Chairman of the Board

Aside from a spot of amature photography, one of my favourite activities is playing board games.  Not simply your run of the mill party games, although they can be fun too, but proper strategy games that involve a much higher skill to luck ratio.  Since moving to Australia this is something I have missed out on as Barnadi has no interest in games of any sort, let alone ones where he has to think.

Despite Barnadi's assertions that people in Australia don't play board games, my hopes were raised a little when I saw a board game shop on Swanston street called MindGames which seemed to specialise in all my favourite games we used to play back in the UK.  Another clue to the secret board game fans of Australia came to me when walking home from the station one day and I spotted a lost 'Ticket to Ride' card by the side of the road.  Still I had yet to met anyone who would openly admit to their love of board games.

One of my friends in the UK, and possibly the biggest board game fan I know, then sent me a link to a website called BoardGameGeek, which had an Australian forum page, but the posts were all quite old and the only groups I found mentioned were university clubs.  It was only last week when another UK friend and board game fan found a site which advertised a board game night held at the Royal Standard pub every fortnight on a Wednesday night.  I am not very good when it comes to meeting new people and there was no way I could convince Barnadi to come with me.  I eventually plucked up enough courage to click the attend button on the website only to find the event already full and that I would be put on a waiting list.  At this point I decided fate was against me ever playing another board game again, but I was wrong.  On Wednesday morning I received an e-mail saying my place had been confirmed,  so now I had to build up that courage all over again to actually attend.



Goldenbrau

I arrived at the Royal Standard, a pub just outside the CBD near Flagstaff and the Victoria Market, at around 6:30pm and the place was already full and many games were underway, I was quickly and warmly welcomed by the organiser of the night, a guy named Corey and after a bit of deliberation I ended up in a group of four with a board game none of us had ever played before.  In my group were a couple of guys, Chee and Anton and a girl Sonika, the game which Sonika had chosen was called Goldenbrau.  It took as a while to read through all the rules and get an idea of what we had to do, but once we got into it, it was a relatively quick and simple game to play.  The point of the game is to invest in beer gardens and breweries with the aim of making the most money after 3 weeks of trading, each round being one day.  It was a good game, Sonika won by an absolute mile, Chee came second, I was third and Anton was last, but like they say, it's not the winning that counts but the taking part.  Chee then picked the next game, one called '10 days in Africa' a very quick and easy game to learn which basically involves collecting cards in the correct order to make a 10 day trip through Africa.  We had a couple of rounds of this before I decided it was probably time to think about heading home.



10 Days in Africa

It has only taken me 9 months and much assistance from my friends back in the UK but I have finally found somewhere I can go and play board games.  The number of people in attendance (over 70 people), just goes to show that Barnadi was very wrong and Melbourne has actually got a large number of people who enjoy a good board game, and I am now unashamedly one of them.