Autumn Beer & Pretzels 14/15th October 2017 Review

The event went pretty smoothly considering the cancellation of the usual venue only a week before – the 3 Queens was not able to re-open in time (though things are looking promising for the near future) but available space at the Bridge Inn and the Brewery Tap at the Heritage Brewery Museum did the job nicely on Saturday and a reduced number of players all fitted into the shop on Sunday. The beer vouchers – issued to make up for the event not being the full Monty and to ensure that money was spent in the pubs helping out – went down very well, although halfway through the afternoon the general manager at the Museum instructed the staff to stop taking them, apparently a 30 year A1 credit rating was not sufficient for Spirit Games to have a tab behind the bar...

The last minute cancellation of bookings at the hotel left us without most of our long distance players, but we still had two from Finland and one from Liverpool. The reduced numbers meant that the proposed Legend of the Five Rings tournament could not reach critical mass, but the Takenoko prizes were hotly contested and the mini-Ticket to Ride saw plenty of use. This last was theoretically also open to the general public, but it was no surprise that the frenzy of interest being whipped up on Social Meeja cut no ice at all with the local populace. Also no surprise was that the most popular game apart from the special promotions was Clank. Otherwise the games ranged from Coup to Cthulhu Wars, with all points in between including new favourites such as Terraforming Mars and old favourites such as Catan.