UK Games Expo

On Friday the elite gaming squad - minus Sylon headed out on road trip to the Birmingham NEC to the UK Games Expo. It was an early start with a planned in full English stop. My first trip to a Toby Inn for breakfast and my first experience of a "breakfast Yorkshire pudding". This was a good call as this kept us going until 7.15pm (apart from a few midgit gems supplied by DK). 

After some quality driving by Snake-eyes we arrived just before 11am - first annoyance £12 for parking!

Then second annoyance - having to queue for 20 to 30 minutes to collect the tickets losing value gaming time!

This was taken at the end of the day but you get the idea. 

The Expo is much bigger than the Wargames shows that we have been going to over the last few years. The Expo had  hall 1 of the NEC and most of the ground floor of the Hilton hotel (which we didn't get to!). There was plenty ... Too much to see and do in the trade hall. 

Anyway we decided to split up and recce the hall for the first 1/2 hour and then meet up - although DK managed to go walk about for an extra 20mins. 

So our first stop was Fantasy Fight games who were running a number of their games to try out ( I would have liked to have tried the GoT card game). Snake-eyes wanted to have a go with New Angeles, so we tried that for a couple of rounds. This should be a good game with elements of co-op play, competitive play and hidden agendas - some of the game play reminded me of Battlestar. My main concern was the time it might take to play 4-5 hours. Anyway Snake-eyes liked it so much he later bought the game!

We then did some more window shopping before trying Nine Worlds. 

This was a fairly quick to grasp game with area control based on the Viking nine worlds - the mechanics were clever - allowing you to move yours or others players counters around to gain advantage (this reminded me of the King is Dead) - 5 counters in a world were needed to activate that worlds power. Steedo and I liked this game a lot. Steedo managing to get the bargain of the day by picking up a copyright for £20.

 We then wandered around for a bit - and tried out Karnage! A King of the hill type game. It was very light - the demonstrator said it could be a drinking game. It wasn't really our sort of game. But we gave it a go. I also left my phone on the table so had a bit of a worry for a bit!

Then the trade hall was going to close in about 40 minutes so we did the final shopping run. 

My little haul ...

I am little disappointed to hear that Airfix Battles will be not be supported - I understand that Morphius and Airfix won't be working together. But the game might be produced again in the future as "plastic soldier battles". Anyway it was a bargain with extra cards and it doesn't need figures to play as it has counters. 

The rest of the evening was spend listening to a very informational talk by Ian Livingston about Games Workshop, Fighting Fantasy (DK got his copy of Warlord of Firetop Mountain signed), Eidos (and Lara Croft) and his top ten games. 

The next talk was an amusing session by Shut up and Sit down. 

Then we headed home with talk of going for 2 days next year to play more and see more .... We shall see. 

A really good day!

Morts