Board game nights in your Melbourne office.
An in-office team building activity that runs in the room you already have. We bring the games, the teach, and your friendly supportive host. You supply tables, chairs and power. Nobody attending needs to know anything about board games.
$600 for 1.5 hours·$1,100 for 3 hours
$600 is a team of four to six for 1.5 hours; up to twelve is $850. The 3-hour night is one flat fee for up to twelve. Travel inside the metro, the kit and the host are all in it.
What actually happens on the night
Six steps, and one of them happens a week before anyone turns up. Sit back and let us organise.
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A week or so before
A ten-minute call
Confirm the headcount, the room, and what your team's like. We plan the games to suit the players, so getting a feel for how they socialise and whether there are any accessibility requirements will ensure a smooth night.
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30 minutes early
The host arrives and sets up
Tables laid out, games out of their boxes, teach-cards down. Your team walks into a room that's already ready.
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First 10 minutes
Each game is taught from the front
Three to five minute rules teaches, in plain English. Then we get out of the way and let people play.
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Every 25–30 minutes
Teams rotate
New game, new group. It's the difference between an evening with your five closest colleagues and an evening with your team.
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On the hour we agreed
It finishes
Not "winds down". Finishes. People have trains to catch and kids to collect, and an event that runs over is the one people remember for the wrong reason.
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Within 30 minutes
Wrap up
Room back as we found it. We pack down, invoice you for the amount quoted, and delete the attendee names. No follow-up sequence and no mailing list.
What we bring, what you supply
We bring
- The games — six to eight titles, picked for your group
- A teach-card for every title
- Scorepads, timers, pens, the lot
- The host, for the whole session
You supply
- Tables
- Chairs
- Power
That's the whole list.
Food and drink
- Catering through our partner, if you'd like food laid on
- We don't supply alcohol — bring your own if you want it
Games and grazing food get along fine. We'll only ask you to keep red wine one table away from the cards.
Where the tables go
Six to a table, and a table of six takes less floor than you'd think. These are the three rooms we run in most.
A boardroom
Seats two tables of six comfortably, which covers most bookings. Less space than you would think.
Four tables or more
Wants an open area, a breakout space or a second room. We've run good nights in worse.
A venue
Function rooms and private bars work, provided there's light to read a card by and the music can come down. We'll say so if a venue won't work.
Six to a table. Twelve to a host.
The fee is flat, and above six people it moves on facilitators rather than on heads. A team of four to six pays $600 for the 1.5-hour night; one host covers up to twelve for $850. The thirteenth is where a second host comes, and that's a real cost rather than a rounding of the fee.
Six players to a table, so nobody waits fifteen minutes for a turn.
12 on the night
= 2 tables of 6
Shaded zone = covered by the flat fee. The 13th person needs a second host.
Estimate
In person · 1.5 hrs
- Session, up to 12
- $850
- Travel, kit, host
- Included
Your night, all up
$850
= $71 a head · one flat fee
Melbourne metro, travel included
Inside the metro, travel is in the price — the number on this page is the number on the invoice. Beyond it we'll quote the travel separately rather than bury it in a per-head rate and hope you don't notice.
If your team sits across two offices, we can run the same night twice — or put everyone on a call instead.
What games will we play?
One of our favourite parts of the work is finding the right game for your group. Our library is extensive, but we take pride in bringing a tailored selection that matches your team size, energy level and personality.
- A team that has never played anything
- Just One, Codenames, Herd Mentality. One rule each, funny within ninety seconds.
- A team where three people do all the talking
- Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, Insider. Games where the quiet person holds the information.
- A team that will turn anything into a competition
- Camel Up, Skull, No Thanks!. Let them. That's the point.
Great weeks to put a games night in the calendar
Four windows worth planning around, and two of them compete for the same short run of dates. The teams that get the date they want ask early.
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June
End of financial year
A team that has just come out the other side of its busiest month of the year.
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Books from September
The Christmas party
November and December are one short run of dates, and we're one facilitator — the whole peak is what one person can cover. September isn't early.
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Whenever they land
Onboarding weeks
Six new starters who have met each other over video. An hour and a half of this does more than a fortnight of introductions.
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Every quarter
The standing social
The one in the calendar that keeps defaulting to a bar. Same budget, and everybody gets a turn.
Who is coming into your building
Leigh Hathaway. One person, not a roster of casuals — the same host who took the ten-minute call is the one who turns up. Fifteen years of running a Melbourne CBD game night for a group of Victorian Government staff who kept inviting more people, which is where this whole thing came from.
- National Police Check — current, available to sight
- Working with Children Check — current
- Public liability to $20m — certificate of currency on request
- Attendee names deleted after the session. No list, no follow-up sequence
Questions about the in-office night
What's the process?
A ten-minute call a week or so before, then we arrive thirty minutes early, teach each game in about three minutes, rotate the tables partway through, and finish at the time we agreed. Nobody attending needs to know anything about board games. The full run of the night, with timings, is set out further up this page.
Do we need a big room?
Less than you'd think. A boardroom seats two tables of six comfortably, which covers most bookings. Four tables want an open area or a second space — but we've run good nights in worse.
We don't have tables that seat six — just one long boardroom table for twelve. Is that a problem?
Not a problem. The table count is an abstract representation of group size. Two groups sitting around a boardroom table works perfectly.
What do we need to supply?
Tables, chairs and power. That's the whole list. We bring the games, the teach-cards, the scoring kit and the host. If you have a screen in the room we'd take advantage of it to put reminders up where they're easy to see — but that's a nice-to-have, not a requirement.
How long do you need for set-up and pack-down?
Thirty minutes either side. We arrive before your team does, and the room is back the way we found it within half an hour of the last game.
Can you run it at a venue instead of our office?
Yes. Function rooms and private bars work well, provided there's light to read a card by and the music can come down. We'll say so if a venue won't work.
Do you travel outside Melbourne metro?
Inside the metro, travel is in the price. Beyond it we'll quote travel separately rather than bury it in the per-head rate.
Do you cater for accessibility needs?
Tell us what you need and we'll bring games that fit. Colour-blind-safe components, large-print teach-cards, seated-only formats, games without dexterity elements, and no-timer variants are all normal requests, not special ones.
Do you do drinks and food?
We can bring in a catering partner if you want one. Most teams do their own thing — games and grazing food get along fine. We'll ask you to keep red wine one table away from the cards. We won't cater alcohol, but we've no issue with people drinking during the session.
Invoicing, group sizes, rescheduling and the rest are answered on the home page — the general questions.
Enquire about a night in your office
Your name, your company, a work email and a rough headcount. Add a date if you have one. You'll hear back today, or first thing tomorrow.
hello@officerules.com.au 0416 426 579Weekdays, 9am to 5pm.
Not ready to book?
Take the one-pager — formats, prices, insurance and police check details — and forward it to whoever signs off.
Download the one-pager (PDF)