Our club open afternoon

Last Saturday my local club at Guildford were invited to take part in an open day event at the church centre which doubles as our secret headquarters. After  much debate we decided to put on a large demonstration game based on a fictitious Wars of the Roses game, which gave us the excuse to feature Richard III on the table in a very topical fashion [this drew lots of comments and interest from visitors].  Actually the whole thing was a bit of an excuse to wangle a whole day game out of the centre at no extra cost :)

The Lancastrians advance...

 

 

 

...and the Yorkists wait for them

 

 

As well as the display game we arranged for an assortment of static displays around the room showing the range of games we can stretch to.  These were themed historically from Ancients through to the 19th C as well as a similar display of naval models and some WW2 aircraft [my very small contribution!]. 

some of the Naval display: this drew a lot of attention from visitors

 

Part of the historical display

We also had some side games set up which I think we'd thought might stretch to offering taster games to visitors although this never actually materialised... these included Song of Drums and Shakos and Lord of the Rings.

We had a steady stream of visitors throughout the afternoon and were plied with exceedingly good cakes from the organisers downstairs.  As the other groups exhibiting included Yoga classes, a recorder group [...shudder...] and assorted community and church groups we were a slightly 'odd' addition and weren't sure how we'd be received but actually most of the visitors were, at worst, fairly tolerant and at best very interested..

It was interesting to actually meet some of the other building users as we tend to exist in our own little geeky bubble and certainly cemented our relationship with the Centre so overall a very good thing.  We also acquired at least one new prospective member and ate lots of cake.

Oh... and Richard lost [again...]