Near the end of May we discovered a board gaming club (Board Guimas) in Guimarães. They have weekly Wednesday meetups at a local restaurant called O Rei dos Cachorros, monthly gatherings in the mall at Fnac, and various other more informal gatherings. We have been making friends, playing tons of board games (you may have been able to tell based on our recent blog topics), and setting the foundations of our local community here in town.

In September the restaurant we normally meet at was closed and we volunteered to host an afternoon/evening of games at our house. There had been some hesitation from the leaders of the group about moving the meetup to a private residence. We think this may be a cultural difference between Americans and Portuguese.

Did we manage to host a fun game day? I’ll run you through a few observations about Board Guimas, how we set up our house for the day, what games made it to the table, and in the end reveal if it was a success or not.

Currently Board Guimas has over 50 members and 10-20 people usually turn up for Wednesday games. The weekly sessions are casual drop-in/drop-out affairs, and the games tend to be lightweight and accommodating to every type of player. With some pre-coordination of rule tutorials and an assessment of interested players, heavy games can be scheduled on Wednesday. Mondays are also unofficially available for smaller groups to play longer games at O Rei dos Cachorros – the restaurant even has some board games of their own on hand. People tend to bring a handful of games and there are usually about 20 options to choose from each week.

Members span a wide variety of ages, we are at the upper end, and most are young professionals who work and live in the area or students from the local university. Everyone shares a passion for gaming and when we get together to play there is very little down time. Back when we hosted Extra Life we set up various things to encourage participants to keep focused on playing games during our marathons – this probably wouldn’t be necessary if Board Guimas members were playing.

Since Wednesdays aren’t really RSVP type events we had to prepare for any number of people coming to our house. We cleaned out as many dust bunnies as we could, extended the main table, set up an extra card table in the yoga room, and got some food and snacks ready to go. Michelle made one of our go-to favorites Martha Stewart’s Macaroni & Cheese and I made some Brown Sugar Banana Bread, both of which would end up being big hits.

We had invited people anytime after 3:00 but things were quiet at first. Michelle and I even enjoyed a couple rounds of KLASK. Around 4:00 another player showed up and we continued to take turns playing rounds of KLASK. Michelle was the champion as always.

Next the two people who run the group showed up and we transitioned to Crokinole. Michelle sat this one out, probably tired after all that winning. As we finished up people started arriving regularly and over the course of the night we’d have a total of 11 gamers (not including us) visit the house and we played until midnight!

At about six players Cockroach Poker made it to the table, followed by another long time favorite Perudo. Since we had quite a large group and everyone preferred to play together, we focused on team and large group games.

Incan Gold always works with a big group since playtime is always the same regardless of player count, and I suggested Codenames since the group almost always plays Decrypto. During a transition time where Michelle and I had to do some chore catch up around the house, the other players tried The Chameleon and someone also suggested a similar game The Insider which we played using bits and bobs from other games we already had out.

Our biggest gaming accomplishment for the event, and heaviest game of the day, was Captain Sonar. We had purchased this team game for our birthdays and it still had some of the plastic coating on the player boards. The reason this was an accomplishment is that the game essentially requires 8 players. The game is a real time version of Battleship with each player taking on the role of a crew member in a submarine. It was intense, fun, and totally chaotic. We need to play again after watching some videos that flesh out the rules a bit better so we can improve our performances on a second try.

As the evening simmered down we got in a few rounds of Ultimate Werewolf and a couple Black Stories. Considering that nothing was preplanned and people came and went without notice, this was an amazing amount of gameplay in a single night!

The event was a huge success and we hope to have some more board game parties soon! We had a ton of fun and really love hosting. This was honestly one of the most fun game nights we have ever had, and that is a pretty high compliment. If you want a more detailed breakdown of any games I mentioned post a comment and we’ll consider doing a full write up!