Tish Chambers: Getting Ready for TableTop Day

Board games have become a big part of my life in the past year since I binge-watched all existing episode of Geek & Sundry's TableTop and started insisting on game nights with my friends. By now, we're all full-on board game geeks, playing together at least once a month, buying new games, and looking forward to International TableTop Day on April 11th.

Wil Wheaton (host of TableTop and well-known geek) and Geek & Sundry (led by geek queen Felicia Day) designated the first International TableTop Day three years ago. They created the day to encourage people all over the world to play board games. Local game shops and groups can organize a TableTop Day event and register it on the TableTop Day website so that local people can find it and attend.

Nothing is stopping my friends and I from spending an entire day playing board games at any time, but I see TableTop Day as a chance to play games with some new people, maybe even making some friends, and to play games that we don't have.

We're also particularly excited about this TableTop Day because they are holding a What's Your Game Plan? contest. For a chance to win a prize pack full of board game goodies, you can enter a 1-minute video about how you're getting ready for TableTop Day and what your plans are. Not knowing that it would be a random draw contest (boo!), I went into full video-creator mode and wrote a fun video idea that involved my friends and I training hard for TableTop Day. I'm really proud of it, so here it is!

I'm also really proud of our gaming t-shirts that we made. When my friend showed me an image of the Settlers of Catan pun, "Yes, we Catan!" I immediately wanted more gaming puns and the image of Rosie the Riveter saying "We can do it!" came to mind. That, and my friend's idea for matching game day shirts, led me to redesign Rosie to say "We Catan do it!" and add our gaming group name (that we came up with for the sole purpose of this shirt design), Board Bitches. With Rosie sporting the popular bandana look, we decided we'd have to follow suit. I also wanted the shirts to be like sports jerseys, so, with much difficulty for some, we came up with game-themed nicknames for all of us (TableTop Tish, MonopoLinda, YahtzKelsey, Kim of Catan, and RPJuliana) and threw our favorite number on the back, too. We made the t-shirts using iron-on transfer paper which proved much easier and better looking than I imagined and I only screwed up one t-shirt (and remade it).

We made sure to get some nice group shots of us all dressed up in our game outfits after we shot the video. I also got individual photos of my friends that day, but I opted to model for my own individual photos at home in my "studio". And I'm glad I did my photos later because I tried something different with my pin-up style hair and I loved it! So much that I had to take about a hundred photos. (As I usually do for any photo shoot I set up, and only get about 5 that I like enough to edit up nice.)