What I bought at UK Games Expo 2009
Jez Higgins
United Kingdom
Birmingham
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The first UK Games Expo more or less coincided with my eldest son getting old enough to start gaming properly. As we only live up the road from the venue, we've been to them all and had a really good time. (Last year I entered the Carcassonne competition and did so badly, I let him take over from me. He didn't win, but he did a lot better than I did.)
My elder lad is now 9, while my youngest is nearly 6 and so at a similar stage to where his brother was when the Expo started. While my games library has expanded somewhat over the last year, I can't really see us all playing After the Flood, Perikles, or Tigris & Euphrates together for a while yet. At the expo this year then, I didn't exactly set out with a shopping list, but was aiming to get some new games that a) we could all play together and b) weren't similar to games we already had.
Point a) meant that games need to play relatively quickly with straightforward rules and that don't require a great deal of reading during play while b) basically meant not buying another Carcassonne or Ticket To Ride variant.
Here's what we got ...
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1.
Board Game: Fluxx
[Average Rating:5.72 Overall Rank:4313]
Jez Higgins
United Kingdom
Birmingham
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Failed at the first hurdle with the first game we bought - we already have Family Fluxx, Zombie Fluxx, Fluxx, and EcoFluxx and there's loads of text on the cards. But we wanted something to play while we ate lunch, and the new 4th edition Fluxx was right there in front of us.
We ended up playing with another Dad+son+sandwiches combo, the new Radioactive Potato Creeper going round and round the table.
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2.
Board Game: COLORS
[Average Rating:6.31 Unranked]
Jez Higgins
United Kingdom
Birmingham
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Ah, this is more like it. Attractive board and bits, easy rules, no words. Ragnar Brothers and Make-A-Game were sharing a stall, and this game was set out for people to play. My son played one of the Ragnar Brothers, I think Steve Kendall, beat him and immediately demanded we buy it.
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Jez Higgins
United Kingdom
Birmingham
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Got chatting to the Ragnar Brothers - nice chaps. We talked briefly about Angola, about which two of them genuinely enthused while the third looked embarrassed and modest. While I am very interested in that game it's not currently available, so I explained my mission this year was games I could play with the kids and they suggested Blooming Gardens. The cards are beautiful and my wife's a gardener, I was in the mood to be pitched to and I liked them, so why not?
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Jez Higgins
United Kingdom
Birmingham
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JKLM's stand was next door to Ragnar Brothers and they were demoing Days of Steam. We played a four hander, in which none of us really know what we were doing, but had fun anyway. It's really quite a neat and clever game. We bought a copy, our table-mates bought a copy.
Last year we got Camper Tour from JKLM, this year Days of Steam. Will they have another travel-themed tile-laying game for us next year?
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Jez Higgins
United Kingdom
Birmingham
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Based on a brief note I'd read somewhere, I was sort of thinking about Hive. I found a copy at the Spirit Games stand, along with the rather eye-catching Army of Frogs. A short conversation later and they gently steered me away from Hive and towards the Frogs.
It's a big hit with my youngest. Not only is it a fun game, the frog pieces look fantastic, feel great, and make a lovely sound when you plunk them down on the table.
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Jez Higgins
United Kingdom
Birmingham
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The next day, we passed by the Ragnar/M-A-G stand again. My son played another game of Colors, this time against M-A-G's Simon Hall. Simon gave him a bit but as the designer has something of a moral obligation to maintain a winning record.
He suggested his Caveman as it was expressly designed as a family game. It had a nice looking board, a big bag of dinosaurs, and it wasn't expensive. Why not?
Played a couple of times so far, and the kids have enjoyed it. Especially the eating Dad's tribe with dinosaurs part.
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Jez Higgins
United Kingdom
Birmingham
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OK, I admit it. I wasn't really thinking about the kids when I bought this, because I've had my eye on it for a while. There it was in front of me, up large (and heavy) in real life, and I couldn't resist.
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Jez Higgins
United Kingdom
Birmingham
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While I was aware of the buzz around Snow Tails, I wasn't really thinking of getting it. When you already have Formula D, an Asmodee Editions racing game in a big square box fails the "not like a game we've already got" test. However, we'd watched some demo games and it looked like a lot of fun. So we had a go too, and it was. Having got us started Gordon Lamont headed off to leave us to play by ourselves. Why? Snow Tails won the Expo's Best New Boardgame award and he had to go to the prize-giving. His embarrasment at having to abandon us to our own devices multiplied by the additional embarrasment of having won was both amusing and rather sweet.
In the dying minutes of the Expo we finished our race, and with the last of the money in my wallet we belted round the dealers' tables looking for a copy. We found one, possibly the last one left anywhere. With seconds to spare my lad asked Gordon to autograph it before it was time to head off home with our mighty pile of new games.
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Posted Fri Jul 10, 2009 11:10 pm