Friday Night Shots – Lunch Time Games

Welcome back to the bar!

I know it’s Saturday. So sue me.

It’s been a couple of weeks, but we got flooded last week so I couldn’t open the bar up at all.

I saw you looking through the window wondering why the door wouldn’t open.

This was our basement!

Amazing that it’s all spotless by now. My clean-up crew is wonderful and just made everything disappear.

I should probably pay them, shouldn’t I?

Or maybe that’s where all the kegs went?

Anyway, sit right down and let me grab you a drink before the rain starts again.

I’d turn on the jukebox but it was stuck on the Osmonds’ Greatest Hits album and wouldn’t change no matter what I did so I just turned it off.

Let’s talk about board games!

Namely, those lunch time games that make a perfect break from the tedium joys of the job.

I spoke a while ago (July 1, 2023 to be exact!) about play time in games and broke it down a bit.

One of the areas I talked about is the infamous “lunch time” game. It’s actually one of my most-used tags on this blog as if a game fits into the category, I will tag it that way.

So if you’re looking for the perfect game to play during lunch, just go to the bottom of this page where all of the tags are and click on “Lunch Time Games”. That will take you to every post where I’ve mentioned them!

I mentioned Space Base, of course, because we all really enjoy it. But I also said that, with all of the expansions, it’s kind of pushing that 60-minute time limit that we have.

That’s not the only game we play, of course. In fact, one of our staples used to be Smash Up because we embraced the chaos so much.

We still play it at least three times when a new expansion comes out, but it doesn’t hit the table as much anymore besides that.

Our lunch situation is changing a bit, with our normal three-player group now sometimes hitting four, and it could conceivably hit five if we let it.

Needless to say, I got us covered.

And that’s an older picture that doesn’t include some of the newer stuff I’ve brought!

How many of those do you recognize? (Not can you identify, since the names are right there! But recognize?)

To me, the perfect lunch time game is a 45-minute game, which enables time for a teach as well.

However, if it is closer to 60 minutes, we may take a lunch session to teach it and then play until lunch is over, just to internalize the rules.

But 45 minutes is the best length for lunch.

That’s why I differentiate these from “filler” games, those that take 20-30 minutes at most.

That doesn’t mean we haven’t played them during lunch, though! Sometimes we play a 20-30 minute game twice, or two different ones.

No Thanks has hit the table at lunch as the perfect 10-15 minute game for it.

Lately, when we have four, I’ve convinced them to indulge my newfound love for trick-taking games, or at least enough so I can get some reviews done (one more play of both Sandbag and Rebel Princess before review time!)

Those games don’t necessarily need four players, but they’re best at least at four (sometimes even five or six).

This whole lunch time thing started when a friend of mine from another department was hired for one of our new positions. When talking, I found out that she likes board games!

Not only did that get a quick invite to our Sunday group, it gave us a perfect excuse to play games at lunch.

That’s why a bunch of the games on that shelf in the picture above are two-player games. I generally avoided two-player games because my wife doesn’t play games much and I didn’t have anybody else to play them with. Our game days, nights, and conventions were always multiple players.

It was nice indulging in some two-player games and they were a lot of fun!

Then, a couple of years later, another new hire expressed interest in games, and that’s where our Smash Up plays started, which then graduated to a bunch of other games as well (in addition to another two-player opponent if the other person was on vacation).

Other new people have come and we’ve introduced them to games as well, though we really only have the core group of four people (mostly three because the fourth is often busy at lunch or her working remote days don’t mesh with us being in the office).

But this gives us such a wide variety of options!

Occasionally a wider group forms, mainly on a faculty game day lunch with people who aren’t quite as familiar with the games that we play, so we tone it down a bit.

Point Salad was a big hit with that group.

I do have a few 5-6 player games as well, in case that happens again.

The way I see it, you have 60 minutes, you have people who like to play games, what better way to spend a lunch than to play games?

Of course, sometimes you just need some time to zone out and be alone, if the morning (or the past few days) have just been a beat-down of incompetence or stressful work.

Those are the lunches that I watch Heavy Cardboard videos on.

But I won’t tag Edward on this one because I’m sure he’s getting tired of that.

Wow, this has almost been a stream of consciousness post. Which there is nothing wrong with!

A couple of other suggestions before I go, though.

We played through both expansion campaigns (or whatever you call them) of the Oh My Goods expansions and that was an enjoyable time.

Fit perfectly into the time frame, too (though the first couple went a little over because all of the stuff was new).

Forest Shuffle is also perfect for that, and I think it would still be even at four players.

We haven’t done that one yet, but it should work.

Cascadia works too!

There are so many games that fit this category that you should never be hurting for something to play.

As long as you plan for it.

Just as an aside before you go back out in the rain, it does help if you have a table in your office where it’s possible to leave a game set up.

I played a few games of Commands & Colors with a colleague because I could set it up myself prior to lunch (it’s all in the scenario book so there is no choice) and I could leave it set up when we didn’t finish.

Usually it took us two lunches to do it. Being a two-player game, it requires others to be away or on vacation, though.

Hey, maybe we can get a game of Great Battles of History going!

The scenario should only take 4-5 hours and fit on my table, right Bryan?

Anyway, do you play games at lunch? If so, what are your go-to games?

Or do you just watch?

(Seriously, if you’re reading this blog, unless I paid you to come read it and you’re not actually a gamer, I’m sure you’re not just watching).

Let me know in the comments.