Our 'Gaming Potion' Story

The aim of the club is to give young people skills in strategy, technique and to have lots of fun whilst doing that!

Gaming Potion's ambition is to encourage young people to gain skills in creative thinking, criticality, strategy, reflection and resilience, through playing hands on imaginative games via cooperation and competition.

Update from 2023

Following the global pandemic Gaming Potion still exists but not in the format it has previously due to changes in the volunteer commitments. Gaming Potion will have featured nights at Tean Youth Club (https://www.teanyouth.club/) and at events around the local area.

Whilst Gaming Potion is paused, the generation of young people who attended still play on!

WHAM Plan 2021

Over the summer of 2021 we ran 8 sessions for young people to engage in the WHAM Plan.

Funded by the iWill campaign and the Community Foundation Staffordshire in partnership with SCVYS.

SCVYS Member meetings 2020

We spent many of these meetings trying to figure out how to carry on Gaming Potion online. We looked into supporting our young people through online activities and events.

COVID Updates and Home Activities

We are gutted that we have had to cancel this years events since March! But we hope you are all doing okay at home, if you need us for anything please do get in touch via our social media or GamingPotion18@gmail.com.

We are working on activities that you can do from home and the opportunities for online 'virtual' Gaming Potion sessions.

Please see COVID Updates and Activities page for more information.

Carbon City Zero

We're so excited to play #CarbonCityZero !! Thanks to @samillingworth @pfwgames @_wearepossible @mrpickers - it was great to meet you at Tabletop Gaming Live! We'll keep you updated #GamingPotion

January - March 2020 Sessions Announcement.

All events take place at Great Wood Hall, Tean (ST10 4JY) and are open to ages 10-18.
Hide and Seek and Board Games, Sunday 1st March 2020, 1-4pm
- Due to exams we are unable to run an event in February, instead we will be running two events in March.
- The first March event will include board games, outdoor activities and (at member's request) dedicated time for hide and seek around Great Wood Hall.

January Nerf and Board Games, Sunday 26th January 2020

In January we are going back to basics with a Nerf and board game event. As per usual we hope to feature a new Nerf game.

Christmas Party and AGM 21st December 2019

Gaming Potion celebrated our 1st anniversary with our AGM and a Christmas party.

At the Christmas party young people played some of our favourite games from this year and got involved in Nintendo Switch tournaments in Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. Following the success of this event we plan to run Nintendo Switch tournaments again during one of our summer games nights.

The AGM was a success, we re-elected the committee with the addition of Will stepping up as Child Protection Officer, we explained our accounts and our plans for the upcoming year and we elected a youth committee allowing young people to give us their feedback and ideas.

The key announcements that were made at the event were;

The club aims to run all of our events free of charge for the next year (excluding trips).

We are going to continue doing monthly events during term time and weekly events (where possible) during holidays.

We are launching a young leader programme to give young leaders accreditation for their volunteering at Gaming Potion.

We aim to be creative with our ideas and will alternate doing Nerf events, allowing us to run other skill building and fun events.

Community Board Games and Nerf 24th November 2019

Despite having to change our initial plan of the event due to illness everyone still enjoyed our November Gaming Potion event.

This month we brought Nerf back with a new Nerf variant of the classic game wink murder. We also had new leader Woody come along to help run Nerf. This allowed Woody and Alex to manage a team each during the Nerf games and to discuss strategies and to reflect on each round with our teams. This led to an impressive variety of strategies introduced by both teams.

In the afternoon we ran board games and the focus groups for Alana's dissertation. Thanks to young people that took part in these and thanks to their parents for allowing their involvement. We played Sushi Roll for the first time this month and it was great to see some of the members who have been at the club longer teaching their favourite games to some of the newer members.

Gaming Potion October Halloween Board Gaming Event - Alex

On Sunday 20th October 2019, Gaming Potion ran our first Halloween based event. This event was particularly special as it marked one year since Gaming Potion was refounded (although events weren't started until December).

We ran a series of Halloween based activities as well as playing board games. Our new version of infected called 'Special infected' worked really well and it was great to see lots of creativity from our members in choosing a new type of special infected each round. Our other new game didn't 'Escape from the Zombie Prison' didn't quite go as planned, however with a few tweaks and playing it inside the hall hopefully it will be another success.

It was great to see so many young people dressed up at the event, everyone who came in a costume will get a certificate and a prize given to them at our November event.

I have lots of ideas for our next years Halloween event that I had slightly too late in the planning process for this year. Hopefully members can expect a trick or treat event where members are given rewards for playing board games. I also have my ideas written down for our Halloween Nerf games that I can run next year.

Our next two events are already booked. These are our community board games and nerf event on the 24th November and our Switch and the City Games Night in December.

Moorlands Radio

Alana and Claire went on Moorlands Radio to talk about Claire's fundraising heroics and about our upcoming events in October, November and December.

https://www.mixcloud.com/MoorlandsRadio/glyn-andrews-speaks-to-the-gaming-potion-group-about-their-fundraising-10102019/

Tabletop Gaming Live 2019

Did you know that Gaming Potion are a registered club with Tabletop Gaming? Our name appears in each monthly magazine in the clubs section!

This year Alana and Alex visited the event to see what all the talk was about and to their surprise it was very enjoyable! Have a look at the video for their trip.

"We had a fantastic day at Tabletop Gaming Live in London! We played games such as Dragon Realms, Noctiluca, Zombie Kidz and Starfinder. Games purchased include Sushi Roll and Dragonrealm! Alana also brough Wingspan for herself too.

We watched the talk on 'Games for Good: Averting the Climate Catastrophe' - "How can tabletop games be used to help develop dialogue around the climate catastrophe? Join experts from Manchester Metropolitan University and 10:10 Climate Action to discuss how games are being used to ignite this debate, and how they can help encourage action away from the tabletop." - Which was absolutely fantastic! We were pleasantly surprised to find that it was based on the 'Carbon City Zero' game that we had backed within 20 minutes of it going live on Kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1010climateaction/carbon-city-zero).

All in all, a great event! Looking forward to going again next year!"

September 2019 Session

We had a very eventful session on September, 22nd 2019 with Josh from SCVYS coming along and running the #MakeYourMark campaign, a visit from a photographer from the Cheadle & Tean Times, as well as our usual board games and Nerf activities!

This month we tried out our new game distribute which changed the usual two team games system into four player games. We also played Capture the Flag, Cops and Robbers and VIP. We used this session to try out the a new board game Amonia, which is a multiplayer version of snap where players have to name something which matches the category of their opponents card instead of saying snap. We found this game to be hilarious and cause lots funny answers and pauses.

Thanks to the members for taking part, see you next month or at Tean Youth Club!

Party Mashup - Games Night

Friday August 30th 7-9pm, Final Games Night Party Mashup - £2
For our final Games Night of 2019 we decided to play a mashup of our favourite games to celebrate Gaming Potion's first summer of events.
We started with a warm-up of wink murder/splat which was enjoyed so much that we ran it for an extra 15 minutes than planned.
Afterwards we split into three games, Bang! led by Fran, One Night Ultimate Werewolf run by Alex and Dobble/Battle Sheep run by Alana.
We have had an amazing time this summer running the Games Night's and can't wait to start running them again next summer. We've got lots of great ideas, which we hope to get funding to create.

Our Planet - Games Night

Friday August 23rd 7-9pm, 'Our Planet' Games Night - £2
This theme has been chosen because we have lots of beautiful games that are amazingly fun whilst appreciating the beauty of nature and the planet. These games are a mix of competitive and cooperative that after testing we are really excited to play at the club and rank among our favourite games.
On a more quiet and casual games night, on the bank holiday weekend we ran a series of games that reflected the beauty of the world around us.
These games included the tense cooperative game Forbidden Island, the tree growing game Photosynthesis, the team exploration game, The Lost Expedition and a competitive artist game called Sunset over water where players compete to become the most renown painter.
We really enjoyed this games night and it was a nice contrast to run more chilled cooperative games after last weeks fast paced competitive games night with the Board Game Olympics.

The Board Game Olympics - Games Night

On Friday August 16th, we ran our most challenging event yet, the Board Game Olympics. The event consisted of young people playing 3 of 5 short games and being given a ranking based on the results for each game. The young person in that group with the most points won. We had bigger prizes for winners and a prize for closest runner up (which was for a young person who lost by half a point) as well as small prizes for everyone for taking part, given out in order of placement.
Everyone had a really good time at the event and I was impressed by how close and competitive each group was with all but 1 of the 5 groups been separated by only a few points.
For the leaders this event was a challenge as we have never run a competitive tournament, nor had we seen one like this run, yet alone running effectively 5 mini tournaments at once.
- The biggest challenge for this event was being able to adapt to the numbers and ensure that we had enough leaders and enough games for the number of young people who attended.
- Another challenge was deciding how to balance groups which we did through our introduction game, the sorting game in which young people had to lineup in an order chosen by the leaders, (e.g. alphabetically by first name, height and age).
- The final topic being age meant that young people when told to chose groups would be next to similar ages and would be more likely to be in groups of similar age and ability. This worked well especially for the new members.
Following the success of the event we believe that we should make this into our first annual event. Congratulations to all the winners!

August Nerf and Board Game Event

On August 11th we ran our 7th Nerf and board games event. This event featured our new Nerf Game VIP, where players either had to elect and protect a VIP on a route to a target or try to eliminate the VIP. This game combined the protect mechanics of Medic whilst ensuring that the VIP had to take risks to win. Lots of creative strategies were used from the just leg it, to teammates shielding the VIP to players moving cover for the VIP to use on his route to the target location. It's a game mode that we will definitely be running again.
We also ran capture the flag and a new variant of cops and robbers. The new change to cops and robbers was that we removed the hidden flag element and offered the robbers a choice of joining forces with the cops to find their old friends or complete community service by picking up Nerf bullets. This meant that the robbers were much more willing to turn on their fellow crooks.
Plenty of board games were played and we debuted the new game Throw Throw Burrito which as expected was the most active board game that we had played whilst also being lots of fun.
We look forward to running our next Nerf and board game event in September

Cooperative - Games Night

Following the success of our first games night on the 26th July 2019, we ran our second games night 'Cooperative Games Night'. This week was all about working together as a team to win.
We started off with a group game of Muse, which resulted in two teams battling to find the correct answers from a series of images, with the aid of a clue from a 'muse'.
After Muse we ran a series of cooperative games, including Stuffed Fables, Escape from Aliens (back by popular demand), Mysterium, Hannebi, Pandemic and Battle Sheep (not strictly a coop game but we didn't have enough time for another story in Stuffed Fables).

Blackpool Trip 2019

On the 21st July 2019 Gaming Potion joined Tean Youth Club on a trip to Blackpool Pleasure Beach. We all had a great time trying out new rollercoasters and getting absolutely soaked on Valhalla.

Thanks to everyone who came along!

Mystery Identity - Games Night

We ran our first games night 'Mystery Identity Night' on Friday 19th July 2019.

We started with a group games of The Werewolves of Millers Hollow, which was our first time running a group card game. Everyone enjoyed this so much that we have had requests to run it again, so we plan on running it in our Halloween event in October and may run it earlier.

Werewolves is a hidden identity game where players are either put on the werewolves team or the team of the townsfolk. Using their abilities, intuition and guesswork the villagers work together to work out who is who before the werewolves take over the village.

After Werewolves we ran a series of group games including, Fae (a great game where players can move any piece but don't know who's piece they are moving), Escape from Aliens (a game where players try to escape from other players who are aliens, the catch is that the players don't know who is an alien and who is a human), Codenames, Bang! and The Chameleon.

The event was a success and we had 16 people attend!

Cheadle Carnival 2019

On the 6th July 2019, Gaming Potion entered the Cheadle Carnival alongside Tean Youth Club, despite the wet conditions fun was had by all and we brought the noise with our 'Boom Whackers'. We hope that the experience was a memorable day for all involved!
See our highlights video at https://youtu.be/uXwbaThdJx4

June 2019 Gaming Potion Session

We are happy to announce that our next Gaming Potion Session is going to be run on Sunday 30th June 2019 1-5pm at Great Wood Hall, Tean (ST10 4JY).

The event is free and is available to anyone between the ages of 10-18. Feel free to bring along your own board games and Nerf equipment if you have any. If you don’t then don’t worry as we have our own. The only thing that we would ask is that if you are bringing your own equipment to not bring along any Nerf ammo as this would likely get lost and mixed into our supply.

We are running for NERF and longer board games (1-3pm) and board and card games and outdoor games (3-5pm).

In terms of Nerf games Alex has been working on a new Cops and Robbers game type for the latest session in addition to modified versions of our usual Nerf Game types (Capture the Flag, Infected and Medic).

We have tested 4 new games for the next session and hope to test a few more before then, our favourite so far is Machi Koro which sees players competing to build the best city in a fast paced game.

We look forward to seeing you at the next event, if you have any questions please get in touch either by messaging the Facebook page or by emailing us at GamingPotion18@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter / Instagram @Gaming Potion18

Gaming Potion on Radio Stoke - 29th June 2019

We had a great time coming into BBC Radio Stoke earlier today to talk about Gaming Potion and our next events! Thank you Sophie Calvert for having us on your early morning show.

Alana and Alex from Gaming Potion were live at 1:09:00 for 10 minutes. Follow this link to access BBC Radio Stoke sounds.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p07cq5z6

April 2019 Gaming Potion Session

This session we ran the usual games of NERF, Capture the flag, Infected and Medic, however we changed some of the rules between rounds to keep each game fresh. For next session Alex is working on a version of Cops and Robbers to run although it is still a work in progress.

We also played a variety of games including Dixit, Deep Sea Adventure, cards and Bananagrams! The sun was shining so most of the time was also spent running around outside with most of the youngsters playing hide-and-seek (we were impressed with their inventive hiding!).

We won't be running a session in May as our Volunteers and a large proportion of the young people have exams and assessments, however to make up for it, we are going to be running more events in June and July!

SCVYS Annual Report

Dale features on the front page!

Alex and Alana are also in the report talking about their voluntary experiences with SCVYS (page 6).

Click here to view the report - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B92G8pQVA5N5ZFRMakVVdW15eE1oeExEY2lfLTVwZ1ZGT3cw

SCVYSAnnualReport2019(Final) (1).pdf

March 2019 Gaming Potion Session

In March we counted that there was a record 35 young people who attended which is amazing as we are growing as a club. During Nerf, we had 24 people playing 12 v 12 games which was beyond our expectations when we started the club up again in December.

In the morning we played Nerf and trialled a new game called ‘infected’ which went down quite well although I will look into changing the format of it slightly to make it better. We also had Charlotte come in to introduce the concept of us running D&D at sessions. There appears to be quite a lot of interest so that's great to see.

In the afternoon we split the session into board and card games and a large game of hide and seek around the hall and on the playground.

We also brought cake in to celebrate the birthdays of Jess and Alfie. The cakes went within half an hour so it must have been popular.

February 2019 Gaming Potion Session

We had 20 young people turn up to the club in February which is really good and allowed us to run both larger and smaller games.

The morning Nerf session was lots of fun and we were able to use our new flags for Capture the Flag and for highlighting where each teams base was located. We thought these were really good and looked excellent in some of the photos that we have taken. We tried two new games, first TTT and then Group Clay Pigeon Shooting. There was some confusion in TTT as at times the Traitors didn’t realise that they were the traitor. Next time that we run TTT, I will produce around 20 role cards to pass to members so that they know what role they are playing and so that everyone will have a fair (random) chance of being put into the different roles.

Clay Pigeon shooting was lots of fun although Squeaker told me that he was slightly unhappy with the amount of times he was shot by mistake. For next time we will look into different ways of customising this game type as it worked quite well.

January 2019 Gaming Potion Session

At the last event we had more people attend than we could have imagined (which is great) and so we had to run a rotation system in Nerf to allow everyone involved to stay safe and wear protective goggles. For the next session we are going to invest in more protective goggles so that everyone can get involved for as long as they want.

The hall allowed us to create an amazing battlefield for Nerf and was big enough to allow lots of options for games. For next session we are looking into two new NERF games (at least new for us), Trouble in Terrorist Town and Clay Pigeon shooting. If anyone has any other ideas of modes to run, please email us with them and the basic explanation so we can think about running it at the next event or at future events.

The board games part of the day was also good and everyone seemed to be having fun. The leaders ran some games whilst some members played games themselves and this seemed to work out quite well. We are going to bring along a mix of shorter and longer board games and should have D&D at the next event for those interested. Again if anyone has any board game suggestions send them our way.

Grand Opening - 22nd December 2018

Our grand opening took place on the 22nd December 2018 and it was fantastic! Old and new faces appeared and we played games whilst discussing plans for the future Gaming Potion events for 2019.

We had refreshments of homemade cake and some drinks to keep the energy rolling whilst we played board games and other tabletop activities.

It was a great opportunity for the team to meet previous members and new members too!

Our History...

Created by Steve Jones and the fellowship some time ago... in a galaxy far far away, the club was formed to help get young people off their screens and back into the real world - whilst still having fun and socialising!

Became a SCVYS member in 2017.

Tean Youth Club's tribute to Steve...

Alana, Alex and Denise are all leaders of the club and we extremely pleased when Steve introduced a different form of interaction in the club - through board games!

Alana and Alex helped on some of the Gaming Potion sessions over the summer and enjoyed it that much that they were going to continue, but after what happened, it could not continue in the same way.