UK Games Expo 2018

UK Games Expo is a yearly event, held at the NEC in Birmingham, and the Hilton hotel nearby, which is where the entertainment happens, and I went to it this past weekend.

It was a lovely weekend of seeing people, including Random Nerdery, (who writes reviews on board games, and other things), looking at all of the awesome games, eating yummy food, and getting to play some games!

The biggest downside for me are the hoards of people who go on Saturday.  Friday and Sunday were both much quieter, so if you're thinking of going next year, choose one of those days to visit!

This year, we played quite a few games, and it was really interesting to see the themes of games this year, which was storytelling.

We played House of Danger, which is like a choose your own adventure book.

Next up was Sub Terra, which is a tile placement game where you are trying to escape some caves.

There's a reason for the torch in the above photo!  You can use it to make the dice glow in the dark, and the tiles have bits that glow in the dark as well, all of which is very hard to take a good photo of, so you'll just have to trust me!

Next up was Dice Hospital, which we saw at UKGE last year, but was always jammed with people! We didn't get very long as it was at the end of the day, but looked fun. 

We played the beginning of Escape from the Awakening, which is like an escape room game where you need to find the clues.

Next up was Blood Rage, but not just Blood Rage, we were also trying out a new way of learning the rules through Dized, which had a tutorial app on the ipad, that took us through the rules.

It was good fun, and felt like a good way to play a game if no one knew it, but the app did have a couple of errors in it as we were using it.

  

I did love the models for Blood Rage!  These were my Bear Clan, and there was 3 other clans, all trying to pillage the world before Ragnerok.

Proof that we did actually leave UKGE! Geese and their chicks were adorable, and very close to the path when we went to find lunch!

We played Core Space, which had lots of cool scenery!  Opening the chest was very fun, and it looks great.

Solar City  was a game that we went and had a look at a couple of times to see if we could play, and we were really pleased to get a chance to play it!  I think all I need to add to that is that it's on Kickstarter on 12th June, and I've set a reminder!

And that's all of the games that I played, except for 1 round of the Camel Up cards, which looked like it was fun!

I went to UKGE with the plan that I'd buy a copy of Azul, but that was one of the games that everyone was sold out of, so something for me to order online when it comes back it stock!  We saw this giant game of Azul, and it looks so nice.

Warhammer was there, with a stand where you could put together and paint your own space marine, which you could then take home! I thought this was a really nice idea!

Last year we played Scythe, which is set in an alternate universe, where the 1920s have mechs.

The aim of the game is to get the most victory points, and you can do this in a variety of ways.  It's one of those games that the explanation takes an age, but once you get it, it's very quick.  

It was a very popular game to try, but take a while to learn, so we kept trying to play it on Friday and Saturday, and then on Sunday, we raced over there first thing to try it!

We played for about an hour and a half, and that was enough for us to understand what's going on, and realise that we wanted to buy the game, if only so we could play it properly!

We bought it, and have played it since, and joke that it's always your turn, because the moment you do one thing, you need to start thinking of what you're going to do in the next turn, which very quickly comes back to you!

Back to UKGE!  There are lots of games you can try out that you can buy that day, games coming soon, and ones that you can play test.  

There are accessories for gaming, from organisers for board games, to gaming tables.

Yes, that organiser is £50, and I don't think you need it for Scythe, but there are some games that I have heard they make all the difference for *cough*Gloomhaven*cough*.

Check out this lovely gaming table from Geeknson.

And all of the accessories you can get for it!

There was food festival, with lots of food trucks, along with Resorts World nearby, so we weren't stuck for places to go and eat!

And if that wasn't enough, there was a bunch of geeky entertainment, from Pandemic being played live, Knightmare Live, and competitions, along with cosplay.

All in all, it was a really good weekend, and we have a good haul of games from it, and others that we'll probably try next year!