Beer & Pretzels Games Weekend 2006

A new high! Well over 250 people attended this year - this was mainly due to many folk finally taking heed of friends who had been urging them to come along, so the newcomers thoroughly outnumbered the regulars who had been unable to avoid social duties such as getting married. I have said it before and will say it again - there is a registry office in the Town Hall and a church right next to it, there is no reason why a wedding should interrupt your gaming for more than a couple of hours. A honeymoon that starts with a day at Beer and Pretzels is guaranteed to get a marriage off to a good start.

Still, I digress. This year we had more tournaments than usual, these were a success qualatively rather than quantitively; to put it another way, the heroic publicity efforts put in by Laurie

for the Starwars tournament and by Simon Gaudin for the Warmachine tournament resulted in one fewer than last year for the former and just four for the latter, but all concerned thoroughly enjoyed themselves. So did the six - just six! - who joined in the Magic tournament, the Heroclix tournament looked pretty lively, and the Hordes of the Things tournament

bucked the general trend towards apathy by continuing to go from strength to strength. Its unique combination of serious tactics and extreme silliness fits in beautifully with the Beer and Pretzels ethos, the winner of the recent local Ancients tournament was there battling against sundry young children and taking a beating.

Game of the event was undoubtedly Antike, in addition to my copy in the Games Library people had brought their own or bought copies on the day to tear them open for immediate use. What a shame that Eggertspiele have run out, word is that they may not do a reprint, I hope that said word is wrong. They can certainly guarantee plenty of attention for their planned follow-up, we have been playing Antike regularly since Essen and word seems to have finally got around about this gem. Looking at the games borrowed from the Games Library, there was a bit of just about everything else played. As this month's special bitter from the Bridge Brewery is themed around an American Civil War general, a game of Battle Cry

was essential - I got thrashed by a young lady who was supposed to be playing Serenity RPG and had never played a board wargame before. Be it said that the Serenity game was running constantly throughout the weekend, so they were able to spare her.

There were plenty of other people trying different things too - it was particularly encouraging to see quite a few V:tes players emerging from their tournament in the back room to take their places in a variety of completely different games.

As ever, there were several well-presented miniatures games for people to join in or just admire in passing. I will let the pictures do the talking for these.

Finally, mention must be made of the winners of this year's competion between our gallant band of reviewers on the web-site. The battle between Brian Moore and David Seddon for first place went in David's favour this time - Neil Cook was looking at a safe third place until his wife Gemma pipped him to the post.

Great stuff. I look forward to seeing you all - plus even more new recruits - next year.

Cheers! Phil

Link to more pictures.