On Valentines Day I spent the day playing board games at Tabletop Gaming Live in Doncaster – what better way to celebrate my love for board games! I knew it was a small convention but beyond that I wasn’t sure what to expect. I only went for one day this year because I was concerned about becoming overwhelmed. As an autistic person, the whole package of navigating to a new place and going on my own to an unknown event was a lot. However, I needn’t have worried. It was such a lovely, chill day. It did help that I met friends there.
They had 1,900 unique visitors and 2,800 turnstile attendees across the weekend. There was plenty of space for open gaming and the stalls and demo area was spacious. I’m optimistic that, like Airecon, if they do scale the event up they will retain their focus on playing games. Here are some of my highlights from the day.
Bad Trevor
One of the games that I enjoyed learning at Tabletop Gaming Live was Bad Trevor: a card battle game. Bad Trevor The game is based on Bad Trevor comic books which gives you a whole lore to dive in to. Me and Esther had loads of fun playing this.
The aim of the game is to get rid of all your cards. But, Bad Trevor is a tricky individual who clings to you like the worst of all bad luck spells.
On your turn, you play an attack hand of three cards, the player on your left chooses one of these cards and the other two are returned to your hand. If they take a hero card this will benefit them, a villain card will mess them up, if you draw a civilian card you keep it until you have a pair which you can then discard thereby reducing your hand. You may choose to hang on to your matching pair till the right moment because playing a pair of Civilians also allows you to change the direction of play, changing who you will attack or demand a specific civilian from another player. If you pick up Bad Trevor you have to pick up the other two cards as well. And now you have to get rid of him as the last player holding Bad Trevor is the loser!
Plays: 3-5, Age: 9+, Playtime: 20mins. Usefully, the box also tells you how long it takes to learn – 10mins in this case.
It’s a fast, entertaining game. The illustrations, characters and flavour text on the cards add to the fun.
Flippin Dinosaurs
Plays: 2, Age: 6+, Playtime: 15mins
Flippin’ Dinosaurs by Heartborn Studios has just finished on kickstarter so you’ll want to keep an eye out for where you can get a copy. It’s flippin’ adorable. I keep saying I’m not getting any more small box games because so often they get overlooked at events. So, unless I know that I’m going to pretty much greet you by asking if you’ve played it yet, I’m not buying it. I bought this. Prepare to be greeted by it at my events!
I’m obsessed with the art work – it’s so cute – and the game is super easy to learn. Advance your dinosaurs across the face down cards; reveal the card you land on; get three of your dinosaurs on their own colour and claim the cards. Cards show points in the bottom right and the person with the most points wins.
But, beware of tar pits, steal cards and above all else – the comet. The comet ends the game by obliterating any dinosaurs you haven’t saved yet – no pressure.
Isla
Plays: 1-5, Age: 8+, Playtime: 30-45mins
I finally got round to playing Isla by Ocean City Games. Shameful when the designers are from Leeds and I’ve chatted to them about Isla. It just shows how busy I am teaching and recommending games at events. I rarely get time to actually play a game.
Isla is a beautifully illustrated roll and write game.Choosing from a shared pool of dice, you move your chosen number of spaces around Isla, discover fossils, fauna and flora, complete research, take rest and importantly explore as much of the island as you can. Unexplored squares lead to minuses at the end. I massively underestimated the impact of that in my first game. You need to plan your route carefully to refresh your dice at the optimum time to avoid becoming lost, as well as covering enough ground, and getting the right tokens for your research. You also need to plan your exit to maximise your points. There is a lot to think about. It’s perfect to really immerse yourself in. I haven’t played the solo mode yet but I’ve heard lots of good things about that too.
Rolling ones leads to threat cards being revealed which hinder your progress in a range of cruelly imaginative ways. Just don’t roll ones would be my advice.
Also keep an eye out for Towers of Ra which is coming soon. I’ve actually already had a go of that and I’m excited to see it released.
Stalls and Open Gaming.
Despite having a smaller number of stalls than some cons, there was still plenty of variety. I bought a few more games that you will have already seen at events: Canal Houses, Slide, Papayoo from Hachette Games plus This is Not a Hat and Flip 7 with a vengeance from Chaos Cards*. After everything I keep saying about not getting small box games! These are all going down really well at events.
I treated myself to some witchy tea from Lucky Leaf Teas. They were really helpful and friendly and put up with me smelling every single tea before finally settling on some lovely chai style tea. Flights and Fancy had all your D&D stationery desires so of course I got some stabby flowery stickers from there. Imagination gaming were there with some giant games – we stopped by for a game of Match Madness which was good fun. All this to say there were lots of lovely game adjacent things to be tempted by as well as a number of stalls selling games.
There was loads of open gaming and I was lucky enough to run into friends there so I had some gaming buddies. We played Cross Clues – codenames-ish game where you give a clue which links two words together. And, Fake Artist where my terribleness at social deduction games triumphed again – this time in art form!
We also went on to form the winning quiz team to everyone’s surprise – mostly ours. We won a game each plus a cute trophy. We also learnt more about the available variations of monopoly than one might want or need to know. The section on matching the Board Game Geek 1 star review to the game was genius and very entertaining. It included this review for Go! ‘The game for fake intellectuals, or those intimidated by actual dice’ and this for Chess ‘Worst game ever.’ Iain from the Giant Brain and Flav from Hachette were great hosts.
Unfortunately, food at the venue was not good. I expected it to be pricey but when it’s expensive it also needs to be at least reasonable quality. You could bring food in though, so I’ll just be more organised next time. They would definitely benefit from the addition of a good food truck – especially in the evening when the racecourse stalls were closed.
I’ll definitely be going back next year. Massive shout out to Esther for hanging out with me and putting up with my repeated loss of items, drinks spills and general chaos.
*Chaos cards will also soon be stocking the April edition of the magazine where you can read all about the weekend and also see me being a prize winner in the quiz!
Ann Jones set up Cards or Die board gaming in 2017 to bring people together with board games. Ann is Autistic, and as well as being passionate about board games she is dedicated to creating inclusive events.
You can book her to teach and recommend games at your event; whether that’s a wedding, corporate event, pub games night or a community group. Or, you can come along to one of her many free events and play games. You can always request games that she has reviewed.
Come along to an event and find out more or get in touch to arrange a chat.
