TGI

I had a day off today, at the 'other' Worcestershire games event: The Great Indoors.  This is where I cheat and paste in the report I posted elsewhere :)

The games day in Redditch was excellent. I was lucky enough to have a day off (Saturdays are normally busy, being a B&B, but E held the fort) and I was there for most of the 12 hours available (9:30-9:30). 

Played a whole pile of games I'd not played before, some established ones such as Great Fire of London with one Mr Denning (This is the Blip. Richard Denning is the guy who runs the rather awesome UK Games Expo) and some new ones being demo'd, such as The Four Elements - a sort of 4-way perspex carrom meets wrestling.

The venue (Arrow Valley visitor centre) worked fine; easy to find and enough gaming space across three rooms. That said the rest of the centre left a fair bit to be desired; the baguette I had was tough and tasteless and the gents had a strong odour of inaccuracy. The immediate surroundings had seen better days but that wasn't what I was there for. Parking was plentiful and convenient; as was a Morrisons with cheaper, tastier food for later.

The three rooms had sensibly been allocated to general games, family games and longer games. There were a number of gaming families there and I have to say I was very impressed not only with the behaviour of the youngsters present, but also their gaming ability. I only just won Camel Up against one young family and that was more lucky gambles coming off than strategy.

There were a goodly number of GI T-shirted helpers around, a great library, two auctions - one a 'Dutch' reverse auction where the first bid on a reducing price won, the other a sealed bid auction for three bigger games. Asgard Games were there with a good selection of games for sale and donated a copy of The Crow into the charity auction which earned a cool £50.

The whole event was excellent. Very well and smoothly run, everyone happy, and enough space, good light and tables. I suspect they'll need a bigger venue next year. Highly recommended.

great-indoors.co.uk/event