We had an awesome time at the UK Games Expo; sadly we didn’t get to check out too much of it, but that is because we were incredibly busy demoing Stak Bots! There was a massive turnout at the event, especially on the Saturday, when there was a constant sea of people in front of the stand. It was great to see so many people in the mood for gaming!
It was also nice catching up with a lot of people we’d met during the year at other events and to see some returning faces from our launch a year before at UKGE 2013! I was heartened to hear so many people say they’d been enjoying the game and to see their eager faces as they snapped up the next set of Bots in the Yellow expansion!
I also had the pleasure first thing Saturday morning of a video interview with Liz from nearlyenoughdice.com, setup by Chris at the UK Gaming Media Network. You can watch that here. Somehow I think we managed the whole interview without the camera being kicked by the throng of passers by!
To those that I didn’t manage to catch up with over the weekend, see you at another event or even next year at UKGE 2015!!
The tournament
We ran the first official Stak Bots tournament on the Sunday afternoon, thankfully assisted by the expertise of Gary Cambell-Smith from KD Games, whose long-enduring miniature laptop saw us through the event!
It was great to see the different levels people were coming to the game at; we had some more experienced players with some custom deck construction, as well as a few people who’d only played the game a handful of times and needed to borrow a deck. Our youngest competitor clocked in at just 10 years old! He played very well and was even helping out a couple of his opponents with how their cards worked, but sadly luck wasn’t on his side and he didn’t make it through to the finals (he did however manage to beat his dad!)
We squeezed in 3 rounds in a swiss format before the semi-final, playing single Stak reactive with a 15 minute time-limit per match-up, best of 3 (or until out of time).
The final standings for the top 4 were as follows:
1st – Andrew Brooke-Taylor
2nd – Alan Banks
3rd – Jame Cruise
4th – Caterine Ranaldi
Congratulations to them all! They each left with a pack or two of Stak Bots as a prize and Andrew gained a unique framed copy of Champion Bot!
Below are a few piccies including some shots of the final!
The tournament gets underway…
The final!
(Andrew is on the left, Alan on the right)
Game 1: Andrew’s starting offence!
Alan’s retaliatory Stomp Bot.
Andrew’s Core Bot is strong enough to take out both of Alan’s defenders and win him the first game!
Game 2: A Bountiful Bot allowed Andrew to setup a couple of strong Leader Bots! Alan takes them on with Spike Bot.
Alan pitting a damaged Leader Bot to finish it off!
Andrew pushes the offensive with a giant power 7 Stomp Bot!
Alan’s last defence isn’t powerful enough to take out Andrew’s Clumsy Bot. It’s all over! Andrew wins!
Our very excited tournament winner! (And yes, technically current world champion of Stak Bots :p ).
