And that was the 24 Board Game Marathon 2023 – part 1

Well, that was epic!

This weekend just saw a bunch of us crazy gamers descend on the Shrubbery Hotel in Ilminster to play board games. For charity. For 24 hours straight.

The event is organised and hosted annually by Dan Apsey, who leads a dedicated team of volunteers hosting events, running an impressive raffle, and sharing the weekend on a live stream.

A great mix of us just dominated the hotel for the three days (sorry to anyone staying there that was not a board gamer). From the crammed main hall full of tables, to the odd areas dotted around in function rooms and spaces where people don’t normally gather, there was something for everyone from games and RPG’s to the social deduction behemoth Blood On The Clocktower.

It was our first time going to this now annual event, and so, as I sit here on this overcast Monday, having spent my weekend being awake for a massive 40 hours and 40 minutes, I thought I would open my laptop and recall the amazing weekend I’ve just experienced.

ARRIVAL

After a slightly longer than planned drive going Portsmouth to Ilminster (with an hour of detours that had some beautiful scenery) we arrived at the Shrubbery Hotel.

We realised the bad timing of our journey as we’d decided to head down on the very same afternoon that children had been released from their schools. The beginning of the Summer Holidays had been unleashed. While we’re still waiting for official statstistics to come in (joke), we’ve been told that about 92% of the nations traffic were all heading in the same direction.

Upon reaching the hotel, it was about an hour before the Early Access began, so we headed to a local Fish & Chip shop for some much needed food and a little leg stretch after three hours stuck in a car.

HAPPY LITTLE FANBOY

If, like us, you decided to reach the hotel the night before the start of the event, then you could join in on the Early Access Evening. This ran from 6pm to midnight (I believe), and just let people decompress after their journeys and get a little bit of gaming in before the madness of the Marathon began.

Of course this was hindered a little by me on fanboy alert for the first couple of hours. After waving hello like an idiot to Ben Burns (which I did apologise for later) I then interrupted our gaming every five seconds with whispers of “that’s Paul Grogan!”, “that’s Luke Hector!”, “that’s JP from the podcast!” while all that Ali (my fiance) wanted to do was play games.

And while I was a little embarrassed about my excited fanboy persona, it was just amazing to see people in real life who I watch on YouTube and listen to on Podcasts. In our circles these people are celebrities for want of a better word, and I was lucky enough to be sharing some gaming space with them. But more on this later.

EARLY ACCESS FRIDAY

So what were the first games we played?

Well, first off let’s just thank the host Dan Apsey for bringing his own personal game collection down to the event and letting that be the lending library for the weekend. I am someone that can be precious about his games, and there are some that I just won’t play with strangers because I’m scared for them to be in the wild. Dan is a braver man than me.

We went for AZUL: STAINED GLASS OF SINTRA first because we know the rules well and we love the game so much. After a long day you just want something comfortable to slip into, right? Now, normally we’re evenly matched on this one, but Ali figured she had an advantage because I was like a Merkat on Dr Pepper taking everything in and being the aformentioned fanboy. But it turns out that whatever part of my brain I left playing the game, it was good. Very good. Despite a slow start, I managed to come out on top and claim the first victory.

Now for the next game I decided to break my rule and play something new. It was something that I didn’t know a whole lot about and mainly just wanted to try out it’s cool Meeple rolling mechanic.

ROLLING HEIGHTS is a recent AEG release. In it, players are rolling Meeples instead of dice and depending on how they land you then gain resourses and actions. Now I will say that, despite the muddled rules teach, three mistakes (one of them really affecting scoring), and a regret that we tackled it at all, I think it’s a really good game. Perhaps not one that we’ll own in our AEG sub-collection, but it was a fun little play. You buy plans and expand your plots out while trying to get the necessary resourses to build up the towers. And the Meeple rolling mechanic works really well. The whole game has hints of CUBITOS and MEEPLES & MONTERS, two of my favourite games from AEG.

Due to the fact that my bad rules teach had effectively given me the win, we thought it best that my fiance get to pick the next game. And when she returned to the table, I knew she meant business because she had picked out a game she always beats me at.

MANDALA STONES is an abstract strategy game that sees players taking coloured stones and trying to plan the order of collection so as to score effectively when taking the scoring action. The game looks beautiful and I really like it, despite the growing negative stats intimidating me. After a few turns, I thought this might be the game that breaks the spell. Perhaps the new location was affecting Ali’s Mandala powers? But no. She let me know pretty quick after that to not get my hopes up as she scored big round after round taking another well deserved victory in my albertrose of a game.

So they were the three games we got played in the Early access, but our night wasn’t over there. We were lucky enough to get invited to a game of BLOOD ON THE CLOCKTOWER. After a traumatic first time playing this in April where my fiance betrayed me (to my face!), we’ve powered through the No Rolls Bared channel for all the BOTC content, and I’ve also been playing a few games online hosted by Craig (@getintogames).

The draw here was that it was being run by Ben Burns, and if you don’t know who that is, he’s sort of a big deal in the world of BOTC. This ended up being Ali’s highlight of the weekend, and she may have had her own little fangirl moment.

The game itself was great as we got to meet a really nice bunch of people, some of who we’d go on to hang out with and game with across the rest of the weekend. I even ended up sitting next to Stuart (@meeplesoup) who I’d first met playing the online games.

In the end our new friend Hilary betrayed our trust as the Imp, I was a murdered Virgin, and Ali was a sometimes drunk Recluse.

THE ONLY SLEEP I GOT

After that it was time to get my head on a pillow. It was going to be a long day when I next woke up, and it would be a long time before I would get any sleep again.

We prepared ourselves for what was to come next . . .

(Continued in part 2 – )