Recycling some old Christmas themed Lego scenes I made so at least this post looks remotely seasonal as I wish everyone a Merry Christmas from myself, Nathan and the mini wolf pack, the attack chihuahuas Nico and Loki.

We hope you are all having a stress free day (unlikely I know as you prepare that Christmas bird for consumption), getting to play games and enjoying the company of friends and loved ones.

Have a good one…

Nico got a new jumper yesterday that reflects his inner sith.

Sadly the stormtrooper one was too big for Loki. Loki is an awkward size between small and extra small. Else there would be photos of Loki in the trooper jumper.

For the record this is the nearest I’m getting to being seasonally festive.

For those that don’t do Instagram, and/or stalk me on social media like Facebook and Twitter. I present here a sequence of photos taken the other evening of the terrible duo playing mind games over a chew.

For the record there was more than one chew. But as usual Nico likes Loki to do the hard work. Plus he likes to practice his Jedi mind-tricks on young Loki.

If there was one character I’ve read longer than Judge Dredd it would be Johnny Alpha aka Strontium Dog. Alpha joined 2000 A.D. from the comic Starlord, along with one or two other characters. Teenage me would love having the opportunity to play a Strontium Dog miniatures skirmish game. He loved playing the 8-bit video games on his Spectrum and C64. This definitely would have pushed his little geek buttons.

So it would appear I was wrong about the Strontium Dog skirmish game. I double checked my assumption about the game by looking at some unboxing videos for it on YouTube. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it had complete figures inside, and not bits of plastic I would have to cut off sprues, and then having to glue together. It’s the bit I hate the most about miniatures gaming. I’m just about warming to the idea of painting the figures. I just don’t get the whole cutting, gluing, and painting for days and weeks before you can even start playing the game.

For some reason after the disappointment that was Tabletop Gaming Live I seem to have come away from the show thinking that the Strontium Dog skirmish game did involve that awful activity. Maybe my fading memory was blurring memories together. I definitely remember looking at the base set box on the stand at the show and seeing sprues. Maybe I was confusing the sprues that the games plastic counters are on with being for the figures?

So despite the very tempting bundles that Warlords offer for the Strontium Dog skirmish game I went with the starter box. I’d like to try the game before going all in. By purchasing through the official web store for Warlords I got the bonus Strontium Dog with electro-nux figure. I also added to the cart the rocky terrain pack they sell. It gives a bit more scenery to use with the base set, and also can be used with Last Days.

The nice touch with this starter set as far as I’m concerned is that it comes with some mdf terrain bits to start playing with. Luckily there should not be any major problems getting more stuff for terrain etc. Anything released for the Fallout skirmish game should be usable with Strontium Dog. I’d also look at Wild West buildings. One or two of the comic strips had them outback looking for their bounties. And it would seem that a heavy influence for those outback communities and their buildings were the old west.

I like that personal touch of naming the people who put your order together. Doesn’t add anything to the game. But it creates a connection to the company.

So once I’ve finished painting up these zombie ladies (not found how to paint the tights/stockings on these yet. Not sure best approach to use.) and a couple of squads, I’ll start on Strontium Dog.

I have a current none board game related project on the go at the moment. It’s going a bit slowly. Mainly because there is only a specific time that I actually do it.

I’m slowly working my way through the Judge Dredd Chronicles, which is 30 odd volumes at the moment I believe. I’m on volume 3! The reason for the slow progress is that I only read it when I’m having a relaxing long soak in the bath at the weekends.

So I’ve covered The Cursed Earth and The Day The Law Died storylines in the first 2 volumes. Which are classics I grew up with. Although for the Cursed Earth storyline I went and got the uncensored version. Apparently the 2 fast food chains parodied in a couple of the issues for a while scared the publisher enough not to reprint those parts of the story.

Volumes 4 and 5 that arrived yesterday cover another 2 of my favourite storylines The Judge Child, and The Apocalypse War. After that 2000A.D. and myself separated. It wasn’t anything they did, just college and work got in the way. Although we did meet up again when he crossed over with Batman for a one shot.

But during that time I did have fond memories of playing the Judge Dredd boardgame (which is now back in my collection). I remember having the role playing game and it’s companion book, but that got lost somewhere in moves over the years. If it turns up I’ll be over the moon.

I never got into the Judge Dredd mini’s game. But that was more of where I was in life at the time than anything else.

I wouldn’t mind getting the Mongoose games Dredd RPG that came out in the early 2000’s. I think that may have used D&D v3.5 as it’s core system. But don’t quote me on that. But it would be great to use the stuff for that as source material for a Genesys based RPG.

So with the a new Judge Dredd RPG currently on Kickstarter (oh I’m very very tempted), a boardgame set in the Cursed Earth using the Lost Expedition as it’s basis coming out next year. I’m sure going to be fanboying it up with one of my all time favourite comic book characters.

I also like that there are plans for Rogue Trooper stuff (I have the 80’s boardgame in the collection) and there is a Strontium Dog mini’s skirmish game (although I was put off it because of my usual complaint about this type of game). So it really is nice to see these great IP’s starting to get some love again. But for now I’m enjoying old favourites, and then looking forward to seeing what new adventures the stone faced lawman got up to.

Yesterday ended up being a binge tv day. Amazon Prime had just put up Season 3 of the excellent series they produce The Man in the High Castle. Which is based on the Philip K. Dick book of the same name.

I’ve never read the book, so I’ve no idea if they have gone beyond the book now, if they are still within the plot of the book, or even if they have deviated from the book much. However I am a fan of his book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and the movie that was based on that. Plus I loved A Scanner Darkly (another one I hadn’t read the book for).

So when Amazon released The Man in the High Castle just the source material had me interested. Then the synopsis got me really interested. The whole alternate history thing I love. The what if? For this book/series the premise is the Germans and Japanese won the Second World War. America has been split by the two victors. But it’s an uneasy peace, the threat of war between the two bubbling underneath. Against this backdrop you have these films turning up mysteriously showing a world where the Germans and Japanese lost the war. These are all linked to The Man in the High Castle, and a kind of resistance movement.

I’m really enjoying the series, good acting, not bad effects for tv these days. The story has now introduced multiverses, and a plot of multiverse domination by the Germans. Can’t wait for series 4.

Naturally you were expecting me to be writing about the no holds barred Commander game. But that fell through. Crowded social calendar meant that the others who had planned to take part couldn’t. Luckily I knew Friday evening, and hadn’t driven for an hour, and sat around looking like Billy no mates at the library.

So in a moment of boredom I decided to recreate visually what Zo-Zu the Commander of my mono red mass land hate deck thought the real reason was.

I did see on icv2 a news story about an interesting expansion for Catan. This one is for charity and is educational! The charity being supported is the Global Crop Diversity Trust and the expansion is called the Catan Crop Trust Scenario kit.

“But in this semi-cooperative scenario, players must balance the needs of the future against their immediate plans by working with the other players to store and preserve seeds.  If players overharvest, they risk damage to the environment, possibly causing a collapse of the food supply.”

Sounds really interesting. Apparently it’s big introduction to the world will be at Essen. I’m gobsmacked they didn’t chose Tabletop Gaming Live last weekend for that! That’s sarcasm folks.

But I like the sound of this, and has now jumped on to my wishlist.

One of the Gencon hot games to actually make it to the Tabletop Gaming Live event was Keyforge.

Luckily for the number of visitors at the show FFG/Asmodee got the number of demo games about right.

I got to play 2 games one on the Saturday against a stranger, and one on the Sunday against Diego.

For me it was certainly a tale of 2 experiences.

On the Saturday I found the game a frustrating experience. I really didn’t grok what the deck was trying to do, and so was playing less than optimally with that deck.

Although in the game I lost 3-0, I was ready to claim my first key (way too late) when my opponent claimed their third and final key, which I was powerless to stop.

The game against Diego I clicked with the deck and got what it was trying to do. And was able to take the win after Diego taking an early lead.

It felt odd that I could have creatures out and not do anything with them if my opponent had no creatures out. Well unless there was an ability or reap action on the card I could use.

The games went on longer than expected. I thought they would be like a 20 minute game, but I pretty sure both games were in the 40 minute plus bracket. I’m not sure this can be entirely explained away with us learning as we played.

I think having played the game your experience will vary depending on the deck you have, and how quickly you get what the deck is trying to do. Multiple plays are definitely required with a deck. But at what point do you declare that a deck is just not fun for you?

It was nice to play. A tad over hyped I think. I can see myself grabbing a deck. I just don’t see it now as being a MtG killer, or serious competition for my playing time. I think this will join the rank of fringe card games in the lcg/ccg arena. There will be some that play it, may be a thriving London scene for a while, but like Destiny, Ashes, Dicemasters and others, it will burn brightly for a brief period, then die out nearly as quickly as it appeared. Leaving behind these small hardcore players that swear blind the game isn’t dead, it’s resting (the dead parrot sketch was written for Ashes fans).

Where to start?

This is probably going to be a long one. So you might just want to go off and make a brew a first.

Right, back? Sitting comfortably? I’ll begin…

The TL;DR or for us older folks, the bottom line, headline is it was ok at best. The word I’d use to describe it is meh.

Let’s first look at how the show was marketed to the public. Back when they first announced it, the justification by the magazine and its publisher for having the show at the end of September was it was between Gencon and Essen. So you would get to see all the Gencon hotness and maybe early Essen stuff. This was a great justification, should pull in the crowds, and distinguish it from UKGE a bit. If I have one complaint about UKGE is that it gets very few big game announcements or previews. These are saved for the top 3 conventions (Origins, Gencon and Essen). I think on this front that the show failed to deliver. It had Keyforge, which was probably the biggest game to come out of Gencon, and there was enough space to meet the demand to play it. I didn’t notice lots of people having to wait to get a game, there seemed a constant flow of games. But I’ll come back to this because I’m starting to touch on another point of mine.

Continuing on the marketing theme. The show seemed to be like a super secret people weren’t aware of. Yes on the publishers social media and the magazine they were pushing it. But thats a small subset of the gaming community in the UK. I did hear that there were ads on bgg, but thats not something I saw. So it’s not surprising that attendance seemed, ok was low. Hardly anyone knew they show was on. Some only found out days before when threads on facebook groups started asking who is going?

The show had a lack of identity in my opinion. The banner at the entrance to Alexandra Palace was tiny, and easily missed. In side there was a lone sad Pandemic photo thingy, where you could poke your face through the hole and seem like you were one of the specialists in the game. That was the only hint you were queueing up for a board game expo. Then the walk from where they collected/checked your ticket to the show space nothing, it could have been a dentist convention. There should have been banners and standees all over the place advertising the show, and board games.

Support by publishers seemed a little none committal. Apart from the big Keyforge banners/posters you had no real idea it was the FFG stand, same for the Asmodee one.

As the above photo shows, FFG couldn’t even be bothered to get out the nice terrain they used at UKGE for Star Wars:Legion. Other rival skirmish games had some nice terrain set up to show off their games. Which really surprised me when FFG with their flagship miniatures game didn’t. I know that the cost of having table space at this show was more costly than UKGE, so this would have been a costly marketing exercise for them. Maybe they are waiting to see how the show shapes out before going to the expense of purchasing special show specific branding.

On the expense side with the low footfall, I was hearing that some of the retailers were not making costs, and there was a little resentment directed towards one or two retailers that were undercutting the rest. I could illustrate this with Forbidden Sky, it was on sale from various vendors from between £27 and £35. Great for us punters looking to save the odd pound here and there. But if you are trying to at least cover your expenses for being at the show, not great news.

It wasn’t a big show. Lots of space to grow. But without doing any demos you could see everything in 30 minutes max. Now for us punters the low turn out of visitors worked in our favour. No fighting through crowds to get to stands to see what was on offer, you got time to chat with exhibitors, and it was easy to get a demo of a game (most of the time). Plus it was not crowded, and you weren’t being shoved around while walking around the uncrowded aisles.

There was a reason why the open gaming area was like this photo below a lot of the time.

Most of the people were instead out on the stands getting demos. Great for the publishers.

Which reminds me one or two of the demos could have been managed better. We waited over 2 hours to get a game of Pandemic Fall of Rome. Mainly because a group of wanna be youtubers wanted to play the complete game, analysing every move and card as they went along. If they weren’t oblivious to the none discreet loud sarcastic hints about finishing up then they were being bloody minded and downright inconsiderate to all the others wanting to try the only copy of the game. A bit more balls from the person running the demo would have also avoided this unpleasant experience and allowed more people to try the game.

Wildlands was by appointment only. Found out after the show there was a copy along with The River sitting unplayed in the tiny games library in the open gaming area! Wish Osprey had pointed this out, I could have tried the game (none of the Sunday slots were at a convent time). and our group would have definitely jumped on playing The River.

The seminars suffered from the same problem as UKGE in 2017. Over loud annoying tannoy messages.

Oh food at the place was as expected average and expensive. £9 for fish and chips, chips alone £3. The pulled bbq meat stall £6.50 for a bun/roll with not a very generous serving of meat.

But they did do something right. Well partially. It was a nice touch having the shuttle bus from the expo to Wood Green tube station. Wish we’d known about it Saturday morning, would have saved our group a bus fair and uphill walk (I’m so unfit these days). And that is the down side of this great idea. We found out about it after we had arrived at the expo. A friend asked about it at the tube station and no officials there knew anything about it. But the receptionist at the Travelodge did!

I liked the location (despite it being London). And Wood Green had lots to do out side the show. Apparently there was a board game cafe there (the show organisers and them should have been promoting it I think) which we only found out about too late on the Sunday. But there were plenty of places to get food from, two cinemas. And free parking at the Travelodge and really helpful staff there.

I’d gone to the show not knowing what to expect. I came away feeling disappointed. Two days there was too long in it’s current state. If I come back to a possible second show next year it will be for only the day. I feel a bit cheated on the whole “get to see the Gencon hotness”. This felt like a trial run for a real show. A testing of the waters. There are a lot of things that need improving hopefully the publishers after show rap up will not have rose tinted glasses and see the faults (which are fixable) and make the necessary changes to give us in the UK a much needed second great board gaming show.

The second and last day of the expo where I once more collect the photos that spammed my social media into collages.