I started a little boardgaming group at work a few years ago with the intention of spending one lunchtime every week together playing a boardgame. I've discovered a lot of new games (and friendships) through this and would definitely recommend it to anyone else who might be thinking about doing the same thing. It beats surfing the web for an hour in your lunchtime anyway!
In the early days there were usually only three or four of us which worked quite well, but we've grown a lot recently to the point that for the last couple of months we've been splitting ourselves into groups to play two games side-by-side, or going for "party" games like Codenames or social/ deduction games like One Night Ultimate Werewolf as these lend themselves well to being played in larger groups.
Anyway, there were eight of us today and since a few of the newer members of our group have never played Carcassonne I brought a few sets in so that I could teach them. We played three games simultaneously (basic tiles only) which I arranged into two games of three and a head-to-head. I played in the head-to-head against the only other person in the group who would consider themselves to be a strong Carcassonne player and we made ourselves available to answer questions from either of the other two games. Two of the others had played a couple of times so I placed them with one of the newbies in one game and the other game was all newbies. It took about five minutes to explain the rules before we started and then we all got going.
There was lots of bickering from the all-newbie table so that required some intervention to encourage them to stick to the traditional rules (rather than ones they were making up out of convenience) but the comments from one particular player soon changed from "This game is all luck" to "This is the best game I've ever played" within the space of about 20 minutes! The other table was a little calmer, but everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves and were definitely "in the game" so to speak (although perhaps not quite as literally as I was with my danisthirty meeples).
My game against the Ninjas was the first to finish. It was quite low-scoring (101 vs. 83) but my opponent played a couple of risky moves which I was quick to capitalise on and this gave me enough of an advantage to ensure I kept my score ticking over nicely after he'd run out of meeples and ground to a halt.

The game to my left was the next to finish. I felt sorry for the Cavemen in this game as the Soldiers and the Frankenstein's Monsters worked together early on (somewhat reluctantly it has to be said) to complete a 30-point city which doomed the Cavemen to finish last barring something quite magnificent. He managed to get five of his meeples onto the same farm which was certainly impressive, but his over-investment in what ended up being worth just 18 points was his downfall…

I'd only just finished helping them to calculate their final scores when the other game finished too. I hadn't been watching this game quite so closely but it sounds as though this had been a much more friendly affair and the end result was a tie between two of the players with the third player just a few points behind (they'd scored and dismantled this game before I'd had a chance to take a photo).
I'd packed everything away and had got back to my desk within the hour so my boss was happy. And everyone else seemed to be happy too, based on the feedback I got and the apparent enthusiasm to play it again next week.
So, to cut a short story long, my main reason for posting this was to suggest that if you happen to have a boring office job that could be livened up with the addition of a couple of boardgames and some open-minded colleagues who don't mind doing something other than eating a sandwich at their desk every lunch time, give it a go! It can be a little bit limiting knowing that we have to fit our game into our lunch hour but we've already built up a respectable collection of games that can be played within the time we're allowed and I would never have discovered such awesome games as "Escape: Curse of the Temple", "Formula D", "Colt Express" or "Zombicide" without our little gaming group. It's been great for developing friendships and getting to know other people in the office too. What have you got to lose (other than your lunch hour)?
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