UK Games Expo 2018 - Gaming Highlights

It goes without saying that seeing friends is always a huge Expo highlight, even though with more and more people getting into the hobby it's getting harder to see everyone enough over the weekend! We're all there to see the games, too, and below is a selection of games that I played or talked about over the weekend. For an overview of the rest of the show, you can see my first Expo post (yes, I've gone on about it enough to fill up two whole posts!)

Review: When I Dream card game

In a hugely competitive market place, publishers are finding all kinds of ways to make their game stand out from the crowd, from splashy cover art to fancy components to the occasional animal costume (I'm looking at you, Paul Grogan!)

But Repos Production definitely went the extra marketing-mile last summer, when they launched When I Dream into the board gaming stratosphere by literally tying it to a balloon and floating it into the upper atmosphere...

You know you need to work on your life goals when a board game makes it 20 miles closer to your dream of space travel than you ever will!

Cardboard - Hanamikoji Review

Just an ordinary Saturday night in, waving teapots at geisha and trying to be more charming than everyone else in Hanamikoji, a two-player card game that packs a big punch (mainly to your poor little brain) for such a small game. It's too pretty for a boring box-shot, so everyone pretend this is lovely cherry blossom, okay?

Shh, I was trying to be artsy...

Cardboard - Star Wars: Destiny dice game review

A long time ago, in a living room far, far away...

This week I'm taking a look at the Rey and Kylo Ren starter sets for Star Wars: Destiny, a collectible card and dice game from Fantasy Flight Games. Each player brings their own deck to the table, centred around a character (or characters) from the Star Wars universe and packed with weapons, equipment, events and support characters that will hopefully leave them as the last team standing.

Cardboard - Mystic Vale card game review

Druids, fancy see-through cards and a substantially reduced chance of ruining your game with a drinks spillage. What more could you ask for in a deck-builder? Cue Mystic Vale, newly crowned Origins card game of the year!

UK Games Expo 2017 Highlights

It's official: the UK Games Expo is currently the world's third largest board gaming convention having welcomed over 16,500 unique visitors to the Birmingham NEC and Hilton Metropole over the last weekend, including a very excited and over-caffeinated me.

Cardboard - Marvel Legendary: Captain America 75th Anniversary card game review

Continuing my little series on Upper Deck's Legendary deck builder, this week it's the turn of Legendary: Captain America 75th Anniversary. Again, I won't go into details on the basic gameplay, as that's covered in my original review of the base game which you can catch up on here.

If you didn't get enough Captain America in Marvel Legendary: Civil War, here he is again dusting off the shiny vibranium shield for his very own small box expansion to celebrate reaching the grand old age of 75. That's a lot of candles...

There's a lot packed into this little box (including a bit of time travel, which can never be bad), so let's have a look through what you get in your 100 cards:

Cardboard - Marvel Legendary: Civil War card game review

So Marvel Legendary was great fun, but that box was looking a little empty with just the base set inside. Not that there wasn't plenty of choice in the starter box, but with shelf space at a premium it would be a crime to have that much spare air in the box for too long, wouldn't it?

Luckily enough, Upper Deck offer plenty of expansion options to switch up your game (or make best use of your storage space!) and I'm going to take a look at a couple: Civil War and Captain America 75th Anniversary. I won't go over the basic gameplay again, as they're all in my review of the base game which you can catch up on here.

Join me as I hang my head in nerd-shame at how little of the Marvel universe I really know. First up, Civil War:

Cardboard - Legendary: A Marvel Deckbuilding Game card game review

Since Dominion took the boardgaming world by storm in 2008 all manner of deck-building games have been released. There's seemingly one for any theme you could think of, from novel writing to sci-fi or anime maids to mythological gods, and I feel like I've played a fairly sizeable chunk of them.

Teetering on the edge of deck-builder-burnout, what appealed to me most about Legendary: A Marvel Deckbuilding Game is that it's co-operative. Your elite team of Marvel super-hero types will fight a dastardly Evil Mastermind together, fending off a parade of villains and henchmen and generally foiling evil schemes to clinch a win. More accurately it's a *semi* co-operative game; whilst you may achieve victory over the bad guys as a group, you still get judged on your personal performance to pick an individual winner. Because there's no 'I' in 'team', guys... but there is a 'me' and I was clearly just more heroic.

Cardboard - Exciting games from Gen Con 2016

One day (when I'm a inexplicably vastly wealthy) maybe I'll make it to one of the awesome overseas conventions like Essen or Gen Con, but until then I'll have to attend vicariously through the Twitter feeds of others like a slightly geeky stalker and marvel at the shiny new games from afar.

This year's Gen Con in Indianapolis hasn't disappointed, with a huge crop of exciting new games to add to the wishlist. Here are a few of my favourites based on various hype, news and the odd pre-release playthrough:

Cardboard - Cortex Challenge card game review (with giveaway!)

Cortex Challenge is a family card game for 2 to 6 players designed by Nicolas Bourgoin and Johan Benvenuto. It's published by Asmodee and Captain Macaque who, as an aside, are now front runners in my mental competition for cutest publisher logo along with Happy Otter Games and Formal Ferret Games.

Cardboard - Codenames card game review (with giveaway!)

I've heard so much about Codenames since its release late last year that I couldn't help but pick up a copy. Initially dismissing it as a party game that I wouldn't be interested in (and to be fair, judging it by its frankly not too exciting cover), it kept popping up again and again in blogs, podcasts and YouTube videos with reviewers whose opinions I trust telling me I needed to play it immediately. Eventually, I gave in!

Cardboard - 7 Wonders: Duel Board Game Review

Antoine Bauza's original version of 7 Wonders is one of my favourite games. A clever card-drafting civilisation-building game, it's quick to explain, plays fast and the simultaneous gameplay means there's no downtime even with its maximum 7 players. The only trouble with it is that the two-player variant brings in a third 'dummy' player, which always rings alarm bells for me.

That's where 7 Wonders: Duel comes in. This time Bauza has teamed up with Bruno Cathala to create a new version of the game that's specifically tailored for two players.

Cardboard - Love Letter: Batman card game giveaway

With Valentine's day fast approaching it seems like a great time to talk about Seiji Kanai's tiny-but-awesome card game Love Letter. Not the most original of links, I know, but I'd forgotten how much I loved this game until I got the Batman version at Christmas and we've played it lots of times since! I like it so much, in fact, that I thought I'd share the fun with everyone by running another giveaway.

Kickstarter - The Dice Tower 2016

Ever-improving technology and internet connectivity have given us access to huge amounts of information and entertainment on demand. It's all too easy to start expecting whatever media you want, when you want, and often for free.

I've been guilty myself of watching content without really considering the effort that someone else is putting in on the other side. And fair enough, it's their choice to put their content up for everyone to use for free - but I think that sometimes it's nice to give something back! Luckily for me, the more choice we get in how we consume media, the more ways that emerge to help us support creators. Crowdfunding sites can sometimes be a little bit controversial, but personally I love the chance to support projects and people that matter to me - like The Dice Tower Kickstarter campaign for 2016.

If you like board games and gaming in general, you'd be hard pressed to find a better repository of news, discussion and reviews than The Dice Tower and its associated network of gaming podcasts. In 2015, Tom Vasel and the team put out over 1,500 videos along with 50 podcast episodes, providing a really valuable resource for the board gaming community.

Their reviews are top of my list to check when thinking about buying a new game. As with all reviews occasionally my opinion of a game differs, but Dice Tower reviews can always be relied on to give a great overview of gameplay with loads of objective information to help make up your mind.

They've kept me entertained through many sleepless hours of pregnancy and the first year of a small baby, so it seems only fair to give something in return (although now I think about it, they've cost me a lot of money in board games over the years!) 

I also know that most of the money is going towards making more and better content that I can watch in 2016, so that's super exciting! Stretch goals will help bring more members into the team, help with convention attendance and add some more fun one-off videos.

There are tons of cool rewards on offer for all the different levels of support, from little dice to game promos - if I had $250 spare I could even join the guys for dinner when they come to UK Games Expo in June (a little out of my price range, sadly!)

Check out the Kickstarter campaign here.

If you want to find out more about The Dice Tower, head over to their website and check out the podcasts and videos. Tom also does important charitable work, having established the Jack Vasel memorial fund to help gamers in their hour of need - you can read more here.

Cardboard - The Game card game review

Happy new year, everyone! I hope it's full of happiness and fun things for you all.  I've had a bit of a Christmas blog-break, but I'm back with new year's resolutions and all sorts of good intentions - starting with a new review!

Another exciting box arrived before Christmas from Esdevium, this time containing The Game, a co-operative card game designed by Steffen Benndorf and published by IDW Games.

Christmas stocking fillers #5: Sushi Go!

Sushi Go! is a quick, fun and easy to learn card game that I think would make a great stocking filler for new or experienced gamers alike. It's a light card game where players draft adorable sushi-themed cards in an attempt to collect sets and score points.

Christmas stocking fillers #4: Star Wars Timeline card game review and giveaway

It's less than a month until Star Wars: The Force Awakens is released, so I may be getting *slightly* over-excited. To help feed the Star Wars frenzy, Esdevium have sent me a copy of Timeline: Star Wars to try out and I thought it would fit nicely into the Christmas stocking fillers series.

My knowledge of history is pretty horrendous, so what better to shame me into learning than Timeline, a game of putting events into chronological order more accurately than everyone else. Asmodee publish the game in various educational sounding flavours: Science & Discoveries, Inventions, Music & Cinema and Historical Events.

But wait! There's a Star Wars version, you say? I know about this already - I can't possibly lose...

Christmas stocking filler #2: Dobble card game review

Dobble
Publisher: Asmodee
Players: 2 - 8
Age: 6+
Cost: Around £10

Continuing the Christmas stocking filler series, this time I've picked Dobble, another great observation-based card game.

Christmas stocking fillers #1: Jungle Speed card game review

With Christmas just around the corner my mind is already turning to Christmas shopping, so I thought a series on stocking filler suggestions might be helpful (especially to those trying to sneakily convert friends or relatives to cardboard addiction!)

For the first in the series, I've picked something that I can see fitting in really well on Christmas evening, once people start to recover from lunch and are looking for something fun to do together: Jungle Speed, a dexterity-based party card game.