E-Zine

ESSEN GAMES FAIR: 18 - 21 October 2007

This is THE biggest Games Fair in the World. The 9 halls are brimming with everything and everyone to do with games, be they Board games, Role-playing games, Computer games, in fact every type of games you can think of. All the new releases by all the major games companies are displayed and on sale here.
Games for the World shared the same stand with JKLM as last year, but we also had Dean Conrad from Ludorum Games selling 'Fagin's Gang' and demonstrating his next release, 'Ice Flow'.

Thursday was the busiest selling day, as it was last year. The World Cup Game sold well, particularly with the Expansion sets. In fact Expansion set 1 completely sold out and Expansion set 2 was down to a few copies by the end of the Fair.

As a consequence of Essen, I have picked up customers in Spain and Italy for distribution.

It was good to meet Francis Tresham there (inventor of 1829, Civilization) as it had been more than 10 years since we last met. I consider Francis to be the greatest of all British game designers; wonderfully eccentric and a really nice guy.

As I have too many games already, I limited my purchase to just one - 'Here I Stand' from GMT Games - Very nice looking game about the Reformation period of the early 16th century. I was also intrigued as it has a similar game system that I have been developing for my pre-WW1 'Pax' game - lots of historical flavour.

Highlight event of the year!

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ManorCon XXV - Stamford Hall, Leicester 20-23 July 2007

ManorCon was the biggest board games convention in the UK up until last year when I am sure that 'The Cast are Dice' overtook it in terms of numbers. However, it remains one of the most established conventions on the UK calendar, now in its 25th year. For the very first time it was held outside Birmingham as the original venue Birmingham University could not offer what ManorCon required.

However, the new venue was suitably large enough for a weekend of gaming. I took along the three new 'prototype' boards for The World Cup Game - 1958, 1962 and 1966. All of them got played at some stage. These particular World Cup years are all quite similar in terms of teams taking part and format - though 1958 still had replays! Almost all games with the new boards involved 4 players as the division of 16 teams lends itself nicely to a 4 player game. Realistically, 8 is the maximum for these expansion boards.

1958 was the year all the home nations took part in the World Cup Finals, Wales for the one and only time; and they are ranked Green along with England and Northern Ireland. Scotland are yellow - sorry guys, if you are Scotland fans, you will probably be aware that your team in 1958 had good players but didn't perform at the big tournament!

1962 sees Brazil and Czechoslovakia - finalists ranked Black - in the same group.

1966, of course, will be popular with the home fans as England are ranked Black. Despite this I have played 4 games and not once have they made it to the Semi-Finals!!

If you are interested in what happened, the two 1958 games ended with France beating Czechoslovakia 3-2 in one Final and Sweden beating Argentina 4-2 in the other. The 1962 game finished with the USSR thumping England 7-1 in the Final. The 1966 games ended with USSR beating Hungary 3-2 and again beating North Korea 5-1. Something about the USSR during this weekends games.

Finally, I did get a game of Tribes and Kingdoms which, I have to say, needs to be looked at again. I am not happy with the length of the game, nor some of the mechanics. Back to the drawing board!

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UK Games Expotook place at the Clarendon Suites, off the Hagley Road, Birmingham over the
weekend of 02-03 June. By all accounts this was a successful weekend with around 1200 attendees on Saturday and 600 on Sunday. The World Cup Game was played constantly throughout the weekend by interested players who could not get enough of the game. A number of players played in more than
one game. Saturday was devoted to the 1930 tournamwnt with 6 games taking place altogether. Some surprising results as Romania won the first two games, Argentina, USA, Uruguay and Yugoslavia won the remaining games 1 each.
Sunday was taken up with two 2002 tournament games, the first being won by England 4-3 over Croatia
in the final. The second game was won by Spain against Japan 2-1.

I would like to thank Nick Kinzett (pictured below in the white World Cup Game T-shirt who helped me out tremendously by explaining the rules to all the newcomers.

UK Games Expo has been confirmed for 31May/01 June 2008.