UK Games Expo 2009

This weekend gone saw Birmingham hosting UK Games Expo, which I managed to attend for the first time this year.

The event is geared around four types of gaming.

• Video games (not what I expected and disappointing enough to not mention further… except that I’ve just found a photo that suggests there was more to it then I managed to find)
• Wargames (a fair amount going on, but a distinct lack of Epic — my current obsession
• RPGs — lots to see here. I managed to get a game of Paranoia in, and picked up copies of Savage Worlds and Starblazer Adventures. Savage worlds was cheap with a couple of fluff books that appealed to my desire to run Pulp games, while Starblazer takes my current favourite game system (FATE) and applies a space opera setting to it. Now I have many more games I wish to run.
• Boardgames…

Boardgames were the biggy here. I entered the Settlers of Catan competition and surprised myself by coming second. Meanwhile Declan won (no surprise there) but also pulled off first place at On the Underground and took the overall prize. Jim won Puerto Rico, and come top five in the Settlers and overall (he was the top player not to play in all three tournaments). My excuse for not doing well overall is that I only entered Settlers (quite a good excuse in my opinion), but next year I think I’ll take a punt at three.

This result means that the group of people that I play boardgames with most often were victorious at the majority of the tournaments, and took away over half the price money (or vouchers), which is impressive, but suggests we spend too much of our time doing this sort of thing.

Still, it gave me a change to pick up Days of Steam, a big collection of expansions for Zooloretto and Twilight Imperium.

With a weekend of boardgaming coming up in two weeks time (did I mention we spend too much time doing this?) I might be able to break some of them out and see how they play.