Those that made it through Mondays post will know I did play some games at the expo. Three of those games were new to me. So I thought I’d share my brief thoughts on those games considering I didn’t do that in the other post.

Ominoes

This game was bought by Jonathan’s daughter after trying it out on one of the stands at the expo.

Ominoes is a light abstract game, with a fair bit of luck involved.

Despite that luck element to the game, it is still a nice enjoyable game. There is a little take that, blocking your opponents plans by moving their dice away from a scoring opportunity, or even stealing a scoring opportunity for yourself. The later is possible if there are enough wild sides showing.
A good intro abstract game, and great buy by Jonathan’s daughter.

The Lost Expedition

Next year a Judge Dredd game based on this is coming out. Osprey when asked assured me that the Dredd game is not just a reskinning of this game, but will have extra stuff (although to be fair I didn’t press them on this bit, and just accepted their word for it), and would be out February 2019.

The Dredd version is why I’d been holding off buying The Lost Expedition. But hearing it was still a ways off from coming out, I decided to take the plunge and finally buy this game. The added bonus for me buying the game from the publisher at the expo was that I got not one but both of the promos for the game. I managed both because I had bought up while buying it the card quality issue for London. Something that they had rectified and were offering replacement cards to those affected. I said I’d already sleeved mine, so had no need of the replacements. So the Osprey member of staff gave me both promos instead.

But that’s the boring stuff of how I got the game and the promos. What did I think of the game after playing it?

We played this as a 3 player co-op, which is one of the cool things about this game. It can be played as a solo game, co-op or finally as a competitive team v team game.
I thought as a co-op the game worked really well. The co-op part really only came into play once the cards for the day phase had been played. Then you are discussing which option on the cards to take as a group. I suppose this phase could be open to alpha gamer abuse, but that kind of gets balanced out by the leader having the final say on decisions.
I like that you have to make some hard decisions with the cards you are dealt with at the start of each round. Do you play the cards during the day stage or night stage? This is particularly hard to decide when you have all bad cards. The fact that during the day phase the cards played before executing them, ordered in ascending numeric order. Then in the night phase the cards are executed in the order they are played. Is a nice touch and adds to the decision process of when to play the cards.
I like the resource management side of the game.
Once again like The Mind, this is a game that if you decided to sleeve it will not fit the box. Heck even unsleeved you can’t add the promos and have it fit nicely.
Yeah I enjoyed this a lot, and want to try the other 2 modes of play now. Plus I can’t wait to see how this is with Judge Dredd.

Ganz schon clever

This game started getting some buzz after it was nominated for this years Kennerspiel des Jahres.
The English version of this game comes out later in the year, so for now unless you can read German, you have to download the rules translation from bgg.
I’ve played this as a 2 player and 3 player game.
During our first play we were learning the rules, and I was a little unsure about the game. Then I started comboing off. At that point there was a total swing in how I was feeling about the game. Suddenly I was thinking “Wow!” that was cool.
There are some nice tactical decisions to make in this roll and write. Mainly to do with which dice you want and which ones you will be making available to the other players.

I love the fact you can as you complete lines, or advance past certain points on a single line get bonuses such as a reroll or +1 to a die. Or even combo off by being able to put a cross somewhere else on the sheet.
This just might have become my favourite roll and write.

I think I had a good time!

Let’s rewind a bit, I wasn’t exactly in the best place before attending the expo. I think that came through a bit in the audio I did at the end of day 1. Which was amplified a million times with me also being tired and a little pee’d off. And it was looking for most of the Saturday as more of the same, but really pee’d off.

The sale of my Star Wars: Destiny collection was not as smooth as I had hoped. It was looking like the person had got cold feet and didn’t want to tell me. The lack of communication from the buyer was poor. It eventually came to light that on Saturday I was being used to look after the stuff because the person didn’t want to cart everything around with them all day. I pointed out that there was a shop and drop service, and I was using that to store the stuff, and would happily hand over my ticket to them. Which was enough of a push to close the deal and allow me to head back to the hotel around 3pm time. I was extremely drained at this point, waiting around, and getting frustrated aren’t exactly conducive to a great expo experience. Yes I know I am in control of my feelings, and should not let the actions of other effect them. But I wasn’t exactly in the greatest of minds to be that resilient to external factors.

There wasn’t a lot there that really grabbed me. I’m pretty sure others got much more out of this years expo than I did. The place was busy, especially on Saturday. But still felt that you could get around without fighting people in the aisles, or push through the hordes to get to see stuff.

This year seemed even more so the year of the super minor inter web celeb. Everyone including their dog seemed to be videoing for their YouTube channel. But apart from the UK super minor celebs we had even more of the international ones in attendance. There was “where’s Rahdo?” As he roamed the aisles of the expo halls, doing more Blair Witch Project footage. The Dice Tower crew were there for the third year(?), sadly no Sam this time. I failed in my attempt to show them the error of their ways and that Barenpark is indeed not a game. Plus I trolled Zee by saying Sam was the funny one. For some reason I do find that the Dice Tower guys seem the more approachable of the Youtubers there. The Shut Up Sit Down guys could be seen I think. I get confused as I often mistake their clones No Pun Intended for them. Oh and I will give a shout out to Toucan Play That Game, Michael is super friendly, sadly also under the impression Barenpark is a game. Scott of Scott Plays sadly couldn’t be persuaded to start an internet grudge with some of the other channels. I tried my best to lead him astray but to no avail.

Ignacy was seen wandering around the show floor on Friday after he got in from a delayed flight. But the small Portal Booth did see a bit of my money in the form of expansions, promos and a mug. Sadly I wouldn’t be around for the Ignacy demo of his latest game from Portal Detective on the Sunday.

I think the Shop and Drop once again was a god send, otherwise I would have been really really pee’d having to lug around the Destiny stuff for 2 days. This is a great service. It was a good idea having the chill out zone next to it. It made meet ups for trades, etc very easy to arrange. However I think next year the chill out zone needs to be bigger. It was not easy getting a spot to sit down most of the time.

My gaming was mainly in the evening with Jonathan and his daughter in the hotels restaurant area.

Games Played Friday:

Azul, Bohemian Villages, Ganz schon clever, The Mind

Games Played Saturday:

The Lost Expedition, Ominoes, Ganz schon clever

It may not appear so on here, but I’m not the most social of persons at the best of times. If I hadn’t gamed with Jonathan in the evening I don’t think I would have done any gaming outside of the odd demo at all during the expo.

Once the attendance figures have been released I will be very surprised if these are lower than last year. Will they have jumped up enough to secure the title of the third largest board gaming expo in the world for longe than Origins to be held? I hope so. It was evident that more publishers are starting to take the expo more seriously. However the lack of presence of the the likes of Wizards of the Coast, Stronghold Games etc shows that we are not there yet.

So that was my expo experience for 2018.

The days haul…

Oh middle right is Elite Dangerous Battle Cards, bottom right is the Heroes of Dominaria board game set in the Magic the Gathering universe.

This Friday sees the start of 3 days of tabletop geekery at the NEC Birmingham in the form of the UK Games Expo.

Naturally I’m attending all 3 days, but what am I going to be doing there?

Well I have very little I’m looking to get or try out. I want to get the new Imperial Settlers expansion We Didn’t Start The Fire, the new Viticulture expansion Visit from the Rhine Valley and that’s about it on the purchases front. I want to get a demo of the new Magic the Gathering boardgame Heroes of Dominaria, grab some promos from the White Wizard Games stand, try against the odds to win the Star Realms tournament, and hand over the games that I’ve sold recently for pick up at the show. These sales are funding any other purchases at the show, and the following weekend the purchase of the Commander Anthology 2.

As usual I will be incognito, proving that I am truly the master of disguise. If by some remote chance you do recognise me say hi and how much you think my writing is atrocious.