As summer draws to a close, lots of opportunities were available for using up the last couple weekends before school starts up again, only one of which involved playing games at GAMES!, but we still ended up with 16 people. Even with a smaller turnout there was big fun, including Pandemic, Airlines, Lord Of The Rings, 7 Wonders, Ticket To Ride (and the Switzerland variant), Tichu and other games.

Sean won the door prize drawing and selected Castle Merchants to take home. We'll find something good to replace it with next month. In case anybody ever wondered, we try to keep a variety of three different strategy games (ideally with different game mechanics), plus a couple different party/family games, a kid-friendly game and occasionally some extra games (or expansions) that folks have donated. All you have to do is show up, sign up (it's free) and stay until the drawing and you could go home a winner.

Our next event is scheduled for September 10th, 3-9pm so put it on your calendar and plan to join us. By then, summer will be mostly behind us and GAMES! will be a welcome break from the usual school year weekend grind. I'll be staffing the kitchen since the ladies from the church will be at a weekend retreat at camp.

If you're looking something to do this coming weekend, August 20th at 5pm the church that hosts GAMES! will be having a free fish fry and BBQ open house/picnic. There will be fun activities for kids plus plenty of food and nice people to interact with. All you need to bring is yourself; same location as GAMES! (see address on website if reading this via email), this Saturday at 5pm. Shanna and I will be there, so you might even talk us into playing a game or two, as long as you bring the game. If we don't see you there, we'll catch you at GAMES! in September. Enjoy the last few weeks of summer!

In case you're not sure what to do with one of the last weekends of the summer, you should consider spending six hours of it with us playing games! There's nothing unusual happening this month to tell you about, but that's okay because even an ordinary GAMES! event is still full of fun.

Since we're all out of Bohnanza games (a really popular choice, apparently), we'll backfill the Prize Vault slot with the 10th Anniversary Edition of Carcassonne which comes in a very cool meeple-shaped box. It could be yours, but you must be present to win.

Circle it on your calendar and plan to join us this Saturday for GAMES! and be sure to put next month's event on your calendar too, just in case: September 10th. We're looking forward to seeing you there!

We had a total of 19 people at today's event, including five who were attending for the first time ever. There was way too much dessert for the number of people present, but that's not always a bad thing. In addition to Car Wars, 7 Wonders, Starfarers of Catan, Pandemic, Tsuro, Wrath of Ashardalon and Notre Dame got played.

Car Wars itself suffered a little from a lack of interest at this particular event, but we'll still have it at the October event, so put it on your calendar now. We'll probably do much the same as we did today, with a series of team-based first-kill matches (hopefully without pointless head-on suicide collisions terminating gameplay prematurely). I've got plenty of unused div 40 and div 10 cars created that we can play with, we just need players.

First-timer Ruth won the door prize this month and picked up a copy of Bohnanza (the last one we had, I think). There's other good stuff floating around to fill the open slot, though; we'll find an appropriate choice before the next event.

If you were among the many regulars that missed July (or even June too), perhaps you'll be tired of summer and its projects/vacations by the time August rolls around. Just in case, pencil in some fun on Saturday, August 13th. See ya then...