GeekFest 2017 dates announced.

Yes. Dates. Plural. GeekFest is expanding to a TWO DAY EVENT for 2017, and will be held on the 14th and 15th of January 2017. Mark your calendars! Update your phones! Run screaming through the streets! It's going to be EPIC!

Toppollo Takes Hold

We've been playing Toppollo, a simple wood block balancing game I built in the school wood work shop. The idea of the game is very simple - players take turns to balance a block on the tower. If any blocks fall off, the active player has to take them. The winner is the first player to get rid of all their blocks. Toppollo has proved to be highly addictive and very popular.

Tim cunningly places a piece early in the game.

Rowan is a tricksy man. He places blocks in a tricksy manner.

The tower is starting to look interesting...

Rowan places an almost impossible block... 

IT WORKS! Okay, so a few seconds later most of the tower fell over, but for a few seconds, Rowan was a shiny golden god of Toppollo.

Here are the full rules:

Object of the game: to get rid of all your blocks.
Components:
Toppollo Tower (basically a small plywood table just large enough to hold four blocks - in my case 60mm diameter)
Four sets of blocks, consisting of:
Cube
Oblong
Cylinder
Wedge
Pyramid
Arch
Curve (the bit cut out of the block to make the arch)
Slanted Oblong
Slanted Cylinder
(these will be made from 30X30mm pine and 25ish mm dowel - closest I could get to 30mm dowel)
Setup:
Place the Toppollo Tower on a hard, flat surface such as a table or board within easy reach of the the players.
Each player is given a complete set of blocks.
Starting the game:
Each player takes their cylinder piece and tosses it underarm towards the tower. The player to land their cylinder closest to the center of the tower goes first. Blocks are allowed to touch the tower and land on top of the tower.
Playing the game:
Players take it in turns to place one of their blocks.
Blocks must be placed on the Toppollo Tower or on top of blocks which are already on the tower.
If any blocks fall off the tower, the player whose turn it is takes these blocks into their collection.
The first player to get rid of all their blocks is the winner.

These rules are still being play tested - some tweaks will be happening, and new blocks will also be tested out.
There's also the 'expert mode' variant where the top of the base tower is removed, and blocks are balanced on the cross-shaped support instead...

Pictured: Expert mode. Not pictured: the enormous balls required to PLAY expert mode.

Warmachine Mk.III Slow-grow Journeyman League

Warmachine, the highly popular game of steam-powered magically controlled giant robot enriched skirmish goodness is about to be updated to it's 3rd edition. So is it's companion game of giant angry monster riddled mayhem, Hordes. This is a great time to jump on board and build up an army while learning the new version of the rules.
One way to do this is a Slow-grow league (which is similar to our approach to MTG). In a slow-grow league, players start by buying a Battle Box starter army, and add to it as the weeks go by. In the official Journeyman format the league lasts for six weeks, and armies grow up to 35 points. You score points for painting models and for playing games, all of which go to earning you badges and glory. I was thinking of running things in a modified format, which would last longer to ease the costs involved and make things more manageable for first-time army builders. We'd probably run for a school term plus adjacent holidays, so twelve weeks.
This would be a great way to get some miniatures gaming happening at GG - Warmachine needs a maximum table size of 4'X4' (120cmX120cm), and smaller games can be played on smaller tables. It is one of the more affordable games since armies are fairly small, and the rules system is robust, well written and action packed. We can run some learn-to-paint sessions at GG for those who are interested - Battle Boxes are built around Warjacks and Warbeasts, both of which are large models and a good place to start learning to paint.
Who would be interested in such a league?
Leave comments below if you're up for it.