This is an auto-generated report from SuperFRED regarding an event that Jennifer Waddington has submitted. http://rabbits.looneylabs.com/?RabbitUserID=EvilKitten ======== Title: UK Games Expo '07 Location: Birmingham, UK Date: 2nd-3rd June 2007 This was the first local convention in some while, and since it was in its first year, it was important that it all went well... ...and it did. Despite a worryingly large amount of events and school-age children, chaos did not break loose and the only thing that technically wasn't great for us was a lower turnout on the Sunday than on the Saturday (but as the schools' tournaments were on the first day, this isn't really a surprise). I won't give names here, since I've already done the growling and hissing, but my original back-up for the event managed to forget about it and double-book themselves elsewhere for the weekend. Luckily, Nimrod (who has sent in his report already) was willing to come up for the Saturday and Rabbit his socks off - well worth his train fare! We were placed close to the schools' tournament, so we behaved ourselves on the Saturday, no getting too loud and rowdy. I had intended to start out with Fluxx but there was a minor crisis when at the T-5 minute mark, my deck was discovered to be missing. A kind stallholder opened up his till early and we were sorted (the missing deck has since been found, but at the rate I go through them it'll get used). Treehouse and Martian Coasters again drew people over to play, as did the giant Cosmic Coasters set which was laid out (we were surreptitiously and gradually taking over the wargaming space that had lain unclaimed in the centre of the table row). People, especially children, like being able to pick up chunky solid pieces and squarely thump them down on another's planet. Various teachers showed an interest in what was on offer, and as a result I am now totally out of catalogues...which isn't a bad thing, given how many of them were maths teachers interested in all the games they could do with pyramids. The Treehouse tournament was played in three double-elimination rounds, and the eventual winner of the Treehouse set was not only delighted but confessed that she couldn't have afforded her own right now, so it was a big bonus for her. Colouring competition entries continued to come in during the day, showing various levels of skill. A Happy Flower was given away to the first person who posted her entry into the box. The picture for the competition was different to the usual ones of de-colourised Aquarius 'Water' and 'Earth' and Mad Lab Rabbit images; it was the peaclock and wyfern from Alison's Animelds set on a standard Nice Sun And Fields Background. (Incidentally, when I went to my normal copying place to get enough copies of all the pictures, the woman who served me said 'You're the Treehouse girl!'. Her boyfriend was the librarian that we'd gotten hooked on the game during the demo in the children's library.) As Nimrod said, my health decided that I'd be leaving an hour early, but up until then, a LOT of games had been played. On Sunday, I enlisted my maths-teaching friend Owen to help out. The day was much quieter, with people mainly wanting to hang out and play through a selection of games. The colouring competition turned out to be rather difficult to judge, as the children who came to the convention were just as serious about this as they were about their board games (but it got done, and all prizes have been posted off - Family Fluxx and Cosmic Coasters to the joint winners, and Happy Flowers to the first runners-up). I also had the opportunity to speak with some traders who were interested in stocking more of the range apart from Fluxx (the traders who did stock Fluxx at the convention sold out, from the comments that came back to me on the Sunday afternoon) - Nimrod did mention this in his report, but he didn't mention that they would all descend upon me at 3pm on the Sunday! I decided to cancel the Martian Coasters tournament, because the sign-up rate was low on the Sunday - next year, I think both should be done on the Saturday. The organisers were grateful for the Looney Labs prizes contributed for the schools' competition and provided a website link in nice big writing under Sponsors. I added Christian and Jewish Fluxx packs to the Fluxx decks, to widen the range of educational use, as well as an AYAW? pack - which is a rainy day game if ever I saw one. They're letting us come back again - and have said that we definitely contributed to the success of the convention. I also sneaked out during a lull on the Sunday and won a copy of Alphabet Runner by making six-letter words out of a random assortment - I'd only gone there to try out the game, after we'd got the inventor onto Fluxx...