02 · Visiting
Visiting
You pay for the table, not the game. Here is what it costs and how it works.
Prices
Drinks and food
What each of the three nights costs, and how they run, is on the game nights page.
How a Table Is Set Up
- Counting heads and asking about time.
How many of you, and whether you have an hour or the whole evening.
- Asking what you've enjoyed before.
A game you liked as a child counts. So does a game you hated.
- Bringing two or three boxes, never more.
Three is enough to choose from and few enough to choose quickly.
- Setting out the components before anyone reads a rule.
People learn faster with the pieces in their hands.
- Teaching in three parts.
The goal, one turn, the ending. Everything else comes up as you play.
- Playing the first round with the table.
Then the floor person stands up and leaves you to it.
- Coming back once after twenty minutes to check.
Usually to settle one question, sometimes to swap the game.
Why Someone Explains the Rules
Nobody should have to read a rule book in a café, and I mean nobody, because the first year I ran this place I taught every single game myself, all 140 of them, four tables at a time, and I watched what happened when people tried to do it on their own: they opened the box, unfolded the rules, read the first page in silence, looked at each other and quietly put it back, and one couple that first winter got as far as their coats because a box looked too complicated, until I sat down and showed them the goal, one turn and how it ended, and they stayed until we closed. Three parts is enough for nearly anything. The goal tells you why, one turn tells you how, and the ending tells you when to stop worrying. The rule book is always read last, never first, and only when there is a question it can actually answer. Anyway, that's the job.
Mira
Booking
- Two to five people never need to book. Walk in.
- Six or more people: book by email at least three days ahead.
- Friday and Saturday evenings after 18:00 are walk-in only for tables of two to five. Arrive before 18:00 to be certain of a table.
- Thursday Long Game Night tables can be reserved by email until Wednesday at 18:00.
- We reply within one working day, Tuesday to Saturday.
What to put in the email is on the page for writing to us.
The Back Room
Host Visits
What We Don't Do
- We don't sell games. We'll happily tell you what to look for in a shop.
- No playing for money, no poker nights and no tournaments with cash at stake.
- No fried or greasy food at the tables, ours or anyone else's. Cards don't recover.
- No outside food, with one exception: a birthday cake, which we'll plate for you.
- No single booking over 14 people, and no hiring the whole café on a Friday or Saturday.
- No host visits outside Leipzig city limits.
- We don't lend a game during its first eight weeks in the library.
- We don't hold tables for two to five people on Friday and Saturday evenings.