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A photo from Rules of Play's International TableTop Day 2016
March 12, 2017 Rules of Play

What to expect at #InternationalTableTopDay2017

International TableTop Day 2017

On Saturday April 29th of 2017, we're hosting the big cheese of board game events...

International TableTop Day is a chance for gamers and newbies to come together and play great games, new games, old games, family games, you name it! 

Our event is taking place at The Angel Hotel,from 10am - 10pm, giving you 12 hours of uninterrupted gaming.

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But if you've never been before, or never heard of this tabletop mumbo jumbo, what's it all about?

Take a tour through last year's ITTD event to get a flavour for what's in store for 2017...

ITTD 2016'S BEST MOMENTS

The 'Getting Ready'

We lay on around 10 members of Rules of Play staff and helpers. We're there to help out, point people towards empty tables, teach games, sell games, and bring order to a world of chaos. Well, we try.

In 2016, we had a lot of keen campers - from the very beginning at 10am, there were queues in the hotel lobby while the last bits of preparation took place. 

Pretty soon, the tables began to fill up, and it was games ahoy! Power up the engines, boys!

The Game Makers

The guest publishers & distributors at the event always help to make it as brilliant as it can possibly be - alongside showing off their own stuff, they join in and play games with everyone else. 

At the time of writing, a few of the confirmed 2017 gamemakers include Big Potato Games, City of Zombies creator Matt, Morning Family, Push It Games, Bez, Tinkerbot Games, Arcane Wonders, Playtest UK, and the Star Trek Artemis Bridge Simulator crew - but keep an eye out for more announcements as they happen!

So, who came along in 2016?

John from Gen42 Games, explaining the brand new Tatsu and the firm favourite Hive

Massimo from Big Potato Games with a table full of Obama Llama and Bucket of Doom

Steve from Librium Games - the master of reverse Jenga! - showing us who's boss of Librium

The wonderful Bez teaching the brand new Wibbell++ and the crowd-pleaser In a Bind

ET Games, the masterminds behind the genius games Pucket and Rollet, were challenging brave souls to competitions

We also had our own French connection with the guys from Morning Family and their game Exploding Kittens. They also sell the gorgeous puzzle cubes below...

Grublin Games, the makers of the beautiful Cornish Smuggler, were previewing and play testing the upcoming Perfect Crime

Tinkerbot Games, our favourite local game makers, were there previewing the brand new Ghostel with their adorable meeple earrings in tow!

Geeknson, the makers of handcrafted gaming tables, brought a few of their beautiful creations along. One of them lit up! I didn't know it was possible to fall in love with a table. Turns out you can.

Cubicle 7 and the Penarth & District Wargames Society were there repping D&D, Doctor Who, and other storytelling gems.

The Gamers

Our attendees range from families to students to people who'd heard about an event and popped along to see what all the fuss was about. 

In total, we played games with almost 400 people at our 2016 event! That's a lot of dice rolls. 

Last year our baker-in-residence Jess was at the event, and it was her birthday. Usually, we ask Jess to bake us cakes. This time, we thought that'd be a bit cheeky... So we baked one ourselves!*

The whole room stopped playing games and sang Happy Birthday. If you're the soppy type, it might've brought a tear to your eye. Not us, though. We definitely didn't cry. We didn't.

*Bought, baked, it's all the same.

The Games

The icing on top of the cake - the actual games! We bring along our massive collection of demo games, and lots of folks come with their own. 

No table will be left ungame-ified. Games fill the room, the stairs, and even the floor (of course). 

Our favourite blogger Geeks in Wales carried out the sneakiest game of Sneaky Cards, ever...

An epic PitchCar tournament was always going to happen

Rollet and Pucket were also very popular!

Artemis, the Star Trek Bridge Simulator, was set up on stage behind some very secretive curtains...

Family bestsellers like Sushi Go, Survive! Escape From Atlantis and Takenoko were all played endlessly.

The Great Stuff

Some of the awesome online feedback we got was enough to keep us going through a very long, warm day! 

We were featured in WalesOnline, as their #1 thing to do during May Bank Holiday!

Geek & Sundry, the creators of International TableTop Day, were quick to say congratulations! Even if the location got a bit mixed up...

Made in Cardiff TV were there, filming gamers and game makers.

We did some filming ourselves! Our videos will be out soon, but we also captured some Facebook live streams and some mini time lapse videos.

Our attendees showed us some love on Twitter and Facebook...

So, in summary...

Every year that we've hosted International TableTop Day, it's got bigger and better.

This year, you can expect games (so many games), great people, game-makers, publishers, families, food, drink, endless LOLs, awesome things to see do & buy, a great day out in Cardiff, and all for just £5! Or free, if you're under 16! Now, if that ain't a deal...

 

BUY YOUR 2017 TICKET

 

Photos courtesy of Rules of Play or Zoe Lim, our lovely official event photographer.

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Filed in: Cardiff, International TableTop Day 2016, International TableTop Day 2017, ITTD, ITTD 2017, Rules of Play
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