In yesterday’s Game Night, we eased my sister deeper into the world of board gaming with “My Little Scythe”, and tested out Game Toppers’ “Watson” gaming surface and mat.
One of the first things my sister Vallerie showed me when I first visited her in her new home nearby was a battered copy of “Settlers of Catan” she’d picked up second hand. “I’ve been seeing your posts about your game nights on Instagram,” she said, “and I want in.”
Well, that can happen. When I was a kid, none of the rest of the family cared at all for anything I was interested in, but times change, I guess…
I don’t have a lot of games that are still fun with six or seven people. There’s “Red Dragon Inn“, of course, which might actually get better the more people you have. “Lords of Waterdeep” and “Vast: The Crystal Caverns” are two others. And then there’s “Scythe“, the tactical board game about world conflict set a century ago, except everyone has battle mechs.
But jumping straight from “Red Dragon Inn” to “Scythe” could be a bit of a leap. Thankfully, we had the loving fanfic to “Scythe”, “My Little Scythe” designed by a fan for his young daughter to play and subsequently released officially as a game in its own right.
Earlier this year, I backed “Game Toppers” on Kickstarter. “Game Toppers” are playing surfaces that are set on top of an existing table that, combined with the large playing mats they also offer, give a really nice look and feel to a gaming setup — including a place for cards and tokens and a guarantee that dice will never roll onto the floor. (I’d printed a dice tower for the dice, anyway).
Out kitchen table turned out to be exactly the size for Game Toppers’ “Watson” topper, a size they already had in stock. The newer Kickstarter offered new sizes and materials, like woods and other fancy stuff, but I opted to just go with the simple black-painted aluminum topper.
The topper arrived in a hundred pound box. The UPS delivery person asked if someone could help him haul it out of the truck. He and my son lugged it into the living room, and there it stood. It came pretty late in the day, so I didn’t have the chance to open it up and see what I’d got until the next day.
The topper itself came in two massive sections that lock together with easily-tightened thumb screws. The whole thing rests on the table without being attached to the table in any way. It’s easily heavy enough, and has enough grip from the pads on the bottom, that it doesn’t move around nor scratch the table beneath. (Not that we’d notice it with our old, scratched butcherblock table).
With the thick mat that also came with it unrolled, it really looks super nice. I can’t wait to play a miniatures game like “Frostgrave” on it.
Storing it is a bit of an issue. Until we get the separately sold panels that slot on the top, we have to disassemble and remove the topper so we can use the table for eating. It comes apart as easily as it goes together, and for now I have been storing it against the wall behind the table. We have baseboard heaters running along that same wall, so if the top panels don’t come before the temperature drops, we’ll have to find a spot for them downstairs. I am really not looking forward to hauling them up and down that flight of stairs, but I’ll do it if I must.
Those top panels will allow us to leave games in progress. We have an ongoing “Jaws of the Lion” campaign, and while we don’t have any scenarios that are so long that we have to interrupt them in the middle, it might be nice to leave everyone’s playing areas intact to speed up the setup time.
So if you want to class up your game nights, Game Toppers offers one way to do it, especially if you want to use a table you already have instead of shelling out megabucks for a custom gaming table.
And, if you just want to ease someone into board gaming, you could do worse than “My Little Scythe”. It’s meant for kids, but the tactics are world-class and it even comes with a card-based AI player if you just want something to play against, or have a player that nobody will feel bad about teaming up against. “My Little Scythe” even has a nice catch-up mechanic that lets players have one more chance on their very last move to completely upend the game and pull out a win from behind. “My Little Scythe” was chosen specifically so that next Game Night, we can haul out “My Little Scythe”‘s original flavor, “Scythe”. It’s going to be so much fun.
