EXCERPT
This year, the 5th instalment of our signature event the BGC Boardgame Retreat is going to be held at a nice concept resort known as The Kabin. With a blend of the new crop of games from this year’s upcoming Essen Spiel and the wide selection available from the OTK Games Library, you can look forward to a weekend of awesome gaming! Winter is coming this Dec 19 & 20, so let’s retreat to the Kabin for 2-days of intense Euro Board Gaming. Don’t miss this…

Venue for this year’s BGC Retreat – The Kabin @ Pantai Remis

IT’S THE BEACH AGAIN THIS TIME!

It has always been our aim to look for a new venue to host our Retreat. This year has been particularly challenging (partly as Waiyan was preoccupied) and most of the places we love were either fully booked or priced out of our range. Thankfully we managed to find The Kabin. Saw what we liked. The only downside is that they are available only on the 19th Dec for a party of our size.

It’s a little later than our usual Retreat dates (which falls between the last weekend of Nov or first weekend of Dec) but at the risk of not being able to get a good venue, we decided to go ahead with this date after we’d checked with some of our past Retreat participants to see if the late Dec dates are fine with them.

The Kabin offers a great resort concept with “containers” as your accommodation

The Kabin is nicely situated at Pantai Remis, which is just 10 km from Kapar – or an hour’s drive from KL/Cheras and an even shorter 30+ min if you are from Subang Jaya or Shah Alam. The driving distance has always been a key factor in our selection of Retreat venues as we aim to kickstart the Retreat at 9 am sharp on Sat itself hence the location has to be some place where we can get to within an hour or so.

A BLEND OF SPIEL NEW & OLD

We have had lots of success using the Retreat to test out the latest games from the year’s Essen Spiel convention. However some of the recent OTK Meetups have enjoyed a renaissance of older Euro classics. With the large influx of new games – some good, some so-so – we thought it might be good to blend this year’s Retreat games with a choice of New & Old, drawing deep into the large selection of games available from the OTK Games Library.

Let’s look into details what the BGC Retreat offers.

WHAT

An offsite retreat over one weekend devoted primarily for like-minded boardgamers like yourself to gather and enjoy each other’s company over two full days of intense boardgaming (of the good type)!

We start sharp on Sat 9 am sharp and play till 6 pm. There’ll be two tea breaks and one lunch break for Sat. After 6 pm, we refresh and have dinner. Dinner is not included in this package. It’s free time after dinner and of us would gather for the much anticipated After-8 session (see below). On Sunday, we resume at 9 am sharp and close the event around 5:00 pm.

BGC Retreat: An intense two full days (and one night) of gaming…. and when it gets dark, we are all prepared with our own torchlights!

Here we would like to emphasize one key point. The gaming sessions in our Retreat is unlike going to a GameCon or Meetup, where you can moderate the intensity and duration in which you play, rest or just chill out. In our Retreat, you’ll savor the experience of learning, playing, cramming and competing over 7-8 sessions of mid-heavy Euros back-to-back in two days.

You do not rest nor stop. You just game, game and game even more. Leave the resting / chilling till you get home. 🙂

WHEN

This year’s BGC Retreat shall be held on the weekend of 19th & 20th of December. We know it’s a little close to Christmas but that’s the only available weekend we can grab from The Kabin (given we are also asking for close to 30 room pax).

WHERE

The Retreat has always been hosted at someplace close by – or at least no longer than 1.5 hrs away by car – to minimize travel time and maximize playing time! We’ve done this at Genting (2010), Port Dickson (2011 & 2014) and Kin Tick Bukit Tinggi (2013) and this year we are again back at the beach & sea but in Kuala Selangor.

p/s We’ll provide detail directions from Kapar.

A Treehouse in The Kabin; fancy a game or two here?

For more pictures of The Kabin, pls check out our Facebook album.

WHO

Who is this Retreat suitable for? Our Retreat Persona is someone who loves boardgames – not Monopoly or Risks but those games by designers like Stefan Feld, Uwe Rosenberg, and Ignacy among others. You are more than a social or casual gamers – ie while you may love to play Jungle Speed, it’s games like Castles of Burgundy or Troyes that scratch your itch. While you do not necessarily have to love Terra Mystica or Russian Railroads, it would be helpful if you do since we expect our Retreat participants to be able to sit thru two days of full 8-hours of almost non-stop gaming day (yes, you still get time to take food & bio breaks) and some of the game sessions may last up to 2 hrs per game.

If you feel our Retreat Persona matches you (and have not made you click the Back button yet) and you are excited about trying out the latest Essen Spiel games with a bunch of friendly and at-times semi-competitive but always fun gamers, dun wait. Sign up now!

HOW MUCH?

Standard fees per person (quad sharing room, queen / bunker beds) is RM350 which includes all meals, accommodation, our special BGC Retreat t-shirt and a commemorative door gift direct from Essen! Getting yourself to/from the venue would be at your own cost and we suggest you to car-pool if possible.

Last year’s BGC Retreat t-shirt (designed by Kaz). Available only for Retreat participants.

WHAT: BGC Boardgame Retreat 201 (FB Event Page)
WHERE: The Kabin, Pantai Remis
WHEN: Dec 19 (Sat) 9:00 am – Dec 20 (Sun) 5:00 pm
COST: RM350 per pax including retreat fee, accommodation, meals, t-shirt and Essen door gift. Exclude transportation.

AGENDA (all timings are tentative and will be finalized closer to event date)

Dec 19, Sat
8:45 am – Arrival of gamers & tea break
9:00 am – Retreat Briefing
9:30 am – Game Zero starts
10:00 am – Retreat Day One starts
12:30 pm – Lunch break
3:30 pm – Tea break
6:00 pm – Retreat Day One ends
7:00 pm – Dinner Time (not included in Retreat package)
8:00 pm – Free-n-Easy or After-8 Gaming with tea break

Dec 20, Sun
7:00 am – Early morning jog at the beach (optional but useful to clear your head block! haha)
8:30 am – Breakfast
9:00 am – Retreat Day Two starts
10:30 am – Tea break
12:30 pm – Lunch break
4:00 pm – Retreat Day Two ends (follows by prize giving)

What do you get?

• 2.0 days of gaming (Sat: 10am-6pm, Sun: 9am-4pm)
• Accommodation on quad sharing basis (queen & bunker beds)
• Four tea-breaks as scheduled, two lunches
• One special edition BGC Retreat 2015 t-shirt
• One special commemorative door gift (from Essen Spiel 2015)
• Opportunity to play the latest Essen Spiel 2015 new games and even some OOP games
• Learn lots of new (and old) games and play with other friendly gamers!
• Opportunity to win exclusive hot prizes from Essen!

What’s not included in the package?

• Your travel to / from the location. If you need help with transport, pls ask us.
• Dinner on Saturday. We’ll likely gather and go for dinner around the area plenty of good, inexpensive food around the area) but will leave it free-n-easy as some may want to have their own dinner arrangement
• Mosquito repellant (yes pls bring your own unless you are not a mosquito magnet)

BONUS – Generous Discount on Game Purchase

Finally to thank you for your support, all paying Retreat attendees would get to buy one game from our BGC webstore at 40% discount (from retail price)! Click here to check the list of games we currently have in stock. T&C applies.

Note: This discount is valid for 3 months (after the event). Some games from our webstore eg Essen preorders are be excluded from this promo. To qualify for this discount, you need to be a paying participant for this event, and participated the event in full from Sat-Sun. No deserters!! 😛

Selection of games in-play during the 2013 Retreat

SPECIAL BONUS – Hot Games & Prize from Essen

Beside getting the chance to have an early testdrive of Essen 2015 releases, there’ll be spot prizes and podium prizes at the end of the Retreat.

AFTER-8 GAMING

Our BGC Retreats are famous for its After-8 Gaming, which is known to be the “real” deal after a full day of gaming! After-8 Gaming is an open gaming session held after dinner where we will bring to the table games that are of longer duration (epic games), out-of-print games and/or those with higher level of complexity. Or just some crazee, fun, party games!

After-8 gaming is self-organized and we’ll leave it to the attendees to decide among themselves what’s going to hit the tables (and who’s going to read the rules). It’s also an optional event as some attendees may prefer to have an early night or spend the time on their own.

After-8 gaming starts 8 pm and last till as late as you want… it’s just like Retreat gaming except you can play all those crazy fun games eg LAPDANCE!

HOW DO I SIGN-UP?

To sign-up for this Retreat, please visit our Facebook Event page (link here) or shout your reply in our forum (here). Seats will be reserved on a first-come first-served basis subject to receipt of your full payment to our CIMB acct (details in the forum). We’ll close the registration once we hit our numbers. This year, the venue we chose limits us to just 24 seats.

GOT QUESTIONS?

If this is your first participation to our Retreat, do check out the Frequently Asked Questions for our BGC Retreat.

BGC RETREATS IN THE PAST

BGC Retreat 2014 @ Port Dickson (read all about it here)	BGC Retreat 2013 @ Kin Tick Orchard Resort (read all about it here)
BGC Retreat 2011 @ Port Dickson (read all about it here)	BGC Retreat 2010 @ Genting Highlands (read all about it here)

Related links

• Facebook Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/497242337121131/
• Registration page on forum: http://community.boardgamecafe.net/index.php?/topic/4459-bgc-boardgame-retreat-2015/
• Facebook Album – TheKabin: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153038969646302.1073741916.219516071301&type=3