whom I didn’t get the name of enjoyed this odd fireworks building card game in which you can’t see your own hand. I hope it drops by next month so I can try it out because it looked like a lot of fun.

We had a good number of new people stop by and several more people who paused to eyeball the Official Sign. Here’s a couple of new Games Library Dayers playing Mammut. I asked about the game and it is “Pretty confusing at first but once you get going it’s really fun”. Plus, it has big mammoth pieces and little mammoth pieces. Mammothette pieces? They all seemed to enjoy themselves despite the inauspicious beginning.

Counting Zzzzs.

My number one personal goal for the entire afternoon was to play at least one game of Banana Party. It’s got monkeys that you try to shake out of trees so you can collect bananas. It’s a kid’s game so monkeys and bananas is about as complicated as Banana Party gets but it does have an excellent refresh mechanism (for getting monkeys back onto the dowels or tree branches – for monkeys loathe table tops) and there isn’t really a way to get cutthroat back stabby with two, three or four players. We discovered that it is also an excellent three beers imbibed game as well.

To those of you who made it in on Sunday, thanks for showing up. For the rest, hopefully we will see you on the 11th of August.

-J.Quirk