Hannah with the prizes!

If you hadn’t guessed already, we’re talking about the Geek Quiz! Thank you to everyone who came along, it was a great turnout and it was exciting to see some members from our sister geek society, LUSFAF (the Science Fiction and Fantasy society), joining in the fun. There were ten teams taking part in all, and they were:

• Team Stig: Nick, Steff and Prinn
• Traffic Laws For Flying Cars: Rob, Alan, Emily and Elliot
• Boots, Buckles and Boobs: James, Jamie, Tom and Lucy
• Schrodinger’s Team: Tim, Ben, Katy and Grendel
• Shadow Teddy’s Existential Kids Corner: James, Mark, Suzy and Alex
• Team GalacticAquaMagmaPlasmaRocket: Farran, Alex, David and Sophie
• Very Hungry Cthulhupuiller: Graham, Jenny, Lizzie and Nic
• Get Your Tits Out, Carl!: Smurf, Ash, Tony and Sam
• Gamesoc One: Jack, Dan and John
• Mystery Men: Tom, Dave and Becky

The winner of our lovely wooden spoon prize was Team Stig. By the time the quiz had finished, Team Stig was comprised of just Prinn, but he gallantly handed out his extra spoons to other Sabres.

The winner came down to a tie between Team GalacticAquaMagmaPlasmaRocket and Get Your Tits Out, Carl!, so we turned to Evil Dan for a tie-breaker question. How many Sabres could name all four of the sisters in Charmed? Apparently none, since both teams only got three sisters! So, the second tie-breaker was put to the crowd. One inappropriate suggestion later, we had Dave and Smurf representing their teams in an arm wrestle. Smurf clinched the contest, and the triumphant winners were Get Your Tits Out, Carl! Congratulations to Ash, Tony, Smurf and Sam.

As well as our normal rounds of questions, as written by Carl, we had the SUCKIT +3 (or King Geek) questions at the end of each round. These were written by the reigning King Geek himself, Evil Dan. Unsurprisingly, by the end of the quiz there was a clear leader, and even he only knew half of the answers. So I once again extend congratulations to Ash, who was knighted as the new King Geek by Tim in a beautiful ceremony.

Thank you to those who attended! If you weren’t there, watch out for a copy of the actual questions as soon as Caboose, our social secretary, releases them. We hope everyone had fun (even if that fun was just abusing Caboose) and will see you all next social.

Hello, Sabres! It’s once again getting to the time of the year where we hold our AGM. This allows the members of the society to vote in a new council (and yell abuse at the old council). If you have any ideas about how the society should be run, it’s also a chance for you to get involved and tell people about them – you never know, they just might vote for you!

The positions available on the council are President, Treasurer, (Social) Secretary, Wargames Rep, Board Games/CCG Rep, Nationals Rep, Sabrecon Rep and PR Rep. Here’s how to get involved:

1. Find a position you want to run for, or that you want someone else to run for.
2. If you want to do it, find two people who think you’d be good.
3. Have those people send PMs to Jack on the forum, or post in the AGM forum thread.

It’s that easy! Then, we’ll meet on Monday 19th March at 6pm, pile into the Film Theatre in the Attenborough Building, vote on who should do what, watch a movie and go to the pub. Come along, it’ll be fun!

The skyline of Leicester.

If you’re too lazy to click through to either of those pages, the basic gist is that, for the autumn term, there are now three weekly meetings. The additional meeting is Sunday Magic, which is held in the Ken Edwards building and will mostly be Magic: The Gathering with a smattering of other card games. The regular two meetings are the Monday Miscellaneousness and the Wednesday Wargaming, which are both based in the Attenborough Seminar Block. Both meetings will almost invariably wind up with us going to the Old Horse, since that’s a long-standing tradition.

If you’re a Fresher, and you’re new to the city, we understand that it can all be a bit overwhelming, especially when we start bandying the names of buildings around as if it’s obvious where they are (which, for a lot of students, it isn’t!). As such, this year, we are introducing a Google Map of the places we frequent. This will eventually appear on the website, when the Google Maps plugin has been installed and configured, but for now just follow the link for all your geographical needs!

That’s all for this time, folks, except to let you all know that the first meeting of term will be on Monday 10th October. There’s a special introduction for the freshers, so we’re starting at 6pm instead of the usual time of 7pm – this is to let the council and the GMs explain their roles in the society before we let you all loose on our carefully crafted roleplays. Until then, brothers and sisters!

Money from all over the world.

Firstly, we have the inimitable Tabletop Tyrant, the premier independent wargaming store in Leicester. Sabres members receive a discount at the shop when they show their membership card, and this also applies to the upcoming Innistrad release in Magic: The Gathering, which is this weekend. Entry on Saturday 24th September is £10, which nets the Magic player in question three boosters and entry into a booster draft event. On the subsequent Sunday, entry is £18, for six boosters and entry into a sealed deck event. If you buy tickets to both events you receive a 10% discount, and for Sabres the extra 5% discount means that the weekend’s entertainment is yours for just under £24. To book a space, call (0116) 253 3954 or email tabletoptyrant@gmail.com.

Secondly, we have the fine people over at 6d6, with whom we have built a strong relationshop since we were first introduced at the most recent Sabrecon. Not only is the society currently planning to purchase a lifetime membership to the 6d6 game system, but Sabres members get money off when identifying themselves to the 6d6 crew at any of the upcoming conventions they’re attending! So, if you find yourself at Oddcon, Indiecon or Dragonmeet this year, don’t forget to say hi!

These are the best justifications we’ve seen to spend money on gaming so far this academic year. Since student loans are about to come through for students in October, there really is no excuse not to take advantage of these awesome discuounts!

A planet floating in space.

The game represents the fifth game of Space Empires to be started on the Leicester Sabres forum. It is the third game that will be run by Tom Scott, previously forum administrator and holder of various Council posts. He returns to us virtually to organise this roleplay. It will be called Genesis III, and is a followup to Genesis and Genesis II: Exodus, which were also run by Tom.

If you’ve played Space Empires before you’ll be familiar with the basic premise, but a lot of the more fiddly micromanagement has been removed in this version of the rules. If you haven’t played before, it’s a game in which you create a race of aliens (or humans, if you’d prefer!) and roleplay your empire’s interactions with the other races in your part of the universe. It’s a lot of fun!

Genesis III joins two other online roleplays, Spells & Sabres and Space Empires IV, as forum-based games. If you want to play, go give them all a look.

This redesign of the website precedes work that is to be done to the forum, which will include new emoticons and the introduction of a new board for comments and queries about this website.

As you may have noticed, this website requires a lot of images. If you have any photographs of the Sabres, or photographs taken at Sabre-run events, that would be incredibly helpful. We’re also looking for constructive criticism of the writing we currently have up, so please get in touch with John. Please also contact us if you have any queries or questions about the new website!

If you did see me playing, then what you were witnessing was one of the demonstration games of 6d6 that was run that weekend by Chris and Ben, who hail from 6d6 Fireball. This game was actually the combat system from the 6d6 RPG, a new roleplaying system that does away with the traditional character sheets seen in roleplaying games of all varieties. It does this by introducing a deck of cards for each character instead, representing your character’s vitality, skills and equipment. If this sounds like exactly your cup of tea, you’re in luck, as the system sees release today!

The cover of 6d6 Core.

6d6 has many strengths, and its vibrancy and engaging playstyle are underlined by how versatile the system is. The combat is so good that it’s been spun off into its own game, 6d6 Shootouts. This game, which was the demonstration at Sabrecon, is played on a board representing a small town in the West, with models representing the characters, and is one of the best strategy or skirmish games I’ve played. However, at the twenty-four hour charity fundraiser, we played a game of the brilliant Mince Pies and Murder, which saw a group of (very tired) Sabres investigating a murder at a mob boss’ country mansion. This relied much more heavily on roleplaying, and was a great laugh for all involved.

Although 6d6 products have been available previously, including Mince Pies and Murder, the 6d6 RPG is released this weekend, and if you hurry you can obtain a 6d6 bundle at 30% off the usual price in the first week. Future releases from the 6d6 stable will include the aforementioned 6d6 Shootouts, which have been thoroughly enjoyed and also playtested by the Leicester Sabres in co-operation with the 6d6 team!

Tony at the 2011 Union Awards.

What we weren’t expecting is to win both awards that we had been nominated for, plus another one for Best Society! This means that we won more awards than any other society this year, which is a huge achievement both for the Council on a personal level, and for the Sabres in general. In fact, it’s so huge, we got the headline on the ensuing University of Leicester press release.

We would like to give all our members a huge and heartfelt vote of thanks for all your help and support reaching this stage. The Sabres are what you make them and we couldn’t do it without you guys. Here’s hoping that we continue triumphantly for many awards ceremonies yet to come!