UK GamesExpo 2023, a retrospective
My wife and I look forward to late May / early June every year as it’s time for UK GamesExpo, one of the highlights of our year.
For those that don’t know, UK GamesExpo (henceforth will be written as “GamesExpo”) is one of the largest tabletop gaming shows in the world. I read somewhere it’s the second largest on the planet (but don’t quote me on that), after the mahoosive GenCon in the USA, with around 52,000 visitors across the three days.
If it involves tabletop gaming, it’s there - wargaming, boardgaming, roleplay, card games, family games. All waiting to be demo’d by experts, tried out with other attendees, getting sneak previews and advanced sales of new stuff, and purchasing more than you’ve budgeted for when you come across that new game you hadn’t heard of or that that hard to find boxed set you’d given up looking for (like the fabulous Burncycle).
This show is huge - three large conference halls from the Birmingham NEC conference centre and most of the conference and meeting rooms from the on-site Hilton Hotel. The dedicated GamesExpo attendee books their hotel room here up to a year beforehand as it’s literally a five minute walk from the main three conference halls and it’s meeting rooms are where virtually all the roleplaying games, the megagame and the starship simulator are played - and you need to book that far in advance to not just get yourself a room for GamesExpo but also to save up for the eye-watering room rates in place for large events at the NEC.
The slow or less deep-pocketed usually book into the on-site Premier Inn (10 minute drive plus paying to park at the NEC) or the Premier Inn down the road in Solihull (about a 20ish minutes drive).
The other major hotel on-site near the conference halls is The Moxy but this has almost no parking and room rates that would sink a lottery winner so I’ve no idea what that’s like.
But wait, there’s more!
Not only that, they also run many events and games throughout - gaming themed comedy shows, gaming celebrities (last year I got to meet one of my childhood heroes, Ian Livingstone, who signed my rare copy of Casket of Souls and this year I got a copy of Rivers of London RPG signed by Ben Aaronovitch for a friend who’s a big fan), a Warhammer 40k themed “lasertag” style game, talks by well known gaming people, a starship simulator, a megagame, many many one-shot roleplaying games run by volunteer GM’s, and a Living History village on the field opposite the conference centre where serious historical re-enactors of Viking, Roman and other historical periods spend the weekend camping in historically correct tents wearing historically correct clothing and doing demonstrations of crafts, meals and entertaining battles.
Did I mention the hall full of Open Gaming tables (where you can just sit and play, or find a group displaying the “players wanted” sign and just join in), serious tournament tables for skirmish games, wargames and card games, a Gaming Library where you can borrow games to play on the Open Gaming tables and a Bring and Buy where you can (hopefully) offload those games you are done with and hunt down a bargain at the same time?
Show Specials
The show also had a couple of special product launches going on. I don’t mean a publisher or seller doing a show special with some deep discounts, I mean stuff you can’t do anywhere else yet. The two major ones that stood out for me this year were:
Lorcana
The much anticipated Disney themed TCG had a major stand in Hall 2 and it was literally the scene of people running to get to it when the doors opened, not just to queue for one of the limited demo slots where you could actually get your hands on it and have a play, but also to buy a very limited number of Starter Sets they had for sale each day. I didn’t catch the exact numbers but on Sunday they only had nine left for sale the whole day.
Being more of a stamina runner than a sprinter, I sadly didn’t get to try or buy the game so I’ll have to wait with the rest of the world until the official launch date on 18th August.
Star Wars Shatterpoint
This was another popular demo game, although you could thankfully book a demo slot and come back later rather than joining a massive queue.
Shatterpoint is the latest edition to the Star Wars tabletop games, with this one focused on small-scale skirmish game play (as opposed to Legion’s slightly larger scale battles).
My wife and I turned up at the appointed time, anticipating trying it out - we were seated as 2 vs 2 (against a father and son), us “playing” the dark side and them the light side. I say “playing” because what proceeded to happen was a very scripted (and well rehearsed and polished) quick-fire 20 minute demo of essentially the four of us watching a guy play with himself (oo-er!) whilst he talked through the mechanics and occasionally asked one of us to measure something or roll some dice.
This was slightly disappointing but did show us enough to know we’ll probably buy it at some point as it seems an enjoyable game - if you’re an Infinity player like we are, the game is fairly similar but has enough differences to justify it.
Unlike Lorcana there wasn’t a scarcity of Shatterpoint boxes to buy at the show but this was the first day you could buy it in anywhere in the UK as it’s launch date was the Friday 2nd June.
More Games and Demos
Last year we booked onto three roleplaying games in the Hilton - a classic 1920’s Call of Cthulhu deadly mystery (where only half of us survived), a steampunky Mars-based game using the yet-to-be-published Manifold system (which we managed to turn into a scene from Wacky Races with a rocket car) and a slightly sleepy/hungover (GM, not us) Traveller game on the Sunday morning.
All were good fun but we agreed three was too many and we got nothing out of playing a system we had played many many times before (Cthulhu) so this year we decided to book onto one game, and in a system we hadn’t played before.
Coriolis
We booked onto this as we’d heard some great things about this “Arabian Nights set in space” themed game, and it’s by the ever impressive Free League which automatically means it’s very likely to be amazing. Coriolis games always seem to sell out quickly at conventions so there must be something to it.
And it did not disappoint - the five of us were essentially policeman, the go-to top team in this world, and had a drug smuggling ring to crack wide open. The GM was entertaining, the other players all joined in and immediately got on with each other (great banter!) and we finished the game with the drug smuggling ring arrested and my character rolling on the ground stunned as he’d just been shot in the groin. Youch.
Highlight was my wife playing the slightly psychotic violent cop that even the GM called a time-out on when her interrogation of one of the chief criminals got a little… intense.
We like it so much my wife went back to the Free League stand the next day and treated herself to the book and GM screen!
Marvel Champions
We played a demo game of this highly regarded co-op CCG with me as Captain Marvel, my wife as Black Panther and our adversary was the Rhino (who beat us).
We honestly didn’t get what all the fuss is about - it was very “ok” but I never felt like I was playing anything unique and it didn’t get my juices flowing. My wife liked it even less. If it wasn’t for the (admittedly very well done and integrated) Marvel superheroes theme the game would have sunk as very average in my opinion.
Null Signal Games Netrunner (aka Android Netrunner)
This excellent game has a tortured history but has been rescued by a dedicated set of people who founded a non-profit, originally called NISEI and now called Null Signal Games, to keep it going.
Netrunner is an asymmetric card game with a strong cyberpunk theme (in fact it’s origins come from the R. Talsorian Cyberpunk roleplaying game) where one of you plays the evil Corporation and the other player is the criminal hacker. The Corporation is trying to make money through scoring “agenda” cards and will win when they reach a certain number of points.
The hacker is trying to stop them and trying to steal “agenda” cards - they win if they reach the points goal first.
The game was brilliant in it’s Fantasy Flight Games version and the group of people that have taken over the mechanics and released their own cards have done superbly with creating cards, getting great artwork and maintaining a regular cycle of new cards (and tournament rules to rotate out old ones, if that’s your thing).
You can even play completely for free by downloading the rules and all the cards from their website as “print and play” if you wish, although buying from one of their official card manufacturer’s pumps a bit of cash back into the non-profit.
If you like CCGs and cyberpunk themes, get this, it’s amazing. Details of how to begin playing are on their website.
Some Hints and Tips
If you’ve not been to GamesExpo before, or feel you’ve missed out on some of it after reading the above, here’s some great hints and tips:
- Keep an eye on the website for when tickets become available for the games and events at the show - they sell out really quickly. Make sure you leave yourself enough time to see the main halls as well though.
- Book your hotel as early as possible, they won’t get any less booked and the rates will likely be cheapest at that point. If you want a hotel within a short drive or walk you’ll need to book early as they will sell out (especially the on-site ones).
- Sunday is the quietest day, but a lot of stands will have sold out of popular stuff by then but equally you’ll be able to get some bargains/haggle as the sellers want to take back as little as possible. Saturday is alway hugely busy so be prepared to have to move slowly with crowds. Friday, if you can make it, is a great trade-off of it being a bit quieter.
- On the same theme, if you can get there beforehand on the Thursday afternoon to collect your tickets, do so as it’ll save you queuing for tickets the next day.
- If you’re planning on buying a fair amount, get there for when it opens and go straight to the “Shop and Drop” service - you pay £3.00 (for the whole day - and this money goes to charity) to essentially hire a large cardboard box in a secure part of the hall. These are usually sold out within two hours of opening. Once you have secured your box you can drop off your purchases with the guys at the desk of the Shop and Drop and they’ll put it in your cardboard box - you can go back and forth as much as you like, as long it’ll fit in your box. When you’re done, collect the contents of your box (and realise you’ve bought far too much and will struggle to carry it out of the hall anyway!)
- Be super-nice to the people in the yellow GamesExpo t-shirts - although they do get some freebies (free entry to the show, some free food and shared free hotel rooms - not in the Hilton!) they are volunteers without which the show wouldn’t be able to run smoothly and effectively.
- In fact be nice to everyone - the staff for the show, the NEC and the people on the stalls work incredibly hard all weekend and it’s knackering. When it gets really crowded it can get a bit hot and stressful - just remember you’re all there for the same reasons, so just nod and smile at your fellow gamer who accidentally bumped into you.
Let’s end on a heartwarming note!
On the Thursday night before the show, Lapin Crafts posted on the GamesExpo Facebook group that they (well, it’s just one person, the super-nice owner Liv) were selling these gorgeous handmade “Dice Dragons” and she hoped they would sell the 90 she made and please don’t forget her as she was at this tiny little stand tucked out of the way in the far corner of Hall 1…
The average gamer mind then went: Cute dragon? Check With gamer dice? Check And she’s only made 90?????
You guessed, it there was a massive beeline (including my wife) for her stall right at the start of the show and she was sold out by lunchtime! So great to see a small independent business like this do that well… she posted that she then stayed up until 3.30am Friday and Saturday night to make a few more for the next day.
Well done Liv, can’t wait to see what you come up with next year!