And that was the 24hr Board Game Marathon 2024 – part 1

It’s the Monday morning after the marathon before.

The first weekend of August has seen us push our board game playing abilites to the limit with another 24hr Board Game Marathon. With sleep off the menu, we were going to spend the 1440 minutes between 9am Saturday and 9am Sunday just playing games with like minded people and supporting an excellent charity; Cots For Tots.

Before you is the battle report of that event, from my point of view. The games I played, the folks I met, the prizes I won, and the highs and lows of telling my body that we can’t stop, that we must continue, that we’ll rest once we return home.

Or, in other words, welcome to the ramblings of a man whose over tired and sat at home alone with nothing better to do. Enjoy.

ARRIVAL

Just like last year, the wife and I headed down to the Shrubbery Hotel in Ilminster on the Friday to join in on the events Early Access evening. I couldn’t cope with a drive down the morning of the event as we’re not local, so we’d always want to get there and sleep over the night before. It’s great that there’s access to the event before. You can meet up with a few people as you all prepare to suffer together.

Our drive down from Portsmouth wasn’t brilliant, with a 2 hour journey prediction being awarded an additional hour of ‘traffic and diversions’. But we made it by 5pm which gave us time to check in, meet up with our wonderful friend Hilary who we met at last years marathon, and grab some cheeky Fish & Chips for dinner. After that we settled in to the Shubbery Hotel knowing we wouldn’t see the outside world again until the Sunday morning.

EARLY ACCESS FRIDAY

We found that the Friday night was a little quiter than last year. After finding a quiet table we settled down for our first game, which unknown to my wife who picked it out, was the very same game we started with last year.

AZUL: STAINED GLASS OF SINTRA is our favourite in the series, though I know it normally comes bottom of the list for most other fans of the series. We had two new players in the game which was great as we don’t often get to play this with more than just the two of us. As with the other Azul games, it just scales with adding more tiles and factories but it does mean that sometimes you can end up with a lot of tiles of one colour in the centre which nearly caught us out a few times.

As with last year, the legendary Ben Burns was attending and running games of BLOOD ON THE CLOCKTOWER. The games are great, especially on the Friday with everyone still full of energy and this one has to go down as a personal favourite session. And yes, that is partly because we got the W, but more so how it went down. I won’t bore you with the details (especially as it will be jibberish to those who’ve never played), so I’ll just say that it’s rare that the wife and I are on the same team, rarer still that we’re both evil, but mainly I’m happy that my bluffing not only seemed to work for a majority of the game, but when it finally failed, it failed at the perfect time to allow my poisoner to get the heat and leave our Demon to secure victory.

Unlike last year where we played several games of BOTC over the weekend, this was the only session we played. My mental capicity for the different roles, the bluffing, and the deduction was quite draining. Becuase of this, the wife and I returned to the main hall and finished out the evening with a few relaxing games.

QWIRKLE is our go to chillout game if we have time for it. This was a tough one with every tile I pulled being a copy of the one I just played on several occasions. I also stuggled to get Qwirkles or high scoring placement. However, the fun is just sitting across from my beautiful wife, mocking each other, and having a good time. Of course I’ll just have to beat her next time. lol

With bedtime calling us we ended the Early Access with a best of three YAHTZEE. It doesn’t get more brain shut off that this game and we take it everywhere with us. Several Yahtzees were had, but my wife’s inability to role 4’s when she needed them several times saw me get one runaway victory followed by a down to the wire victory.

While others caried on gaming into the night we thought it better to conserve our energy for what was to come, especially as hotel beds are always an unknown quantity. Our heads hit the pillow with ten and a half hours to go until 9am.

(Continued in part 2 –)