UKGE

This weekend was the UK games expo.   Which I attended primarily for the UK conquest nationals.  I finished 2 wons 4 losses, so did not do well all told.  But it was a fantastic weekend.
A run down.

Friday.  First day of the event.  Not much to do except shop and find space for open gaming.  Didn't buy anything,  but did play some games.  

Fresco is a worker placement game.  Where you are all artists attempting to restore a Fresco(!)  The interesting part that you assign all your workers in secret.  And then all workers go out in turn order.  So you could well waste actions if all the limited spaces are filled before you get your go.  You need to buy and mix paints in order to buy tiles from the Fresco for points.  We all finished our first game within 7 points of each other.  We took that as a good sign of balance.

Castles of Mad King Ludwig is tile laying game by the same guys who did Suburbia.  And it plays much the same, except now you are building a castle.  The main difference is that rather than the Power grid like set price order, and everything gets cheaper as it goes on, in this the first player sets the prices. And all money used to buy tiles is paid to him.  But they pick last, and pay the bank when they buy a tile.  Then at the end of the round all remaining tiles get 1 currency on them, which is collected if you buy that tile, and new tiles are drawn.  Being rooms the end result tends to look better than the hexes of Suburbia.  I did as badly at this as I do in suburbia.

Love Letter is a very light game of basically guessing what your opponents have in their hand.  You always have one, each turn you draw a card, then discard one for it's effect.  The cards have various powers, and your aim is to eliminate your opponent, or have the highest card at the end of the round.  The High cards tend to have negative effects (if you ever discard the highest card for instance, you lose) and the low cards have the better powers (the Guard (value 1) can guess an opponents card, if you are right they are gone).  Very light, good fun.  We never finished.  We all finished with one round vitory (you need 4).  I won the first round, so I will take that as a win.

Dead of Winter is a coop(ish) game of surviving a zombie apocalypse in the middle of winter.  The catch is everyone has their own secret objective, and one of them may well be a traitor though not always.  Each game had an objective for the colony which must be completed if you are not a traitor.  This needs to be done before the morale reaches 0 (the game end condition)  If you are traitor you are attempting to get that morale track to 0.  But also each secret objective (traitor or otherwise) will have a second condition on it, that must be completed if that player wishes to win.  And that condition may or may not be wholly compatible with the rest of the group.  So each turn you are attempting to resolve a crisis (playing cards into a facedown pile the crisis needs x icons to overcome.  Any non matching count negative) , control the zombies and gather cards representing weapons, food (the colony needs feeding) or medicines.  Two intersting thing, if you travel, or go out to kill a zombie, you must roll the dreaded exposure die.  It has a 50/50 chance of doing nothing.  It could just ause a wound.  Or 1/12 of your surivior being bitten which is death and a horrible snowball effect.  Another note is the event cards.  One is drawn by the player the current players right.  They have a secret trigger, and if the condition is met by the current player during his turn, the event occurs.  We all died.


Seasons is a sor tof card game where you are just trying to play out cards from your hand in order to accumulate points.  To pay for these cards you are gathering energy and crystals, which you can get from the the dice that are told each turn.  Each round is a year, and each year has 4 seasons.  Each turn the dice for the current season is rolled.  Each player takes turns choosing a die, which may give them energy, a summon charge (a counter of how many cards you can have in play) or the ability to turn energy into crystals (a currency, but also victory points). Energy is more abundant in some seasons, and totally unavailable in others.  So you are just playing out cards attemtoing to get an engione going to get points.  It's ok, but player interaction is very minimal.  Very multiplayer solitaire.  me and Barry played this, and we tied.  On points and on the tiebreaker.

Harbour is a very light euro game, where are collecting goods and shipping them to buy buidings.  Each turn you put your worker in an unoccupied building and use it's action.  If a player owns said building, you must pay them a good to use it.  Some actions gain you goods. Some may let you ship.  Their is no currency in this game.  You ship what you have according to the market, and then buy a building.  In order to ship you need to have whatever the market says.  for example, meat may be worth 2$ and you have to ship 2+, Stone may be $5 but you need 5+.  if you ship a good, you ship all of it no matter how much you have.  For example if I had 6 meat and shipped in the above example I would only get $2 but lose all my meat.  Each building has a victory point value, first to 4 buildings triggers final round and highest combined building value wins.  I won(!)

Legendary Encounters Alien.  Been tempted by this for some time, but seems too pricey for what it is.  It's basically the same game as Legendary, the marvel deck building game.  But with some differences.  I can't explain it all here, but we failed miserabley.  It's hard.

 Saturday was all Conquest.  Result was at the start.   My first game was a win.  the guy I beat then went on to win all his games the rest of the day.  I never stayed for the finals.  But I know he made at least top 4.  It then went horribly wrong.  faced Kith, Cato, Baharroth, Shadowsun, Zaruthur and a Ragnar.  My two wins was vs Kith and Ragnar.  Turns out you can bully Ragnar with an Armorbane sword and crushing blows.  I never had cards vs Kith, but it didn't matter too much.  I just threw units on the planets that got me wins the quickest, and I guess he never saw a doom to punish my warlord train.

Sunday was all Netrunner.  Now I haven't played Netrunner for well over a year and half, maybe 2.  I just entered for giggles.  Net decked some decks from wins from whatever the last pack I bought was and turned up.  I did much better than I thought.  My corp deck went 4-2. Runner did badly, 1-5.  Some real fun games though.  I had to fight hard for those corp wins, just installing things everywhere and hoping the agenda's didn't get run.  My best game was vs a Leela Pattel.  Was so close, but a last turn agenda score left my hq open which he hit mercilessly and scoring a win.  I did get a Ken 'Express' Tenma which was the worlds partipation promo.  Now Netrunner is hugely popular.  And the Americans haven't had their nationals yet.  I think ours might be the first.  This card may well be on ebay.  Already seeing it on there for £90+