UK Games Expo 2023

On Friday the 2nd of June, 2023, UK Games Expo returned to the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, England.

 

 

I got myself a ticket for all three days of the event (Friday the 2nd until Sunday the 4th), and travelled there with my friends, Richard and Chris. Richard and I were also to play in The Birmingham Brawl (a competition of the fantasy miniatures wrestling game, Rumbleslam from TTCombat), on the 3rd, and three three of us, along with three other friends, were to crew a virtual star ship, in the UK Star Ship Simulator, on the last day of the Expo.

My friend Ben, had done a sterling job, organising accommodation for 16 of us. The main draws were that it was affordable, available (both things which are difficult to come by in Birmingham during Expo) and had a large room in which we could play games!

By the time that Chris, Richard and myself arrived on the Thursday afternoon, the gaming was already in full swing. A Game of Saint Petersburg swiftly followed. 

 

 

After a while, we decamped to the NEC to pick up our tickets, and for those who had items to drop off at the bring-and-buy, to do so.

    Those assembled, split into two groups. One of which opted to go and get dinner, while the rest of us found a bar!

    After this, we reassembled in the cinema for a preview of Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse. I hate spoilers, so won't give anything away about the movie.

When the film had ended, we returned to our accommodation where, among other things, borrowing extra dice from another game, we had an epic, and very fun, nine-player game of Tumblin' Dice.

Friday saw the first day of the Expo itself.

 

    There were three halls this year, two of which were full of traders and demonstration games, whilst the third was set aside for tournaments and the ever popular bring-and-buy.

 

    After having a wander around Hall 2, Richard and I decided to check out the bring-and-buy, as the previously huge queue had somewhat subsided. The bring-and-buy itself was a little overwhelming, a great deal bigger than the last time I attended Expo in 2017.

    After over an hour of searching, I managed to find myself a couple of bargains.

After the bring-and-buy (and some lunch), the two of us finished having a look around Hall 2 and moved onto Hall 1.

One of the great things about UK Games Expo, is the many demo games that are being hosted.

    Pre-empting our forthcoming Rumbleslam tournament, Richard spotted a wrestling themed card game, All Time Wrestling, that he was keen to try out. So we gave it a go. The guy demoing the game explained the rules and gave us some useful gameplay tips. Sitting next to us, was a fella named Mohamed, who as it turned out, was none other than the game's designer!

    I had also seen a game I wanted to try as I had toyed with the idea of helping to fund the Kickstarter campaign for it, and had watched a game-play video of it. It's called NEXUS: Arena Combat System. The premise of the game is that you're a fight promoter on a star ship, pitting your combatant (known as a helot) against those of the other players. The components are high quality, with all the helots, crates, pillars, and flaming braziers, pre-painted. 

The demo game was fun enough (despite the fact that we didn't get to finish it as the halls closed for the day before any of us (Richard, myself, or the demo guy) had achieved victory), but I in no way thought it was worth the hefty £121 price tag they were asking for it.

On the way out, I got Richard to take my photo in front of a huge model of an Ultramarine, Space Marine, Terminator (from Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 setting).

Friday night saw more gaming back at the accommodation, and Richard, trying to finish painting the models that he was going to use the next day, all the while being distracted by...well, games.

Saturday saw Myself and Richard heading straight to Hall 3 to try and find the location of the Birmingham Brawl (the Rumbleslam tournament that we were to play in).

    Fortunately, this was on the table to attract our attention!

There were sixteen spots in the knockout tournament. However, one person couldn't make it, so the way that the competition was structured, meant that one person would have a bye in their first round and get through to round 2 without having to play in the opening stage.

    It just so happened that Richard got the bye. I, on the other hand, got knocked out in the first round! I did play a second game though, just for fun, against a guy who had also been knocked out in round 1. (I lost that game too!)

    Here's a picture of my team (albeit a bit blurry).

(From left to right: Amazonian Grappler, Treeman, Gravedigger, and Amazonian Brawler.)

    Richard got through to the final, in which some questions about a rule pertaining to his team arose. I won't go into the minutiae of it, I'll just say that Richard was playing the rule exactly as it was written, but that might not have been how the designer of the rule intended it to be used. (We reckoned that an official errata entry would be forthcoming about it.) Richard and his opponent, along with the tournament referee, all came to a mutual agreement about how to proceed however, and in the end, Richard came out victorious.

The excuse that I came up with for not winning was that, being a vegan, I couldn't accept a prize that was made, mostly, of leather...and that, being a vegan, I probably wouldn't have been strong enough to lift it anyway!

After the tournament, we returned to Hall 1, where, among other things, we went to see wrestling fan , and aforementioned designer of All Time Wrestling, Mohammed. He asked us if we'd like to try out the prototype of the second edition of a board game he had designed called Conqueror: Final Conquest. We did, and agreed to meet him in the Playtest area the next morning.

Richard and I wandered around the rest of Hall 1, and, among other things, came across the area of games company Gale Force Nine. A few things caught our eye, including the soon to be released, Star Trek: Away Missions. 

I initially didn't like the look of the miniatures in the game, as they had a kind of, what I'd describe as an animation ascetic, with exaggerated features. However, that look worked with the look of the board pieces and the game-play feel.

    The core set, themed after The Battle Of Wolf359 (which any Trekkie will know was when a Borg Cube destroyed a Federation fleet on it's way to attack Earth), sees (in one of the game's scenarios) Federation officers, aboard the Enterprise-D, attempting to repel a Borg incursion. One of the players, plays as Commander Riker, Lieutenant Commander Data, Lieutenant Worf (my favourite Star Trek character) and the annoying Commander Shelby. (According to the guy showing us how to play, I wasn't the first person playing a demo that day, that had commented that Shelby was annoying! (Also, while we were playing, a couple wandered over and one of them also, commented the same!)) The other player plays as the dreaded Borg.

    The game is played over three rounds and has players scoring points by achieving objectives that they have on a hand of cards. In addition to these cards, each player also holds cards that may give them an advantage in achieving those objectives.

    It was fun but (despite there also being a scenario, that has the Enterprise Crew exploring the Borg Cube) I wonder how much replay-ability it might have.

Sunday saw Richard and myself heading to the Playtest area as soon as we got to the NEC as, at 11, we had an appointment to crew a star ship in the UK Star Ship Simulator!

We met up with Mohammed, who took us through the rules of the second edition of his game, Conqueror: Final Conquest.

The three of us, Richard, Mohammed, and myself played as ancient empires attempting to assert ourselves across Southern Europe and North Africa.

    We each started with a hidden objective card. Unfortunately, mine encouraged me to attack Rome. (Richard was playing as the Romans!) My empire, the Carthaginians crossed the sea from North Africa in attack. Unfortunately, by the time I did so (having spent a few turns improving my unit numbers and empire's abilities), Richard had expanded into the south of Italy and South-West into Sicily, and was able to out-flank my advance.

    After my unsuccessful foray into Europe, I decided to swap my objective card for another, mystery one. This one, it turned out, would reward me for expanding across North Africa. Something that I had already started to do!

We didn't get to finish the game however, as Richard and I had to rush to The Hilton to, along with four other friends, to crew the Star ship Artemis.

I was looking forward to the UK Star Ship Simulator as it was something that had piqued my interest since I first saw it at the UKGE in 2016.

    Due to some technical issues, our "ship" was running half an hour late. This, though, allowed us a lengthy discussion as to who would perform which role on the crew. I ended up as captain!

    When we "boarded" The Artemis, we found that there were still some technical issues going on. Only one of the four large screens that, in Star Trek would have made up the main viewer, was working. And Chris, our communications officer had to use a lap top rather that the bespoke console that the other bridge officers had access to.

    I won't give any spoilers as to the content of the scenario, but I will say that we failed our mission!

After this, our crew dispersed, and Richard and myself returned to Hall 1.

We though we'd try out a comic book themed dice manipulation game called Kapow!, from Wise Wizard Games, the company that released the excellent deck-building card games, Star Realms and Hero Realms. We played two games with the "Volume 2" set. Despite the game featuring things that I love (comic book characters and dice (which can be customised and manipulated through gameplay), I was underwhelmed by the game itself.

One of the Kapow! player boards and screens (with the life counter to the left). It looks more complicated than it actually is.

After a bit more shopping and wandering around, we met back up with Chris and headed back to London.

The whole event and "extra-curricular gaming" were great fun. I'm looking forward to going back next year!

Star Trek The Experience.

Way back in 2008, I went to Las Vegas in the USA. Now, while I loved the atmosphere of the place, I don't gamble, so a lot of the entertainment was lost on me. I did however visit The Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon which were both pretty cool. Within Las Vegas itself however, the best thing that I did was visit Star Trek The Experience.

Star Trek The Experience was an attraction in the Las Vegas Hilton from 1998 to 2008. For loads of information on it you can view the Memory Alpha page for it by following this link.

The main part of the attraction were a couple of, well, experiences, that rivalled anything that Disney or Universal Studios have to offer. Obviously, whilst in those you couldn't take pictures (not that I'd have wanted to as I was too busy enjoying them), but hanging around waiting for them to get running, in the Star Trek area, I was able to snap away. So here are some of the pictures that I took that day. (I've had to lighten some of the photos so that the images are actually visible, so apologies for the graininess of some of them.)

The Enterprise NCC-1701, the Constitution Class refit, that first debuted in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Picard's Enterprise. The Galaxy Class NCC-1701-D.

Voyager.

Whilst waiting for the experiences I met a couple of people from the Star Trek universe. One was this Klingon. On hearing my accent he said to me

    "You're English! You had a mighty empire...once!"

His profile on the Star Trek The Experience website said that he had travelled back to the 21st Century from a Time Station. (Apparently with the intention of insulting holiday makers.)

I also met this fellow. A Borg who had been rescued from The Collective and was trying to regain his individuality.

Talking of The Borg, they also had a prop replica of what was left of one incarnation of The Borg Queen after its demise in Star Trek: First Contact.

And back to the Klingon's, another prop replica. This time the bat'leth known as The Sword Of Kahless.

And, the Klingon Bird Of Prey.

Best And Worst Games Of 2022.

On my boardgames club's (Isleworth Boardgamers) forum on Boardgame Geek (possibly the most exhaustive resource about boardgames on the 'net), at the end of every year, our members sum up their thoughts on gaming over the past 12 months, with a focus on new or new to us, games.

Here are my somewhat rambling thoughts on the subject.

All the links in this post will take you to the appropriate page on Boardgame Geek.

Top Games That I Had My First Play Of In 2022.

Marvel Crisis Protocol.

I bought the core set of this this in 2020 and have been slowly adding to it with some of the expansion boxes. I didn't get to play it until last year though. It is absolutely brilliant. The representations of the characters are bang on. (I was a huge fan of Heroclix some years ago but somewhat frustrated with the generic powers and abilities that the characters in that game possessed. MCP doesn't suffer that problem in the least.) The game-play is simple to learn but with each character, comes more complexity with their individual abilities and the way in which they synergise with each-other. 10/10

My, so far, only fully painted character model for MCP - Ultron (from the core set).

Red Alert - Space Fleet Warfare.

A game that I'd been looking at for years. I was only put off by the rather high price tag and less than great models. I finally got to play it last year though. It's great! It is part of the Commands And Colours series by Richard Borg which include Memoir '44 and Battlelore. The only downside to it are its rather homogeneous looking starship models. These do not detract from the game-play however, as each unit (when deployed on the table) also will have a token with it that gives the players, at a glance, the details of that unit. 9.5/10 (the point five off of a full score is only due to the models.)

The set up at the start of the second scenario.

Scout.

A lovely little game from Oink. The theme is totally irrelevant as it's a game about numbers which tickles my sweet spot. (I want to point out that not all games about numbers tickle my sweet spot but this one is really satisfying.) 8/10

Undaunted: Normandy.

A mix of war game and deck-builder. It shouldn't really work but does, really rather well. I've only played the first two scenarios so far but am looking forward to trying them all. You can play as either the U.S. or German forces and the game's asymmetry allows for even more longevity from a scenario based game than might otherwise be so if the forces and objectives involved for both players were identical. 8/10

Top Game That Was Released In 2022.

Reload

This game was touted to me as the board game version of Fortnite. I've never played Fortnight but it did look somewhat interesting so I thought I'd give Reload a go. I played in a three-player game and enjoyed it very much. You play as an enhanced human (each of the different characters have a different special ability), competing in a televised death-match on an island that gets more and more dangerous as you advance through the game. Reload has a very innovative scoring mechanism, whereby you add different sized chits to a score-track depending on what achievements you complete during the game. The first payer to fill their track wins. 8/10

Best Expansions.

Marvel Crisis Protocol. - Punisher And Taskmaster.

This was released in 2020 but I had my first play with The Punisher in 2022. I've not used Taskmaster yet but The Punisher is incredibly fun. You can gain “Vengeance Tokens” when an allied character's card is flipped or they are taken out of action, which can then be used to boost your attack. Also, You can blow up pieces of scenery, with pre-planted booby traps, which can damage enemy characters who have wandered too close. Or just coldly gun down your enemies. All very Frank Castle. 10/10

Star Wars: Outer Rim - Unfinished Buisiness.

This gives you more content for an already awesome game. I played as Jyn Erso from the brilliant movie, Rogue One. 10/10

Biggest Disappointments.

Gladiatores: Blood For Roses.

I Backed the Kickstarter for this (twice (the first time funding failed)) and was so happy when it went into production. I got around to playing it last year. All the mechanics, on paper, seemed solid, but they just didn't come together to form a great (much anticipated by me) game. 2/10

Lucky's Misadventures.

The premise is that, whilst out walking your beloved dog, the eponymous Lucky, he chases a character called Pumpkin Jack through a portal into a realm know as Oddtopia. Players attempt to achieve one of three instant win conditions or amass more points than their opponents by the time the “Fate Deck” has been played through twice. Another game where the game-play seems like it will be a lot of fun after reading the rules but that fails to deliver on that assumption. 1/10

Best Convention/Show.

I went to three games conventions/shows this year SELWG and Warfare (both wargames based) and Dragonmeet (which combined role-playing, board gaming and a small amount of miniatures-based gaming.). All were good. Warfare, in Farnborough maybe due to the novelty value (as it was my first time going), plus the fact that I was able to pick up loads of boosters for the now discontinued game TANKS, for just £3 a piece tops this list. Not to say that SELWG wasn't great fun too. I was able to find all the paints I needed for various gaming projects, plus the correct water-slide transfers for my TANKS tanks. Dragonmeet continued to get bigger (as it has been doing almost yearly since it was taken over by games company Modiphius) and I got to play the new Terminator role-playing game from Nightfall Games.

Best Miniatures That I've Painted This Year.

This isn't about my best paint-jobs of the year, but rather about the nicest models out of all the ones I've painted in the last 365 days (which isn't actually that many). This award goes to Otherworld Miniatures' Hob Goblin Warriors. They are metal, which for a start is good in my book, as I much prefer painting metal models over plastic or resin ones, and are just great sculpts. Otherworld Miniatures' models are inspired by early roleplaying games and, just this week, I used my hobgoblins to ambush my players' characters in Port Blacksand in my Advanced Fighting fantasy campaign.

Dice Quiz.

If you've read my previous post, you'll know that, while my Wednesday night games club, Isleworth Board Gamers was on hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some of our members posted quizzes and such on our BoardGameGeek forum. You might even have had a go at solving the crossword in that blog post. Along with that crossword, on BGG, I posted a quiz entitled "Look At The Dice, Name The Game." I thought I'd repost it here so a wider audience can have a go at it.

Some of the games are well known, some fairly obscure. Nonetheless, if you guess the game from the picture alone, you get 2 points but if you need to use the clue (looking things up on-line or on BoardGameGeek at this point is fine), you get 1 point. There are a total of 24 points on offer. I've put all the clues after all the pictures so that you can have a good look at all the dice before you resort to the clues (if indeed you need them). The answers are at the very bottom of this post. Good luck!

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

CLUES.

1. Board-based World War Two wargame from Days Of Wonder.

2. Co-operative adventure game from Themeborne Ltd, inspired by Fighting Fantasy Books.

3. Gladiatorial combat with pre-painted, metal miniatures from em4miniatures.

4. Word Game by Reiner Knizia from Big Potato Games.

5. World War Two air combat game from Warlord Games.

6. Fantasy Flight's hugely successful space combat game that uses the Flightpath System.

7. Wizkids' less successful space combat game that uses the Flightpath System.

8. Board-based sci-fi wargame from Braincrack Games.

9. Steam-powered robots play sport in Privateer Press' Warmachine setting.

10. Dice-drafting superhero game from Wizkids.

11. Discontinued fantasy wargame from Fantasy Flight.

12. Egyptian-themed abstract strategy game from Yay Games.

ANSWERS.

1. Memoir '44.

2. Escape The Dark Castle.

3. Ludus Gladatorius.

4. Clickbait.

5. Blood Red Skies: Battle Of Britain.

6. Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game.

7. Star Trek: Attack Wing.

8. Farsight.

9. Grind.

10. Marvel Dice Masters: Avengers Vs X-Men.

11. Runewars Miniatures Game.

12. Ominoes.

Games Crossword.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, my usual Wednesday night board games club went on hiatus. During this time, members kept in touch using our forum on the great website that is BoardGameGeek. Among other things, some of our club members posted quizzes. Inspired by this, I decided to get in on the act and came up with this crossword.

All the answers relate to games in BoardGameGeek's top 500 except for one which is way doewn the list but fitted so nicely into the grid.

You will probably need to copy the image below and print it out. Please don't write on your screen with a permanent marker. 

Answers are at the bottom of this post. Enjoy.

ACROSS.

5. Part of a plant which attaches it to the ground and provides water and nourishment. (4)

7. Lay tiles to help build this walled French city. (11)

10. See 6 DOWN.

13. (And 4 ACROSS) Wizard paladin. (4,6)

14. Alloy of Copper and Zinc where UK Games Expo was in 2019. (5,10)

15. (And 9 DOWN and 20 ACROSS) Epic occidental route. (5,7,5)

18. Joan Of Arc was Maid of here. (7)

20. See 15 ACROSS.

21. (And 17 DOWN) A single thing is all. (4,3)

22. Abbreviated year of this memorable recreation of the D-Day campaign. (9)


DOWN.

1. Grim Reaper's farming implement. (6)

2. (And 16 DOWN) Terror in Lovecraftian town. (6,6)

3. Ready, steady, __. (2)

4. See 13 ACROSS.

5. Collect tiles before the sun god stops you. (2)

6. (And 10 Across) Making the red planet like Earth. (12,4)

8. A long time ag in a galaxy far, far away, roll dice to decide your fate. (4,4,7)

9. See 15 ACROSS.

11. Dark place of safety. (10)

12. Natural environment of organism. (7)

16. See 2 DOWN.

17. See 21 ACROSS.

19. Spanish blue. (4)

ANSWERS.

ACROSS.

5. Root.

7. Carcassonne.

13. Mage Knight.

14. Brass Birmingham.

15. Great Western Trail.

18. Orleans.

21. Just One.

22. Forty-Four.

DOWN.

1. Scythe.

2. Arkham Horror.

3. Go.

4. Ra.

6. Terraforming Mars.

8. Star Wars Destiny.

11. Gloomhaven.

12. Habitat.

19. Azul.

DRINK!

 A cry often shouted by Father Jack Hackett from sitcom Father Ted and a song by pirate metal band, Alestorm.

In this case however, a photo gallery of all my geeky drinky things!

I thought up this post on a night I couldn't sleep while I was at UK Games Expo 2016. It's taken me this long to get around to typing it up. I didn't sleep last night either, so this seemed a good opportunity to do it!

Oi You Mug!

I have several geeky mugs and mug-type things. Here they are.

Star Wars.

Droids.

R2-D2 and BB8.

The R2 mug came from Forbidden Planet's London Megastore. I don't know if this particular mug is still available but they have plenty of  mugs in stock, here is Forbidden Planet's mugs page and this is the front page of their website.

The BB8 mug was a Christmas present from my mum so I don't know where it came from...other than a galaxy far, far away!

Space Slug.

Breathtaking Escape From The Deadly Space Slug.

I picked this one up from a shop in The Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. It did and does, continue to make me smile. Here is the link to where you can buy merchandise from the theme parks.

Marvel.

Stark Industries.

I like the idea that someone who works at Stark Industries might have brought their mug home with them. This also came from  Forbidden Planet's London Megastore. See R2-D2 above for the links to their site.

Gaming.

Bugman's.

This is a lovely chunky mug in the style of an earthenware pint jug. Perfect for drinking strong dwarven ale from. As far as I know, they are only available at Warhammer World - Games Workshop's headquarters in Nottingham in the United Kingdom, which is where I got this one.

You can read about my trip there by following this link.

Wotan Games.

I won these two mugs at two consecutive Dragonmeets (Dragonmeet is an annual table top gaming convention held in West London) from the nice people at Wotan Games for coming first and joint first, playing demos of Camelot: The Build and Camelot: The Court.

Here is the BoardGameGeek link for Camelot: The Build and here is the BGG link for Camelot: The Court.

Star Trek.

Beer.

Way back in December 2002, I along with two friends, went to Star Trek The Adventure in London's Hyde Park. (Here is the Memory Alpha entry for the event.) Among other things, I bought this collectors set of beer. Klingon Export (which really should have been Blood Wine), Ferengi Eelwasser and Romulan Ale.

Shot Glasses.

Many years ago, I went to Las Vegas. I loved the atmosphere of the place but not being someone who gambles and being a Trekkie, the highlight for me was Star Trek: The Experience, at the Las Vegas Hilton. (Here is the attraction's Memory Alpha entry.) In addition to a drinking establishment called Quark's Bar (although sadly not a recreation of its namesake from Deep Space Nine), complete with "replicators", there were two ride-like experiences (which rivalled anything Disney had at the time) and a shop, which was where I purchased this set of shot glasses.

TREKKIE TEST: Can you spot the error in the packaging in the above picture?

Answer at the bottom of this post.

True Blood.

I really liked the TV series True Blood. Well, Series 2 anyway! (Series 1 was a bit dull and Series 3 was an over-the-top melodrama!) Series 2 though, great fun. On the strength of that, I bought this fizzy Blood-Orange drink to keep and display. This, like my R2-D2 and Stark Industries mugs, was bought at London's Forbidden Planet Megastore. (To find a link to their website, scroll up to just under the picture featuring the aforementioned R2-D2 mug.)

Answer to the TREKKIE TEST: The Engineering and Science glasses have been put in the packaging in each-other's places.

If you'd like to see some cool photos, please head over to my photography blog www.plecopics.blogspot.com .

I recently wrote another short story. This time a Sci-Fi one. I hope you enjoy it.

For centuries, The British Army has used the night as a weapon. Utilising stealth, our fighters have struck from the darkness to cut the head off of our enemies.

And so, I find myself here, in an alien compound, on a distant world. Intelligence had told us that this was where one of their generals was hunkering down.

This planet is roughly half-way between Earth and the Diurnal home-world. We have the advantage here. Due to the fast orbit of the next two planets between us and this system's sun, the rock that we're on is three quarters of the time in darkness.

The advantage we have is that, to all intents and purposes, the Diurnals seem afraid of the dark! Seriously. The race that, unprovoked, attacked all of our colonies this side of Deneb, are nyctophobic. All of the battles that they have instigated across all of the rocks that we've been fighting them on, have been during the day. When they have been forced to fight at night, they wear what we have come to call “Glow Suits”, which mark them out as easy targets.

This compound, our drones told us, was only lightly defended. Both us and The Diurnals, our supply chains stretched so thin, lack the resources to build bunkers or other properly fortified installations here. It is for the same reason that we have no artillery support, so were having to go in on foot and do the job ourselves.

So, with the darkness as our ally, we attacked. With 37 Earth hours 'till sun up, we entered the compound to no resistance. We found the Diurnals command centre lit up from the inside. Every where else was dark. With hand signals, visible due to our night-vision gear, our lieutenant signalled us to keep moving forward, then surround the building as planned. We were less that 40 meters away when it happened. Floodlights blazed on, dazzling our optics. Every one of us ripped them from our heads. Still partially blind, we saw through watering eyes, the enemy flood from the building.

Now, I'm the only one left. My platoon mates were all slaughtered.

Instead of being cut down by the spinning blades that the enemy uses instead of bullets, I was stunned with some kind of electrical weapon. Now I'm here, bound, squinting in the bright lights inside the Diurnal's command centre.

The enemy soldiers have put their rifles down and are taking off their “Glow Suits”. I've read the intelligence reports on Diurnal physiology, studied them. It has been part of my job as platoon medic, to brief my comrades on how best to kill them. But until now I've never seen one alive. Now they are unarmoured, I see how grotesque and alien the enemy truly are. They are humanoid, but twice as big as any man I've ever seen. They have bilateral symmetry, have arms and legs, a torso and a head. They even have a skeleton, red and bloody-looking, I can see it through their semi-transparent bodies which seem to be made up of a kind of pink cytoplasm surrounded by a thick membrane. It's their faces that unsettle me the most though. No mouths or noses but tiny little eyes, merely black spheres floating at the front of their heads.

Seemingly paying me no attention, they spread out in the room, making space for each-other. They stretch out their limbs creating as much surface area with their bodies as they can. They seem to be bathing in the harsh light coming from the illumination panels that line all the walls and the ceiling of this place.

A noise comes from the far end of the room, a door opening I assume. The Diurnals part, making way for two more which come toward me. Without a word, the new two each grab one of my armpits and easily lift me. They carry me out of this room and into the next. As I'm moved through it, I look for anything that might facilitate my escape. But all I see in the brightness is a bank of some kind of electronic equipment, until that is I'm dumped on my knees in front of a bed, the surface of which, like nearly every surface in this place, is lit.

The Diurnal lying here seems superficially like the others. Blinking and trying to focus, I notice that his skeleton is darker though, more of a rusty brown that a bloody red.

Another of the creatures comes over to me and thrusts a metallic box near the side of my head. Low whistles emanate from the Diurnal and an electronic voice comes out of the device,

“Heal him and you will be go!”

Now I know why I was kept alive. The red cross on my uniform marks me out as my platoon's medic. As alien as the Diurnals are, they understand this.

The Diurnal with the box gestures at my patient's leg. I see some kind of irregular, metallic patch on the outside of its membrane. At first I wonder if it's some kind of bandage covering a wound. As I watch it though, it begins to vibrate slightly. It does this every now and then and not in a set pattern. As far as my restraints will allow, I lean forward, hoping to get a better look at what I now assume is a pathogen, as alien to the Diurnals, as they are to us. As my shadow falls across the patch, it stops vibrating. Also, ever so slightly, it seems to shrink. I blink, thinking that my eyes might be playing tricks on me, but it is definitely shrinking.

I stay there, not knowing what to do. My patient shifts its weight and a high-pitched noise comes out of it. The Diurnal with the box grabs my shoulder and pulls me back so that I'm no longer blocking it from the light shining above it.

“I can heal him.” I say.

The metal box is again shoved towards me.

“I can heal him. But not while I am bound.”

Low pitch whistles repeat what I have just said in a way that they understand.

One of the Diurnals that carried me in moves behind me. Trying to keep my cool, I resist the urge to turn my head to look at it. I hear some clicks then feel a release of pressure as my restraints are removed.

Not knowing what to say next, I mumble. More whistles come from the box. The postures of the three standing Diurnals in the room changes.

Very slowly, I move my hand towards the box. I look into it's holder's eyes, attempting to look earnest. It seems to understand the message that I'm trying to convey and hands it to me. Without rising from my knees, I hurl the box at the bank of electronics on the opposite wall. Sparks shower us but the Diurnals stand motionless. Then the lights go out.

I stand but having been restrained for, I don't know how long, I loose my balance and stumble. I fall through the door that I entered this room by. And then the screaming starts. The same noise that the patient on the bed made but louder and from all around me. My hand finds something in the darkness. I recognise it as a Diurnal blade rifle.

I regain my footing and open fire expending the weapon's entire magazine. I hear thick liquid sloshing on the floor and feel a viscous wetness on my legs.

Then I see it, a chink of light. I recognise it as the dim light from this planet's only moon, visible through a hole in this building's door that I have just cut with my alien weapon.

I drop the heavy rifle, sprint for the door and escape into the safety of the night.