Inside Chance & Counters, the Board Game cafe in Digbeth Birmingham
We speak with Chance & Counters assistant manager Tom all about the popular Chance & Counters Board Game cafe in the Custard Factory in Digbeth, Birmingham
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00:00 Hi there, so we are in Chance Encounters in the Custard Factory in Digbeth and we're with Tom,
00:07 who's going to tell us how the cafe has grown in popularity and what some of the most popular games are.
00:14 Hello, hi, so Chance Encounters Birmingham, we've been around since 2019, we've survived Covid,
00:20 we've survived the cost of living crisis and things are now, I would say, the cafe's better now than when I joined it 18 months ago.
00:26 So I'm one of the assistant managers, obviously not everyone that comes to the cafe is necessarily going to play games,
00:32 but this is one of our flagship games, this is Onitama.
00:35 This is a great, one of the many reasons this is a great game is because a lot of people that come to the cafe,
00:41 they want something that's different but familiar, so a lot of people want to come and play chess.
00:45 This game was designed as an antidote to chess, because chess is great if you're both grandmasters or if you're both complete novices,
00:52 but if one of you is good and one of you is not, you're just going to win every single time.
00:56 Onitama levels the playing field and it takes 110 seconds to teach, it can be slightly different every time,
01:01 and it's obviously gorgeous, but it's familiar enough for customers.
01:05 This is one I've literally taught three times today already, it has some of those similar chess elements where
01:11 if you capture the opponent's master you win, but it's got enough of a difference where the pieces move based on martial art moves,
01:17 and whenever they move you're going to swap the move you've done with the move in the middle,
01:22 so whatever move you do you're going to be giving to your opponent,
01:25 so for those people that like to think two or three turns ahead you get that reward,
01:29 and for those people who just want to play it fast and loose this will take 10-15 minutes,
01:33 rather than the long drawn out game that chess can be.
01:36 We really want those games that play a bit quicker, because ideally what we want to do is we want people to experience as many different games as possible,
01:43 you don't want someone sitting there while you're teaching the game for 10 minutes,
01:46 we've all played the games of Monopoly the Dragon for four hours,
01:48 if you want to come and play Monopoly you absolutely can,
01:51 but it always feels a little bit like going to have an Indian and ordering the steak and chips.
01:55 Have what the place is good at, we've got 600 games on the shelf,
01:59 we've got staff who are super keen to teach them,
02:03 you know, an outdoor department that's just ÂŁ2 an hour,
02:07 it seems a shame to play Monopoly when you couldn't fall out on that over Christmas,
02:11 whereas we can teach you games that are far quicker, far more modern,
02:15 and dare I say it, much much better.
02:17 Our food and drink menu is also absolutely staggering,
02:20 all the food is freshly made on the premises,
02:22 which can be when we get busy, wait times go up a little bit unfortunately.
02:26 All of our beer, we have eight craft beers from Bristol breweries, Birmingham breweries, Stourbridge breweries,
02:32 it's one of the things that I'm in charge of and I'm really passionate about.
02:35 about.