BoardGameBollocks Vs. UKGE 2026

0:00 Hello, welcome back to the channel and this is a channel where we give you reviews, don't do unboxings and playroughs. Today we're going to be doing a recap of our experience of attending the UK Games Expo in 2026. I am a little bit hoar because not only are you breathing in other people's dirt and germs, but you got to really sort of shout quite loudly to make yourself at the expo cuz there is a lot of ambient noise. So, my throat is like a piece of sandpaper that I've used to wipe my ass with. So, in this video, we're going to be going through all the four days went to the press preview. Obviously, day one, day two, and day three, which is a Sunday, which is sort of like, in my opinion, a little bit of a waste of time. We're going to be going through all of those days, and we'll be telling you what games we played, what we looked at, and what we did. And at the end of the video, we'll tell you exactly what we thought about this year's experience at the UK's biggest games exhibition, or I suppose you could call a convention sort of thing. You know what I mean? So remember, if you are new here, consider subscribing to this channel, hit the like button, and all of that YouTube [ __ ] We'll see you after this

1:15 bo. So, if you have been living under a [ __ ] rock for the last 20 years, the UK Games Expo is the UK's biggest exhibition of tabletop games. Yeah. All the major publishers of board games are there. And then you've got some independent retailers are there. And on the fringes, you got these sort of like trinket sales people and even the geyser from that kids TV show Nightmare was there this year, right? And that guy who played Rimmer in Red the Wolf was there even though I didn't recognize him cuz he looked like he just walked out of a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp. So yeah, UK Games Expo. It's been going for 20 years. It's in Birmingham which is pretty good cuz it's the center of the UK. And uh yeah, we drove up there this year with no car trouble whatsoever. My MS did get lost on well my daughter says three occasions, but she says she only got lost once. So, we made it to the hotel in Castle Bromich, which apparently Meleool University gazers were there, but we didn't see them, which would probably be a good thing because they probably kicked my ass. And uh yeah, we went to the press event in the evening. Right. The press event is a little bit weird because this year they give you some weird instructions where you had to sort of wait by hall number five and then you'd be given a briefing and then you'd be allowed in and escorted to the press event. Yeah, we waited there. There was no briefing and yeah, the doors opened and everyone just flooded in and I'm pretty sure that this wasn't really like a press only event because there was plenty of people milling around the stalls with normal passes or whatever the hell they were.

2:47 So that was a little bit weird. But yeah, we managed to get a look at a few games mainly from the Zato game store. And uh yeah, let's have a look at some of the games we played during the press preview. So, the first game that we had a look at was a sort of dexterity game. It uses these I suppose they're called skewer sticks, isn't they? But you got a bunch of sticks and you're going to draw a card that tells you which one of your fingers is going to smell of fish. It's definitely not that one. Which one of your teammates's fingers you're going to push the stick against? And then you got to use one of your fingers to push back. So, you're going to balance this stick between two of your fingers, right? Then you'll draw another card and then it will tell you which stick to push against your fingers. So, it's basically like a cross between Twister and I suppose Kaplunk, I suppose, in a sense. There was an advanced variant where you use balls with your fingers, but um I don't know. I'm not really going to get into that. Yeah, I didn't really want to play with somebody else's balls. But yeah, this look more interesting.

3:41 Obviously, it's just a throw away dexterity game. And uh yeah, I suppose if you like fingers and balls, then this is going to be right up your back alley, ain't it? Next game we had a look at was a very nice looking small form factor area control game called packs. Yeah, just got like an Irish theme. It's uh indicative of a trend that we have noticed recently where cardboard boards are being replaced with these sort of material mats. And in a sense, I suppose this is a good thing because you can cram more game into a small box, which is great when you've got thousands of [ __ ] games that you're probably never going to play in the remainder of your very short lifpan. way this works is that you're going to be drawing cards and then it's a kind of eye split. You take the action sort of thing like a sort of um New York slice for Irish people and you'll be moving your bits around. You'll be [ __ ] about with influence. Obviously, you'll be trying to take control of different areas.

4:32 Right. This is a twoplayer only game that lasts between three and six rounds and it looked really really interesting. The only bummer is that it's not available yet. I'm going to have to hold my breath and hope that this comes into the UK uh before I pop my clocks, which could be after this video. You can never be too sure, can you? Next game that we stumbled across was a game called Copus. I think this was released in 2024, and it's basically an abstract strategy game. Yeah. And uh yeah, I didn't really understand what Blake was going on about cuz truth be told, I couldn't really hear him, but it looked nice. But as with a lot of these abstract strategy games, it just seemed like you was sort of moving your pieces. And I think one of the things was that you don't really want to get too close to your opponents because obviously you can get killed. So, uh I don't know. I suppose if I'm being honest with you, I sort of wasn't really bothered about this one. Do you know what I mean? But next door to this game was a really really prettyl looking game called Ascendia. I do get a little bit suspicious when I see a really nice looking game that the person that explained it to us said was a gateway game. Yeah. So, I'm always thinking, is this going to be style over substance?

5:35 Yeah. But this is a semi-ooperative game where you'll be trying to collect like different resources, trade and like kill animals and stuff, upgrade your [ __ ] and uh yeah, try and be the future leader of the world of Ascendia. Yeah, this looked [ __ ] amazing. It really really popped on the table. I just was a little bit unsure as to what the base game was and whether or not there was any sort of add-ons. There was like a really nice dice tower and all that which is part of the Kickstarter. So, I was a little bit confused as to what you actually get in a box and what the add-ons were. Yeah. So, it does look like a decent gateway game. So, the bloke said, "So, maybe we'll pick this up and have a look at it in the near future." Next thing we had a little look at and a mate of mine actually picked this up was Shakespeare the card game. Right. I never read Shakespeare in my life. Well, actually, that's a complete lie. I was forced to read the first three sentences of Richard the Third and then I threw it out the window at school. But this game features 52 characters from all the Shakespeare plays in that. 52 characters. 52 cards.

6:33 Is it going to be a game that's made out of a generic pack of cards just with Shakespeare geysers on it? You know what I mean? But there's three win conditions in this. There's the comedy, the tragedy, and the history, right? Tragedy cards in this game have things on them which cause you to die. Comedy cards have you finding like two hours of lovers and stuff. And there's also chaos cards. No, not the board game retailer that recently changed their logo into a piece of [ __ ] You got characters from the plays on there like Puck Bottom, Touchstone and all that sort of [ __ ] Yeah, I don't know. I'm not really a big fan of Shakespeare. Yeah, I never really got into it. Yeah, I just thought it was a load of [ __ ] pretentious twaddle. Obviously, if you like Shakespeare, then by all means pick this up. I'll probably play it. But the theme for me was just like another [ __ ] Shakespeare thing here. So, not for me. So, the next game, well, it's not really a game yet. It's a modular terrain system. Yeah, I think I upset the geyser cuz when we went over to the Lawscape booth, I said immediately that this looked like Heroscape and the Gizer rolled his eyes.

7:32 So, obviously, even though we were only 2 hours into day one, he'd had loads of people come up to him and say, "This looks like Heroescape." And I don't know what he's getting funny about because it [ __ ] well does, right? But this is like a modular terrain system. It's [ __ ] Heroscape tiles that have been shrunk down into a smaller form. And I did say to him, you know, you could actually use this as Heroscape tiles if you haven't got a lot of room. Obviously, you won't be able to use the figures from Heroes Escape because these are smaller. But yeah, it looked all right, but I don't really see myself using this. If I was like playing RPGs more than I do at the moment, which is not at all really, then maybe this would be useful, but it looked nice, but I just can't really see a use for it. And if it was a little bit bigger, it would basically be [ __ ] Heroscape, even though the Giza said it wasn't. Whatever. After I felt like laying one on that geyser with Lcape wasn't going to do it really. I was saving that shut up and sit down. We went over to the asthma deboo and to calm down I play a couple of games of double connector chair. Obviously it's just twist on double but rather than using one card each time. I think that's how it works in double. You're going to be trying to connect cards in a row and players can put cards on top. It was actually a good variant but I was amazed at how many [ __ ] variants of double there are.

8:46 No, we don't need any more [ __ ] doubles. And we definitely don't need double katan, which was the next variation of double that we played. Yeah, this was [ __ ] awful. Didn't like it at all. I just don't see the point in this at all. You're going to be putting these double cards out, making up like a katan board, and then you'll just be trying to place your cards on top of each other to get like majority points. And once you've placed all your cards out, you add up some fast scoring. And yeah, it was [ __ ] dog [ __ ] So, I'm not even going to talk about it anymore. Yeah. So, the next game that we found, it's just like lurking on a table. My mate sort of said, "Oh, it's a game of Bandito." And I said, "Yeah, I've never played it before." But basically, it's a card laying game. Start off with like a prisoner who's trying to break out of a jail, and you've got to lay these cards down, which are like pathways like sabotur. Yeah. And the idea is to block off all of the exit routes for the bandit geyser to escape from. Yeah. If you run out of cards, then you [ __ ] the game up. And if you manage to block off all the exits, then you win. It's a stupid little game, but I found it mildly entertaining. I don't know if I'll bother playing it again, but maybe I will because it's just one of them games you think, "Fuck me, I ain't played that for a while.

9:48 Let's just uh pull out Bandito and spend 5 minutes [ __ ] about." So, is it day two yet? It's probably day two already. Yeah. So, we went over to Zato Games and and Mr. Rob decided to show us a few of their latest games. Yeah. The first one was Kinfar Chronicles. Obviously played Kimfar Council a little while ago and that was fine. And this is set in the same universe. Yeah. But this is like a card version of that. 20 quid for a box. You're probably going to need more than one box, right? I don't know how many available. I think there's three at the moment or something. In order to play with two players, you're going to have to get two boxes, which is 40 quid. But this is a like cooperative campaign that kind of reminded us of like Pathfinder, the adventure card game. Yeah. So, there's three phase in this game. There is adventuring, battling, and exploration. And you'll basically take part in these challenges where you'll have to flip over the correct color cards from your deck in order to pass these challenges like jumping over rocks or trying to arrest Prince Andrew. Like we said, there's three boxes at the moment of this. I think it was released in 2023, so it's not really a new thing.

10:49 And uh yeah, I suppose if you like the Kimfire universe, it's going to be up your street, but I'm not that enamored with Kinfire or anything. So yeah, I'll just be playing this for the game. So maybe we'll pick it up. We'll see how it pans out. Yeah. So, the next game that we had a look at was the newer version of Thief's Market. In this game, you're going to be rolling a dieice and you got the option of either taking as much loot as you want or you can nick some loot from another player and put something back into the center of the table, right? You can then use this to iron more thieves or you can acquire magical items that are going to influence future D rolls, making you a little bit more powerful, right? So, yeah, this didn't look too bad. Hopefully, it's an improvement on the original version that was released 10 years ago or something like that. But, it's been streamlined. They've improved all the icons and all that. So, yeah, we'll see if we can find a copy of this and have a look at it.

11:35 So, the next game that we had a look at, and this is probably the standout game of the convention for us, and it's weird, isn't it, how sometimes cheap shitty little games that you probably would never have a look at ended up being absolute bangers. Yeah. But this is a game called Tally Up. This is a game from the same Gizer that done Flip Seven. Didn't find that out until yesterday, but Tally Up plays up to 10 players. Everyone's going to get like a a token that says in or out. And then somebody is going to choose three dice from the six that are available. They're going to roll them. And if you roll two stars, you bust. Yeah. But if not, then you'll add up all of the points on the dice and you can bank them. And if you roll a dieice with a circle around it, you roll the modifier die. And this can add or take away 100 points. It can force you to roll more dice, which is going to increase the chances of you rolling two stars. And if you roll three stars, any point, the first player to shut tally up is going to get an extra 200 points. Everyone else is going to get 100 points. First player to 2,500 points wins. Absolutely [ __ ] simple.

12:33 This generated so many laughs when we took it back to the hotel. And uh yeah, it's weirdly the probably the best game we played at the expo. Yes. So, you really need to pick this up cuz it's a [ __ ] awesome shitty little game in a 10. So, we go from the best game that we played at the expo to the worst game that we played at the expo. This is a game called Chat on a Cat. This is a pathetic shitty little card game where you have three cats in front of you and you'll be playing cards to basically [ __ ] on a cat by putting your card on top of it. Yeah. If you lose all your cats, you're out and player who is remaining is the winner. Yeah. We asked this geyser how he come up with it and he said, "Well, he's in a pub playing cards with a standard pack of playing cards and they bent the rules on a game and it ended up being fun and they basically published it themselves." Yeah. And it [ __ ] looks like it cuz it is complete and utter cat [ __ ] Yeah.

13:20 It's unfair. It's unbalanced and it's just basically a waste of time. So if anyone asked you to play shout on a cat, tell them to [ __ ] off. Game that we played was a game called Bad Trevor. Yeah, I didn't really want to play this cuz it just looked like some sort of Android Netrunner clone. And uh yeah, you got this card with Bad Trevor Gizer on it. It's going to be in somebody's hand all the time. If you get to the end of the game, you got this bad Trevor card in your hand. You're going to lose. You're going to be playing a hand of three attack cards. Somebody's going to choose one. You take the other two back into your hand. they're going to play it. You got attack cards, hero cards, and civilian cards. You're going to do what it says. And if you've ever got two civilian cards, you can discard them and you can change the direction of play. You've got this uh is it mis annihilation where you can play the skezy anytime you want. If you think somebody's played bad in front of you, you can pick where it is and if you're correct, something happens. I can't really remember exactly what it was, but yeah, it's a running milk car game. Not that interesting. And uh yeah, maybe if you chuck the Marvel license on it, it might it might peique people's interests, but as it stands, yeah, not particularly inspiring for me. This game that we played was something that we just passed by and I thought, well, it only takes a minute. We'll have a go at it, but this is a game called Magic Minute. You're going to get a basically a piece of paper. You're going to have a category and then you're going to have to write down as many things in that category as you can in one minute. And then you do the usual thing where if you've got duplicates of anything with other people, you'll cross them off and then a player with the most unique guesses wins. Yeah, we've seen this

14:50 before a billion times. And yeah, it's well there [ __ ] in it. You know what I mean? So, we strolled around for a little bit and we found a nice looking game called River Valley Glass Works. This is basically just a set collection game. You can be picking up these tokens and you'll be putting them in a track system and yeah, it looks nice. Yeah, it reminds us of the game Niagara. You know, you're going down a river with these transparent pieces of plastic and all that. But yeah, it's just a basic generic set collection game that took too long and I got bored out my brains and I couldn't wait for it to be over. In fact, I was contemplating just walking away, but that would be rude and that's not in my nature. So, we found the is it Gigam Mac or Gim Mac games? the oversized wooden games we've played.

15:36 What was it? Quartto and Womit. And uh yeah, these are these are just variations on like Quidor, Pyos, and all that. But we had a look at these. They were mild interesting. I'm not really enthused about these oversized abstract puzzle games, but they're all right. I just wouldn't bother picking them up because they last about 5 minutes. Yeah, they take up shitloads of space. If you are interested in these Gigam Mac games, then pick up the small versions. Uh yeah, corridor probably being one of the best ones, right? So, the next thing we looked at was Castle Boom. This is another boring game where you'll be flipping over these tiles trying to remember where different colors are around this main board. And if you match them, you'll add a level to the castle and it's a sort of Jenga dexterity thing. If the castle falls over, blah blah blah blah blah. Yeah, it looked nice, but again, it's just an uninspiring game that really is just sort of that Ravensburgger card matching game with Jenga stuffed in. And yeah, it didn't really work very well at all. So, the next thing we had look at was a game called Cork. This is a dexterity game, isn't it? Where you got pieces of string with corks stuck on the end, and one of us is going to roll a dice. If you get a seven or a double, you'll have to pull your cork away from the center cuz the guy that rolled the dice is going to try and trap your corks. Yeah. If you wrongly pull it away, then you're going to get a point and you don't really want points in this game. Yeah. And obviously you get to a set amount of points and then you are out and you keep going until somebody's left in. I quite enjoyed playing this game. It was quite good. But the only thing that makes me

17:07 think this is a complete waste of money is you probably well you could definitely make this yourself with a piece of string, some corks from wine bottles, right? If you really wanted to. Is there really any reason spending 20 quid on this? Probably not. This is a game that's probably made by Wino after they got smashed on like 10 bottles of [ __ ] Veno. And uh yeah, I was contemplating picking this up, but I thought might as well just spend 20 quid on some [ __ ] Lamborin and I like make it myself. So, next game was a game by Portal Games, a game called Bohemians. This is a really lovely looking game. It's got some fantastic artwork, but once you peel that away, the game play reminds me of Dominion with After Us mixed in. And I don't know, just felt kind of lame. You'll be matching these symbols on these cards. They're going to give you points to buy extra cards to put in your deck. And uh yeah, you're going to make your deck more powerful.

18:00 is going to let you buy more cards until you've satisfied the win conditions. Thought about taking it to the bring and buy and uh yeah, buying something else that is a little bit more interesting. So, my daughter was at the expo with us this year and she wandered by the double stand again. She saw this big [ __ ] off iPad and she stood there for about 100 years addicted to playing double on this big screen. Yeah. until I pulled her away and said, "Look, if you don't stop playing double on the big screen, then I'm just going to have to lock you in the dungeon when you get home." Right? So, she started playing even more. And she is still down there now. I might go let her out in a minute. We on to the third day or fourth day, I can't remember. We walked past a game that was sort of lit up with UV lights and I sort of had a an acid trip flashback and I wandered into the stand and it was a game called Shape Invaders. Yeah. almost picked this up, but I was thinking you really do need the neoprene map. Play this and it was like [ __ ] 68 quid.

18:56 So, [ __ ] that. I'm not I'm not going to spend that much money on this dexterity game. But basically, you got these plastic probably 3D printed Space Invader like tiles and you'll be flicking them to try and knock your opponent's pieces off the board. You got three shields. If you lose your free shields and your mother ship gets knocked off, you lose the game. Like I said, I love dexterity games. They are really interesting to me, but the price point put me off. I just couldn't see this being worth 68 quid. And I think the base set comes with like a perimeter that you can put around any table, but I couldn't really figure out how that worked. Is it like a stretch thing if you've got like a pin table? Is it going to fit on that? But yeah, too expensive. And uh yeah, I was a little bit gutted about that cuz it did look like a quite decent dexterity game. We played a game called type set. The geyser who showed it to us said it was like a play on Wordle. I didn't know how to play Wordle, but a mate of mine said it's nothing like Wordle. And uh my MS basically withdrew from this game because she hates word games. And uh yeah, I can't really say I recommend this one, but basically you got a bunch of tiles. You're flipping these tiles over and you'll be trying to make words on this grid. You get free use of these vowels. And if you use all the vowels up and you get bonus points and you get points for making words up and funny enough, the tiles that come out were like Q, U, and R, two, three E. And the Giza who demoed us made the word quit.

20:14 And that didn't even cross my mind. Yeah. So, cuz I'm probably [ __ ] Scrabble. He ended up winning the game and that sucked. So, yeah, it was a drab looking game. Kind of like too much work for what it was. And yeah, this can stay on the shelf forever. So, the Potato game that we look at was a game that my daughter saw. It's game called Lolly Dogs. This comes with some sort of rubber dogs that you can sort of squeeze and their tongue comes out and each tongue has got a different color. But you're going to be rolling some dice and you're basically going to be trying to remember where each colored dog tongue is, right? This could quite easily have been done with a couple of tokens that you flip over. But fact that it comes with these little gimmicky dog things made it absolutely fantastic. And my daughter wanted me to buy this. But I said, I'm tight as [ __ ] so I said no. And I bought her a fridge magnet instead. Yeah. Which she was a little bit upset about. So the final game that we played was one of our favorite games of all time. one of the best Dexterity games, if not the best Dexterity game that we've ever played. It's a game called Kuruka. And I finally managed to meet the creators of Kuruka. I've been meaning to bump into them at some point for the last like four or five years or whatever. And it finally happened and they were the nicest people that I have ever met. I've managed to have a game with the creator, Kuruka, and it went down to the wire. It went down to the Last Black and I ended up getting beaten. But that's probably the standout thing for me is actually getting to meet these two wonderful people who who had an idea had the balls to get the idea out into the world and now Kurupa is being manufactured in India, South

21:44 America, the United States and it's being distributed all over Europe. Yeah. So fantastic success story and if you haven't played Karupa, get hold of the [ __ ] table cuz it is a timeless classic that is only going to grow in stature in the future. Yeah. So that was all the games that we played. We did go and have a chat with Ian Livingston. He told me about the new that he finished on Friday. Yeah. Showed me some of the artwork that is going to be appearing in that new book, The Tomb of the Golden Skull. And yeah, the artwork is absolutely fantastic. It's nothing like the [ __ ] artwork that was in the original Scholastic ones. It's properly done by a fantasy artist. And there's also a reimplementation of Freeway Fighter coming next year, which uses augmented reality. So, you'll be scanning these pictures in the book and it will give you mini games and like other choices that are available. Yeah.

22:34 So, we cannot wait to have a go at that when it comes out. Yeah. Mate of mine also went and had a chat with the Giza who was from Nightmare. Yeah. I think I've already mentioned that anyway. So, also thank you very much if you did see me at the event and you did come and say hi. If you didn't have the balls to come and say hello, then why not? Don't bite. I'm not going to punch you in the face. But one of the funny things that happened was when my MS was having a dump, the six geysers basically mobbed me and we had a nice little chat. Yeah. So, thank you very much chaps. That was a nice little thing to do. Right. So, yeah. Some of the good things about the convention is that I got to meet a good few number of people that were very, very pleasant. Yeah. Very, very complimentary about this stupid [ __ ] little channel. We got away from bugging Pompy for 4 days, which is a good thing. We got to play loads and loads of games that we otherwise wouldn't have played, right? Some of the bad things about the convention press event was a little bit [ __ ] Yeah, it just seemed like all these things they wanted you to do that didn't actually happen. So, that seemed a little bit pointless. Saturday was mental busy and I got a little bit scared walking into the gender neutral toilets. Uh, when I saw women coming out, [ __ ] hell, if I walked into the ladies bogs by mistake and a little bit of we come out before I managed to find a cubicle, right? Food was too expensive. the [ __ ] cues for the water stations were too long and my mate spent 3 hours trying to check in if stuff at the bringer by so we won't be doing that again and also Sunday seemed a little bit late that last year it might be the case that next year probably only going to go for 2 days

24:05 because a there's not that many people there on a Sunday and b I think it shuts early by the time you've actually wandered around aimlessly looking at stuff that you've already looked at you've got to start thinking about heading home early afternoon and it just seems like bit of a waste of time really. There needs to be some sort of incentive for you to stay at the expo for the Sunday. Yeah. But other than that, I highly recommend if you are into tabletop gaming at all, then you make your way to the UK Games Expo next year. There is so much to see and do. Birmingham is vile, but luckily for you, the NEC is nowhere near that steaming hole. No disrespect if you live or you were born in Birmingham. That is your fault. You can move out anytime you like. But yeah, the biggest games exhibition event in the United Kingdom.

24:51 If you've never been or you turn your nose up, then you are missing out and you're a [ __ ] idiot. Right. So, we're going to review the two games that we picked up at the expo. We obviously we picked up Talia and we picked up the new version of Container. I'm not one that's going to be posting these [ __ ] haul videos. I don't give a [ __ ] what games you picked up. and I generally don't really want to pick up that many more games myself because there are [ __ ] too many to play as it is. But yeah, I'll see you at the next UK Games Expo. Make sure you get a ticket for it. And if you see me, don't be scared to come up to me and say hello cuz I'm a nice bloke at the end of the day. I only attack certain people. A people that use breath smells, people with BO, and people who are under 5' 3. So yeah, sorry about the length of this video, but the expo takes a long time. So you can [ __ ] off now. back to your crochet or your bowl of brown flakes.