We've all been missing the opportunity to move plastic space ships around an actual board rather than online, and at least here in the US it doesn't look like it's going to get better anytime soon. But I wanted to share how our local group found a way to manage the risk and still play in person a couple weeks ago.

I picked up a couple 13x13 canopies at Costco and set them up in the driveway. You can put 2 tables at the outer edges of the canopy and be almost 6 feet from the person at the other table. The shade of the canopies was key to staying comfortable.

Everyone wore masks throughout, we didn't share components or touch each other's ships, and took a couple steps back from the table when not actively interacting with stuff. There was a bottle of hand sanitizer on each table as well.

We had an 8-person 3 round tourney with no problems. It was great to reconnect with friends that we hadn't seen in months while having fun in a safe & responsible manner.

11 hours ago, Mistborn_Jedi said:

It was great to reconnect with friends that we hadn't seen in months while having fun in a safe & responsible manner.

I love this, good on you for helping set it up!

I applaud your responsibility and creativity to set this up. Would love to do this as well, it has been way to long without a decent game.

YEa. Its now 4 months since i last gamed with someone else in person..

I would do this, but only with trusted friends. Might even consider having gloves too.

Thats Awesome Guys 👍

Good on you for setting this up! I've mentioned the idea of having an outdoor game at someone's house.
Did you have any problems with things blowing around in the breeze?

I've been collecting little rubber feet that come with IT hardware. They fit in the bases perfectly, and weight down the models quite nicely.

Cards though, and objectives, will need something when the wind gets up.

15 hours ago, Hatemonger said:

Did you have any problems with things blowing around in the breeze?

It was a very calm day so there weren't any issues with the wind. I've played a few games outside since then where there has been a breeze. None of the game components moved -- seems like charge tokens, shields, etc on the cards are enough to hold cards down under reasonable conditions. The printout of my list tried to blow away though!

17 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

I would do this, but only with trusted friends. Might even consider having gloves too.

Agreed you have to know the other participants and know they will respect the rules. These were all guys that have known each other for at least 2 years and everyone was aware of the expectations beforehand. One person did wear gloves, and I had them available for others if they wanted to wear them.

Honestly the biggest challenge is stopping yourself from touching the other player's components. The natural tendency is to slide tokens out of the way, help by holding a ship down, etc. By the end of the day I had started to get into the habit of using a movement template to slide things out of the way. Now that I've played several more games outside, it's starting to become the default to do that. And if/when I forget, I immediately use the hand sanitizer that is a required part of my kit now.

My son and I made a board for playing X-wing (or Legion in the case of this photo) when we are camping. We have big rubber bands on the player sides that hold it down to the table below it and we tuck our squad cards under it to hold them down