Our Expo Experience Day 1: Friday- All the Shinies!
A brief (ish) run down of Adam and Elaine’s three day, magical adventure at The UK Games Expo 2017, held at the NEC in Birmingham and The Hilton Metropole Hotel, Birmingham. This is our third visit now to the Expo and the experience has been different each time.
Friday 2nd June
We arrived on Friday just after opening and bumped into four of our friends from Herefordshire Board Gamers who had travelled down together (Fraser, Jo, Mike and Emma). It was lovely to see them all wearing our club t-shirts, including one ‘ghostbusting’ Herefordshire Board Gamer!
We went our separate ways and had a good explore of the trade hall at the NEC. Friday is a much better day to shop than Saturday as it’s much quieter. Ad made us walk the halls methodically so we didn’t miss anything, as I kept getting distracted by all the ‘shinies’!
We bumped into Kenny from Herefordshire Board Gamers and his girlfriend Abi and decided that we must get some of the purple ‘Dobble’ hands that we had seen people sporting. The ‘demo-er’ said we had to beat him in a game of ‘Dobble’ in order to win the hands. We played one game of ‘Dobble Beach’ and he narrowly beat us by one card. We made it clear that we weren’t leaving without the ‘Dobble’ hands and so the poor lad (who looked about 15) just gave us the hands as I think he wanted to get rid of us but hey whatever works?!
https://www.esdeviumgames.com/featured-product/game-number-1/
We then met up to have a sit down and compare our loot whilst we waited for Ad to queue in the Bring and Buy. Both ourselves and Fraser and Jo were weighed down by a copy of ‘Star Wars Rebellion’! Mike had aptly bought a ‘Ghostbusters’ game and Emma was sporting an awesome new purchase ; a t-shirt depicting a cat vomiting rainbows (‘cos Expo!). Mike also met a fellow ‘ghostbuster’ and had a long chat about proton packs.
We then headed to the Hilton for a night of open gaming. Our HB crew had scored us a large, round table in the ‘Kings’ Suite’ whilst we checked in to our hotel, so we played a few quick games with them before they headed off home.
We opened one of our new purchases to learn, ‘ Legacy: The Testament of Duke de Crecy’ by Portal Games which Ad had picked up in the Bring and Buy; a game set in 18th century France, about marrying off your children advantageously. No sooner had we set up than Jo (Burdon) from Herefordshire Board Gamers and her boyfriend Tom appeared and asked if they could join us! We played a couple of games and were very impressed. I managed to birth a broad- hipped daughter which stood me in good stead. Jo and Tom then bid us farewell and we decided to crack open one of our other new acquisitions, ‘ The Pioneers Program’ by GCT which is a Kickstarter we had collected at the Expo. We were joined for this by Kenny and Abi. The theme of the game is post- apocalyptic survival. The artwork is amazing (same artist as the’ Explorers of the North Sea Saga’- Mihajilo Dimitrievski). There are elements of drafting and building up your settlement, as well as attacking other players. I think we need to have another play of this as it felt a bit disjointed and there was also no tie-breaker winning condition which meant a couple of us had a joint win.
https://gctstudios.com/catalog/pioneers-program-0
All in all, a great first day at the Expo.