This weekend, just for the Saturday, I hustled my way up to the UK Games Expo to see what all the fuss is about. My brother visits every year, wife and kids in tow and they stay for a few days. Every year they try to convince me, a fellow, but somewhat more casual, boardgamer, to attend. Every year I respectfully decline. This year, my other brother of The Player's Aid fame was in the country for a family wedding. We all made plans to go up and attend. I didn't want to be left out so went for it.
I now regret never going. The freedom I had this year to wander around and play whatever I felt was brilliant. I will give a breakdown of what I tried and saw in a bit. Next year I intend to take my eldest two children. I will have less freedom, but will be able to share the love of games with them a little more. The children and family section was large, and had lots of little games to try out. The cosplayers were many and friendly enough for photo ops. It was all around a good time.
Temptation to buy Skyrim miniatures rising...
Mr brother and I played a few rounds of this. It says the game takes 20 mins, but as it stood, each dogfight was taking about 3-4 minutes. Once you get caught in the opponent's gun sights it was really hard to get out of them. There were only two small plane miniatures, but they may not be the final miniatures. I would hope for actual plastic minis of the planes.
We attempted to try another game called Air Flix, where you have planes on disks and attempt to flick them into firing positions while avoiding flak, but the guy had sold all the copies and wasn't there on the Saturday to demo it any more.
There were other games I tried, which were fun, bought one for the family, bought a set of dice as that is customary at events like this.
I will take my eldest two next year, I hope. It should be fun.
