Your toe taps with anticipation as you grip the perfect combination of cards in your hand that will inevitably devastate the competition. Your turn arrives and you brace for what will be your crowning moment. Each card drops to the table with the weight of a brick, followed by a rush of adrenaline as your plan comes to fruition. The faces of your opponents, filled with incredulity and awe, only adds fuel to the already beaming smile plastered on yours. You have found the mark of a great game.
Hi guys! How are you? I hope that everyone is doing well and that spring has finally sprung wherever you may be. I recently read an article that listed some board games that are “good games” that can help improve your relationship with your significant other. I love the idea of playing board games to improve or strengthen a relationship, but many of the board games listed seemed to be the kind of board game that you’d find back in the adult section of Spencer’s Gifts at the mall.
Spring is in the air with warmer temperatures and cool showers. Swapping the snow for rain is a welcome change as the winters in northern Michigan can get a bit long at times. Game Night is heating up as well with many new titles finding a place at the table. Take a look at some statistics and news from Game Night in April.
Hello hello! I’m trusting that all of you gamers have had a
good week. I certainly have. I’m not sure if y’all have noticed, but currently,
I’m currently the only female voice on this website. So, ladies, this one is
for you. Guys, you can read along as well. It never hurts to read.
Ladies, I’m going to be honest with you. We are
underrepresented in the board game community. The community is changing, but we
are still behind the guys when it comes to active players. I don’t know if
women just aren’t as vocal within the community, or they don’t feel welcome in
board game communities, or if it is some other reason that we aren’t seeing the
representation. I don’t want to say that we aren’t out there and well known
because there are some well-known women board gamers. I consider myself fairly
lucky as far as playing board games goes. I’m not the only woman in our local
board game community. In fact, all the winners of our Ticket to Ride Tournament
have been women. 4 years, and 4 female winners.
To be honest, I haven’t encountered a lot of the problems
that women have expressed about playing board games. I’ve been very very lucky.
Our local group has a fairly large number of female players, so I’ve never felt
like I needed to be brand ambassador, so to speak.
That being said, when I venture beyond the safe confines of
the Traverse City Board Gamers, I have run into some difficulties.
I purchase most of my board games online. There are a few
reasons for this. The selection online is wider than what I can find at the
small board game shops in our town. I would prefer to support small local
business, and we do buy games from them. But… I don’t generally go into them
without Number One by my side. I find that when I go into our local shops by
myself, I become some sort of novelty. Every single person in the store stops
what they are doing and looks at me like I’ve wandered in by accident.
Generally, I have my Peep and Stormageddon with me, so that certainly doesn’t
help matters much. Here’s the thing, when I’m looking to purchase a game, I’ve
generally done my research. So, I know what game I’m looking for, and I know if
there are any expansions or anything special that I need to buy with it. Should
I ask a question while I’m in the store (usually something related to the
location of the game so that I can purchase it), I often find that the words
“little lady” or “sweetheart” are attached to the response. By shopping online,
I can also generally find the games cheaper than what our local businesses
charge for them.
The other thing that I’ve noticed when playing a board game is that sometimes I get talked over. Meaning that even if I’m answering a question or clarifying a rule for someone, another player is going to talk over me to make sure they are heard even if their information is incorrect. Luckily, this doesn’t happen often, and when it does, the other people playing the game are often quick to state that Kate knows the rules for this game or Kate does in fact know what she is talking about. I don’t think that I’ve ever had any of the regular attendees of our game night ever question me or try to talk over me. It’s only ever been someone who comes to check it out once and then never comes back again.
I think one of the solutions to the problems that women have
in the board game community is speaking up. If you know the rules and you are
teaching a game, let them know that you know the rules and you know what you
are doing. Don’t let the guys talk over you because you are a woman. We also
need to be more present in the community. Go to conventions. Go to tournaments and
local board game events. And when you are there, ladies, win some games and
kick some butt! I know you can do it.
I’ve decided to include as a regular segment to the blog that will show case a few games that are on their way to Game Night. This group is about board gamers and the board games they play so why not talk about future attractions to Game Night. Here are a few things to look forward to in the next couple weeks.
Who remembers collecting all of the money from the middle of the board when you landed on Free Parking in Monopoly? Were you aware that this is not in the official rules for Monopoly? This free parking rule is one of the most well-known examples of a house rule. A house rule, by definition, is a rule that is used amongst a certain group of players or in a certain place. A house rule can be something as simple as a variant of the rules, or it can go as far as adding new rules or replacing existing rules. Anything goes because it is your house and your rules.
Rarely, does a Target run ever result with empty hands. This oasis of retail therapy often reminds you exactly how many things are missing from your life. You then walk out realizing that all you needed was toilet paper. A familiar story to most and to me one evening when all we walked in for was some household cleaners. The end result was two new games: Trellis and Spirits of the Wild. Let us take a closer look into the latter.
If you follow the TCBG Instagram (yes, we have an Instagram!), then you will have seen that A Place at the Table recently went on a spring break trip. Number One and I loaded up all the kids and drove them down to visit my parents, Nana and Popsi. While on vacation, we checked out a game store down in Austin Texas. While there, I found an expansion for Terraforming Mars titled Prelude. This is not the first expansion for Terraforming Mars which brings me to the topic for this week’s blog post: Expansions. Are they really needed? What’s the point of them? At what point do we say enough is enough? Keep scrolling through to see my thoughts on expansions.
Hello again, gamers! On this edition of A Place at the Table, I thought that I’d introduce you to the owners of Earthen Ales, Jamie and Andrew. Earthen Ales is the local brewery where the Traverse City Board Gamers host their weekly board Game Nights on Sundays. You can find them in the Grand Traverse Commons under the water tower. Let’s get to know them a little better, shall we.
How did you wind up in Traverse City?
Neither one of us is from Michigan, but it’s where we met (and we can’t imagine being anywhere else!) We had a good friend that grew up in the area, and Andrew eventually followed him up to Northport to grow vegetables. We fell in love with northern Michigan and started plotting our move here. It’s a great community and a great beer community.
What is your relationship with board games?
We started playing board games pretty early on in our relationship. We definitely are very competitive with one another. As Kyle likes to point out, we like “classic” board games….Agricola, Dominion, Forbidden Desert, and Tsuro to name a few. Playing a board game, especially in such a digital era, is a way to slow down, engage in intentional conversations, and, of course, stragegize!
Earthen Ales with the iconic water tower on the front lawn.
If you were to make a beer for the TCBG, what would it be?
You guys are a diverse set of drinkers. Obviously, there are lot of fun board game puns we could try…Ticket to Rye comes to mind. If we had to narrow it down to one, probably a sessionable beer. Something you could drink for a couple of hours while playing a longer game. We also particularly enjoy beating Kyle, so maybe Kyle’s Folly. We’re thinking a dry-hopped session pale ale with Galaxy hops. You guys have played a lot of Terraforming Mars lately, so Galaxy hops seems appropriate.
If you had the chance to sit down and play a game with us, what game would we play?
We’ve sat down and played a few games with the TCBG before! We really enjoy Dominion. It’s a fast paced game that is easy to pick up and is easy to change up. You can easily play the same set of cards, but challenge yourself to try different strategies. Or you can completely change the card set up for a totally different game. It’s a good mix of luck and strategy. Recently, we’ve been exploring Dominion Nocturne which introduces some new mechanics.
There you have it, gamers. The next time you find yourself under the water tower (and you really should find yourself under the water tower at least once), stop by and have a pint of beer. Earthen Ales always seems to have some event lined up, so there is something for everyone. Make sure to stop by some time when they have The Cheese Lady in house making grilled cheese sandwiches. I hear they sold out quickly the last time that event happened.
Today, we have a guest writer for A Place at the Table. My teenager, Janeway, has written about an experience she had on a group project at school.
Captain’s log. Stardate 72634.4. Janeway here. I know my mom has mentioned my a few times and already done a piece on who we all are, so let’s get to the point of this. I’m currently in Econ in high school. We recently had to make a board game covering everything we’ve learned so far, as a way to study for an upcoming test. I was ecstatic; after all, I’ve played a good deal of board games and had a great idea for a worker placement game. My partners, however, shot me down by saying it’d be too hard. After two days of arguing, we split the group, and I made the worker placement game. Everyone else had made a Monopoly style game or some other variation of rolling a dice and moving along a path. Every single one.
Now, I’m not saying those types of games are “inferior” to worker placement games. A lot of people had really good games, and I’m up for playing Life now and again. But with a “roll-and-move” type of game, you can’t choose what to do. You have no control over the outcome of the game. And you don’t have to apply the concepts that you’re trying to learn. You could play one of the poorer made games from my class and walk away not knowing anything about economics. But when you have to place your meeple, and decide how to use your money, you can understand the concepts a lot better. You can see how your choices determine the outcome. It makes sense when you can see what’s going on, rather than just reading it off a card.
Not only can these games be suited for studying, but they’re also really fun. The worst part, aside from my group not wanting to go out on a limb with a new idea, was that no one knew what I was talking about when I was giving examples from other games. Terraforming Mars, Lords of Waterdeep, even Ticket to Ride, no one had heard of them. NO ONE in my class, not even my teacher, knew what these games were. I’ve played these games so many times, that it’s just mind-boggling that no one knows about them. Please, feel free to bring your kids, your teens, and their friends to game night. It gets lonely having no one within a 15 year age range of myself. And, hey, maybe it’ll help them get some extra credit on the next board game they have to do in class. Janeway out.
