Boardgame Cafes are becoming more and more common. Do you have any close by? Have you been there? How did it go?
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We live in Madrid, Spain and have one boardgame cafe in the city center. Its called Replay
We have gone a couple of times, usually just because we were in the area and jumped in to play something quick. The collection of games is pretty massive. Many casuals but lots of deeper games too. There is also an outlet section to buy games at a discount. The food is OK, nothing special but fine for a session.
Since its downtown, we do not go that often. Wednesdays they even organize an english-speaking evening which is handy if you want to meet a more international crowd.
My post earlier about the “Evolution of Boardgames” is painted on the wall of this cafe.
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They are decently often in Greece, either as boardgame cafés, or (more often) cafés with boardgames. On the latter it’s rare to have someone to suggest a game or explain the rules so you have to read them yourself. Used to go very often while a student
Sounds cool. What kinds of board games are played there? Classic card games, modern strategic Euro games, party games or any of those?
If you mean in boardgame cafés, they have pretty much everything. In cafés with board games, it is mostly faster card games, some games like Jungle speed or 7 wonders and similar, maybe Catan as well
If you mean in Greece in general, all of those that you mentioned I would say. It depends on the group
Thanks for elaborating. I’m just generally curious what is being played in other countries. As a German, I always played lots of board games and I for myself prefer complex Euro games.
It’s interesting that you distinguish between those café types since here in Germany, there is no such distinction. I only know boardgame cafés.
It’s very usual for many cafés to have a couple of board games, especially if they are near a University
There’s a few in my city. Both cafes and bars. They’re packed all the time. I personally can’t get into them but I’m glad people are enjoying them.
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sounds cool! We have some boardgame shops that have some get-togethers once every weekend. These are nice but most that we have gone to have a very limited selection of games.
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My wife and I’s first date was at a boardgame cafe. We haven’t had a chance to check out any of the cafes in our new city yet, though.
sounds like a new date is in order!
Vancouver has a boardgame pizzeria out of all things: https://www.ludica.ca/
You’d think that handling pizza slices and handling boardgame components at the same time would be a recipe for disaster but it works pretty well somehow. They have a good collection of games and the pizzas are great too.
I think there’s about 3 in my city. Always seems to have people in it playing something, and event nights look more packed when I go past. But I don’t really have the friend group for that kinda thing though
I would go during event nights! Unless these are different in your area they should be a great opportunity to game with strangers.
Unfortunately not. Until just now I wasn’t aware of any in my country but it turns out there are in some now but the closest is 1.5h away.
shoot, 1.5h is maybe a bit steep for a quick game. Maybe in the future there is something closer. Unless of course you are out in the sticks :)
Fortunately I have a very loyal gaming group and the local toy library does regular game nichts as well. So I’m well covered what gaming is concerned. Just not with boardgaming cafes.
Yes, in Santo Domingo! I didn’t know it was a more widespread thing, but one showed up around a year ago and has grown more popular this year. It’s called “Playboard Café”, and their food is also great.
I recently visted one in my home town for the first time. I didn’t expect much, but it was actually a lot of fun. The food was meh tough (mostly fast food).
Yeah, the food is often not the reason to go but its a nice addon
No cafes and sadly the closest store that is anything more than a MtG/Pokémon shop is an hours drive away.
We’ve had a couple of people try to open stores but they’ve never lasted. A cafe might actually fair better in the college town nearby but no one has tried for some reason.
At least I save a lot buying online…
One just opened not too far, planning to check it out soon.
No, never been. I just looked whether there are any in the wider region but looks like only bigger cities have any, so an hour by car minimum.
I don’t even have any LGS though, so a BGC would have positively surprised me.I think I would like to visit a really nice one at some point just to try the experience. On the whole I prefer to play my own games - and to buy the games I prefer to play, needless to say - but going to a café with a nice small group and seeing what games they have could be neat.
i pass by boardgame cafes and sometimes step inside for a tour. Invariably, they smell funky and dirty, and have some seedy smelly dirty people inside. I’m not sure why. But the boardgame (aye even the dnd crowd) is typically filthy hairy and carrying some weird infections. It’s sad, since I’m very very clean (Japanese), and smelly hairy dirty males make me feel somewhat nauseated.
There’re plenty of boardgame cafes, and plain straight out boardgame playing spaces here in Singapore. I’ve been to quite a few, the latter I much prefer because the staff/owner are invested in the games, are long-time gamers themselves, and are very good at recommending and introducing games. Being able to concisely introduce rules and mechanics and have a group of people understand them is not as easy as it looks!
I have a board game bar in my city. It’s pretty nice. They have staff to introduce you to the games. they serve lots of mixed drinks. Those tend to be expensive, but hey it’s to cover the cost of the board games and non wait staff.
