Well, we survived another event! It was long and exhausting (especially after contending with the hotel’s attempt at a bed. Photo at the bottom!), but ultimately it was as enjoyable as ever!
We were overwhelmed by how many people came up to the stand saying that they loved the game, or had been told to come and get it by a friend. We even had people try to buy our demo copies of the unprinted Red Expansion!
Things got off to a great start on the Kickstarter for the Red set, and at the time of writing we are on the borderline of reaching halfway to our goal! So if you know anyone who might be interested, please send them this link and help tip us over!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/643459158/stak-bots-red-a-sneakily-strategic-tabletop-card-g
It was also great (once I managed to escape the stand for a bit) to be able to catch up with a few friends from previous years (like the awesome Mike ( http://www.whodaresrolls.com/ ) and Chris ( http://www.ukgmn.co.uk/ ) on their filming adventure, and the ever friendly DarkCleoPro gang to name but a few.
Here’s a quick run-down of the games we got to play this weekend:
1: Stak Bots!
Yes, the first game we played at the end of a day of demoing Stak Bots was… Stak Bots.
Why?
Well, with a game that is capable of so much complexity and variation, it can get frustrating only demoing the basic version of the game repeatedly! So we let loose and tried to ram as many modes in as possible. This was the beginning of trying to create Stak Bots ‘Ultra’, a mode so complex that we kept forgetting which rule toggles we were incorporating! This was the beginning, just playing with 3 Staks each and reactive play, with the grey, yellow and red sets all smooshed in together.
This was the scrapheap at the close of play!! It was a long and hard fought battle!
The ridiculous finish of the game: A Bee was used to reset a Pulse Bot that then eliminated all of the other cards on the table, which just happened to have the same power of 1! We both had hands full of cards ready to react to an attack, and enough cards on the Stak to survive a simple Shot or Reaper, but nothing had prepared us for this ending!
2: Three Cheers for Master
A fun little game that saw us trying to sabotage and squish each other’s towers of dark squiggly monsters. It was fairly straightforward to play and we chucked in the intermediate cards immediately; by the end of the game we’d worked out a reasonable grasp of the tactics and would have happily played a second time, but with the wealth of the games library in our grasp we were keen to smash through as many games as possible!
3: Age of War
This looked like a fun simple little dice game, but turned out to just be frustrating and dull. Roll dice, see if they match a card. Steal it off your opponent. They steal it back. Repeat until you get bored. Or were we missing something?!?
4: Eruption
A strange game where lava rapidly surrounds your village walls at the edge of the board, and then your village slowly heats up until you die. Quite fun as a one-off.
5: Stak Bots greasy pizza variation
This is what happens to your incredibly complicated setup when food arrives earlier than you thought it would 🙁
6: Barony
A nice light strategy game that I’d probably play again; we only realised at the end that we’d not been using one of the building types! Things may have played out slightly differently…
7: Stak Bots (yes, again!)
We got locked out of the board games library, so played some Bots while waiting for our neighbours to finish their game so we could join them in the next one.
This time we added a blind hand in addition to the normal one, that could be played only in reaction to attacks.
8: Kingsburg
Our new pals from Pegasus Spiel kindly let us join them for this game; a nicely elaborate dice game with some good matching mechanics and building levelling.
9: Mijnlieff
Levelled-up noughts and crosses, where your piece type dictates where your opponent can play. A clever little game; the demo guy took it easy on me! http://www.hopwoodgames.co.uk/
10: Wasteland Justice
I didn’t get a chance to play this one as the demo table was full, but it looked pretty cool! Made me think of Carmageddon! They’re on kickstarter at the moment if you fancy a look.
11: Monkey Butt
Basically sh*thead but with some clever card variations. Definitely worth playing if you’re a fan of the aforementioned!
12: Game of Ties
If this was a game, Mats definitely won!! It prominently features Levi Bot, his favourite (which you’d know if you came and played at our stand at all!!!)
13: In a Bind
No photo as I was busy playing! Clever little party game involving full body dexterity. Despite some adept manoeuvres I lost to the guy demoing; in my defence, I’m pretty sure wearing glasses in a game where you have to attach a card to your eyebrow is cheating! I even bought a copy!
All in all, another great expo, marred only by my new nemesis, the hotel ‘bed’!!! It was made of springs so I slept on the floor, curled up on a sofa cushion! So if I looked tired at the event, this was largely responsible!!
Hopefully see you again next year UKGE!
