Nice.
Announcements
After the announcements of our (online) special events offering in last week's newsletter, we thought we'd bring you some more details to pique your interest:
Tabletop Radio
Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st June, 12pm to 1am (times may be subject to slight change)
What's the premise?
Charity fundraising has suffered greatly because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and our usual in-person charity fundraising during our Pride Week can no longer happen. So, as part of our Tabletop Pride Week (week 9), we will be participating in the 2.6 challenge.
We're raising money for Stonewall, an LGBT-focused charity that is committed to empowering LGBT individuals, transforming the culture of institutions towards inclusivity and acceptance, changing hearts and minds to value and respect LGBT individuals, and changing and protecting laws to contribute to LGBT equality.
What is "Tabletop Radio," exactly?
We thought amongst the exec on what exactly to do for the challenge: we wanted something to bring together our community in this isolated time, and we wanted something that echoed the marathon aspect of our Tabletop Weekends. And so we settled on an epic 26 hour charity stream (bold, I know), with a lot of segments incorporating activities that we and people in our community love. We've got RPG one-shots, kazoos, Minecraft, Animal Crossing and Chill, Jackbox Party Fun, The Wheel™... and that's about half the run time.
Can I help out?
If you're thinking "damn, I'd like to get in on that," we are very open to you helping out! If you have segment ideas you want to suggest or run, or something you'd like to help out with backstage, you can yell at me on Discord (@dovahbutt#7544) and I'll help you get involved.
We're definitely going to have to do some testing to get this up and running, so keep your eyes peeled for announcements of mini test streams that we may or may not be running in the future...
But... What about the Megagame??
Those of you who attended last year's Megagame (or those who wish they could have) might have noticed that on our special events schedule last newsletter there was no mention of a Megagame happening this year. Which, you know, seems sensible, given that we can't meet in person.
Unless..... We did it online!
Yep, we are in talks about hosting our 2nd Megagame online, but this would be after the end of term, during the summer break (as none of us have enough time around exams to get all the planning done sooner).
Don't worry, we will keep you updated on what's going on as plans progress. For now, get hyped, and keep your calendars somewhat clear!
What's happening this week?
It's our regular schedule of online content, with a little extra pizazz in the draft department:
- Monday 5-10pm: Isolation Tabletop (Wargames and Board Games)
- Tuesday 6-10pm: Isolation Draft - Mystery Booster (MB1) - free, with a promo prize to the winner - you must sign up here so we know whether we we have enough players to run. This is a super fun draft which we haven't been able to do in person yet at a Tabletop event (though we have some boxes for next year), so I would highly recommend trying it out!
- Thursday 5-10pm: Isolation CCGs
What happened last week?
This week was pretty quiet, but Azul was finally played online during last week's Tabletop Evening. Finnbar made a Discovery™ in finding Gaslands: Refueled, a racing car wargame traditionally played with hot wheels cars which you can mount guns onto. One or the rules is literally called "the rule of carnage": if you're unsure how to rule something, go for the way that causes the most chaos. They're aiming to play this tonight (Monday 11th) at Tabletop Evening, so if you're interested, go talk to Finnbar (@finnbar#1659).
Additionally, our new Secretary Anakin has typed up our last two exec meetings worth of minutes for you all to peruse, and you can find these in the minutes section of our website!
The other exec got enthusiastic about me writing a new segment to fill this news gap, and Finnbar suggested recipes, so welcome tooo.... (drum roll)
Baking with Ares
My new segment where I provide y'all with tried and tested tasty baked good recipes, as a way to get myself motivated to bake weekly again (the entire astro staff and PhD cohort used to get cake every Monday until we all went underground).
We're starting this off with a Persian Love Cake, a simple one layer cake with some pretty unique flavours: rose, lemon, almond and pistachio. You can find the recipe here; in order to bake for a small household (it's just me and 2 others to bake for right now), I halved the recipe to make a 20cm layer providing 6 slices (but yes, I've baked the full recipe before!).
If you need to make it vegan, you can replace the butter with vegan soya butter, and the eggs with apple sauce or milled flax seed (though the latter produces a speckled appearance).
If you make this, please share photos with me and let me know how you found it! Remember that the #highlights channel in the Tabletop Discord is your place to share your Tabletop-related news and it might even get featured in the newsletter (I'm going to be actively looking in there from now on, I did not realise I had it muted before oops).
That's all from me this week! I hope you all enjoyed your bank holiday as much as possible in this time of lockdown and exams. Good luck with revision! You're gonna do great!
Wash your hands, stay inside, and come play some games with us <3
This week's "frog of the week" brought to you by my favourite video of all time
Ares Osborn (Communications and Operations, Cake Baker)
@dovahbutt#7544 on Discord
e.osborn@warwick.ac.uk
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