Blog

St. Ives Tabletop

• Sixteenth Session - Multiple Cities and Mysteries
  6th October 2021

  This was another bumper session with 17 attendees, 12 returners and 5 new members, over 4 tables and playing 9 board games. It is great that word of the club is spreading and people are coming along to see what is on offer.

• Fifteenth Session - Trading Trains, Lost Civilisations, and Dystopian Worlds
  22nd September 2021

  This was another 3 table session with 11 attendees (all returners) playing a varied selection of game themes and mechanisms.

• Fourteenth Session - Clans and Cities
  8th September 2021

  Thirteen people turned out for the second session back post-pandemic, including 5 new members and 8 returners. Only a few different games were played this session, all about building civilisations from clans to cities.

• Thirteenth Session - Back from Lockdown
  25th August 2021

  Live sessions were able to resume on 25th August with a bumper turnout of old faces, new but previously virtual members, and some completely new joiners who had heard about the club and came along to try. The Corn Exchange has changed a little over the last year causing some initial issues with the hot beverage provision, but we managed to get the tea flowing and have some ideas to improve for next session.

• Interim Online Sessions - Going virtual
  17th July 2021

  The club had to suspend in person gaming due to the persistent pandemic, and started online sessions fortnightly instead. Some of our regulars have continued joining in this way, and word has spread with quite a few new members also joining us. Sessions start at 7:30pm using voice comms over Discord and we have largely settled on Board Game Arena as the platform for games, although Tabletop Simulator and Boiteajeux have also been used. We tend to first play a few short, simple games while we see who is joining the session, followed by a longer game, and finally, for those with the stamina, another 1 or 2 shorter games. Some are games that club members own and have had outings at the in person sessions (see other blogs/reviews) and some are new games discovered through the online platforms.

• Twelfth Session - Birds, Skye, and Villagers
  11th March 2020

  We had 14 attendees this session despite the spring chill, with two games from last session making a reappearance and some new players learning them. There were a lot of games involving villagers, crafting, building, or topically fighting epidemics.

• Eleventh Session - Athletic Ninja Escapes
  26th February 2020

  We had 19 people this session, making it the new record breaker for both total number of attendees and biggest RPG game! It included competitive birding, civilisation building, ninja training, and a first trial of an escape room in a box.

• Tenth Session - Mars, Mordor, and Menageries
  12th February 2020

  Nine people turned out despite the cold for this session, including one new member, which included settling on Mars, battling evil to defeat Sauron, and building the best zoo.

• Ninth Session - Heroes, Horrors, and Homage
  29th January 2020

  This was a great session, even though only two committee members could attend, with heroes smiting evil, haunted houses and wonderous civilizations. This is a very quick summary of what was played - we’ll be back with a full blog as usual for the next session.

• Eighth Session - Spirits, Ghosts, and Things that Go Bump in the Dungeon
  15th January 2020

  It was a good start to the New Year despite a few members falling victim to the seasonal bugs. We had 11 gamers, all returning members, with games involving an island of spirits, clanking in the dungeon trying to steal a dragons treasure, and a city surrounded by ghosts.

• Seventh Session - An Abundance of Islands
  4th December 2019

  This week was the seventh St. Ives Tabletop session, with 10 attendees in total including 1 new gamer and 3 games tables. The theme of the gaming took us to 3 different islands: 1 cursed, 1 inhabited by spirits, and 1 Scottish.

• Sixth Session - Shipwrecks, Survival and Scuba diving
  20th November 2019

  It was the sixth St. Ives Tabletop session, with 11 attendees in total and 2 new gamers. Some of our avid RPG crew were unable to come so instead 3 board game tables were set up, one with the infamous game Robinson Crusoe as requested.

• Fifth Session - Mars, Wind and Fire
  6th November 2019

  It was the fifth St. Ives Tabletop session and we had another good turnout, despite missing 2 of the committee members, with 11 attendees in total and 1 new gamer. Due to the shortage of committee members, we decided to focus the session on board gaming and not to run a RPG table. That gave us 2 tables over the course of the evening with firefighting, fortune telling, kingdom building and terraforming!

• Fourth Session - Garden Planet
  23rd October 2019

  A record breaking session with the most attendees so far (15), the most different board games played (7), and the most game plays in a night (9 - 2 games played twice). Not forgetting an RPG table trying to bring some modern infrastructure to a fantasy setting!

• Third Session - Excitement and Evolution
  9th October 2019

  Another good turnout with 8 returners and 3 new gamers meaning 3 tables ran over the course of the evening involving investigations, prison breaks, boasting, climate change and evolution!

• Second Session - Time and Wonder
  25th September 2019

  Our second session had good attendance with 9 returning players and 5 new gamers joining, which let the session start with 4 active tables. In fact it was so active that we rearranged the RPG table so they could better interact, while the board gamers explained rules for new players and in one case rolled lots of dice. The RPG table was where John led a lively Cthulhu Dark one-shot session, with 4 adventurers going on a journey through time in the village of Dunwich and resulting in some of the crew descending into insanity.

• First Session - Architecture Great and Small
  11th September 2019

  It was the first session of the St. Ives Tabletop gaming club on the of 11th September and we weren’t sure what to expect. So it was great to be joined by some new keen gamers and after a little deliberation we worked out how to split up based on peoples games preferences and had 3 tables running.