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UK Games Expo: New games, old handshakes

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There Will Be Games

This weekend I went along to the UK Games Expo in Birmingham. The expo aims to be a UK alternative to Essen and is now in its third year. It provides a mix of gaming: board games, RPGs, CCGs, miniatures gaming and even a couple of rooms of video gaming, including a Sega Master System. It had the feel of a busy trade fair. Those looking for quiet open gaming could go to the next door hotel to play. There was a lot of tournaments and RPG sessions available. All that housed in the bizarre luxury of a masonic temple.

 

I did my fair share of open gaming but also hit the stands and demo tables. Here are my impressions of the new games I got to play over the weekend. These are of course all based on a single play, so bear that in mind when reading.

Crunch (Terrorbull Games)

 

Crunch (Terrorbull Games)

 

Terrorbull have been quick off the mark with their second game. After War on Terror, the next target for their satirical ? is the current economic downturn. Players are bankers choosing how to invest their customer's money to maximise returns. Victory is not decided by how much wealth the bankers accumulate for their banks but how much they sequester away for themselves. To line their pockets, players either award themselves large bonuses or embezzle their bank's funds. Embezzling money requires players to hide asset cards about their person. However, if caught in the act by another player, the money must be returned to their banks' coffers. The players hire and fire investment teams who will invest asset cards in high, medium or low risk enterprises. These enterprises will pay out more asset cards in response to certain events. The asset cards can also be used at any time for their action such this forcing another player to prove they have enough money to balance their books with an audit, gambling your bank's money on hedge funds or stealing a players investments in a hostile takeover. The game builds to the inevitable crunches where banks that lack the assets to sustain their investments rely on government bailouts to stay afloat. A bank loses trust cards as they receive bailouts. Once all of a bank's trust cards are depleted it will go bust and it's managing director is out of a job.

 

Bonus Time from http://www.crunchthecardgame.com/

 

Crunch is unabashedly a take that card game. It is both funny and mean spirited, which for me are what separates the good from the bad in this genre. This is for people who like game like Junta or Cash n Guns.  You struggle to keep your bank solvent as you have to pay your workforce from crisis to crisis with your opponent's constant harrassment. Eventually one bank's risk laden porfolio will pay dividends giving them the financial clout to squeeze any competitors out of business. The added stress of needing to find oppurtunities to put a little something aside for yourself and stop your opponents shameful thieving are the elements that make it great. Surely this game is as satisfying as embezzeling millions of dollars yourself.

 

Overclockers (Diverse Entertainment)

 

You and your fellow hopefuls are seeking to be recognised as the coolest at the LAN party. However, this ain't about your R2-D2 t-shirt, your ability to get head shots with your foot on the mouse or directing your team in Klingon. These are hardcore 'clockers who are impressed only by your system and the games it can run. It's a fast, simple bidding game where players compete in auctions to get the best hardware. This is a promising early effort from a young designer with some sharp video gaming jokes. This auction filler does just seem to be a couple of components short of a great system.

 

 Steam (Mayfair Games) 

 

Steam (Mayfair Games)

 

One of two Age of Steam reprints coming out this year. However, the designer will be paid for this version. Much has been said about Age of Steam over the years by better reviewers than myself. I am guessing most people who are interested in the idea of a heavy economic train game have had a chance to play it. As heavy economic train games go Age of Steam is superb. The new Mayfair version has much improved graphics and a couple of great new features. Steam has a new income track inherited from Railroad Tycoon that smoothes many of the calculations. The way new goods are added to cities has been improved and made a more strategic element in the new game. The game has two new maps: one aimed at 4 or 5 players and another for 3 or 4. The new components are designed to be compatable with old maps and you are provided with enough player pieces for 10 players. The game now features a more friendly version with the turn order auction and share angst removed. The old brutal version is still in there as well. All in all this is everything you could want from a reprint and is worth it for fans for the two new maps alone.

 

Trader (Cocktail Games)

 

With four players, this is a partnership game. You must work with your partner to invest in and merge businesses to make a profit. The businesses are cards numbered 2 to 6 in five colours. The number indicates the cost of a business and the profit you make from merging two of the same colour is determined by multiplying the two numbers (eg. 3 and 4 gives 12 is better than for the same investment cost 2 and 5 gives 10). As you buy a business you make the business beneath available for your opponents to buy leading to tough choices. This is an excellent example of the fifteen minute euro. It is abstract economics boiled down as far as it will go. If you like bone stock, you should try this.

 

Sumeria (Reiver Games)

 

As great leaders of men, you must guide your tribe to greatness from the dawn of civilisation. I lie. This is a pure abstract area control game. It plays in 30 minutes and is reasonably good for what it is. I personally am not looking for reasonably good in games these days. It is so reasonable and unassuming that I will have forgotten I ever played it in a month's time. Area control has been done to death and I'd much rather sit down to Shogun or Struggle of Empires. It's not like 30 minutes is a length of time where there aren't plenty of greats to choose from either.

 

Fzzzt (from http://www.surprisedstaregames.co.uk/)

 

Fzzzt (Surprised Stare Games)

 

This will be a hard sell to the AT crowd. It is afterall a euro bidding game. It does have a nice theme of building robots and cute artwork going for it. You are collecting the reliable old victory points. Each robot has some victory point value from 3 down to minus 1. However, each robot also has a volts value used in auctions and a combination of cogs, nuts, oil or bolts that let them be put to work on production lines making more VPs. Each round, robots are either shuffled into a players mini deck or they are put to work on the production lines. This is very much a euro auction game and I can sense a collective rolling of eyes but it is a good game. It is also great to see that the Dominion deck building idea is getting out there into more interactive games (if you count auctions as interactive, that is).

 

So those where the new games I played. There were other new games out there I wish I had gotten a chance to play like Waterloo (Warfrog), the new version of Ideology (Z-Man Games) and War for Edadh (WarriorElite), which was previously featured in a Cracked LCD episode. There were more euros than AT but I got in a game of Netrunner with a friend I recently discovered is a fan. We failed to get round to the planned Starcraft game. We did have fun in the brilliant Crystal Maze style Living Dungeon.

There Will Be Games
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