East Portland Tabletop Arcade: PLANET EARTH (Hobby games at the Midland Library)

Happy equinox! For the past little while, I've been organizing a board game meetup on the first Sunday of every month at the Midland Library at SE 122nd & Morrison. Our last event had six attendees and saw plays of Santiagio, High Society, Rebirth, The Gang, Vegas Dice Game, and Let's Go! to Japan. For next month, I've reserved a community room on Sunday, April 5th, and I'd love for anyone that's interested to come join us. This time around, we'll be in room 1C, one of the larger rooms at the front of the building. These rooms are explicitly for community use and open to the public, so I'm hoping for a pretty friendly, relaxed gathering. So far there's been a mix of interest in shorter/lighter games and longer, more involved games, and we've been able to organize pretty organically without anyone having to wait too long. Still, if you're interested in something longer or more complex, I'd suggest arriving at the beginning so we can get that going from the jump.

My partner recently reminded me that when we hosted game nights many years ago, we used to bring out a few selections each time with a thematic connection, and I thought it would be nice to revive that tradition. Playing these is hardly mandatory, of course - I'll have a number of other games with me, and I hope that anyone who attends will feel free to bring stuff that they're interested in getting to the table. This month's theme is PLANET EARTH, and I'll have several agriculture- and ecology-themed games available:

DAYBREAK (Leacock & Menapace, 2023, medium complexity): Daybreak is a co-operative game about climate action. Each player controls a world power, deploying policies and technologies to both dismantle the engine of global heating and to build resilient societies that protect people from life-threatening crises. If the global temperature gets too high, or if too many people from any world power are in crisis, everyone loses. But if you work together to draw down global emissions to net-zero, you all win!

HARMONIES (Benvenuto, 2024, low complexity): In Harmonies, build landscapes by placing colored tokens and create habitats for your animals. To earn the most points and win the game, incorporate the habitats in your landscapes wisely and have as many animals as you can settle there.

THREE SISTERS (Pinchback & Riddle, 2022, medium complexity): Three Sisters is a strategic roll-and-write game about backyard farming. Three Sisters is named after an indigenous agricultural technique still widely used today in which three different crops — pumpkins, corn, and beans — are planted close together. Corn provides a lattice for beans to climb, the beans bring nitrogen from the air into the soil, and the squash provides a natural mulch ground cover to reduce weeds and keep pests away.

The library itself is quite nice, especially after its recent facelift, and is just a couple minutes' walk from the 20-Burnside bus and a maybe a five or ten minute walk from the 122nd Ave Blue Line MAX stop. As far as food options, Bridge City Taproom is right across the street, there's Just Tea about a block away, and Los Francos Food Truck, Don Pedro, Victorico's, Bon Bahn Mi, Gold Garden (Chinese), and Sisters (Ethiopian) all within a few blocks.

Alright, I think that's everything for the moment. Please let me know if you have any questions, and I hope I'll see you there!