An autumn evening at Gamers@Dockers

Gamers@Dockers is the gaming group that dacoutts, Reggy and myself founded around two years ago, handily situated at the building where we worked at the time. Two of us are still with the organisation, but only one of us still works in the building. We started fortnightly (that’s once every two weeks for those places unused to the f word) and moved weekly a few months later. We were up to about twenty a fortnight and after the initial move to weekly numbers dropped to about a dozen or so a week, but are now back to above twenty each week.

I should point out that the website is rarely updated anymore, but it still holds the important location and contact details. Discussion of what is likely to be played and by whom is usually done at Melbourne Gamers or via our mailing group.

Originally games played at Gamers@Dockers where primarily Euros, but as people realised that they had anything upto seven or more hours if they started on time, or didn’t need to be at work early on Friday morning, longer and more varied games were played.

I could say that this was an ordinary night at Gamers@Dockers, but that is not entirely true. The Tichu tournament was coming to a close and the Combat Commander: Europe tournament was still in full swing.

In between my games that night (Thursday 10-May-2007) I went around attempting to record everything that was played. Unlike some clubs we have no uberstats person who keeps a record of everything played.

I logged a total of twenty-four people present for the evening, well over half of whom have have BGG accounts.

The games played, in no particular order, were:

Expedition. I played this at Dockers ages ago and quite liked it.

Combat Commander: Europe As mentioned above the tournament was in progress and I counted four different games of this played over the evening.

San Juan A couple of the Tichu tournament players were waiting for another game to finish so played this with a couple of other people as a filler.

Carcassonne Possibly being played as a warm up for the tournament in Albury next month.

Polarity Unfortunately I didn’t get to see this played. I saw a bit of a game previously and it was fun to watch.

Fire and Axe. I thought this was new game, but it has a date of 2004! Perhaps that’s the date of the original version. I do believe that Mr Skeletor wrote this session up over at F:AT

Tichu, the last three games of the tournament plus one just for fun.

Reef Encounter, a learning game as I don’t think any of the players had played it before. Using the Z-Man games edition.

Robo Rally Played twice. The first game was with six or seven players and went quite a while. The second game was with only four.

Guildford, the Eutaw Springs map or scenario. I only saw the name Eutaw Springs on the map, so it actually took a bit of investigation to track down the real name for this game.

Texas Holdem, about four hands waiting for the last Tichu tournament game to start. We used Tichu cards (the spare deck) and the Dealer button and chips from my copy of Vegas Showdown.

Settlers of Catan Remember people decide if you are going to play the rules as written in the set you have on the table or the more modern tournament rules before you start playing.

Tutankhamen I haven’t seen a copy of this for about a year or more.

Bug Bluff Mr Skeletor seems to be a fan of, and quite good at, this. I haven’t played it myself.

Under the Lilly Banners Ben insisted that this was really called Musket and Pike, but that’s not what is written on the box is it Ben?

There was quite a range of games on the tables, slightly influenced by the two tournaments running, but it would not be unusual to see either of the tournament games hitting the table once or twice on a normal evening at Gamers@Dockers anyway. Looking back over the list I would say the surprise omission would be Power Grid

Mmm meeples taste like…