Loading Bar & London Live!

I spent the past couple of days in London with Moose since he's back there over Easter for work. On Tuesday, we decided to check out the Loading Bar, a gaming bar that opened up a few years ago now in Cornwall and has since expanded to London. They recently changed venue, from a very convenient little cafe in Soho to a pub all the way out in Dalston. It's a shame the new venue is so far out of the way, because the whole place is far more suitable for gaming.

While Moose, Wrath and I waited for Kingsley to arrive, we played a little Magic: The Gathering upstairs. Well, I spent most of the time sleeving my new commander deck (Power Hungry red/black/green) while the guys played, but still! It was then we noticed a TV crew was in full swing getting ready for ...something! We kept low and when the game was over and Kingsley had arrived, we decided to pack up and go find food before the evening's Tabletop Gaming. That was when a guy came over to us and asked us to keep playing so they'd have gamers on camera. They were filming for a new channel that's started up in London called London Live and they were doing a feature on Loading Bar. Uhh, okay! But Moose and Wrath really didn't fancy being a part of it, so they decided to play... Snap. With Magic cards. I can only hope a real MtG fan watched and wondered what the hell we were doing, haha.

Anyway, after food we headed back to the bar for Tabletop Tuesday! The bar doesn't actually open officially in its new location until Thursday (today, in fact!) so we weren't sure if many people would turn up, but the place was actually packed by the time we got settled into a great long game of Smash Up!

Turns out, the basement was taken over by many Kings of Tokyo!

Plants and Bears! Army of gods.

I won. Turns out wizard dinosaurs, alien ninjas or steampunk pirates really aren't much of a match for a cavalry of giant plant bears.

Loading Bar is an amazing idea - gaming pubs and bars is something I've wanted to see happen for the longest time. It's unfortunate their venue is now so far away from even a local tube stop, because I can't imagine many people who aren't locals will make the trek. I hope I'm wrong! I appreciate London prices make good location + decent venue impossible maths, but I wonder if maybe the idea would be better suited to a smaller city with a more centralised hub of gaming fans. Like Bristol. Just sayin'.