Tale of two game clubs

I had the chance to visit two different game clubs today and they were very different experiences, although each positive.

My first stop was the monthly central Connecticut meeting of the Connecticut Game Club in Middlefield.

This was definitely serious geek gamer territory. I got to play a game of Small World. Other games I witnessed in progress included Talisman, Carcassonne, Agricola and World at War. Any of these would have been well beyond the ken of the second group I visited, which was a gamer's Meetup Group called the Cardplayers Club. This was definitely not geek territory, and as matter of fact, we not only had gamers but the hostess had also invited folks from an entirely different Meetup Group, the Over 40 Meetup.

Things got off to a slow start because everyone really wanted to play in one game, but the group didn't have anything suitable. We started a game of poker, but enthusiasm wasn't high and few of the players were familiar with the rules. There really aren't that many game that can handle 8 people well, especially if those people are not really gamers.

Fortunately I remembered I had a copy of Fluxx in the car so I broke that out. The first game was a little rough. It can be a little confusing, but everyone was willing to make another go at it and by the second game people were starting to get the hang of it. We ended up playing it three times, so I think it was a success. Fluxx has its critics -- it is a bit random -- but it is well suited for a large group of casual gamers. It's really almost self-evident in play, turns go fast and the random element means that everybody has a decent shot at winning..