What do Wise Owls do for lunch? Play games, it turns out ...

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What do Wise Owls do for lunch? Play games, it turns out ...
When your trainers aren't giving courses, some of us have a sordid secret - we huddle together at lunch time to play board games.

Posted by Andy Brown on 13 May 2026

In this blog

Ark Nova
Other games (with photos)
Other games (no photos available)

I don't know what our clients might expect us to do at lunch-time. Write poetry, perhaps? The inconvenient truth is that some of us play board games - this page lists a few that we've played recently.

It's normally Andrew and Sam who play these games, but sometimes I join in too. I like to think I'm just an occasional board gamer, and that I could stop if I really wanted to ...

Ark Nova

So here's what one of our upstairs rooms looks like at the moment:

I've labelled the hands so you can see where we're each sitting, although things have moved on a bit since this picture was taken.

For anyone who knows the game, here's my hand at the moment in more detail:

The wolverine is my current trophy animal.

So the idea behind Ark Nova is that you have to build enclosures in your zoo and put animals within them. As you do this you can accumulate three types of points:

What	Notes
Appeal	This is basically how appealing your zoo will be to paying customers (and therefore how much money your zoo will bring in).
Conservation	Zoos aren't just about paying customers - you need to run conservation projects to earn points.
Reputation	You can increase the reputation of your zoo (although unlike the first two items, this doesn't contribute to your final total of points).

The winner is the person at the end of the game whose combination of appeal and conservation points is the highest. But this hardly does justice to the game, as you can also create partnership deals with other zoos, release animals into the wild, build petting zoos and aquaria and much, much more.

Of course, it's better if when you buy an animal for your zoo you can put the appropriate figurine on the card:

I played a game of Ark Nova outside Wise Owl with someone who takes things to extremes (sorry Russ if you read these newsletters ...).

So tomorrow lunchtime (at the time of writing) Andrew, Sam and I will be seeing if we can complete the above game!

Other games (with photos)

We've played many other games over the last year - here are ones for which we have pictures:

Game	Description	Photo
Sky Team	In this game two players (Andrew and Sam, let's face it) fight/fought to land an aeroplane.
Takenoko	In Takenoko you have to grow one of three types of bamboo, while trying to prevent a hungry panda eating it.

Other games (no photos available)

Other games played at the Owlery in the last year include:

Game	Aim
Cartographers	Draw terrain on your map to satisfy scoring goals and earn the most reputation.
Champions of Midgard	Recruit warriors, gather resources, defeat monsters and gain the most Viking glory.
Harmonies	Build landscapes and animal habitats to settle animals and score the most points.
Kakerlaken Salat	Play vegetable cards quickly, naming them correctly or strategically lying, while avoiding cockroaches.
Labyrinth	Change the maze to your advantage so that you can collect the most treasures.
Sail	Cooperatively steer your pirate ship to safety before the Kraken or damage overwhelms you.
Whispering Woods	Build forest trails for spirit animals, complete missions and score the most victory points.

Those who know Sam probably won't be surprised to hear Champions of Midgard is his favourite game. What's not to like about recruiting Viking warriors and defeating monsters?

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