RogerBW's Blog

Friday at UK Games Expo was a half-day of demos, followed by meeting friends.

I rose early and went in before the serious rush. There was a deal whereby one could get parking for all three days for £18; people were queueing to pay for this, despite the confused attendant saying they could pay later. Yeah, but when we leave at ten o'clock this evening, the ticket booths may have closed for the night, and this deal wasn't available on-line; not to mention, it would be easy to forget.

The tunnels between parking area and NEC are decorated in a pseudo-graffiti style, and psychedelically lit. (But I've never seen a graffitist paint "Drive Safely".)

Apparently this kind of thing appeals to some people. But isn't it just branded stuff that the producers couldn't sell at full price? Seems to be.

I soon got down to some War of the Nine Realms demonstrations, with the full version of the game rather than the print-and-play.

I think this is a video game character.

After I left the booth I wandered off to do some shopping, including the Crystal Twister dice tower I've been lusting after for a while, at about half the price I've been seeing it for on-line.

As a side note, in this era of smartphones, I wonder why companies bother to turn up and sell games at significantly higher prices than the mail-order companies are offering. The BoardGamePrices site is right there, and when the NEC's own wi-fi connection falls over (which it did quite often) there's still 4G. A local games shop can add value by advising you about which games you're likely to enjoy, but that doesn't apply at an event like this. I suppose some people might pay a few pounds over the odds to have the game right now, or may not have heard of BGP (though they've heard of Amazon), but it seems a very chancy way to do business. I had a long list of games I might buy at the right price, but almost nobody was beating the mail-order prices by more than a pound or so, which isn't enough incentive to me to carry a box around for several hours.

Indeed, this year I felt there was a shift away from the general retailers and towards the "our game" companies - play the demo, back the kickstarter, buy the games that we specifically make. Which suits me very well; they're more interesting.

Dated, but pleasing.

I played some Red 7 and 6 Nimmt!, but soon had to go off to a business meeting.

After the meeting I got together with other people from the 1 Player Guild, a group of players who share an interest in solo games. I'd bought The Networks earlier at a slight discount, and we played a 5-player game (and I came second, which I thought wasn't bad).

Last game of the evening for me was Startups, where for each sort of card you want to have either a majority or none at all, but you only know some of what the other players are holding. It was quite tough, and I did medium badly, but I liked it enough to buy a copy the next day.