I often write about the organisers in relation to Miniatura, the International miniature art and dolls’ house hobby fair because they are there and organising it. When they are not being part of the furniture and, in the case of Bob Hopwood, actually leaping on it to test the strength of the tables, they do have lives of their own.
Andy Hopwood plays other games than ‘guess how we’re going to fit all the tables in the space’ and designs them too. He sells them from his website and to visitors to games shows because as well as running a fair he also exhibits at them. I think this is a wonderful idea. I think all fair organisers should make something and try to sell it at a fair, I think it would do them a world of good.
Andy invents board games. How clever is that? I don’t even manage to play board games much. When I was first going out with my husband we used to play board games and card games but it wasn’t really my thing. We had a game called Napoleon, I think, in which the object was to conquer Europe, in the normal way, with blocks of plastic artillery and model troops of cavalry, like you do. My husband-to-be spent about half an hour each move plotting the future, not with one arm in his jacket and wearing a silly hat but not far off. While he was working all this strategy out by writing it down and drawing complex diagrams I went round the board with a cannon, shot everyone and won. Thereupon he turned so Napoleonesque I’d have exiled him to Elba at the drop of a cocked hat and we immediately discontinued playing board games on the grounds that I wasn’t meant to win and had somehow cheated.
So I heartily admire people who can persevere with board games and those who invent them, to whom I doff my cockaded hat. You would think every board game that could ever be invented had been invented, wouldn’t you? Apparently not. Enthusiasts generate, test and play hundreds of new games every year and meet at fairs and conventions in order to do so. Andy has invented and gone into production with three games over the last few years. Mijnlieff, a game he invented, won Best Abstract Game Award at a show in 2010; this year his new game Zoom Zoom Kaboom won Best Board Game at the UK Games Expo.
You can see people playing the games and read all about it at www.hopwoodgames.co.uk
There you will see that the most important thing about Andy’s games is that he uses them to benefit causes that help Conductive Education. Andy’s elder son, Tom, has been greatly helped by Conductive Education and has needed every bit of help he can get. Tom has spent a lot of time in and out of hospital, recently having an operation to break and straighten his legs, which were growing in a way that would have completely incapacitated him if the problem were not addressed. If you have children who are whole and well and can play games with you, you could give thanks by visiting the website and maybe buying one of the games.
I don’t play board games but my co-exhibitor, Bettina, who comes from Germany to exhibit, always buys Andy’s latest game and tries it out on her younger children. She’s become quite a connoisseur to the extent of proof reading the instructions. As she’s proof reading in English as a foreign language, this is helpful because it ensures wherever you are in the world, the game is understandable and playable.
There’s no doubt about it, in the game of life some of us can be dealt some really rubbish cards. The challenge is to see what you can do with the hand you’ve got. In twenty years of interviewing miniaturists, I have met some of the most unlikely winners at the fair where the organiser is himself a winner not once but twice, with games he invented in the spare time he doesn’t have.
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