Back from the UK Games Expo
Well I'm back and (more or less) recovered from another long weekend and mostly enjoyable of board gaming at the UK Games Expo.
The "mostly" bit is partly due to the ride up there, although that was, in some ways, my fault, I had some work to finish off and orders to post which I should probably have dealt with the previous evening but didn't, so by the time I did leave it was starting to rain quite heavily and the route I'd planned to go up there which would have included some nice twisty roads just wasn't viable :-(
There was a wierd co-incidence en route, I decided that, after filtering through traffic for about 15 miles after Oxford, as I was getting cold and tired I'd stop off at a service area for something to eat and, as I parked the bike up, a voice said "Hello Graham"! It turned out to be someone I know from the IAM Group I'm a member of who was on his way to Nuneaton and was just about to leave, so if I'd got there a minute or so later, we'd have missed each other...
Anyway, the Hilton Metropole is a much better venue for the Expo IMO as everything is under one roof and they'd got a good Convention price on food (although the quality wasn't great, but it was cheap).
Some games I played include Shadows over Camelot, Cleopatra and Smallworld, all of which I like and enjoyed.
I also played the new Martin Wallace Aeroplanes game, but I was more than a little unimpressed by this one, not least because I was asking "Who proof-read this rulebook? Did *anyone* proof-read this rulebook??", there were typos, words missing and blatant formatting errors (eg a yellow box-out example had the word "Example" and the first line of text *above* the box!). It's not exactly rocket science to sort this sort of thing out, but nobody had. Also I found the game fiddly and overly complicated and it went on for over two hours :-(
However, on the flip side, I also broke my usual rule of not buying a game until I've played it twice because I gave Fresco a go and liked it so much I bought it after my first play! You play a Master Painter who needs to get his Apprentices to buy paint, mix it and paint the Basilica, but there's a lovely mechanic where, if you wake up early you get first choice of paint at the Market, however you move down two or three spots on the "Mood" track because you're grumpy and your Apprentices don't like being woken up too early. Do this too often and they may quit! (Of course if you let them sleep in, you may get another one joining your studio...)
I also, finally, got Angus from Chronicle City to try out my Barfight! game and he's definitely interested, so I've sent him the details and, who knows, it may actually get published one day...! :-)
The "mostly" bit is partly due to the ride up there, although that was, in some ways, my fault, I had some work to finish off and orders to post which I should probably have dealt with the previous evening but didn't, so by the time I did leave it was starting to rain quite heavily and the route I'd planned to go up there which would have included some nice twisty roads just wasn't viable :-(
There was a wierd co-incidence en route, I decided that, after filtering through traffic for about 15 miles after Oxford, as I was getting cold and tired I'd stop off at a service area for something to eat and, as I parked the bike up, a voice said "Hello Graham"! It turned out to be someone I know from the IAM Group I'm a member of who was on his way to Nuneaton and was just about to leave, so if I'd got there a minute or so later, we'd have missed each other...
Anyway, the Hilton Metropole is a much better venue for the Expo IMO as everything is under one roof and they'd got a good Convention price on food (although the quality wasn't great, but it was cheap).
Some games I played include Shadows over Camelot, Cleopatra and Smallworld, all of which I like and enjoyed.
I also played the new Martin Wallace Aeroplanes game, but I was more than a little unimpressed by this one, not least because I was asking "Who proof-read this rulebook? Did *anyone* proof-read this rulebook??", there were typos, words missing and blatant formatting errors (eg a yellow box-out example had the word "Example" and the first line of text *above* the box!). It's not exactly rocket science to sort this sort of thing out, but nobody had. Also I found the game fiddly and overly complicated and it went on for over two hours :-(
However, on the flip side, I also broke my usual rule of not buying a game until I've played it twice because I gave Fresco a go and liked it so much I bought it after my first play! You play a Master Painter who needs to get his Apprentices to buy paint, mix it and paint the Basilica, but there's a lovely mechanic where, if you wake up early you get first choice of paint at the Market, however you move down two or three spots on the "Mood" track because you're grumpy and your Apprentices don't like being woken up too early. Do this too often and they may quit! (Of course if you let them sleep in, you may get another one joining your studio...)
I also, finally, got Angus from Chronicle City to try out my Barfight! game and he's definitely interested, so I've sent him the details and, who knows, it may actually get published one day...! :-)