Tabletop Gaming Live 2019.

And A few photos from Tabletop Gaming 2018, that I didn't get around to posting until now!

Tabletop Gaming Live is a games show run by Tabletop Gaming magazine at Alexandra Palace in London and the weekend of the 28th and 29th of September saw its second year. The event runs over both the Saturday and the Sunday. This year it consisted of a trade hall, and a hall for seminars, tournaments and a well stocked lending library. Last year there was also a room dedicated to demo tables for games but that was missing this time.

My friend Richard and I attended this year as we did the last. To start with, we had a wander around the trade hall. The trade hall at this event is larger than the one at Dragonmeet but nowhere near the size of the one at UK Games Expo. (If you would like to learn more about those events, scroll down on this blog as I've posted about them both in the past.) We picked up some play mats and health marker coins for Warhammer Age Of Sigmar: Champions. (Here's the Boardgame Geek page for it and here is the game's official site.) I also picked up a warbands set that I didn't yet own but that Richard had bought the only copy of at Geek&Buy (a convention that I will be blogging about when I've completed this post) the previous weekend.

We were watching the time however, as we were eager to play in the Kingdomino tournament. Richard had won it on the Sunday of last years show after I urged him to join me in playing in that and the King Of Tokyo tournament (more on this years King Of Tokyo tournament later). He had never played either of the games before but I informed him that both games were very simple to learn and great fun. Now, I'd decided that I'd like to win this years tournament as, nearly all of the times that I've played against Richard (who purchased a copy of the game after his victory last year), I have beaten him! There were a total of 15 players attempting to win the crown this year. On our first game, Richard and I shared a table with another friend. He had not played before but the very nice lady from Blue Orange, who were running the tournament explained to him, the simple rules of the game. The top two scoring players from each table (of which there were four) would go on to the next round. From our table, it was Richard and myself. There were a total of 3 rounds. I didn't get past the second but Richard progressed to the final, in which he achieved a score of 75, the highest that I have ever seen in the game, winning the tournament by just one point!

Here he is with his prizes, including the giant Kingdomino Meeple that was the real reason I wanted to win this year....I really like Meeples.

Here is the Boardgame Geek entry for Kingdomino.

After the tournament, we had another wander around the trade hall. Richard spied a game called Kero that he decided he'd like to try. His favourite genre is post apocalyptic Sci-Fi, and Kero has that type of aesthetic. It is a two-player game and, on your turn, you up-end your kerosene tanker playing piece which contains a kind of hour glass partially filled with brown sand (representing your clans fuel supply), hoping that you can roll a favourable result on up to eight dice before it runs out. If it does run out, your go ends there and you will have to refuel while you opponent attempts to roll a certain result on (usually) all eight dice. The dice rolling isn't as random as it might have just sounded as you get to put aside rolled dice if they land on a result that you want to keep, before re-rolling the rest. Kero features some solid game mechanics and can be played in 30 minutes. However, the whole experience didn't grab me as something I'd want to play often, if at all again. If you'd like more information about it you can check out its BGG entry here .

At a bit of a loss for what to do next, we thought we'd try out some games from the lending library. It was run by a gaming cafe called Ludoquist. The cafe itself is in Croydon, in South London. I really wanted to try out a game called Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare by designer, Richard Borg. I am a huge fan of his game Memoir '44, which is a mix of a boardgame and wargame and retells the story of the D-Day campaign from the Second World War. (Here is it's page on BGG.) After handing over a deposit of £10 to the very nice and knowledgable, Ludoquist people, we took Red Alert over to the first free table. Perusing the rulebook, I found that Red Alert shared some game mechanics with the aforementioned Memoir '44, a game that Richard, too was familiar with. However, one thing stopped us from playing it....the fact that there were no free tables large enough to hold the HUGE mat that is the playing surface for the game! Anyway, here's the BGG entry for Red Alert.

Returning Red Alert and wondering what else to try to play, I spied Azul: Stained Glass Of Sintra. The original Azul, winner of the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award for 2018, is one of my favourite games. After giving it a go, I came to the conclusion that, in comparison, Azul: Stained Glass Of Sintra doesn't measure up well to its predecessor. It's not a bad game, it's just nowhere near as good. I would play it again, just not very often. As a side note, even the components of  A:SGOS feel cheap in comparison. The scoreboard and player boards are made up of nice quality cardboard and the tile bag is as nice as the one in Azul. However, the tower (in which you deposit tiles that "break" (in game terms)) seems flimsy and the tiles themselves, while out of necessity made of plastic, feel cheap when compared to the lovely heavyweight resin tiles in Azul. The most amusing aspect for me, of the game components, came from the fact that the red ones resemble the sore throat sweet, Tunes. You can see this in the picture below.

Here is the BGG link for Azul: Stained Glass Of Sintra;

And here is the one for the original Azul.

After a sleep, both Richard and I returned for the show's second day.

We got back to Ally Pally in time for the 11 o'clock tournament, again run by Blue Orange. This time, King Of Tokyo. Last year, after my urging him to join in, Richard had won this tournament too. Nine players took part in the first round, five on one table and four on another, with the top two from each table going through to the final. I came in first on my table and joined Richard in the final, in which, I got knocked out after scoring 14 points of the 20 needed to secure victory, coming in third. Richard  got second place.

On the right in the picture below are my character, Mecha Dragon, along with his player board showing my status at the end of my game in the final, the upgrade card that I had bought during the game and the single energy cube that I had left.

On the left are my winnings, the Lollybot special character and board and the Zombify upgrade card for KOT and the New York City Defender card for its sister game, King Of New York.

After another wander around, Richard and myself sat down to play Magnate:The First City, a game that we had signed up for on the previous day. It was described as a cross between an economic game and a city builder by the guy who would teach us the rules and play along side us. At this point, the terms "economic" and "city-builder" made me think that I would find the next hour and a half quite boring. In fact, I had quite a good time. The 90 minutes flew by and I found the game, intuitive and fun. The game is a bit of a race to build up your properties and then sell them before the market crashes (but you'll not be quite sure when that'll happen). I'm oversimplifying it in the above description. There's a lot more to it but the game-play remains fluid. I squeaked a narrow win. Richard unfortunately gambled on the market not crashing when it did and the game not ending, causing him to come in third.

The creators will be launching it on Kickstarter soon. You can check it out on their website here .

The pic below is of the city centre at the end of our game.

One of the first games that caught our eye when we entered the trade hall on the Saturday was Joan Of Arc.

The 16mm scale, or as they call it "Legendary Scale", allows for large (in comparison to the figures), playing areas. The castle in this picture seems a realistic size for the humans in the game.

Here's a look at the castle courtyard.

On the Sunday, we got to try the game out. There are different ways to play the game including a war-games mode but we played a storied scenario. It involved a contingent of witch hunters arriving at a village to investigate sightings of a werewolf. Richard controlled these fellows while I had control of four villagers, one of whom I secretly chose as the alter-ego of the werewolf at the start of the game. One nice aspect of the scenarios, is that a player can have the characters under their control, undertake conversations with non-player characters, in this case, a witch, who was lurking around on the outskirts of the village, near the hunter's entry point. Richard, as the hunters, did exactly what I expected him to do, which was march in and slaughter everybody. The last of my characters, a young girl, that he picked on, happened to be the one who, by night, would succumb to lycanthropy. In a last ditch attempt to survive, she transformed into her more hirsute self and hightailed it into the woods at the other side of the village. The leader of the hunters (who happened to be riding a horse) abandoned his men and bolted after her. In the last turn of the scenario, he was able to dispatch the were-creature. It was a close run thing though. The game was incredibly fun. The rules are detailed enough to facilitate a beautifully put together narrative without bogging down the game-play. Here is the BGG page for Joan Of Arc.

The huge hydra model wasn't a part of the scenario described above but the guy who was showing us how to play the game, popped it on the edge of the village set-up just before I took this picture, because he thinks it's cool.

A closer in look at the village. A blurry werewolf (must be mid transformation) stands with her two wolf companions close as the mounted lord and his men-at-arms enter the village. And there's a hydra too.

From the hill on which Alexandra Palace stands, you can see great views of London. Here's one of them.

Alexandra Palace itself is an impressive building and the mast that broadcast the first television programs in Britain, way back in 1936, is sill there. Here are some pics of it.

I said that I'd include some pictures from the first year of TTGL, 2018, so here they are.

This was the 2018 enclosure housing the very nice people from Tabletop Gaming Magazine who run the event.

Themeborne Games, the company behind Escape The Dark Castle were there this and last year. Sometime between last years TTGL and this year's, I bought the game. It is very strongly influenced by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone's Fighting Fantasy books that originated in the 1980's and were probably my first forays into role-playing. I'm not often a fan of co-operative games but this one is great fun with massive nostalgia value for gamers of my generation. You can find the Boardgame Geek entry for it here.

Japanese company, Oink Games were there both years. They pack some fun games into very small boxes. Here is their official website.

TTCombat were also there both years. At the '18 show, I bought a fair amount of stuff for their fantasy wrestling game Rumbleslam. Pictured here are a studio-painted set of one of the teams I bought, The Cryptborn Nightmares. And yes....the skeleton on the left is wearing a mankini. Here is the BGG page for the game.

Anvil Industry were at the first year's show inviting people to build their own custom miniature from their (then) new multi-part, modular kits. I went for a post-apocalyptic theme and came up with this little fellow.

And, after a quick paint-job, this is how he looks today.

There were some big demonstration games happening at the first year's show including one based on Gerry Anderson's cult hit UFO and this one called, The Sands Of Sudan.

I took this last pic at last years show. Not because I bought the game but just because it amused me. The name of this game is very similar to the name of the T.V. host and former wife of D.J. Fatboy Slim.