Superfriends Assemble The Deck List

Deck tech, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

But before I go any further it’s probably best I give my boiler plate get out of jail disclaimer for my decks.

“I’m not claiming these are the best decks in the world, they certainly are not top competitive decks. They are hopefully fun, affordable (subjective I know) decks. I don’t try and keep to a target price point. I try and use as many cards in my collection as possible to keep my costs down. I’m certainly not a master deck builder claiming this deck will win tournaments, if it is fun to play and does it thing then I’ll be happy.“

Let’s face it based on Saturday this deck needs some work.

I’m presenting it here today, a) because I said I’d share it, b) maybe you can improve on it and let me know how.

So let’s jump straight in with the deck list.

Creatures:3

3 Hydroid Krasis

Spells:33

3 Spell Pierce
4 Syncopate
4 Dovin’s Veto
4 Essence Capture
1 Gideon Blackblade
2 Narset, Parter of Veils
2 No Escape
2 Saheeli, Sublime Artificer
2 Teferi, Time Raveler
2 Thought Collapse
1 Jace, Wielder of Mysteries
1 Settle the Wreckage
2 Wilderness Reclamation
2 Nissa, Who Shakes the World
1 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria

Lands:24

3 Evolving Wilds
7 Forest
3 Hinterland Harbor
7 Island
4 Plains

Sideboard:16

2 Blink of an Eye
2 Kasmina’s Transmutation
2 Ashiok, Dream Render
2 Teyo, the Shieldmage
2 Thought Collapse
2 Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor
2 Kaya, Bane of the Dead
2 Nexus of Fate

Ok here is the breakdown of the deck as it stands.

So we know quick decks like aggro and burn are too fast for it. How does it improve? More creatures? Focus on a core 3 Planeswalkers? Was last weekend just unlucky and on another day those match ups wouldn’t be a problem?

Campaign Prep Workflow

D&D, RPG

In this post I’m going to look at the apps I’m using to prep for the D&D campaign.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

My main device for anything is my iPad Pro. I can’t remember when I last fired up a desktop or laptop at home. The nearest I’ve come is using a Raspberry Pi a couple of times. Apart from coding and some fringe cases I can do everything I need to on an iPad.

When it comes to preparing for the campaign I’m using three main apps. Well I say three but in reality you could argue that it is really two.

I’m including the rather good WordPress app in this workflow because I’m including this post, and my other posts about my progress and such as part of my prep for the campaign.

Yes this blog is a diary. It’s not incite full, it doesn’t look deep into the human condition. It fails as a boardgaming blog. There are not reviews on here, when I play a new game I talk about what I liked and didn’t like about it. But what I say is no way as in-depth as the reviews others put out. These days I talk about Magic the Gathering, D&D and other RPGs, and gaming sessions. Stuff that interests me.

I use the prep posts particularly as notes, reminders, even just thinking aloud, milling over ideas. Which I think is an important thing to do. Hopefully some-one will find my sharing, seeing my thought process helpful. It is for me.

Ok onto the next app in my workflow.

That app is Scrivener.

Scrivener is aimed at people who write a lot of manuscripts, particularly screen writes, authors, etc. It has none of the bells and whistles of like Word. It aims to help writers focus on the writing without the distractions.

I’m using Scrivener to write the session notes. Stuff like room and character descriptions, encounters notes, etc.

I particularly like the cork board view. It allows me to play around with the structure of a session. It has some other nice features too, like keeping research notes with the project.

The nice thing for me also is I can control what gets generated as the final version of the adventure for the session.

The final app in the workflow is Good Notes.

Good Notes is a note taking app. A digital note book.

There are a lot of notebook apps for the iPad. It’s a natural thing for it to be used for. Especially with an Apple Pencil.

I particularly like this app. It has a presentation mode (useful for my day job). Plus I like being able to have custom page templates. So my notebooks in the app can be made up from several different page types. For example graph paper for some, plain for others, A3 pages instead of A4, landscape and even character sheets.

I’m using Good Notes as a digital DM’s folder. Which will be holding more than my actual DM’s folder. The physical version will have some of the pages printed, like maps, encounter stats. Basically stuff I need for the session.

In previous posts about the campaign pitch and the player sheet that introduces the campaign I did use a couple of other apps that fall under the honourable mention section if I were to have one. For the two documents just mentioned I used Word on the iPad. Word I don’t think needs any explanation. Plus the images used in those documents I edited in my go to image editor on the iPad Pixelmator.

I do intend to at the end of each session write a reflective blog post about how I thought the session went. And with those posts include the current version of the DM’s folder, and the adventure session notes.

Superfriends Assemble

Deck tech, Game day, magic, MtG

Saturday was a big weekend for my FLGS The Hobbit Hole. It was Modern Horizons Pre-release Weekend draft, Standard Showdown and the 5th Anniversary of the store being open.

To celebrate the first 100 customers over the weekend got a commemorative coin. Luckily I was able to get one when I paid for the Standard Showdown.

Luckily for me and the other handful that had turned up for Standard Showdown there was room for us to play. There had been a chance that if the Modern Horizons Pre-release draft had sold out we would have not had space to play. But as you can see below although that event was well attended, it left room for us cheapskates to play Standard.

While waiting for both events to start I was able to get a quick test game in with the new Superfriends deck I built. It wasn’t really a great game to test with. My opponents deck was also a work in progress (aren’t they all?) and being tested. That deck was more of a work in progress than mine, and allowed me the time to get set up and control the game for the win. My conclusion was at least the deck could work.

I adjusted the deck quickly after getting some feedback from one of the stores ex-pro players. The new Nissa was added. Weaponising lands.

As the results below show the deck didn’t do fantastic. Ok a couple of games I got mana screwed (so for the casual games with Bob afterwards I went up to 24 lands from 22).

The one game I won against surprisingly the mono red burn deck has Saheeli out and was getting servos out on the board.

For both Standard Showdown and the casual games I was just not hitting the superfriends quick enough. Or when I did I was getting mana screwed. Nissa and the weaponised lands did help me draw things out while trying to find answers.

But the speed of the burn deck and even Dean’s dinosaur deck (he had a turn three Ghalta out on game one) was too much for me. The counter spells allowed me to delay things, but I was just not hitting my answers.

The deck has potential. Do I cut back on the counter spells? Out in some cheap creatures? Or do a put in some fog spells?

I’ll post the deck tomorrow in another post.

Casual Games

Josh: Win 1-0

Dean: Loss 0-1

Bob: Loss 0-4

Standard Showdown Stats

Participants: 8

Rounds: 3

Round 1: Bob (mono red burn) Loss 1-2

Round 2: Dean (aggro) Loss 0-2

Round 3: bye Win

Record: 1-2

Final Position: 4th

Prizes: 1 participation pack. Plus Standard Showdown pack

Update on planning session 1 #6 – Battle Crab!

D&D, RPG, session planning

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

This morning I attempted to do layers on the battle crab model.

The colours went from Flat Red to Pure Red to Lava Orange. Which I then used a Red tone wash with to blend the layers together. Or attempt to.

I did dry brush some of the Lava Orange after I applied the wash. And applied some Blood Splatter paint to the tips of the metal spikes and the blade on the tiny claw.

Naturally I can only see the mistakes. Like the odd hard to reach bit that I failed to get to. Luckily that stuff has to be examined up close. On the table this looks pretty good.

The initial Flat Red layer could have been thinner, allowing a wider Pure Red layer. With the wash it now looks a more slightly gradient red. Not the intended look I was initially envisioning. In some spots the wash is awful.

There are other mistakes but I won’t bore you with them.

Now what stats to use? The Storm King’s Thunder campaign book has stats for a Hulking Crab.

While the Monster Manual has a Giant Crab.

What I think I need is something in the middle. This is meant to be for level 1 characters. So I’m feeling an AC of 16 (Natural Armour) with an HP between 20 – 30. I think it should have multi attack, but more the Giant Crab stats for Claw, and not the Hulking Crab Claw stats.

I think that should do it.

Really stoked to see the players face if they get to see it.

Some painting photos

D&D, miniatures painting, RPG

For those that don’t stalk me on Instagram/Twitter/Facebook here are a couple of photos that I shared on those social media outlets earlier today.

I like to share.

First up I did “test” painting on a couple of the beds, a table and a chair. This also included using a wash. I like how they have turned out.

Next is a photo of the wash drying on some of the cave tiles.

Just have 5 4×4 tiles to paint now, and then I’m done for the time being on the cave tiles.

An update on planning session 1 #5

D&D, RPG, session planning

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

This is more a prep update than a planning update.

Thought I’d take some photos of the painted cave tiles. Sadly the bright sunlight doesn’t do the tiles much justice.

I also took delivery of the final part of the stuff my friend was printing for me this evening. Not shown in the photo below are the 5 4×4 tiles. But as soon as I got home I was priming everything ready for base coats tomorrow.

I can’t wait to start using this stuff in our first session.

Plus with the lid of the Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated I can do split level!

My next 3D project is the 3D tiles for ships that I came across. But I’m going to talk about options for boats in another post.

Rolling and Writing

first look, game night

Yesterday Jonathan very kindly met up with me to try out some of the new additions to our collections.

Sadly our regular hosts were not available due to the refit taking longer than we expected. We are now having to cancel club meet ups. Which is seeing a first in the four year history of the club, a cancelled monthly meet up.

So Jonathan and I met up at the local Spoons. It’s been a while since we have done any gaming here. It far more busier and noisier. But on the plus side I can get unlimited coffee for £1.30. On the downside it’s just about drinkable coffee. So for me on the beverage side a very very cheap night out.

The first game to hit the table was the latest game from Portal Games Imperial Settlers: Roll and Write.

I like roll and writes, or the ones that are in my collection. They do seem to be this years must have for a publisher to be putting out (just like legacy games and escape rooms before that).

Naturally we played a 2 player game, and the basic version of the game. There is an advanced variant, and a solo variant too.

The game plays quickly, each game is 10 rounds, and we found a round was very quick.

I liked that the dice are used by everyone playing each round. So everyone gets the same number of basic actions each round, plus any bonus actions from buildings or tiles. And also get the same basic resources plus any bonus resources from buildings, tiles or harvesting.

I like the use of two sheets one for the village, which when the buildings are built give bonuses each turn, and an empire that is where you can harvest resources and score victory points. Neither felt overwhelming individually or together. Which the Ganz Schon Clever sheets do.

The empire sheet allows you to track rounds, and gives a very small area on that tracking for notes. Which we both found you needed. I was using it to note how many actions I had each round, and resources used.

One thing I like about the Portal Games rule books is the little touches of humour. But the one in this rule book has to be my favourite of all time (see below)


I love the graphic design and look. Naturally it matches up art wise with its inspiration thematically Imperial Settlers. But there is also this kind of pastel, sketch note feel to it as well. I point to exhibit a above for the house rules, and exhibit b below with the tile photo below. I really like the feel it gives to the whole game.

Let’s talk about the dice. There is a great design, game play choice made here with the worker die being not only a different colour to the resource dice. But also larger. It really hammers home this die is not a resource die, it’s use is different.

But wood?!!! Couldn’t we have better quality dice? These really are the weakest part of the game. You get 4 pencils included (very nice touch). But you scrimp on the dice?

I’m waiting to here back from Portal Games about why the adventure mode pad (used for solo games, each sheet is a unique village) can’t be used in a multiplayer game.

I can’t wait to try the advanced mode. But it’s cool that the game has this, plus the solo mode.

I like this game a lot. It’s not as light as say Qwixx or Qwinto. But less complicated than Ganz Schon Clever or the really over complicated and awful Welcome to Dino World. It’s hit the sweet spot.

I suppose I better admit Jonathan won by a single point.

Jonathan and I did start to set up Caverna: Cave vs Cave – Era II. Wow with the base game and this new expansion boy does it take up a lot of table space. Looking at the new rule book you play the base game first then move onto the expansion! We did the maths based on the game play times on the boxes. With having to refresh our memories on how to play as well this would take more time than we had. Our calculations put it at over an hour to play.

So we moved onto a game of Citadels. A classic for sure. I love the 2 player drafting of characters. It’s very similar to dark draft in Epic. You have an idea of what the other player may have taken but not exactly.

I will need to sleeve my copy before using it at club nights.

I managed to get the win of our play of this.

Jonathan did give me a game last night. They were being given out free at the expo. Apparently this is a worker placement style game. But looking at the box you’d have no idea what type of game it is. The description on the box gives no clue. The publisher is doing themselves no favours.


I’d like to thank Jonathan for being so kind for taking the time to meet up and play games last night. It was really appreciated.

Games played: Imperial Settlers: Roll & Write, Citadels

My take on that UKGE Incident

rant, RPG, UKGE

While I was busy showing people how to play Epic the card game on Friday I missed all the drama happening elsewhere at the expo. Now I don’t intend that to seem like I’m making light of what actually happened. I’m not. But I struggled to find a better word to describe what happened. I feel what ever word I use sounds like it is trivialising what happened. And I don’t want to do that.

On Friday during a RPG session that was being run the GM decided to cross the line and do something I think was totally out of order.

Here is a first hand account as told by a person in the game.

(I grabbed the screen shot above off one of the Facebook posts that shared what happened. Unlike the person that shared it I have removed any way to identify the person involved. What happened is more important than who it happened to.)

Naturally this has been a hot topic of debate and even made the BBC News Website.

Firstly the organisers of the expo need to be applauded for their handling of the incident and quick response. They seem to have done everything right as soon as they were made aware of what happened.

I know they have said they will review things and put stuff in place to avoid this sort of thing happening in the future. However I don’t think that the process they had in place for approving the RPG sessions was at fault. It was obvious that the GM had not included in his submission for the game that this would be happening or hinted to the players before hand either.

So I fail to see how the organisers or any other event could avoid this happening in the future. What you can’t stop is a GM being a total dick and just throwing something just as vile and unacceptable out of nowhere in to the game.

If I need to state it, for the record I think what this GM did was disgusting, unacceptable and I can’t imagine any circumstances (even with real good friends) that this would be appropriate.

What I did find odd, was that some were kind of defending the person online, using the freedom of speech etc defence. You can’t defend this. It doesn’t fall under the freedom of speech.

What I find hard to understand is the mentality of this person. Just what thought process did they have that made them think this was a good idea? I’m baffled.

Single handedly this person has not only harmed those involved in the session, they have bought the hobby into disrepute. I’m hoping after the dust has settled that the person has had time to reflect and see that what they have done is wrong, and made an apology to those involved. But something inside me says that they are finding the attention and coverage fun. I don’t know why I think that. But if the person thought the subject was a good idea, and then enjoyed the aftermath of it. Something tells me that they may not be entirely repentant.

Which is a shame. There are so many positives to the hobby. The last thing it needs is dicks like this ruining it, and destroying those positives.

I hope that those involved get the support they need, and that they hopefully will find peace.

UKGE 2019 Happenings

epic, UKGE

Wow I bet you folks thought I had stopped the blog with no posts happening for 3 or 4 days.

But as you know I was at the UK Games Expo, helping out on the White Wizard Games (WWG), demoing (as it would turn out) Epic the card game.

I did post some photos on Instagram that got shared on Twitter and Facebook. Don’t worry about finding them, most of them will be further down in this post.

Day 0 – Arrival

Thursday is the usual day I like to travel to the expo. Drive across mid afternoon, so I arrive between 4pm and 5pm. I hopefully avoid all the traffic that way, can get registered in to wherever I am staying and settled in. It also means I don’t have a silly start the next morning to get the expo. I can have a nice and relaxed start instead.

That’s the usual plan from previous years. When I’ve had the resources to attend.

This year was a new experience for me.

The previous day the contact for WWG had arrived at the hotel I and the other demo staff were meant to be staying, and there had been a problem with the booking. Apparently there was a mad scramble to sort something out for us. We were given details of the new location, which was an apartment (or flat for us unsophisticated folks).

By the time I arrived at the flat I still hadn’t received the codes for getting in. I texted the WWG person who sent them back 5 minutes later.

I negotiated the locked key boxes. Like any good RPG open the first one gets the key to get inside the building. Open the box inside gets the key to the flat.

As you can see from above the top two photos (taken from the hotel website) were where we had initially been booked into. It’s walking distance from the NEC Hall 1.

The bottom three photos above are where I actually ended up!

The outside I think you would agree looks a bit rough. And that is being extremely kind. But it had free parking, which solved a problem I had for the day if we were at the original 4 star extravagance (I had planned to just leave my car in the NEC car park for the 3 days of the expo – which is cheaper than the airport parking I’d been directed to, but it left me the problem of parking for the night).

The flat was a 2 bedroom flat, with a double room (the couple helping out had that room) that had an en-suite bathroom, the small bedroom (that I was in, picture above), a second bathroom, kitchen/living room. It also had free WiFi.

Having a kitchen was handy. It meant I could cook, get milk etc. Location wise the flat is really good. Within 2 minutes walk there were 2 Chinese take-aways, pizza/kebab establishment, kebab establishment, fish and chips, fried chicken, Co-op, cash machine.

It’s just that the exterior isn’t the most attractive.

Our WWG contact wasn’t going to be able to meet me due to a minor accident the previous day. They had sprained their ankle, and was unable to get around for a day or two. It would appear yesterday was not a good day for them.

I had curried baked beans on toast for my tea. Sometimes the simple things give you the most enjoyment. And this is one of those things for me. Mind you baked beans on toast always brings back memories of when I used to have tea round my friend Gareth’s. We had other food, but that is the one that I will forever associate with being round his.

The couple from France arrived around 7pm, and after they had settled in invited me to join them to get something to eat. But I had already eaten. Routine (if not broken) has me eating at 5pm. Today had not broken the routine.

Day 1 – Showtime

After an early night I was up early as usual. I don’t use an alarm, my body clock seems to be programmed (by the dogs) to wake at 5am. I snoozed for an hour before getting up and having my usual breakfast routine.

I arrived at the NEC and at the proposed meeting point with our WWG contact by 8am. I was early. I sent a text saying I had arrived and near the meeting point. Just in case they were inside the hall already. The reply let me know I would now be meeting some-one else from WWG who would have the passes etc. The injury meant our contact was unable to get to the show.

I was there early, because that’s me. But there people already at the ticket office, queuing up for their tickets (hence that photo below), the doors didn’t open until 10am! I sent photo to Jonathan to let him know the queues had started. But he was nearly at the entrance himself, because he was on the bus from the car park. So we met up for a brief chat.

After getting our badges, we went inside to the stand. After putting on our WWG tee’s we set up the tables ready for the “punters”. Because I knew Epic, myself and the French couple were assigned to doing the demos of that for the day. It was easier for WWG to find people that could demo Star Realms and Hero Realms, but a bit harder for people that could do Epic.

Epic was very popular due to the promotion for the expo of get a demo of the game and get a free copy of the game. However we had an allocation that we could give away each day. Naturally this went very quickly. Anyone coming along after lunchtime didn’t stand a chance of getting a copy.

Wow did the morning fly by. Before I knew it, it was 2pm and I hadn’t had a break. Luckily WWG got subway subs in for everyone earlier. So I had mine, and then had a quick wonder round the hall. I used this time to meet up with Jonathan again. who let me know the new expansion for Memoir ’44 was on sale at the show (which was early as the official date was the 6/6). So I snapped that up from the place he had seen it on sale. I also got a bonus scenario booklet with it as well. Which was a pleasant surprise.

Unofficially I heard that the Judge Dredd version of Wild Lands might be compatible with the original. Rules to allow this were being worked on at the moment. If that was the case, it would make the decision to keep investing in Wild Lands easier. Because if push comes to shove I’d take the Judge Dredd version over the original every time.

The rest of the day passed equally as fast.

A discussion late in the day between WWG and the demo team (that’s me and the others) we were told we could claim our store credit from sales stand. That all we had to do was tell them using store credit to pay and how much store credit we had.

Sorcerer the new game from WWG had been selling really well. The bundle deal was nearly sold out.

As we were leaving for the day to return back to the flat, another joined us. They were also staying at the flat. This was fine, I was expecting a fourth.

However once back at the flat I had a text saying that a fifth (who was the real fourth person) was arriving after 7:30pm.

Wait! What? Five in a 2 bedroom flat? I was not chuffed. Luckily there was a fold out bed in the flat. Sadly no extra towels, or bedsheets. Our contact when informed of this did manage to get the cleaner to come in and sort that bit out. But this really wasn’t on.

We all decided to get some take away. After getting supplies from the Co-op (I purchased fizzy drink, and apple juice), we hit one of the Chinese take-aways. The chow mein and salt and pepper ribs were fine.

But everyone was shattered. Who knew teaching and playing Epic could be so exhausting? The French couple were able to get an early night. However I and the other guy weren’t because the fifth person hadn’t arrived yet.

They finally arrived close to 10pm instead of the 7:30 as told. But we had no option but to stay up. Our contact suggested that we leave the key in the key box outside the front door and they could let themselves in. But I pointed out that was a pointless exercise, because if we did that we wouldn’t be able to lock the front door!

Eventually after the new arrival got settled in we could all get some much needed rest.

Day 2 – YNWA

Once again I was up early. This time the advantage was I got to use the bathroom first and the shower.

With the fifth person sleeping in the living room/kitchen. It made making my own coffee a bit awkward. So I snuck in and grabbed my breakfast and drinks for the day, and then left the flat hoping to find a McD or something on the way.

In the end I ended up grabbing my favourite hot beverage from the NEC Starbucks franchise the Chai Tea Latte.

It was kind of relaxing sitting in the empty exhibition hall having my breakfast.

I did have to get the NEC staff to organise cleaners to clean up a large puddle that was right beside the aisle to the WWG stand.

As soon as staff turned up on the retailer side for the stand I asked them if they would put a bundle aside for me. Which they did.

They day went pretty much like the previous day. Except that we had extra copies of Epic to hand out after a demo. I think the copies lasted an hour longer before running out.

I saw Jonathan again throughout the day, and also one or two friends that had also come to the expo for the day. I really did enjoy this part of the expo. Probably the highlight for me. And I even got a chance to get a brief play of a proto type game a friend had brought along to get feed back on.

Late in the afternoon it emerged that WWG had none of the kickstarter stuff for Sorcerer with them! have to admit being disappointed at this news. That was the side I wanted to pick up really if I was going to get Sorcerer.

The day didn’t get any better on that front. I went to get my bundle that had been put to one side at the start of the day. Yep you can guess what I am about to write. It hadn’t been kept at all. Plus they bundle had sold out, as had a lot of the Sorcerer stuff. Then as I was taking this in a rather grumpy boss of the stand told me that we should be getting our product from WWG not them. I was getting a bit miffed. But before I waded in all guns firing I wanted to talk with the others to make sure my understanding of being able to buy from the stand from the previous day was an accurate memory.

Back at the flat after grabbing a Chinese take-away again I watched the Champions League final live on YouTube. It was a nervous 90 odd minutes as a Liverpool fan, considering that Liverpool weren’t for whatever reason firing on all cylinders. Despite the performance not being the usual high quality for the team, Spurs failed equally to perform at their best. Although to be fair to Spurs they were the better of the two teams on the night. Sadly for them just not in front of goal and taking opportunities.

So Saturday ended on a real happy note. My team for the last 45 odd years won their 6th European League trophy.

Day 3 – Departure

I repeated Saturdays morning routine, and added packing away all my stuff and putting it in the car. Well it was checking out day for the flat.

At the expo I used the quiet time as an opportunity to briefly look around and also take some photos of an empty expo hall 1. Something as a punter you don’t get to see normally.

Once people started to show up on the stands, the saga of the store credit and where exactly it could be spent took twists and turns. The boss of the stand tries to make sure that demo staff don’t miss out, and puts copies of Sorcerer aside for those that wanted a copy. They would work it out later with WWG about payment. A very very kind offer that I personally really appreciated. But then once WWG get in it’s all change again. WWG will ship to us any product we want that they don’t have with them. And that we would be given an opportunity to purchase the demo copies of Sorcerer at a reduced price.

Naturally this annoys the boss of the stand. It annoys me. It means I have to wait for anything I want. I didn’t want a demo copy of the game. Missing pieces, mistreated cards etc. were a concern. Heck we had “borrowed” tokens to use as counters and tracking life with Epic for starters (we had to improvise somehow).

One of my fellow demo crew members was tasked with taking the order of what people wanted to spend their store credit on. They had prices for the kickstarter stuff as well.

It worked out I could get all the Kickstarter exclusives and add-ones, but not the base game with the credit I had. So that’s what I went for. I reasoned that I’d be able to pick up the retail game easily enough, and probably cheaper than WWG would let me have it for.

Now instead of driving home with my brand new copy of Sorcerer and add-ons. I have to wait a minimum of a couple of weeks. Which my gut feeling is telling me will drag on longer than that. Mainly because I think WWG will be distracted in the meantime with Origins in the US that occurs in about 3 weeks time. So now their priorities shift to getting ready for that.


I wasn’t able to hang around at the end of the show (4pm) to help pack away. Maybe I should say more accurately that I was unprepared to do that.

My journey home was uneventful. The Attack Chihuahuas were pleased to see me back. Loki even left me a welcome home present by the backdoor!

Final Thoughts

As I said at the start and in a previous post, this was a first for me.

Seeing friends again that I haven’t seen in a while (months/years) was a definitely a highlight. But also seeing my friends from back home was equally a highlight.

Tom and Zee still seem dead set on pushing the myth that Barenpark is a game.

The guys behind the Judge Dredd RPG are pretty cool (as is their podcast).

I really enjoyed teaching Epic, and playing the odd game with a “punter”. But all the stuff around it kind of soured the experience a little.

I think it is accurate to say that the problems were due to poor planning and communication. In hindsight the warning signs were there with the late getting back to people with details etc when they asked for volunteers. And leaving it very last minute letting people have details about where they were staying (and that’s before they knew about the booking snaffu).

A lot of stuff could have been avoided with better organisation, confirmation phone calls/emails, better communication.

I appreciate that things go wrong, mistakes happen. And you can excuse one or two. But this was mistake after mistake. And they were avoidable mistakes.

There was also a confusing bit for me. If this was my company I’d be there before the help (which is what I was) arrived. I’d want to be first on the stand. Make sure everything was right before the doors opened etc. But they weren’t. I was first on the stand. They have no idea about the water spill. They arrived just before the doors opened. Or at least delegate that to one of your employees who is there with you.

I know where I lay the blame. But this isn’t a blame game. It’s a learn from your mistakes and do better next time.

Would I do it again?

I think so, just not with WWG. Great games, but…

Plus if anyone reads this post they most likely wouldn’t want me now to help out anyway. Very few people these days want reliable, independent, thinking, hard working people. They want cheap. Ok I just described myself twice. But you know what I mean.

UKGE 2019 Starts Tomorrow

epic, star realms

Just a gentle reminder that from tomorrow the UK Games Expo (UKGE) is on.

Depending when you do the table, the UKGE is either the third or fourth largest table top convention in the world. It swaps between Origins and UKGE. They keep leapfrogging each other. Although this may not be entirely true since PAX Unplugged started. I’m not aware of the numbers that is attracting.

I think this is the biggest UKGE ever. They have 3 NEC halls this year, plus the Hilton Hotel. I’m expecting attendance numbers to beat last years record attendance also.

Despite its growth, the expo never feels crowded as you go round the stands. The walkways between stands are wide enough to make movement easy and not feel that you are fighting to get around.

The expo is starting to be taken seriously by publishers outside the UK. Particularly the US ones. It’s hard to justify not being here when it is so large. So we are starting to see more publishers have their own presence at the expo. There is still away to go, but it’s a start. That also holds true for game releases and previews etc.

If you are in to table top games and all that covers, this is really worth a visit. Even if it’s just for the day.

I’ll be there all 3 days of the expo.

But my experience of the show will be different to anything I’ve experienced before at the expo. Each year so far my expo experiences have added something new. But this will be a massive first.

This year I volunteered to help out on the White Wizard Games (WWG) Stand demoing their games. I’m excited and a tad apprehensive at the same time.

WWG also have 3 events running during the expo.

Win one of those tournaments and become immortal! Well semi famous, and associated with a game you enjoy forever!

I know folks look forward to my daily posts about nothing. But that schedule may be interrupted. I’ll try and do a post each evening. There will be photos from the expo during the day going up on Instagram.

Hope to see you at the expo, and maybe have the chance of teaching you how to play one of the games.