I went to Airecon Northwest again, in the convention centre in central Manchester. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.

Friday

The usual slog up the M6, followed by a pint in the Briton's Protection.

There is room to argue with this!

Games, in what struck me as a slightly smaller hall than before, began with Sea Salt & Paper; there's been a bit of a gap since I last played this but I quickly fell back into it.

Then something a bit more meaty, Imperium: Horizons, where I took Mauryans against Celts. One of my cards rewarded me for keeping Unrest circulating, and nearly half my final score came from that and other Progress producers. The elephant-powered triremes were surprisingly effective.

Also Gaming Livestock (feat. the Great Beetle that Eats the Sun and Ludwig Sidebottom).

As the hall started to empty, two-player Fungi, for which for some unaccountable reason I hadn't produced a mini rulebook. I have now.

And finally a taut game of The Climbers, which is technically not a dexterity game but it got very close at times…

Saturday

Apparently the Rochdale Canal is "missing". The Canals & Rivers Trust is very keen to blame unspecified "thieves" rather than the leaks that aren't getting repaired.

Four player Steampunk Rally Fusion: Atomic Edition this morning, with two new players who got the hang of it quickly. Like most modern games this has been largely forgotten about now that there isn't new stuff coming out for it, but I'm finding that it definitely rewards repeated plays.

Not having played Flash Point: Fire Rescue at the last couple of Stabcons we settled in for a solid session: first with three players on the Hotel board,

then a long two-player slog on the Ship, which has defeated us before. This time I took the Strategist, who spent most of his time full up on saved actions to keep the fire where it could be dealt with.

After that, some Project L

and then more Imperium: Horizons: I took Vikings, versus Taino (who won) and a new player with the Celts. I can't really speak for anyone else's game but I felt very restricted by not being able to get rid of cards to History (the Vikings discard cards instead, which is useful to get repeated uses out of things that are normally one-offs, but bloats their deck) and instead having to hide them away in my Regions; in the end I never made it to Vinland. Even though they're one of the simpler civilisations, I find I want to play them again…

"You realise my head is now filled by a Scandinavian male voice choir belting out 'We Know the Way'?"

Sunday

This morning we went for something a bit lighter, with A War of Whispers, an enjoyably close three-player game. (If the red empire paints the city walls with the blood of their enemies, and the green with their bile… let's not ask about the brown.)

A quick round of Flip 7, which I particularly like for its purity: it's all about pushing your luck and doesn't mix in other mechanisms.

Then on to Realm of Sand, another of those "why isn't this more widely available" games: yeah, maybe not the perfect game to drive out everything else, but there's room for the midlist in my collection too.

And finally some more of The Climbers. (Of the games I brought with me this time, I think this attracted the most passing comment.)

Then home, but first across the Pennines to Leeds to drop something off with a friend. Lovely bit of road!