Two years ago I took my eldest two - daughters then aged 8 and 6. Last year I was double booked and went camping instead. This year I was set to take my daughters again - 10 and 8 but the 8 year old decided not to go. Last minute my 6 year old son wanted to come - I was worried about it. He struggles to regulate his emotions at times, and is being a PITA at bed times. I am proud of him though. He did so well. More on that later.
Thursday. Day 1: Drive up to Birmingham. I arrived at my brother's place around 6:30pm, we ate, the kids played in the garden, we tried to get the younger ones off to bed , played Circle the Wagons with my eldest, then when she was in bed I played it with my brother, then the adults played Forest Shuffle.
Circle the Wagons was a surprisingly fun small card game, the kind of which I really enjoy. I looked it up immediately and it is going on my watch list. 2 players only though. Quick, however.
Forest Shuffle is annoying. The name in English is nonsense. The original German name Mischwald is very clever. Wald is forest. Misch comes from the word to mix/shuffle. The compound noun Mischwald is literally a forest composed of many varieties of trees, including deciduous and coniferous. The game itself is brilliant, and have I mentioned I am a sucker for an animal theme? I was thinking about how you could replace the trees with mercenaries, and the animals/other vegitation with weapons, abilities, armour, gear and probably have the same sort of game play. But the animal theme is just pleasant. The game has enough interaction that you aren't just building your own tableau in front of you. You do need to watch out for what others are doing, and try to remove, take cards they might want/need. I managed to score over 100 which is 40points better than last time. I still lost though.
After that game I went to bed, exhausted, but I ended up going through the preview game list and taking screenshots of games I would like to go and check out. I hadn't cared enough about that before, but my brother got me thinking. Spoilers; i didn't buy any new games at all, but did try a couple out and had a good time.
Friday. Day 2: We got there quickly. Went in at pretty much 9am on the dot - no queues because they had already gone in. We signed the 4 kids up for the junior DnD at 10am. I ended up having to sit with them this time because my 6 year old was unsure what to do and needed me there as a comfort. It seemed like he didn't enjoy it, but by the end, when he rolled a naturaly 20 he suddenly loved it. He kept asking if he could do it again later or the next day. We went for signing up for the next day. I didn't have to stay that time.
That chest turned into a mimic. We then saw a bunch of mimics - this one was the first I saw but is the least cool looking.
We ate out on the grass and watched part of the viking battle at lunch. That battle - I could probably retell the story myself now having heard it 4 times. We left before the kids could fight them though because we were booked into the giant Battle for Hoth demo game. We played a few rounds and it was a blast. Playing the real game will likely be a disappointment as it won't have the giant figures and dice. Killing AT-ATs was perhaps easier than it should have been, but actually more difficult than just tracking hit points. I will probably not buy the game for a while though, as I can't justfy £40 on a game...unless it is a rule book?? Strange.
I took a photo of this Dune game. I love miniatures.
This table just looked so good.
We found two tables that offered miniature painting where you can keep the miniature for free. One was trying out a bunch of marker pens that painted miniatures - they were pretty cool but didn't work too well for getting into small gaps. We painted a strange miniature there. Then walking around there was the Vallejo stand where you could use paint and brushes to paint what looked like Star Wars Shatterpoint figures. I painted a Magna-Guard droid, as did my son. My daughter was not interested in painting at that point.
They found a table that had a bunch of 3D printed toys on it. My son loved it so much he wanted to buy something there. I tried to teach him the idea that we should look at everything before committing to buy something first thing on the first day. He spent the day asking me about when we were going back. Right at the end we found another stand selling 3d printed toys but they cost way more! So we went straight back to the first table and bought him a Stegasaurus skeleton toy. It is pretty cool I have to admit.
By about 3pm it was time to chill out in the free gaming zone. My son ended up spending most of that time playing with the miniatures he had painted and the stegasaurus. I love watching him play.
I played Fritanga but went out after two turns. I just got unlucky. Not a game I will buy to be honest. I don't really like player elimination.
The Crew Family Adventure (I think). That was a pretty cool game. You played short challenges about how many cards you could lay to match the board there. While kind of interesting, and each round offered a different puzzle, I will not get that myself.
After eating and returning home we played more games.
One was Alibis - I helped my daughter who couldn't connect China with Fish or something. I came up with Prawn. We lost the game. It is a team co-op game. I liked it and came close to buying it.
Another game was CubeMelt. It was a blast, but again, the excitement of opening a new game probably made me like it more than I otherwise would have. If I see it for £5 I will pick it up probably. You are an ice cube trying to experience love and life before melting. Lots of dice rolling. It was a fun 20 minutes.
8 of us then played Team 7 Wonders. That was a fun time. Quite a good game really. It filled the huge table right up though!
Saturday. Day 3: This day was mainly talking to vendors, painting another couple of miniatures, my trip to the Bring and Buy. The kids fought the vikings and won. We left at around 3pm, bought stuff from The Works and then drove home. All in all a great weekend away. I have come away with probably about £20-£30 worth of free miniatures.
In the end here is my haul. I have a dice tray that folds down, which I have been on the look-out for for a little while and thought I would get one at the expo to support a non-amazon business. I also picked up the two boxes of D6s from the same vendor. I want those mainly for Chain of Command, but will use them for other wargames. You can buy 100 D6s online for the cost of one of those boxes, but they don't come in those nice little boxes. So I splurged a little. Race for the Galaxy was bought via the Facebook groups (where no-one wanted to buy any of my games). Cartographers was my Bring and Buy purchase, I checked it had a full pad of maps. Air, Land & Sea was from my brother who had picked it up for free somewhere and knew I wanted it. I saw it on Actualol's channel and like the look of it. The cards were a free pick up when entering Hall 4 on Saturday morning. I don't know what they are. The magazine is the free DnD thing for entering, and I also have two small map tiles.
I don't tend to buy much, but I genuinely like being there and experiencing the whole thing. Already planning for next year.
