Author: urbaer

Extraordinary Awards

Melbourne Meeples is a participating in the Extraordinary Awards and that means that all it’s members are eligible to nominate games that will form part of the Melbourne Meeples nomination for the awards.
The awards come in two flavours, ‘most popular’ for games that were released at any time and ‘Best new’ for games released in 2015.

Annual General Meeting 2015

It hardly feels like a year has gone by and yet it has.
So its time for the Annual General Meeting of Melbourne Meeples.
The AGM will be held at the Stolberg Beer Cafe (cnr Bell St and Plenty Rd, Preston) from midday on August 9.
To vote or to nominate for a position, you need to have been a full Melbourne Meeples member at least 10 business days before the AGM. So all new members should submit a membership form by July 26th at the latest.
At the AGM, the minutes of the previous AGM, the annual report and financial statements will be presented. Additionally the fees for 2016-2017 will be determined.
Also during the AGM, all of the committee positions will be declared vacant,  nominations will be accepted and elections held.
These positions are:

  • President
  • Vice President
  • Secretary
  • Treasurer
  • Quartermaster

The position descriptions for the above (except Quartermaster) can be found in the Melbourne Meeples Rules.
The Quartermaster is responsible for the keeping and maintaining the Melbourne Meeples games library.
We look forward to seeing you there!

Spiel des Jahres awards

We’re a little late to the party, but the announcements for the Spiel des Jahres came out a while ago and there’s some great Australian news wrapped up in it.
For those that don’t know, the Spiel des Jahres (which translates to Game of the Year, but we’ll call SdJ from here on in) is an award given to the best game of the last year that was released in Germany as decided by the German gaming press. Boardgame reviews appear in lots of print mediums in Germany somewhat like movie reviews appear here in the press.
There’s actually three awards, the SdJ (which tends to focus on family games), the Kennerspiel des Jahres (the game for those in the know… or the more complicated game) and the Kinderspiel des Jahres (the game of the year for kids). The winner for the Kinderspiel has been announced already, but the Kennerspiel and SdJ get announced on July 6.
Because of the ‘released in Germany’ in the last year, you get odd nominations and recommendations for games that have been out elsewhere in the world, such as this year, Machi Koro which was originally published in 2012 in Japan, but has taken a while to get translated to German.
So the two games which we’re excited about in our jingoistic way are

  • Elysium by ex-pat Matthew Dunstan (now living in the UK, also designed Relic Runners) and UK designer Brett J. Gilbert. Elysium is nominated for the Kennerspiel.
  • Cacao by NSW’s Philip Walker-Harding (who also designed Sushi Go, Pack of Heroes, Archeology and more). Cacao is a SdJ recommendation.

Click on the link below to take a look at the other nominees and recommendations!

Bordercon 2015

We’re all going on a winter holiday…. to the Border of Victoria and New South Wales, because it’s time for the Con that lands in the middle of the year, BorderCon.
Bordercon is held on the Queen’s Birthday weekend (June 5th-8th) in Albury and is an open gaming event (though you can schedule games).
There’s still some tickets on sale, so you can pick them up here (but make sure you find some accommodation too).
Hope to see you there (and drive safe)!

Image: Mattinbgn from Wikimedia

The new site

Welcome to meeples.org.au, Melbourne Meeples new home!
For some history, we setup nseg.org.au before Melbourne Meeples was formed… or even conceived!
It was getting to be a bit confusing having NSEG, MeepleCon and Melbourne Meeples all on the same site, so we’ve split them into three (all under meeples.org.au).
We’ve also setup a Melbourne Meeples forum and we may add additional features to the site soon.
Excuse the mess as we try to put everything into an orderly state. If you find any dud links on any of the sites, let us know and we’ll patch them up!