Birmingham. Birthplace of heavy metal and the home of the Venislarn Embassy… disguised as a Library. This weekend it serves as another home, though – home to the UK’s largest board gaming convention. You’ll have to haul yourself out to the NEC to know it was going on at all, despite it occupying four huge halls, with one hall dedicated to the Bring and Buy queue alone (and I am not that far from the truth in saying this). It may not be Essen, but it has more gaming space; it may not be Gencon, but it has less Americans; it may not be bigger than either of them (it is now bigger, witjh respect to floor space, than GenCon), but it’s ours.
Welcome to UKGE 2025!
Individual attendance last year was 39 thousand, with total attendance weighing in at 65 thousand, so, yes, we’re going to need a bigger boat, and, as I mentioned above, four halls have been opened up for the expected increase in attendance – three of them have been ‘knocked through’ to make one big super-hall and on Thursday it looks… calm. I wouldn’t say empty, because there is whole load of pallets filled with floor pads, tables, chairs, barriers, display gubbins and boxes and boxes of games, ready to be acquired by the overstimulated and dopamined-up punters. That’s not my jam though – I’m a demoer, one of those peeps who give you that sweet, sweet taste of gaming action to persuade you to part with your hard-earned cash at the trade tables for that hit of card and plastic.
I’m the pusher man… well, push-your-luck man.
Only, I’m not – my stand is the Preview stand, the place where you go to play the games that aren’t even out yet, so I’m all about the delayed gratification, and what delayed gratification we have for you this year.
Only I don’t know anything about this yet, because I don’t even know what I’m demoing yet – nothing like the buzz of uncertainty to give everything a frisson. Last year I ended up demoing Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game, which, at the time, comprised of a collection of colour photocopies and cut-outs – it certainly evoked the early days of table top gaming and went down pretty well (well enough to return this year).
But before the Evening of Discovery (where we get our hands on a good number of the games we will be demoing that weekend) comes the Daytime of Preparation, otherwise known as set-up.
Thursday
Working for a well-known company beginning with A means that there is a lot of set up to be done, though most of the stands have already been put in place. Our job is to set up the Fantasy stand, a stand that will hold some of the most sought-after games to be played this weekend – Star Wars Unlimited, The Fate of The Fellowship and The Mandalorian Adventures: Clan of Two, as well as established UKGE favourites like Marvel: Crisis Protocol, Star Wars: Legion and Star Wars: Shatterpoint.
A lot of the set up involves putting down floor tiles, because as anyone who has spent three days walking endlessly on hard ground, you really, really appreciate any kind of soft terrain that you can get your feet on. It is here that I finally get to put a face to a name. One of my fellow floor layers turns out to be one Seb Hawden – yes, THE Seb Hawden of Zatu blogging fame. It’s a small world… Next, come the display materials and their appropriate frames – I love a flat-pack, me, but when you discover that one set is missing a pole/screw/base, it can get a wee bit frustrating… just a wee bit.
After lying down in a dark room and breathing into a paper bag for a bit, the issue is resolved and the display banners arrive. Each stand is mapped out in a certain way, so it is vital that the right banners go to the right frames… which explains why my friend Nick spends the time wandering around with a tablet, pointing at things in an authoritative manner. Ever the foreman.
With the tables and chairs in place, the stand looks pretty good… except for the lack of table cloths, which are in transit. They’ll be here on time (please let them be here on time). Other stands now require our attention, including the Preview stand which features… a lovingly restored double decker Routemaster bus. Well, it certainly will be eye catching. Speculation is rife that THAT new Star Wars game, the one with the AT-ATs and the Snowspeeders will be featured here, and when a three-times-the-size snow scape divided into hexes appears, the rumours are confirmed – Star Wars: Battle of Hoth has landed! Well, it will do. In August. Late August. Almost September late August.
But the hype is rael!
Now the stands are set up, the games are arriving thick and fast, and the other stands are emerging like brightly coloured fungi, only brightly coloured fungi surrounded by slightly overwhelmed and bewildered people wondering what goes where. Fortunately, we have a Nick who continues to oversee the whole operation with military precision, sending us set-uppers to our scattered stands with our respective games.
No-one knows why we have a copy of Project L, though I’m sure we can find somewhere to put it… it may or may not involve a Nick.
With table cloths laid (yes, the ones for the Fantasy stand are definitely on their way [hyperventilation intensifies]), games in place, shop stocked (so many copies of Survive the Island…) and empty boxes stowed, it’s time to dust off our hands and… head to the Hilton to find out just what games we’ve got to demo over the weekend. And meet up with a whole bunch of old friends.
The Thursday before the Expo officially starts is pretty much the calm before the storm, but there are still a few peeps around, either punters wanting to be here as soon as or retailers who have come in for the events run by distributors and producers to give them a preview of ‘the hotness’. We’re just here to play, and also pick up our new t-shirts (very stylish and slimming black, with the new logo to one side).
My table has a number of interesting looking games, but the most stylish is Take Time. You know a game is new when it doesn’t have instructions in the box, and Take Time is one of those games. Fortunately, there is a helpful designer on hand to do the teach. It turns out that this is a puzzly cooperative blending The Mind and The Crew, with a stylistic dash of Mysterium. The idea is very simple – arrange six piles of cards around a clock face so that they go in ascending order. Only a couple of problems. One, most of your cards will be played face down; two, some of the slots around the clock face have very specific requirements. Suspenseful fun, and with 40 clock faces to complete, a lot of game for your hard-earned cash.
But not just yet, because most of the games being previewed over the weekend are destined to be released just in time for Essenspiel. One day the industry will take UKGE seriously… one day…
I have to confess that my ability to absorb much more in the way of rules is impeded… it’s been a long day and I am starting to slide into a fugue state. Luckily, Rich shakes me from my trance-like state, lets me know he’s off and asks if I want a lift. I don’t need asking twice.
Back at the hotel, refreshed by some well received food (I mean, we had to get it and everything), there’s just enough in the tank for a quick game of something. Tonight, it’s The Gang, described as ‘co-operative poker’, where players have to correctly guess where their Hand will be in the standing. It’s hilarious, because everyone is convinced that they have the worst hand and no-one wants to grab the high chip. It may also involve strong language and potential violence – fun for all the family!
Friday
“No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” Helmuth von Moltke
“Everyone has a plan, until they get hit.” Mike Tyson
I’d like to say that all is quiet, until a slight tremor can be felt and a low, barely perceptible rumble that slowly grows to the sound of tens of thousands of feet pounding their way into the hallowed halls of the Hobby. Actually, I wouldn’t, because that sentence read really badly and also because the demoers’ coach has been delayed, so we arrive at the same time as the punters. Oops. I’m sure all will be well.
Surfing the crowd to catch the bus before the wave of peeps breaks, we quickly determine who is going to do what and what is going to go where. On the top deck go the smaller games as the tables are smaller – Duplik, Agent Avenue, [a two player card game called ‘somethingcardia’ whose name escapes me] and… Ink?
Ink is gonna have issues as it is not the smallest of games, but it is one of interest – a tile-laying game that bears a kinship with drafting games like Azul or Sagrada, but has little ink bottles that have to be… dealt with. Yeah, I didn’t get a chance to demo this one, but it looked interesting. The other three games, I did get a chance to demo.
Duplik is a drawing game where it’s all about the detail – one person describes against a sand timer, the other players draw and everyone scores based on what details have been included in the picture – let’s just say that as a draughtsman, I make a good writer. Good fun though.
Agent Avenue is one of those deceptively tactical games that looks dead simplistic to start with. A two-player chase game where each player takes it in turns to play two cards from their hand in front of them: both different, but one face up, one face down. The other player chooses. What makes the game crunchy is that there are three numbers for moves on the front: the first if it is your first card; the second if the second; the third if the third. With some cheeky cards and a Zootopia vibe, it could be one to watch.
I wish I could remember the name of the Cardia game as it was a very interesting little number. Two players, each with the same deck of cards, play a card from their hand, which has an attack value and an effect. The player with the highest attack value wins the point; the other player activates the ability. It reminds me of Vale of Eternity in that it has a TCG feel without the TCG price tag, and has a lot of card synergy. And I still can’t remember what it’s called.
There is also one very big attraction at the top of the Routemaster bus: the view. Children are demanding their parents that they want to go on the bus, and with the presence of so many spare seats, they’re not arguing. It’s also slightly cooler up here, compared to the rest of the hall, so another reason to be up there. It’s a handy place to look out for lost friends, glimpsed stands and landmarks. And it shows how gosh-darned big the place is – you can just see the far side of Hall 2 from here, but most of hall 4 is cut off by a big wall. The geek shall indeed inherit the earth.
There is a wee problem with being on top of the bus: it’s a bit wobbly. Every time someone goes up or down the stairs, the whole top deck moves. So much so that one player has to leave due to motion sickness. Oops. I’d better go downstairs to add my weight and stability to the bottom deck.
If the top deck is slightly cooler, then the bottom deck is… infernal. I am glad for our new lightweight t-shirts and the fact that we have been given three of them, as I am perspiring heavily through mine after a few moments, and I don’t think opening a window will help. Despite this, the games continue. Down on this floor, we have Take Time (see above), Stitch: The Fix for 636, Star Wars: Super Teams and Brick Like This.
Take Time I’ve already… taken time over, so I’ll go to Stitch: The Fix for 636. It is, in essence, a re-skinning of Love Letter, but with a Stitch related mechanic where a player can end up with either Stitch or Experiment 636, and depending on what card is played, can result in their loss or success. If you know Love Letter though, you will know this, and if you know Love Letter and want to introduce Love Letter to a younger audience, then this might be a good way in.
Star Wars: Super Teams is a racing game that looks a bit like Micro Machines and plays like a less complex version of Heat: Pedal to the Metal or Flamme Rouge – actually, considering the fact that each player controls two vehicles, it’s more FR than Heat, though heat is appropriate for the atmospheric ambience of the bus. In a hollowed-Taunton-shell, players play cards from their hands to move either your or your opponent’s vehicles to make your vehicles go zoom and your opponent’s go gloom – you can get them stuck in Asteroid belts whilst getting yours in hyperspace. Simple but fun.
The one that is getting the most attention, though, is Brick Like This, the soon to be released Lego party game. Brick Like This is a Team game, not a million miles away from Duplik: one person from each team takes a card that is worth 5, 6, 7 or 8 points, which also corresponds to the number of bricks needed to build it. They then describe the design on the card to another player, who has to build it using the bricks provided (there are enough, but don’t lose any). The describer can use colours and numbers when describing the bricks, but can’t point at them. The first team to complete their model then flips over a sand timer, which limits the amount of time the other team(s) has to complete their model. Succeed, and the points are yours. Though we don’t have them out for the demo, there are additional condition cards that can be played as well – like you can’t say colours or you can’t use your thumbs (impossible).
Friday seems to be so much busier this year, amazing considering the gorgeous weather we are enjoying – I say enjoying; it’s not much fun on the bottom deck. Luckily, we are all given a break from the bus as the head of said board game corporation is being interviewed by Sky – fancy – and we all need to get off the bus because when anyone moves, it wobbles. Lessons to be learned for next year.
So I get a chance to have a look at what’s set up outside the bus. There are copies of SETI and War for Arrakis out and they look impressive, but they pale in comparison next to the scaled-up version of Battle of Hoth – I mean, who wouldn’t be itching to get at those oversized AT-ATs – more on that later.
We do get an hour for lunch, which is nice, so I get a chance to wander around… about a third of the halls. Yikes. I am ‘being good’, which means that I am curbing my spending (saving for holidays), though there are some items of interest – Molly House has a big display, a game based on the underground LGBTQ+ community in Georgian England, designed by Cole Werle, best known for Root, Arcs, Oath, Pax Pamir and John Company. Interesting but very pricey.
More in my price range are the offerings at the Rebellion stand. Joyride has been one of my favourite games of this year, and I have been picking up extra cars for it, because why not. But now, joy of joys, they have a new double-sided board with two new tracks on them – and one of them has a vol-ca-no! Yeah, that might be coming home with me.
Once lunches have been had, interviews concluded and expeditions embarked upon, we are back on the bus for the last part of the day – thank goodness for the plentiful supply of water, or making it would have been a close-run thing.
Back on the coach, there is the general feeling that, fun though today has been, it has been knackering and that it has been the busiest Friday yet. Saturday might be a bit full on.
The day ends with one of number staying on at the NEC, so us hotel dwellers take advantage of this to nip out and get a curry at the Peg and Grill, which is just around the corner and very good indeed (they also have Jute IPA, which is quite literally brewed just down the road from me) – the hot Chicken Bhuna is [mwah!] perfection! – then return to the hotel for a game of Innovations, one of the most complex (and ugliest) small box games ever, IMHO. I lose, but not too badly, and do get to play the Atomic Energy card… and don’t destroy everything. Lessons learned.
Right, early days – stay tuned for more stuff about card games, dice games and THAT game – ice, ice baby!
