Our International TableTop Day 2015 Was INCREDIBLE!

It's been almost a whole week since over 200 people came to play games with us, and the Rules of Play elves are still not quite recovered! For those not in the know, International TableTop Day is an annual event dedicated to board and tabletop games. Like Ladies' Day! But without horses or hats. And a lot more board games. It was created by Geek and Sundry, a website/Youtube hub of awesomeness and geekery. The day itself is championed by the likes of Wil Wheaton (@wilw) and the founder of Geek and Sundry, Felicia Day (@feliciaday), the event has become a huge global gathering. It's a whole Thing. 

Check out our Facebook photo albums of the Chapter event and The Gate event - share and tag, people!

We threw two events during the day - from 12-4pm, we were at Chapter playing board games with families! Stuff like The Magic Labyrinth, Cappuccino, Survive and The Hare & the Tortoise were all out on tables!

In the evening, we went to The Gate for a whole night of beer and board games! This event was free too, and on arrival you could pick up a free 'Rules of Play' wristband, and a free raffle ticket. I was offered bribes for to sell them more numbers but I've got morals (and limited tickets). We also had about 200 free cupcakes from one of our lovely customers, Jess. Some of them even had little blue icing meeples on the top, and they tasted fantastic! Thanks Jess! Gino from Tinkerbot Games was around with his recording mic, ready to get some juicy stuff for his podcast, and Chris Brett, an ambassador for Arcane Wonders, was teaching Mage Wars and Sheriff of Nottingham!

There were sooo many people there playing games, it was insanity! We even had our first ever stag do at a Rules of Play event, so that's a tick off the bucket list. We also had a very happy bunch of raffle winners! Prizes ranged from a Munchkin hoodie, to a special TableTop edition of the Dead of Winter board game, to endless promo cards for all kinds of games. After the initial few wins, chaos descended (naturally) and people flocked to the table of promo cards and mini prizes like seagulls on chips. Seagulls with a particular taste for board games.

We also had Andrew Harman from Yay Games at the event, with his awesome Frankenstein's Bodies game and cardboard 'stick-yer-head-through' cut out, which was fun! Andrew taught both Frankenstein's Bodies and Sandcastles to various groups - in fact, he was teaching pretty much non-stop! It was fab to have Andrew there with us, and he was a real hit with attendees!

All in all, we had a brilliant day (12 hours!) of playing board games with lovely people. We saw a lot of new faces which is awesome, and the whole day was twice as 'big' with twice as many attendees as last year - keep up the good work! Next year we'll be so big, we'll need the Millennium Stadium to hold you all! Cheers to the next one, people!

Check out our Facebook photo albums of the Chapter event and The Gate event.