UK Games Expo 2017

Another year, another Infinity tournament at the UK Games Expo!

On Saturday 3rd June in hall 3A of the NEC we had 22 players competing to be the 2017 Expo champion - a title so far held by Robin Sealey (2014), Chris Penfold (2015) and Daniel Barber (2016).

There were a wide range of players attending this year, some long-term veterans and some who were just starting out. There weren't too many rules queries though so it was all smooth sailing really.

So, how did they get on?

The prize haul for this year's event

Interplanetary 2016 Staff Round Table

Okay, final seminar write-up from the Interplanetary. Honest!

This is actually the first seminar that took place over the weekend and was a discussion about the creative process for Infinity and also included a Q&A portion with the staff. There was a wide range of topics covered and it's clear that there were a lot of questions that the community was just dying to ask.

Among other things, the seminar covered art design, release schedules, the delays with the RPG and entirely too much information about Dog Soldiers.

Interplanetary 2016 Angel's Seminar

Angel Giraldez, CB's master painter, hosted a seminar at the Interplanetary about his upcoming book - Masterclass volume 2 - and a new project called Luxumbra. Once again I set about making as many notes as I could, particularly as I was interested in what the new limited edition miniature would be...

Apologies for the low image quality, such are the issues with trying to take pictures of a projector on a sunny day and I'm still getting to grips with a new camera and image editor.

Interplanetary 2016 Manga Seminar

There were a number of smaller seminars at the Interplanetary, including one about the upcoming manga, which seemed very interesting.

I didn't know much about the project before attending so I busily took photos and made (rather scribbly) notes throughout. The panel had Kenny Ruiz (illustrator) and Victor Santos (writer) on it alongside the CB staff to talk about their work and the character designs.

Please be aware that because this seminar was done during the daytime many of the pictures came out looking quite washed out on the projector. I've therefore increased the contrast to make them more clearly visible but this might not be completely accurate to the final product and minor details may be lost.

WARNING: This post contains a lot of large images - mobile users beware.

Interplanetary 2016 Table Dump

Like last year I found the time to take pictures of all the tables at the Interplanetary before the tournament started.

There was an excellent selection of scenery on show and the all-card tables from last year were noticeably absent. Several tables had special terrain rules including woodland (cover or saturation and difficult terrain) and mountainous/aquatic areas (difficult terrain) but there didn't appear to be any very difficult terrain.

Generally there was a good mix of terrain density, although some of the tables definitely look a bit too 'even' which reduced the value of picking deployment zones. There were a couple that seemed a little lacking in scatter, but nothing outrageous.

The tables are all presented in numerical order (from 1-50) and there are two pictures of each table, one from the front and one from the right side.

WARNING: This post contains a lot of large images - mobile users beware.

There was also some life-size beautiful scenery in Vigo!

Interplanetary 2016 Bostria Seminar

Last weekend I attended the Interplanetary tournament in Vigo, Spain. There will be a full after action report coming in the next week or so, but first I wanted to to share a lot of the pictures I took at the event.

In particular there was a seminar from Bostria about upcoming releases that you may find interesting. There was some overlap with stuff that was shown at Gencon, so I've tried to show mostly things that I believe are new, or at least that I wasn't aware of!

These are mostly photos of their projector, so there may be clearer images from the livestream somewhere, but this should be a rather complete set of pics. Enjoy!

WARNING: Lots of images!

New Demo Kit - Salute 2016

Another Salute has been and gone.

Once again I used the event as motivation to update my demonstration kit for Infinity. This year I added the USAriadna Ranger Force to my pool of available factions - joining PanO, Nomads, Aleph and Haqq - and also updated my player handouts which can be found in PDF form here.

The new hand-outs were redesigns of what I've used previously, having taken on feedback from those I've played with and from my own observations. Things have been sufficiently tested, updated and tidied up that I now feel comfortable unleashing them on the wider world!

Player handouts - front view.

Infinity at the UK Games Expo 2015

This weekend I returned to the UK Games Expo in Birmingham, albeit with a very different motive to last year. In 2014 I attended and fairly successfully took part in an ITS tournament which was well run and a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

This year I had the privilege of running it instead of playing though and I had a lot to live up to, not to mention that it's also the biggest tournament I've run so far and the first I've run so far from home.

To top it off I'd had a couple of rather late nights before as I had been rather enjoying the rest of the convention and being involved in the open gaming. For those interested - Concept, Coup and One Night Werewolf were the most popular games of the Expo.

No pressure, eh?

Warning, this post is very image heavy!

Infinity Expo 2015 - The games are under way.

Salute 2015

I haven't been to Salute for a very long time. I've always though of it as being just too big, with long queues and quite far away on the far side of London.

But this year I was invited down by a friend to run Infinity demo games on the day. So with free entry, no queues and the chance to coincide it with a visit of nearby friends and family I was set to go, and I have to say I'm glad I did.

It was a lot easier to get to than I remember and travelling on the Docklands Light Railway is always enjoyable actually. You do get some nice views of some of the shinier parts of London and the station is pretty much right next to the venue too.

The huge range of games and traders was very impressive, although I was disappointed to find that the bring and buy had been axed previously. Still, I'd recommend it to anyone who is on the fence about attending next year.

For a one-day event, Salute is freaking huge! It's hard to see, and impossible to play, everything there.

Blast-Tastic!

I recently had the pleasure of attending Blast-Tastic! (yes, the exclamation mark is compulsory), a small sci-fi specific wargaming show in Bristol, for it's very first event. Considering it was an entirely new venture I have to say it was very smoothly run by Michael of Angel Barracks.

I signed up to run demonstration games of Infinity throughout the day using scenery kindly provided by Ian from The Wargaming Trader.

The show itself was a success, although I did bemoan the lack of a bring-and-buy which is normally a great draw for me, and I even picked up some new bits of scenery to take back to my local club.

The main hall with traders and participation games