It was great seeing you again Andy, for some reason you do not appear to have aged over the last five years – it’s probably just the beard but I’d like to think that you stepped into your own personal Tardis or something back in 2013. Thank you for being so gracious in giving in to the constant pestering to play games from two little kids (and one big one). For the record the games we played other than Spirit Island, which is the best game ever, were Hogwarts Battle, Fake Artist goes to New York, an antique copy of Plus Minus, and Catch the Moon.
UK Expo! Non-GTG stuff will be mentioned, but as I have everything GTG related there isn’t much to otherwise report.
We usually go up as a family for the Friday only as Saturday is a bit hectic and our focus is on watching a few shows and catching up with various people that we know will be there. Unfortunately our plans were nearly scuppered when the tread peeled off my nearside front tire halfway up the motorway, we were lucky not to have a blow out as it went right down to the weave. Cue a very slow drive on a spare and by the time we made it to the nether regions of the packed car park we were running tight on our schedule. We sadly had to drop kid's roleplay from our list which is a shame as they are usually really great sessions, but you do need to sign up early to get a workable time slot.
While my wife and daughter sought out the face painting (cheaper but not as good as last year) I went up the stairs to the Formal Ferret booth to grab a copy of the UKGE special Telly Time expansion for The Networks which was the only thing I actively wanted to pick up. We had a look for our friend Rob who runs the Playtest area but he was off somewhere schmoozing so we took a turn about the second floor booths during the twenty minutes or so we had remaining before our first show started.
What immediately caught my eye was Four Elements, a fun crash-and-bash ‘dexterity’ game that we first saw at last year's Dragonmeet (a London based con that focuses mainly on RPGs but has expanded to include board and miniatures gaming). Back then I had a long chat with the designer about the price barrier on the game which was fairly expensive for something that they should be marketing to family gamers, so I was really pleased to see that they had ditched the ludicrously over-produced box in favour of a much smarter canvas bag and had split the game down into a cheaper starter set with modular upgrades. So yeah, I bought the full set of pieces for this and we've had it out almost permanently since getting back.
Tried out a game at one of the smaller booths which sadly was not good in any redeeming way. I do hope that the guy behind it didn’t lose any money on his project but I was reminded again how solid and impartial development, playtesting and marketing are crucial in this industry.
Onto the shows!
We started out with ‘Knightmare Live’ which was sold out last year so I think they put on some additional performances this time. The kids were perplexed at why I was so excited about seeing this so I told them that it was basically a fantasy version of Last Commanders and that got them bouncing up and down in their seats alright. Anyone not familiar with UK kids shows of the 1980s will no doubt be similarly perplexed. The show was pretty good, there was much cheering at crappy anagrams and knapsacks and how everybody's name was greeted with "Aha! A warriors name!" The show was good but I think that the live MMORPG show from the same host was more entertaining (we saw that one last year but couldn’t make it this time). I have a nagging feeling that I know one of the cast members from somewhere, I looked them up on their website and I’m still none the wiser so worried that I may have been terribly rude in not saying hello to someone that I’ve met before.
A quick break for a sandwich and then we were back in for ‘You can't polish a nerd’. There were far fewer people in for this one which was a big mistake everybody. This was the highlight of the Expo for us, a really funny and mesmerising blend of comedy, magic and extreme rubics-cubery. Tom Crosbie played up on the awkward nerd bit but you could tell there was a ton of confidence and well-practised ability behind it. I do hope that he did not lose heart at the half-full room and will come back again next year.
One more quick break, then onto ‘The Dark Room for kids’. John Robertson runs a really funny show with lots of audience participation that kids just love, but he can be a bit sweary so it’s nice that he decided to run a special PG-rated event this year. It is a well known fact that children make anything at least ten times funnier so this was an absolute riot. I don’t know how far he tours with this show but if you see it on near you and have a chance to go, then you should.
So the shows were as always a fun time, and we were left with about ninety minutes to roam the trade hall. I finally caught up with Rob at the third time of asking, said hello to some familiar faces in the playtest area, and randomly bumped into someone that I had met at a previous con. We swung by the Greater than Games booth again to say hello to a couple of people (apologies if I missed you but you were all so busy both times that I wandered past).
We played a funny guessing game where you do animal impressions, but not funny enough to spend sixteen quid on a bunch of cards with words on them, tried out another game that I had hesitated backing on KickStarter and which turned out to be very dull and mechanical (so phew, I guess). We admired the incredible effort being put in at the cosplay area, checked out some of the artwork on display, and were amazed by how many people were at the Expo just to market themselves - I counted four different manufacturers, three artists and two writers but there were probably more. I missed Ian Livingstone at the Fighting Fantasy booth which we had to hurry past in the morning, which is a shame as I wanted to be the hundredth person of the day to tell him how awesomely incredible he is.
in terms of "Expo Haul" we came away with a cheap expansion, something that we liked and got for half what it was previously being sold for, and some dubious necklaces that will probably turn my daughter's skin green but at least she thinks that dragons are cool so that's something right? Given the handcarts that we saw a couple of people towing around I’m not sure if that means we did it right or wrong. In any case we had a lot of fun!
