Squid Eats: Boards & Brews

Boards & Brews hails itself as "New Hampshire's premier board game cafe."  As explained in this post, my friends and I are on the lookout for gathering spots equidistant from northwest Vermont, where most of us live, and the new home of one of our comrades in Massachusetts.  Most of the prime candidates are in New Hampshire.  Manchester is 3ish hours from my house, about an hour further than Hanover which we explored last time. 

Boards & Brews (BB) provides a few advantages over The Fourth Place (FP) in Hanover.  The most important difference for me is that BB serves its own food.  FP is more of a comic book store that also sells games and provides some space to play them.  BB, has quite a decent menu - in fact, far more extensive than what is on offer at our local place in Vermont.  One can eat a proper meal - decent beer and coffee offerings, too.  I had the Caesar Salad with Chicken twice, then Chicken Tenders as a final snack before heading home.  BB has a lot more games than FP, too, as well as more space for playing them.  The table fee only covers a three-hour stretch though one can renew as long as space allows and you can make an advance reservation which is handy.  Prices are reasonable.

So, I would definitely go back.  It is a long drive for a day trip.  Ideally, for either Manchester or Hanover, I'd love to make it more of a weekend getaway along with my wife, the game gathering only being part of the festivities.  Manchester's bigger than I would have thought with a population around 115,000.  For a weekend trip, Hanover offers a bit more charm but I would bet Manchester has more to do.  Both are worth exploring further.

Right, the games...

Dominion - A medieval deck-building game.  One of our current favorites and well-established in gaming circles.  I rate it 8/10.

Cards Against Star Wars - I'm not a huge fan of Cards Against Humanity but I am a sucker for anything Star Wars.  Predictably, it is irreverent, offensive and disgusting.  Yes, it's also occasionally funny but the Star Wars material itself is rather half-assed.  One wonders how well the game creators actually know the franchise.  4/10

6 nimmt! - We fell in love with this one online during COVID lockdown.  This was our first time playing in person.  You play cards numbered 1-104 in 4 columns in numerical order.  If you play the 6th card in the row, you pick up the pile.  Picking up cards is bad.  There's more to it but those are the basics.  Surprisingly addictive.  The simplest games often are.  8/10

It was a good day for me.  I won every game!  Well, technically I tied for first in the two games of 6 nimmt!