inconsequential ruminations

Last night at Swiggers Game Club was fun.

I found out about them a few years ago, looking for London games clubs, but I was put off by how far away it is, looking after my son and the fact that I was getting plenty of gaming at the time. About two months ago, I was in a restaurant with a non-gamer friend who I had introduced to a few €uro games. He told me that one of his work colleagues was a “games geek” like me and offered to introduce us. I agreed and a few days later Tycho from the Board Game Geek invited me to Swiggers. This week Ness and Oscar have been in Scotland with her mother, so I decided to go along and check it out.

The venue itself, The Bunch of Grapes, is in Southwark, one of the oldest and most urban parts of London, just by London Bridge and the London Dungeon. I find it an ugly, grimy part of town, although it can be quite atmospheric. The tube ride there made me remember how happy I am to have avoided commuting in my latest job. The pub was nice – the photos at the Swiggers website do not do it justice. The food was also cheap and reasonable quality.

John/Tycho showed up just after me and kindly took me under his wing. We played:

Ticket to Ride Europe
I have only played the original once, and everyone else knew the game well, so I struggled a bit at first. It is a little more complex, but a little more deep, than the original. They are both about as good as the other. If you mostly play with adults, go for the Europe map; if you play with familes, go for the US.

Flandern 1302
This left me cold. The theming was a distraction and did nothing to help understand the rules or excite the imagination, although the components were nice enough. I have not played very many area majority games, but to make me happy they need a little more excitement than that mechanic gives alone. Having said that, several people at Swiggers said good things about it, so maybe this is just sore grapes about coming last and not listening to the rules properly.

Geschenkt
This was the suprise hit of the evening. It is simple and blindingly fast, but quite tough. I will probably buy it, even though my games nights do not tend to involve or need fillers.

Wyatt Earp
Brian Walker of Games International taught us this one, but we only played one hand. It was a little confusing at first, but in the end turned out to be quite simple. It is decent enough. I would always suggest this over traditional rummy games. The cards are very nice. I am not sure if I will buy it, as it did not seem very challenging.

At closing time, I chatted to Brian Walker. My pal Michael writes reviews for him, so I mentioned this connection. We had a nice chat and he gave me a back issue. I subscribed today – it was only polite! Actually, it is a suprisingly professional publication. It is very glossy, the pictures are good and the writing is high quality. Maybe the pressure of writing for print makes people work harder on the reviews?

The most interesting thing for me was getting used to playing with strangers in a public club environment, with people dropping in and out of games groups and around 15 people playing several different games.

At an hour to get there and away it is impossible to fit into my normal schedule, but everyone was very welcoming and friendly, so I really enjoyed my trip. I will go again.

I turned on user registration in order to write comments. I did this to avoid comment spam, which was becoming unbearable. There are few things more irritating than having to delete a flood of 20 comments advertising pills, porn and poker.

If this puts people off too much, I might resort to captcha images.

It is a pity WordPress does not provide a plugin for TypeKey.