UKGE 2023 recap - Day 3

Day 3 of UKGE was a short one for us. We got up a bit later due to playing so long in the evening, then we had to leave before 4PM for the airport. It's always sad when conventions end (well, and generally when holidays end). ☹️ Still, we got in some gaming today, so we can give you some more impressions! 💪

✈️ Undaunted Battle for Britain by @ospreygames is super thematic! 🙃 We tried Stalingrad the day before, so the rules learning was smoother. There are many similarities, but also some cool unique twists. As you play cards to control your planes, they must always move, and they can only turn 60 degrees at most after each hex movement. So it simulates dogfighting very nicely. Targets also need to be in your line of fire before you can attack them. One more thing I loved is how your group of fighters have to remain together, or else they lose comms and you get Discord cards into your deck that are useless. So there is a bunch of innovation to the basic Undaunted formula. 👍

Then we teamed up with @bearwithmeeples 🐻 and stormed the booth of @hachetteboardgamesuk to play some of their games. 😁

🦎 In the Footsteps of Darwin is a lightweight set-collection tableau building game that plays super fast and has insanely good production quality. 🤩 It just looks so inviting. I enjoyed our play, though it might be too light for us in the long run.

⚔️ Vaalbara was a big surprise for us. We heard good things in the past, but it played brilliantly! 😊 It's similar to Libertalia (but in a small box) - you play cards in secret, then the numbers decide the order of choosing land cards (with set-collection nuances), plus cards also have some kind of abilities. It's very fast, but very fun.

🐾 Vivarium was the last game. It's similar tableau building like the Darwin game, but with a bit more meat. You use domino tiles to choose coordinates to decide which card to pick from the display. There are creatures, tools and scoring conditions to draft. I like this one a lot! 🙃

And that’s it! That was our UKGE 2023! We had a great time and already can’t wait for the next convention!