A quick look at the games I played for the first time at the UK Games Expo 2015.

Hive

We stopped by an empty table and sat down to play Hive.

How was it?

Hive is a highly addictive strategic game for two players that is not restricted by a board and can be played anywhere on any flat surface. Hive is made up of twenty two pieces, eleven black and eleven white, resembling a variety of creatures each with a unique way of moving.

It this game, you’re playing and moving ‘bug’ tiles in order to surround your opponents Queen Bee.

You either play a tile or move one on your turn. When you play one it has to be next to one of your own tiles. Each tile has its own way of moving depending on what type of bug it is.

The Queen can move one space, the worker Ant can move around the outside of the ‘Hive’. The spider can move over other tiles I think etc (To be honest, I don’t remember :))

While it’s a good game, there are plenty of other 2 player games like this I would rather play. The best thing about this one is that it’s very portable and can be played on almost any flat surface.

Crokinole

Flicking disks and getting frustrated…

Must… Not… Buy…

Players take turns flicking disks on a board, trying to score points by attaining central regions. The main stipulation being that contact with the other teams’ pieces must be made in order for the disk to remain on the board afterwards. Although the game uses quite a bit of skill to flick the disks, there’s a very significant strategy element to the game. There are many different variants and rules, as this game is very old and has had many different incarnations over the years.

So yeah, flick disks while hitting an opponents disk and keeping your disk as close to the middle as possible.

Sounds easy and dull which is why I didn’t bother with it all this time. But, now I’ve had the chance to play it. I’m resisting picking up my own board is going to be very hard.

They had them for sale at the Expo. If I didn’t have to take a busy bus back I would have no doubt I’d have one of these boards now.

You have to flick from the outside line in your own quarter of the board. You MUST hit one of your opponents disks or take your disk off the table. After hitting an opponents disk, you want to try and move it as far away from the middle as possible while leaving your disk as close to the middle as possible.

If you get it in the centre hole you get points too. After everyone has played their disks, you get points for each of your disks on the board depending on which zone it’s in, most points wins.

Crokinole Summary

It’s really nice and the way the disks glide across the board is quite impressive. It’s not quite the never-ending glide effect of Air Hockey but it moves further than you would think wood on wood would… Wood.

The coating on the board makes the counter glide just enough.

We played on a ‘mini’ 62cm board with smaller disks. I’d like to play on the 78cm board at some point.

A very fun game, I can’t see me never owning this in my life.

Codenames Prototype

A prototype from Vlaada Chvatil.

Sooo good!

This is a team game where two teams of spies and their master spy try to find words before the opposing teams.

There is a 25 word of 25 word cards and each Master Spy can see which word in the grid relates to each player colour using a colour coded grid on a stand.

Each master spy takes turns saying one word AND one number only to try and get their teams to pick the right word/s.

We stopped by the booth and had the game explained and went back later to play. We were told 2 different versions.

The first time you could say any word and any number to try and get your team to guess the right words on the grid.

The second time you could say any word and any number but the number relates to how many words your team should be able to get from the word clue.

We played it the second way and it was good but I can see the other way being pretty good too.

This is the grid the master spy can see.

Obviously, the Red/Blue blocks are for each team. The Yellowish squares are neutral ‘civilian’ and the black square is an assassin… If your team picks this square you lose automatically.

This is a great game that will be out at GenCon so I’m hoping to pick this up when it’s out over here… It’s a CGE game so I’m guessing Essen.

Versailles

We didn’t play this we just had a run through.

The board is pretty big.

The palace and gardens of Versailles, finalized under the rule of Louis XIV of France, are an architectural marvel of the world. In Versailles, players take the roles of architects and interior designers, working together to build and decorate the ensemble of Versailles, competing for the favour of the King. Players take turns moving one worker from a building site to an adjacent one, activating all the workers in the new location.

So this is kind of a worker placement-ish type game where you’re gathering resource to build things and score points.

But instead of placing workers they start on the board. You move them around a board using a point-to-point movement system.

The roads that connect the different areas together are one way. You move your guys around to activate the different spots. The more guys you have in the spot the more you get from it.

The aim is to get resources and other things to build Palace tiles into that central Construction Yard.

The game end clock is pretty fun. There is a ‘Kings Favour’ tile that gives you more workers… But every time someone lands on it or moves through it, you move a King a step closer to the Palace. When he gets there, the end game is triggered.

I like the game ending like this where you can speed up and slow down as you wish.

Anyway, someone in my game group bought this while we were there. I’ll save my thoughts for the ‘Versailles First Play‘ 😉

Jesta ThaRogue