Quartermaster General Tournament at Strategy GameCon

You may or may not be aware that a large new gaming convention is going to be held in Telford from August 25-28th. Details are still sketchy, but the first boardgaming tournament has been announced: Quartermaster General on Saturday 27th.
http://strategygamecon.com/events/events-programme/

Spare place for Agricola tournament at UK Games Expo

Someone has dropped out of the Agricola tournament taking place this Saturday from 9.30am at the UK Games Expo. This means a ticket is likely to be available. If you are interested then please contact me at: scott.h.moore@gmail.com

Scott

Volunteers sought for UK Games Expo board game tournaments

We're looking for people to volunteer for at least a full day (morning + afternoon) to help run the board game tournaments at UK Games Expo. No previous experience is required, though we are particularly looking for one or two people who can use Excel to be responsible for scoring the tournaments. Accommodation at the Hilton is provided for anyone who volunteers for 2 or 3 days and prefers to stay overnight.

If you are interested please let me know at the club or send an email to: scott.h.moore@gmail.com

UK Games Expo Boardgame Tournaments

Tickets are now available online for most of the boardgame tournaments at the UK Games Expo. I draw your attention, in particular, to the Voyages of Marco Polo tournament on the Friday! Tickets for some additional tournaments - 7 Wonders, Agricola and Splendor - are not yet available as the details are still being worked out with the sponsors.

Potential Quartermaster General tournament at UK Games Expo 2016

A volunteer (unaffiliated with Halesowen Boardgamers) is considering running a team-based Quartermaster General tournament at this year's Game Expo. Would anyone be interested in competing and, if so, do you have a preference for the day (Fri, Sat or Sun) and length of tournament (2 rounds over 4 hours, or 3 rounds over 6 hours)?

HBG at Barrage 2015, Stafford

I'm just adding this with a few quick notes about our visit to Stafford today, hopefully I will get round to posting some info about our weekly sessions on a regular basis as well. Anyway today Mike, Scott & I visited Barage 2015, a small wargames con run by Stafford Wargames. We were billed in the programme as the Big Boardgames Bash and the idea was to demonstrate some boardgames to the wargamers visiting.

I don't think any of us really knew what to expect as the last time we did anything like this was at Warfayre which used to happen at the Cornbow Hall in Halesowen and in those days we just had one game running which was Formule De, I think it was me, Mike and Dave C and was probably in the day before we had the room at the Conservative club.

So we each took along a selection of games, I'm glad I had the wheels on my bag as it weighed a ton, mainly due to the presence of Battlestar Galactic and Eldritch Horror, neither of which were played.

As it turned out I think most of the people passing had either the time or the interest in what we were doing, being much more interested in all the set piece wargames most of which had beautifully created terrain and nicely painted figures. That said we did manage to keep playing of most of the six hour time when the con was open.

Mike stuck to the shorter games and I know that he played Carcassonne and Love Letter, also Infiltration with me and Nottingham with me and some others. Scott I think played some in Mike's games early on before joining me in a 4 player Power Grid game on the UK map, later on he introduced Castles of Mad King Ludwig to 3 others. I started with San Juan, before the Power Grid game which just won by the skin of my teeth, having 3 coal plants when there was no coal left at the end. After that and lunch it was Nottingham and Infiltration which we started before and finished after the Nottingham game.

All in all it was an enjoyable day, although if we repeat it I hope to be a bit more organised, particularly with some kind of notice to identify our table, that said I did print off a few flyers which I distributed around our space and I notice half of them had disappeared by the end of the day.

Following are a few pictures of what went on.

Games in Play

Power Grid

Possibly not good for the environment

Castles of Mad King Ludwig

Infiltration

UK Games Expo 2014

This is the second year that Halesowen Boardgamers has run many of the board game tournaments at the UK Games Expo. Besides Steve H, Gordon and myself - who participated as unpaid, unfed, overworked and sleep-deprived volunteers - I saw a few other club members at the Expo over the weekend. I would be interested to get your perspective on the event as "normal punters". In the meantime, here is my view.

The Games Expo certainly seemed a lot busier this year and the official numbers confirm this. The number of unique visitors was up from 3,500 to 6,000, while total attendance increased from 5,700 to 10,000. Friday is devoted to open gaming, with the trade halls not yet open, but when I arrived at around 4.30 pm there were already a lot of people around. By the time we finished running the tournaments, it was getting late. So late, that everything close to the NEC was closed. Gordon and I finally sat down to a meal in Solihull town centre at around 11 pm. Meanwhile, Steve had his own adventures in the open gaming hall. More space was available this year, yet it seemed far too little on the Saturday when the big crowds arrived. I didn't manage to patronise the bring-and-buy in 2013, but from what I remember it was relatively calm. Queues were long for breakfast and lunch, but just about manageable for those of us with little spare time. This year, I brought a couple of games to sell but when I finally wandered over to the bring-and-buy I found an hour long queue just to drop off games! Needless-to-say, this was more than enough to deter me. None of the three of us even bothered trying to get lunch due to lack of time and reports coming in about the impossibility of getting food within a reasonable time. We considered ourselves fortunate to find Subway open for our evening meal of a tuna sandwich each. Sunday was considerably less crowded. A friend kindly volunteered to do the bring-and-buy drop off and pick up on my behalf, resulting in two sold games! And, due to an unscheduled trip home on Saturday evening, we had the luxury of lunch: mango-flavoured fizzy drinks, cheese and parma ham sandwiches, and biscuits.

The Board game tournaments themselves went well. Of course, there were enough problems to keep our stress levels in the danger zone and we were so busy that trips to the toilets had to be carefully rationed. But we expected that. Whereas in 2013 we ran 7 tournaments over two days with a total of just over 100 participants, this year we ran 11 tournaments over two-and-a-half days with over 200 gamers taking part. I noticed more international players - Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese, Malaysian - though I can't confirm that anyone actually travelled from abroad just to participate! But we will be sending four of the players out of the UK to take part in the world championships for Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride.    

Oxcon 2010

Mike, went down to Oxcon this year to play Settlers, he sent this report

Well, in the end, as the driving conditions looked OK, I decided to go down to Oxford for Oxcon Sunday and go for the Settlers tournament.  Tournament organisation was frankly a bit shambolic, with the organiser forgetting that if he was to keep to the ambitious schedule of 5 games starting at 11 a.m. finishing before 5.30-ish then he'd better set strict time limits on rounds.  In the end we managed 4 rounds, 27 participants featuring two Halesowen Boardgamers - me and Mark Stretch. 

1st game was a disaster, got badly boxed in quickly and had to dump cards to a '7' throw twice in the first 5 rounds, never recovered and didn't even manage a city build before the end!  2nd game was much better but ultimately frustrating, I was unstoppably about to play my 3rd Knight card to take Largest Army and win, when the player going immediately before me got to 10pts to snatch victory!

After a long wait for it meant a hurried lunch, 3rd game was disappointing, the only game wrecked for me by lousy dice rolls, I was the only player not to benefit from 4's and there were ridiculous numbers of them.  It was a two-horse race more or less from the start and I think I was a distant joint third.  4th game started very bleakly, was only on three commodity types and another player accidentally blocked me from being able to build on a key commodity port - wouldn't have minded so much if he'd actually meant it!  However, managed to get some city building going, kept under the radar while the others attacked each other (there were a lot of 7's rolled and knights played), and the card accumulation kicked in, including a couple of rounds where I was sitting on 20+ commodity cards.  After being 1 card short of the Longest Road for a win, I had to sweat for a further two rounds (including one where I was robbed of the only card which losing stopped me winning!) before I finished things off with a satisfying win.

Didn't hang around for the results or presentation, but feel pretty confident I didn't miss the opportunity to be presented with a trophy... 

Catch Up 10,17,24 June

Just a few notes by way of catching up.

Games Expo

I was at Games Expo on the Saturday and Sunday, but didn't actually play many games. Saturday morning was spent was spent demoing Great Fire, which seemed to go down well. Feedback was positive and Richard Denning is going to look for a publisher on that basis. There have been another couple of changes in the game since then and I hope to get the game on the table again to try them out.

Saturday afternoon was spent wandering including a game of Battle Line (old Knizia title) with Mike, it's OK for a 2 player game, but not one I'd want to play regularly.

Sunday morning was more wandering before going back and actually playing Great Fire in the afternoon. Dave & Ben were also around both days playing parts in the Living Dungeon.

10 June

We had to wait for the room upstairs to become free, so spent some time in the bar playing some short games. 6 of us played a couple of games of Tsuro.

Tsuro 15 mins.
Posn.	Player
1	Mike
2	Ben C
3=	Dave F
3=	Dave D
3=	Steve H
6	Steve Pe
Tsuro 15 mins.
Posn.	Player
1	Steve H
2	Dave F
3=	Mike
3=	Ben C
5	Steve Pe
6	Dave D

While Dave C and another 3 tried Days of Steam, which he had picked up at the expo. The game was not completed before we moved upstairs. I had a chance to try this with Dave (2 player) on the following Saturday and it seemed OK, but probably needs more players. It seems fairly light and could make a reasonable filler.

Days of Steam 20 mins.
Posn.	Player
1=	Dave C
1=	Paul
1=	Donald
1=	Nigel

We moved upstairs and split into 2 5 player groups. On one table was Pillars of the Earth, I think this was Dave's first try at the game, Ben had played once before but not with the expansion. The 2 Steves finished comfortably ahead, with the rest of us trailing.

Pillars of the Earth, The 140 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Steve H	55
2	Steve Pe	52
3	Dave D	43
4	Dave F	41
5	Ben C	35

On the other table was Automobile, the new Martin Wallace and another one that Dave had picked up at Expo, I had thought about getting this myself, but knowing that Dave & Andy had both bought copies decided against. The game seemed to go down well and I enjoyed my try the following week.

Automobile 140 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mike	3990
2	Paul	3680
3	Nigel	2870
4	Dave C	2810
5	Donald	2790

17 June

7 this week and a 4/3 split.

I had my first try at Automobile, which ended with a second win for Mike, I think this a game that's going to take a few trys to get the strategy. I gather though that after 2 wins Mike came a bit of a cropper at the Rosliston weekend, speaking of which I'd be interested in seeing some sort of info about the games played there.

Automobile 120 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mike	4680
2	Dave D	4150
3	Donald	4040
4	Dave C	3050

We finished off with Tsuro

Tsuro 15 mins.
Posn.	Player
1	Mike
2	Dave C
3	Dave D
4	Donald

On the other table the first game was Stone Age, a game which I didn't take to when I tried it

Stone Age 80 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Steve H	165
2	Gordon	159
3	Dave F	155

Followed by an old favourite, Ra, I see that Gordon didn't win for once.

Ra 50 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Steve H	56
2	Gordon	52
3	Dave F	40

24 June

With 8 players, we started with Tsuro, while waiting to see if Dave & Ben would appear.

Tsuro 15 mins.
Posn.	Player
1	Donald
2	Steve P
3	Gordon
4	Mike
5=	Dave D
5=	Daniel
7=	Steve H
7=	Dave F

After that it was another 4/4 split, no one else having arrived. 4 of us played Power Grid. Dave was new to the game and Daniel, I gather, has not that much experience. We used the China board, which I think could be my favourite. It has a slow build up due to the ordered appearance of the power plants, but this seems to lead to a great climax.

This was the closest game I have known with all 4 players tied and separated by money. There were only a few elektros between Dave & myself at the end and he would have won, if he hadn't spent 2 much on buying extra raw materials he didn't need, I think it was a case of inexperience showing. Steve was looking good for a lot of the game, having been left quite isolated in the south, but lost out at the end, when he went last to build and there were only 2 cities available in the far north, the connection costs were enough to drop him down to last.

Power Grid 120 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave D	17+++
2	Dave F	17++
3	Daniel	17+
4	Steve H	17

On the other table was In the Year of the Dragon

In the Year of the Dragon 90 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Gordon	98
2	Donald	89
3	Steve P	88
4	Mike	68

And Dominion, I don't have the scores or positions for this game, although I am told that Gordon won.

Dominion 30 mins.
Posn.	Player
1	Gordon
2=	Donald
2=	Steve P
2=	Mike

UK Games Expo 6 & 7 June 2009

This weekend it is the third UK Games Expo at the Clarendon Suite on the Hagley Road. Dave C & Ben will be involved with the Living Dungeon and will be there both days.

I shall also be there both days and will be running Demo Games for Great Fire on Saturday morning, short precis of the game can be found here.

No doubt reports of the weekend's events will appear in the new future.

Midcon 2008 by Dave D

Midcon is over, over the course of the weekend I played 16 games, including first plays of 5. Other members of the club present at various times included Mike, Dave & Ben, Julian, Andy, Steve Perkins and Paul. I also met a few new people and also saw many old acquaintances from other conventions. This is a brief rundown of what I did over the weekend and is based entirely on memory, so I will not rule out any errors in the following, also apologies to anyone other than regulars who may be reading this and who's name I may have forgotten.
FRIDAY
I arrived just after 1 o'clock in the afternoon and had a wander around the Wroxton suite, where there were quite a few games going on even at this early stage. After wandering I approached the table in the corner of the room near the bar where Dominion was being played and asked if I could watch which was no problem. After one game one of the participants left and I accepted the invitation to join in. The previous game had been played with the card combination suggested for the first game and Chris who's game it was wanted to try a random distribution, I had no great problem with this so it was in at the deep end for my first game, although I did get to try with the "basic" set later on in the con. I ended up playing 5 games of Dominion during the afternoon, the first 2 being with Chris, Phil & Becky. Phil, who I believe was also new to the game was very impressed by it and also picked it up very quickly, winning his second game (my first) after coming close in the first game. I actually won my second game as well, in a strange selection of cards including the thief, but also (as Chris explained) a number of anti thief cards. Having had the fear of God put into us about the thief stealing our treasure, the game followed what, on the evidence of the other games I played was a strange pattern, with very little treasure taken and as result few provinces. The thief was also never taken. I won by using Villages with workshops to grab Gardens, the game being ended by running out 3 of the supply piles.
After 2 games of Dominion, Richard Dewsbury joined us and we played a lap of Powerboats. This is a race game involving a modular board representing a lake with small islands in it and you have to follow a course such that you pass by a number of buoys on the correct side, you have to thread your way between the islands in the most effective way. The boats are controlled using some interesting looking 3 sided dice, which were apparently made for it (these are very nice, but the same effect could have been obtained using 6 sided dice with duplicated sides). You start the game rolling one die and each turn you roll the same number or can add or subtract 1 die, in addition you can leave any number of the previously rolled dice on the same number, rather than reroll them, which adds a small amount of control. The problem I found (and Phil even more so than me) was that it seemed that to weave between the islands, rolling exactly the number you needed was often critical, one over or one under could result in crashing into an island or having to stamp on the brakes such that you lose vital momentum. I forget who won this one, I was fourth, the game is supposed to be played over 3 races, with each worth more than the previous one, but we knocked it on the head at that point Phil had had enough and I was not over impressed either.
More people had arrived at this stage was we now split into 2 groups, each playing Dominion, Richard moved over to the other table with his set, although he had only brought the "basic" cards. We played 3 more games during the afternoon with Julian joining us later on. After this people decided to stop for something to eat and, as I was not staying in the hotel that evening, I headed home at that point. What did I think of Dominion? Well it's OK, the secret is to put together a deck with combinations in it that will help you, while not clogging it with useless cards so your combinations stand a chance of coming up. The problem seems to me, that despite the multiple ways of getting there, it all boils down in the end to getting the scoring cards as this is the only way to win points. Also with 4 players (which all the games I played were), even at about 30 minutes length, some of the games played felt a bit too long. I can see playing this as a single game at the beginning or end of a session, but not multiples, like we played here. Maybe my opinion would be different for games with fewer players.
Ratings for Friday: Dominion – 7/10, Powerboats 4/10.
SATURDAY
Arrived at about 10 o'clock and again joined up with Richard and Phil form the day before, this time to give Le Havre a try. I have been interested, but certainly on first play it did not seem to click. I'm not exactly sure what you are supposed to represent in the game, presumably some kind of entrepreneur in the town, but each turn you add certain goods to supply spaces and can then take an action which can either to be collect supplies or move your person disc into a building and take the action associated with that building, which may include building new buildings or ship, gaining further supplies or converting supplies into other types or into money (which is also VP). At the end of each round of which there are 12 in the 4 player shortened game that we played, there is often a harvest when extra cattle and grain may be collected as well as food from ships and then, whether or not there has been a harvest the workers must be fed. The amount of food needed starts low but by the end of the game has grown to problematic levels. The big issue I have with the game is the limited options. There is only 1 supply space for each type of goods and if you take supplies you can't use a building action. This is compounded by the fact that if you take supplies, your disc is left in the building it is currently occupies, so even though you are not using the building you are still blocking its use by other players. Both I & Richard found ourselves desperately scrabbling for food at the end of the game because people were already sitting on buildings we could have used to feed our men more efficiently. I have since realised that I could have improved my own situation by selling my own building, so turfing out the sitting tenant allowing me to use it myself, but the idea that I have to sell my own building to allow me to use it does not seem a good mechanic to me. I have to say that my first play was probably tainted by the fact that the game was interrupted several times, so probably lasted longer than it should have, but even so this was supposed to be the shortened game. I will give this one more play and if that is not a better experience that's it.
Next up was a single game of Dominion, followed after lunch by Jet Set introduced by Richard with Phil, Mike & Julian. In this one you run an airline and I'm not actually sure of the thematic logic, but on each turn you have an action, where you can claim links by placing planes, claim routes (which give VP and income) by having planes on each link of the route (and then removing them) or claim income from routes you have claimed previously. You also have a final flight route card which is worth up to 20 VP (if you are first to claim yours), which can't be played until the second vacation card comes up. Once a player plays a final flight the game has 5 turns to go and those who have played final flight no longer have a normal turn, but simply add a plane to the flight, so that's a maximum of 5 planes each worth 2 VP. My view, only one action per turn made it far too pedestrian. It didn't take long until I was pretty bored, so I finished my final flight and then tried to force the second vacation card by drawing more short route cards. This worked and I was immediately able to play my final flight, starting the countdown. The fact that this also won me the game did not improve my opinion of it.
The rest of the game was known games, after a quick game of Dominion, a game of Power Grid with Mike, David Norman and 1 other (Richard I think). We played this on China, which I think may be becoming my favourite board (although Mike prefers Korea) I won on the tie break with 17 Elektros to David's 16 and Mike on 12, so quite a close game. We split into 2 groups with Mike, David & another playing Mykerinos, while Steve Perkins joined Richard? & I for Saint Petersburg with expansion. Again this was a close game with Steve beating me despite having 1 fewer aristocrat. Interesting play ensued, with Steve taking the Textile Factory into hand although it was worth nothing to him (he had no shepherds) to prevent me (to who it was worth 10 points a turn) from having it, but due to its clogging his hand he used Away with it! to discard after one Building phase and I was then able to pick it up in the following Building Phase using the Debtor's Prison. The expansion certainly adds a lot to this game and I have now moved it into my Top 10.
After that I played no more and spent the rest of the time wandering and watching, including Dave C game of Red Dragon Inn (this does look fun) and also World of Warcraft the Adventure Game on another table. I was interested in this as I have bought a copy for my niece and nephew at Christmas in an attempt to educate them that there is more to games than the computer variety (a forlorn hope I suspect).
Ratings for Saturday: Le Havre 5/10, Jet Set 3/10, Dominion 7/10, Power Grid 10/10, St. Petersburg 9/10
SUNDAY
I don't think I got more than a couple of hours sleep in the night due to the traffic going by outside, so was up bright and early. After breakfast I grabbed a table in the Wroxton suite and filled with the Bolide board and sat studying the rules, which I suspect are not the greatest translation from Italian. When Dave & Ben came back from breakfast, we tried a few turns, before digging Nottingham out when Rob & Tony (see Dave's report) arrived. This is always a fund game and I think I've played it most at Midcon over the years; I again won on the tie break.
After that, Race for the Galaxy, again without the goals, which I want to introduce next time I get to play without new players. I had Earth's Lost Colony to start and an initial hand consisting of Mining League, Mining Robots and a couple of Rare Mineral worlds, throughout the rest of the game I was able to add Mining Conglomerate and more Rare Worlds, so Mining League was worth 13 points at the end and I was also able to make good points by consuming the goods at x2. I had a handy win from Tony, who got the hand of the game quickly and finished it by building a 12^th Tableau card, although I only had 9 cards on the table.
After that Mike showed up, he had been playing 18GA in the Ariel suite and seems confident that it should play in an evening, so we must try that some Wednesday. We then all played the 6 player game of Bolide Dave mentioned. As I said in my comment on his piece, I think perhaps fewer players would have been better, unless everyone knows exactly what they are doing; the game certainly bears further play however.
After that it was time to pack up and go, it was an enjoyable weekend, but the new games I played seemed to confirm what I suspected before, that this year's Essen did not produce a vintage crop.
Ratings for Sunday: Nottingham 7/10, Race for the Galaxy 10/10, Bolide 6/10

MidCon 2008

MidCon 2008

Dave Cooper (Brass Jester)

Another year rolled round and Ben and I headed off to MidCon. We arrived around 10.30 on the Saturday, this time coming in on the train from Cradley Heath. Our room was ready when we arrived, so we took the case upstairs, then headed down to the Wroxton. It transpired that our name badges had gone missing overnight, but we were wearing Halesowen Boardgamers T-shirts. Said hi to lots of people; Halesowen was well represented with me, Ben, Dave D, Mike, Andy and Julian. Met up with Richard Denning, who introduced Ben and I to Red November, a game of trying to survive on a crippled Gnomish submarine (!). The aim is to survive an hour (game-time) against all the disasters happening to the sub. It ended when Ben had to defuse the malfunctioning nuclear missiles; to do so he had to drink a bottle of vodka ( to give him courage to enter the burning compartment); he put the fire out but then passed out due to the vodka, so the missiles exploded, killing everyone, with only four minutes to go! A fun game; could easily be turned into a participation game.
Mike then joined us and we played Colossal Arena, has been around for a long time under the name Titan: The Arena. Ben and I headed for Bishop Games stand; Ben bought Super Munchkin and I bought After the Flood (Martin Wallace’s latest). After this, Richard introduced a prototype game for playtesting. Called London 1667, it was about the Great Fire of London. Basically, played on a map of medieval London; the fire is raging and spreading via play of cards by each player. You are trying to protect your properties (distributed at random on the map at start) at the expense of your rivals; plus you have Secret Objectives to gain extra Victory Points. It was mentioned that the Great Fire was in 1666; maybe it broke out again. We played two games of this, tried a short game of Super Munchkin with Dave (?), then broke for tea. Deciding not to risk the hotel’s horrendous prices, Ben and I went up town to Kentucky Fried Mollusc
On the way back; I was stopped by the police! It transpired that the officer knew me from 20+ years ago, when I worked at Halesowen Jobcentre; he used to be on the training side.

Back at the hotel we met up with two guys from Swansea, Rob and his nephew Tony. It was their first MidCon and they were keen to try lots of different games. We were joined by Paul (from Telford, a frequent visitor to Halesowen Boardgamers) and introduced them to Power Grid, on the American board, using the original deck. Paul won, Tony was second and the rest of us tied. Ben was third, Rob fourth and I was last on the money. Tony and Rob went for something to eat (I gather they’d had a marathon session of Arkham Horror at the hands of Great Cthulhu himself (aka Nick Kinzett).) They left Ben and I playing The Awful Green Things from Outer Space, a re-release of a game I first saw given away in Dragon magazine sometime in the ‘70s. I was the crew of the spaceship, Ben was the Awful Green Things that swarm and multiply. I get to use lots of potential weapons, but the fun thing is that you don’t know what the weapon’s effect on the Awful Green Things is until you use it (determined by a chit draw). Some cause them to multiply and spread faster! My last ditch defence was hurling drums of fuel out of the engines at them. Special mention must be given to the marine with the pool cue who attacked an adult Awful Green Thing on Round One and finally fell around Round 20! Eventually my entire crew was eaten.
Rob and Tony had returned so they got out a game called The Red Dragon Inn. This is a fantasy drinking game; you are brave adventurers relaxing in the Inn after your latest adventure and you are having a drinking contest. Your Fortitude starts at 20, your Alcohol at 0. If the two ever meet then you are passed out under the table. Each player runs a character with a unique set of cards; you play these to do Actions, then drink your Drinks card. Unless you can avoid the effects; you get steadily more drunk. I was playing the Priestess and managed to change wine to water a few times to keep sober; Tony went out first; Rob was barely hanging on; he survived a nasty drinking contest with Ben so I offered him a drink to help him recover! That left Ben; another drinking contest and a Water to Wine spell took Ben out. A fun game. There is another game (Red Dragon 2) that is stand-alone but can be combined to take the players up to 8.
By now it was about 01:30 and the Wroxton was emptying. We arranged to meet up the following morning, then Ben and I turned in.

Sunday, breakfast was excellent as usual, then we checked out and returned to the Wroxton. Tony and Rob arrived and we were joined by Dave D from Halesowen Boardgamers. We started off with Nottingham, which was close-run but Ben eventually won with 60+ gold. Ben then went off to play Galaxy Trucker with Tim (?), a game he’s wanted to try for some time. The rest of us played Race for the Galaxy, another new one for Rob and Tony. Dave D won this. Ben was busy winning Galaxy Trucker so I headed out to get some lunch. I watched the prototype of Steam being played on the next table with Martin Wallace, Richard Drewsbery and a couple of others who I’ve met before but whose names I can’t recall.
In the afternoon, rejoined by Ben and Mike, we played Bolide. This is a motor racing game with an intriguing vector movement system. You move your car, then the ‘bolide’ marker moves ahead from your car, mirroring the exact move the car just did. On your next turn, your car can move to any of the legal 25 vertices surrounding the bolide, thus steering, braking and acceleration are all handled. The bolide then moves again and so on. It takes some planning to move to keep the bolide where you want it for your next move and it is very easy to find yourself heading at full speed off the track. I liked the bolide idea and have already adapted it for a space combat game (Full Thrust, if anyone’s interested)’ but I found the game was way too long to play and quite fiddly with several players, it also helps if you can keep vector mechanics in you head. The race lasts two laps of the circuit, we played for over three hours and only managed one. Maybe if the circuit was shorter, but this would need a complete redraw of the map.
This was the last game we played, we said our goodbyes and headed home on the bus.

Overall, this was one of the best MidCon’s we’d attended. It was Ben’s second one and he really enjoyed it. After The Flood looks really good, I played a solo set up on the Sunday evening prior to introducing it at the club.

UK Games Expo – 31 May, 1 June 2008

This past weekend was the second UK Games Expo, bigger and better than last year, you only have to look at the programme, which unlike last year's flimsy booklet was now a glossy affair, superior to many concerts I've been to (and it was free as opposed to setting you back a tenner or more).
Before I start describing my weekend, I'll give a mention to Dave C who volunteered to help out with the show and was at the venue setting up on Friday evening, was there both mornings at 7am and spent much of the days helping out including operating moving walls in the living dungeon. Anyway he seemed to thoroughly enjoy it and earned the club a name check in the programme. The downside was that I don't think he got a chance to play any games. Anyway well done Dave.
Now my weekend.
Saturday
I got there about 10 o'clock and spent some time wandering about finding out where things were. Almost immediately I ran across Nick Kinzett who was demoing The World Cup game and had a brief chat. I happened on Paul manning his GamesLore stand and after a bit of a chat he pointed me in the direction of a nearby table where they were demoing Jamaica so I sat down and gave that a go. In this game you represent a pirate racing round the island collecting gold and treasure and shooting your opponents, the game finishes when one player reaches the finishing line and victory points are awarded based on how far you have gone and the amount of gold you are carrying in your holds. In the 2 player game I played, the 2 ships got separated early and we never actually got round to exchanging any broadsides, I caught up right at the end so we finished at the same time , but my opponent was carrying a bit more gold. This strikes me as quite a fun family game and the production is very good. For myself, though it's not something I would choose to play that often.
Now it was back to wandering, I visited Ragnar Brothers stand where they were demoing their new game Monastery and booked myself a demo, after that I met Dave C, who had a bit of free time, and Ben, so we joined each other in our wandering. Ben seemed to spend a fair bit of time chasing a Dalek around tormenting it, which did not seem an entirely wise thing to do considering the nature of these creatures. Oh well I supposed kids no best some times.
11.30 and back to the Ragnars. I thoroughly enjoyed Monastery and proceeded to buy a copy. The game is one of building a medieval monastery. Each player has a team of monks and they spend some of their time building parts of the monastery which are tiles that are first laid with their unconstructed side up and and are completed and flipped over when a sufficient number of monks are present on the tile. As an alternative to constructing, monks can also engage in toil or study in completed location depending on the time of day, or can start praying. All these actions earn the player points which they will then spend buying letters of their phrase or acquiring extra monks, if they have points left over then they receive blessings which can be use to add to points in later turns or count towards victory at the end of the game. 3 times a day (the day is played over 2 days) there is a service round where a new abbot (starting player) is elected. No points are scored in these rounds but praying monks are returned to the abbey and are then available for use again.
The game goes on until all the letter tiles are taken or 2 days have been completed at which time players score 3 points for each letter they have placed in their phrase and 1 point for each blessing, highest total is the winner. Dave C had a chance to see some of the game play as for part of the time he was sitting on a chair by the game guarding the door to prevent unauthorised people coming in. After Monastery which we didn't quite finish, I went off over to the Garden House for something to eat and drink, away from all the hubbub.
Returning I bumped into Roj from Wayland's Forge and then Julian, who it does not sound as if we will be seeing at the club in the near future. I played a game of something called Shout7, which is an abstract involving getting 7 stones in a row on a hexagonal grid. Following that, I met Dave again who was looking to gather Ben up and head for home having completed his duties for the day, so I thought I would go with him but got involved in the last demo of Tinner's Trail for the day, we were likely to be pushing the 5 o'clock closing time so Dave headed back without me. I had assumed I would be on the bus anyway and had bought a day ticket so that was no problem.
Tinner's Trail is the new game by Martin Wallace about tin and copper mining in Cornwall. Not surprisingly Dave had already picked up a copy earlier in the day so I would expect to see it on the table at the club in the near future. The game has been billed as a lighter Wallace design and I suppose this is true when compared to Brass or Age of Steam, but the game still has quite a bit of beef in it to my way of thinking and I enjoyed the demo game which we just got finished before we were thrown out at 5pm, having played in about an hour. I just came second in a close finish. There is a review on the geek by one of the other players in the game I played.
Also during the day I picked up a copy of Tsuro, which is a nice little filler playing up to 8 and should be done in about 15 minutes.
Sunday
On Sunday morning, I woke up with the alarm but then went back to sleep again and next I knew it was 5 past 9, so I rolled out of bed and had to rush to get out for the bus. I again arrived about 10 and this time I headed upstairs to grab a cup of tea and a sausage roll as I'd missed breakfast. Heading downstairs I ran into Ben who told me his Dad was on car Park duty so I went for a walk round the building to see if I could find him. I didn't because he had already gone down the dungeon for the morning, but did meet Gordon, Keith and Daniel on their way in, who wondered if I was already leaving.
For most of the morning I wandered around. I was given a talk on Confucius, which Dave had also picked up the day before; apparently they only had 30 copies which they had sold out before lunch on Saturday. Wandering into the Board games tournament room, (which was somewhat larger and more airy than last year) I came across Steve Perkins and Mark Stretch playing Carcassonne and observed that Mark was wearing our T-shirt. I then ran across Gordon and co. again who apparently had missed out on a game of Giant Settlers, we all headed upstairs for a cup of tea and met Alex, who used to come to the club a few years ago, and his Dad.
After leaving Gordon, I went back downstairs and got a chance to try a prototype of Ascendancy, a 4X space game which is due out at Essen. This was OK, but I think my enjoyment of the game would probably be dependent on the group I was playing with. Now it was lunch time, so over to the Garden House again.
When I headed back to the show I met up with Dave who was now off duty and spent the rest of the afternoon with him. Ben had a trip down the dungeon which he seemed to thoroughly enjoy. I succumbed to the temptation which I had had all weekend and picked up Steam over Holland (aka 18IR aka 1839). This is the nicest produced game of its type that I have seen and I think it should play in an evening.
After Ben had finished I went home with Dave. I had had a good weekend and so had Dave although I suspect his was a lot more tiring than mine. We have now of course got a number of new games to try out at the club.