Welcome

Hi Everyone,

We trust 2010 has got off to a good start for all of our customers and subscribers!

This festive period has been very busy indeed. It seems that many people have realized the value of board games as a way to entertain during the recession :-)  We have certainly had a bumper few months and will be restocking a few months earlier than usual.

Settlers of Catan continues to sell like crazy - the momentum is there and we are very confident that it is on track to become a house-hold name in South Africa - allowing us to realize a major milestone in our mission to re-ignite the board game market in our wonderful country by "bringing family & friends together" everywhere!

You may have noticed that we are moving many of the functions of our board games web-site over to Facebook. It is a really powerful platform for communicating with our customers. We would like to strongly encourage you to visit our Facebook page and register as a fan. This will allow you to get instant updates on news relating to board games. See below for more details.

Please enjoy this month's newsletter and, as always, we look forward to any feedback you may have for us.

Chief Kid
 

Settlers Tournament 2010 @ ICON – July 2010

We would like to urge all you Settlers fans out there to start preparing for the Settlers Tournament to be held around mid year. The competition will be fierce as we battle it out to see who is the best in the land. The tournament will open for all to compete, old and young, experienced players and beginners. The emphasis will be on FUN.

Prizes:               Great prizes to be sponsored by Boardgames.co.za
 

Boardgames.co.za on facebook

With board games being very social by nature it would make sense for us to start taking advantage of a social networking platform such as Facebook. Please feel free to visit our page and join up as a fan.

We are really excited about the prospects that this platform holds to support our mission of bringing family and friends together!

Click here to see our Facebook page

We anticipate announcing newsletters, competitions, sharing photos & club events, industry newsflashes and the like via Facebook in the future. We look forward to welcoming you there!
 

Yahoo! More awesome specials!!

These games will be on special until the end of February (or while stocks last). Don’t miss out!

Game                      Normal               Special
Carcassonne       R387-00          R350-00
Power Grid          R557-00          R530-00
Cluzzle               R370-00         R300-00
El Grande ***     R790-00          R499-00

(*** This super game is going at half price to the first 5 clients. Rated in the top 10 on the Boardgamegeek as well as one of the most rated games world wide.)

Don't forget to take advantage of our awesome bundles. Save huge amounts of $$$ - click here.

Edenvale: Meets every 3rd Wednesday of the Month.  Contact Barbara for details 082-880.2707

Pretoria: Anyone interested can contact Jannie Pieters at jannie.pieters@gmail.com. They get together every other Saturday.

Cyrildene: You can contact Marcus.  They meet on Wednesdays to play either Magic or board games. 0832559454 or marcus1@mweb.co.za 

Durban: Gavin Westermeyer is the one to speak to 0837033326 or 031 202-3639. Anyone interested should contact him. He is guaranteed to light a spark in the board gaming arena.

Cape Town: if you are interested please contact Barbara 082-8802707 and she will add you to this list.

MahJong Club: If anyone is interested in playing MahJong, Lippy Lipschitz is the man to speak to.  He is looking for players.  Beginners are welcome as he will teach you all there is to know about this awesome game.  Please contact Lippy at:
 - lippy@netactive.co.za
 - 011 486 3451 (h)
 - 083 454 4536 (c)

Play and Learn Catan immediately!
"The Catan - Introductory Game" for your web browser provides instant access to the Catan base game. Play against two virtual opponents for a fun and fast game! "The Catan - Introductory Game" is ideal for beginners and it is a great way to introduce new players to the game.

* Free
* Ideal for beginners
* No sign-up required
* Runs in your web browser

Play here: http://introgame.playcatan.com/

Catan in The Wall Street Journal!
A wonderful article in The Wall Street Journal by Pui-Wing Tam, called "An Old-School Board Game Goes Viral Among Silicon Valley's Techie Crowd", was on the front page of the publication on December 17th!

We were very excited to learn about Catan's popularity in Silicon Valley. It appears Facebook, LinkedIn, Mozilla, and others are all having a blast throwing tournaments. Is it possible we'll start seeing some more contestants from the high-tech crowd in the WWCC this up coming year? Read this article at the link below:

"An Old-School Board Game Goes Viral Among Silicon Valley's Techie Crowd" by Pui-Wing Tam

Not sure if you want to buy online? Or unsure about the quality of the games available from our retailers or our web-site?

Then make sure you take some time to read about what our customers have to say about our products and our service - click here.

 - Catan Dice Game
 - Dominion
 - Power Grid: Factory Manager
 - Settlers of Catan: Portable Edition
 - Carcassonne: Abbey & Mayor
 - Lost Cities: the Board Game
 

Dominion Wins 2009 Deutscher Spiele Preis
Dominion, the deck-building card game which won the 2009 Spiel des Jahres, has also won the 2009 Deutscher Spiele Preis.

The DSP is a German award given to a strategy board game or card game.

It is chosen by the votes of gamers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Dominion, designed by Donald X. Vaccarino and published by Rio Grande Games.

Factory Manager is the new stand-alone game in the world of Power Grid. It was released at Spiel '09 in Essen, Germany.

Each player owns a factory and tries to earn the most money during the game. To be successful, each player must use his workers to buy the best machines and robots at the market and to run the machines most effectively in his factory. Because of increasing energy prices, the players must be careful to check the energy consumption of their factories and to avoid using only energy-consuming machines. Otherwise, their profit will suddenly vanish, the worst fear of a good businessman.

Factory Manager uses a clever market mechanism for choosing the supply of factory tiles in the market

For more board game information, statistics, reviews, and descriptions log onto www.boardgamegeek.com. This site is a fountain of information.

Congratulations to this month's lucky newsletter subscriber, Sven Lundin, who has won a copy of Settlers of Catan valued at R395.00

The Boardgames crew hope that you thoroughly enjoy your prize and that you play it often with family and as many friends as possible. Spread the magic!

Subscribe

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Remember that subscribing to this newsletter gives you a chance to win a board game every issue. So stay tuned and WIN!

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That's a Wrap!

That’s all for now. We will be sending out another update soon. Until then, happy gaming! Please also give us any feedback that you may have.

Play hard,

The Crazy Boardgames.co.za Crew

info@boardgames.co.za