UK Games Expo 2022 Awards Shortlist Spotlight!
Written by Jonnii Small - May 30 2022
Now in it’s 16th year, Friday 3rd until Sunday 5th of June at the NEC Birmingham, we have the UK Games Expo! We’re going to be there alongside a whole host of other publishers, designers, and a lot more in the tabletop scene and surrounding hobbies! Whether you’re going there or not (if you do, be sure to pop by our stand at 1-314) we’ll be sure to post as much as we can through our social media channels, so give us a follow or like if you haven’t already!
Each year, UK Games Expo presents awards to fantastic games that released in the past year from many different categories! Previous winners include Arboretum, Root, Codenames, and Azul to name a few! So, we’re going to take a look ahead at some of the nominations for these prestigious awards and tell you a little bit more about them!
Nominee for best Abstract Game - Great Plains
Great Plains is a small and fantastic entry point for ‘Area Control’ games. Throughout this two player game, you’ll be trying to control the most territory on the map, and gain the most points at the end! While this may sound like many other ‘Area Control’-style games, Great Plains boils it down to a smaller, re-playable and beautiful experience. Each hex has a variety of spaces within it too, allowing you additional effects while placing animals on them. This is a tactical two player game and perfect if you’re looking for something portable this Summer!
Nominee for best Board Game (American-style) - Unfathomable
The Arkham Files game series is back with a vengeance in Unfathomable! This game is a re-implementation of the popular Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game, combining hidden roles and a traitor mechanic into a team-based board game. Unfathomable combines that original game idea with the Arkham universe from Arkham Horror: The Card Game, Eldritch Horror, and a litany of other tabletop games! In this case, you take on the role of the crew of the SS Atlantica, preventing the ship from taking too much damage from human-Deep One hybrids that have infiltrated the Atlantica. As with other games in the series, you’ll perform skill tests, but this time you’ll be working together, contributing cards to a central pile. With a traitor in your group, will you make it to shore alive?
Nominee for best Card Game (Strategic) - The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game
The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game has been around for over 10 years now, however, this past year it released a brand new Revised Core Set containing everything you need to start playing the game, as well as boon cards, card to string a campaign together, and somewhere to store many of the cards! This revised edition provides a great entry point for new players to get into the game! With Hero and Campaign expansions coming soon, to combine what used to be within cycle packs into one big box, now is as good a time as any to start playing and fight back against the dark.
This card game is similar in style to Marvel Champions orArkham Horror: The Card Game where you will be working together with other players to complete a scenario and thwart enemies along the way. Lord of the Rings requires you to complete quests and defeat foes that reveal from an encounter deck, but you’re threat (or the threat of Sauron’s eye falling upon your brand of adventurers!) is constantly increasing, forcing you to act and make decisions quickly! Do you use your Willpower to Quest, potentially increasing your progress, or hold back to defend an attack from an evil Spider, or even hold back further to attack the foe! There are a lot of decision points in this game, not to mention deck construction and the numerous cards already available in this game’s over 10 year history!
Nominee for best Children’s Game - Quacks & Co: Quedlinburg Dash There’s a new version of The Quacks of Quedlinburg in town, and it’s Quacks & Co: Quedelinburg Dash! While this game has similar gameplay to the original Quacks (building a bag of tokens and drawing them to potentially win the game), this time you’ll be riding a mount to victory to claim a golden cauldron! It’s a race to the finish line, so pick your tokens wisely and let luck guide you to winning the race!
Nominee for best Dice Game - Under Falling Skies
Under Falling Skies is our first and only entirely solo game on this list. This multi-mission campaign puts you in charge of defending a city from an alien attack! And you’re using the dice at hand to determine your actions, rolling them at the beginning of your turn. Do you shoot at the aliens? Charge up energy? Create additional facilities? You have to decide, and worse still, the enemies will get closer to your base every turn based on the dies number within it’s column! Think Space Invaders with a whole dice and base management system rolled in. This game is an amazing example of how solo games can be just as fun as the rest, all while making dice incredibly important to winning (and losing) the game!
Nominee for best Digital Hybrid Game - Destinies
Explore a mediaeval-fantasy land and fulfil your destiny in Destinies! If you’ve been looking for a story-driven, app-supported, RPG-like board game, this could be for you. You’ll take on the role of a hero on a quest, with at least two completely different paths to victory and branching adventures. You will compete with the other players to push the world to your destiny. With dice, miniatures, double-layered player boards and much more, this stunning game could be a great new entry into the ‘Digital Hybrid Game’ genre alongside Descent: Legends of the Dark, The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth and the like.
Nominee for best Expansion - Taverns of Tiefenthal: Open Doors
The Taverns of Tiefenthal was a game all about constructing and upgrading your tavern in a fun deck-building and dice-rolling game! The Taverns of Tiefenthal: Open Doors has you return, adding new rooms (like a wine cellar or a guest room) to your tavern, and a mayor that will reward you if you help him! This expansion adds a load of variety to the base game, allowing for more re-playability of this great game!
Nominee for best Family Game - Chronicles of Avel
There are a lot of board games out there that can suit the whole family and Chronicles of Avel is a cooperative game that does just that! You’ll become brave heroes and heroines attempting to save your magical land! Personally create your character, equip them with items and prepare for battle exploring the world of Avel, a modular board created by hexagonal tiles. Encounter dangerous monsters, fight and roll dice to succeed and defeat your foes! Cooperate and you’ll win the game! If you’re looking for a great adventure board game where you can work together with your family, this one could be for you!
Nominee for best Party Game - Secret Identity
Secret Identity is another social deduction game, but with a twist! You’ll make your opponents around the table guess who you are using ‘pictograms’ that both do and don’t represent your character. Using your judgement, you’ll do your best to determine how best to signal the character you have using the drawings you have available to you. At the end of 4 rounds, the player with the most victory points wins! There’s also a cooperative mode in the game too, for even more variability!
Nominee for best Role-Playing Game - The One Ring Role-Playing Game
The new edition of The One Ring Role-Playing Game is an RPG set in the world of The Lord of the Rings. This second edition adds an entirely new way to play the game, splitting encounters into Journey, Combat and Council. Play out the struggle of good against the return of the Shadow and explore the lands of Middle-Earth, the iconic characters from legends, and complete the heroes journey in this wonderfully illustrated role-playing game. If you love The Lord of the Rings and role-playing games, you need to check out the Starter Set!
Nominee for best Role-Playing Game Expansion - Alien RPG Colonial Marines Operations Manual
The Alien Role-Playing Game released last year with a huge amount of fanfare, putting players and Game Mothers into the Alien universe, to explore and shiver in space. With some incredibly interesting rules and memorable adventures, the Colonial Marines Operations Manual adds even more to the experience! From further lore in regards to the universe, expanded character creation for grunts, new gear, six missions and the framework for a Colonial Marines campaign, perhaps you’ll be prepared for your latest threat! Also included in this book is even more of the stunning artwork that appeared throughout the Core Book and Starter Set.
Nominee for best Variant - World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
Using the Pandemic system, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King has you team up with your friends as legendary heroes, each with unique abilities to defeat the oncoming hordes of ghouls and abominations! Along the way you’ll create strongholds and complete quests, as well as slicing through your foes. Unlike other Pandemic games, you’ll roll dice in this one, allowing for a chance of failure or success in each battle and mission! Complete your quests and perform a final assault on Icecrown Citadel to dethrone and destroy the Lich King.
All of these games we’ve highlighted here today are nominated for awards, so good luck to all of them! You can check out the rest of the nominees here! If you’re looking to pick any up, be sure to click the links within the text and you’ll be taken directly to the product page! There have been a lot of fantastic games, from all of the categories, this past year and we look forward to seeing more at UK Games Expo 2022 between the 3rd and 5th of June!
We’ll see you there!
