Thank you to our 183 respondents to our market research questionnaire. Our results showed;

1. A welcoming atmosphere, game selection, transport links, cost, knowledgeable staff and the refreshments that are available, were the most influential factors for attending the board game café. Respondents specifically asked for a small selection of vegan, veggie, diary/gluten free products. 

2. Hot and cold drinks, sandwiches, snacks and sweets were the most popular items people would like to be available in the board game café, with hot food and alcoholic beverages lower down in priority.  

3. The city centre was the most popular choice for the location of the board game cafe. Other preferential areas included Harbourne and the Jewellery Quarter. 

4. The most likely time for people to visit the cafe would be a weekday evening and weekend afternoon. 

5.182 different games were suggested to be available in the cafe. Common themes included newly released games, obscure games, games people have not played before, a wide gaming selection as possible and no Monopoly.

Interestingly one person requested no games snobbery, which is certainly the vibe we are going for with the board game cafe!

Although we feel your pain guys and girls with Monopoly, I am afraid we will have a few copies lying around to cater for everyone’s tastes :) 

Hi all - Scott here from All Aboard, 

One of the big reasons we wanted to open this cafe was to share games with people and find out new games along the way. 

Recently we went to the UK Games Expo and got to see a lot of exciting new games, some great cosplay and we even witnessed a wedding proposal (she said yes). 

I should say from the get-go, I am a collector. Not a "got to catch 'em all" type, a "looks good on the shelf" type. So when I saw Krosmaster: Arena at the expo I was intrigued. 

The game has an adorable chibi art style (similar to Super Dungeon Explore) and is an arena battle game (DOTA2 being a popular PC game example). The game setting is based on a French cartoon but I know nothing about the show and this doesn't seem relevant to the game. 

What do you get?

The base game costs around £60 and contains 8 pre-painted figures, a hoard of tokens and terrain, a dual sided gameboard and rulebook. 

The figure themselves look great. Those into wargames may consider the paint-job simple but the colours are bright and bold - I think they look great.

The rulebook has an interesting feature that it contains a collection of mini-games that you play on the pages of the rules themselves, using the pages as a mini-gameboard. Each mini-game teaches you more about the game until you get up to speed with all the rules. While not a necessity. I felt it was a nice touch for those new to this type of game. 

The gameboard and tokens seem to be pretty sturdy but not quite the quality one gets with a game from Fantasy Flight say. Some of the terrain pieces are little crates that you need to assemble. Mine are held together with stubbornness, on reflection I would advise using glue. 

All the toys!

Being a collectible game there are already numerous expansions to this game. There are two gameboard expansions, three seasons of figure releases and expensive terrain upgrades for the really dedicated. 

All in all there appears to be well over 100 different figures to collect, although a lot of them look similar to others (there are 3-4 knights of different colours). You can get some pre-determined figures but for the most part these come in randomised boxes so you don't know what you might get when you buy one. The excitement of opening the unknown appeals to some, but I would prefer I knew what I was getting so shall be sticking to the pre-determined figures for future puchases. 

Next time: Game play review...

We want to thank everyone who has completed our survey so far. The response has been overwhelming and we're hugely grateful. We are in the process of collating the results and will continue to post progress reports here.

If you haven't seen our survey and are interested in helping us with our market research then you can fill the survey out here: www.surveymonkey.com/s/J36YBXR