Every February there’s a festival of RPG folks making zines. It began on Kickstarter with ZineQuest but after a few too many rakes being stepped on, expanded out to sites like BackerKit and Itch.io as their own thing. Zine Month aka ZineQuest, ZineTopia and I’m sure several other iterations. I’m just going to go with Zine Month or ZiMo for ease of use.
The site, “I Want to Play Games” has a lot of guidance and promotion for ZiMo projects, as well as this neat logo:
Personally, I always like to have a bit of an examination of different projects, see what catches my eye and what I’d like to shine my admittedly fairly little spotlight on.
There are a lot of different sites and places to check out, so I put a shout out on BlueSky to see what projects folks had. A number of people responded and I specifically have to thank Chaotic from The Gauntlet community who hammered out the majority of responses. I also asked at a couple of RPG Discords. If you have a project which I might like to look at in my next article, email me at charles (dot) etheridgenunn (at) gmail (dot) com. My rule is no 5E and no AI. I try to do my due diligence, but I am only human, so if I have accidentally covered something with AI, tell me and I’ll burn it from my article.
One last thing, I won’t be backing everything I cover, which isn’t necessarily a value statement on the campaign, I’m just one guy and can’t afford every RPG that intrigues me.
First of all a quick disclaimer. I’m pretty sure Michelle and I are both writing for the same RPG at the moment (The Lands Remaining, coming soon!).
What’s it about?
Lie to Him is a solo RPG about honesty & dishonesty, trust & mistrust, all played with a tarot deck and wooden block tower. One of the stretch goals which has been reached is an app allowing you to play without either (as someone with terrible coordination, I appreciate this).
The game sounds like the specifics of theme are chosen by the player, the project says it’ll be a short zine on recycled paper with an intentionally water-damaged look to it. Also if you back at any level, Michelle will tell you a lie about herself. As someone who offered burnt script pages to their comic to backers, I appreciate this kind of offering.
Conclusion: Backed to a physical level! (and a lie, of course)
THE CRYPT HAS OPENED
By When Suddenly! Games
Disclosure time! One of the people involved here is Chaotic, who has worked on Sprigs & Kindling, an RPG anthology I’ve contributed to.
What’s it about?
An EC comic-styled RPG about cryptids in small towns. This is one of those games that sounds entirely like it was made for me, even if I’ve never really been an EC guy. It looks pulpy, eerie and definitely worth a look.
There are several different cryptids to choose from and player-facing town creation. The “Imposition Dice System” makes a lot of appealing comparisons to Blades in the Dark, Brindlewood Bay and Cypher. The expansion books also include some comic pages as well as new places and cyptids. That’s pretty rad.
Conclusion: Backed digitally. It looks like outside of the US, that’s your only option.
FOOD & EVIL
By Goosepoop Games
What’s it about?
You play a demon who runs a food truck, trying to complete orders for customers. This is primarily a comedy game, with a deck of playing cards used in a deckbuilding fashion to manage ingredients. The campaign states that it’s able to be run as a self-contained game or dropped into any other game as a side story (removing demons if you’re playing a cyberpunk or science fiction world). The campaign contains several adventures and promises more as the campaign goes on.
Look, it doesn’t have to be Mothership Month for there to be Mothership modules.
This campaign is for some cursed cybernetics, talking in Alien, Tetsuo: The Iron Man and FLCL as reference points, so you can see the kind of thing we’re talking about here.
I’m not familiar with the Explore ROOMS RPG, but the style of this campaign is gorgeous. There are not one but two books: RIGS in Roomino and RACES in Roomino.
This looks like a really nice RPG primarily for kids, with short puzzles for them to go through in 10 minutes to an hour. Races RIGS makes multiple rooms into a story and RACES add chase mechanics for an escape or pursuit.
Conclusion: Following, not backed. I’ve emailed them to get a copy of the pocket guide to see what it’s like and whether it’s something to recommend to friends with kids.
FANTASY IN MY BACKYARD
By James Quigley & Chase Call
What’s it about?
I like worldbuilding RPGs. I’ve used Ex Novo and Quiet Year to build settings for RPGs. This looks like it’s doing the same sort of thing for urban fantasy games, specifically name-checking Monster of the Week, Monsterhearts and World of Darkness.
You use a map of a city (real or fictional) and a deck of cards to add locations, myths, faction locations and so on. While I like Quiet Year as a way of building up an establishing situation, games like this and Ex Novo look a bit better as a way of constructing a history, factions and making somewhere feel like it’s been lived in.
Conclusion: Following, not backed, mainly as I ran Monster of the Week fairly recently and don’t know when I’ll be getting my urban fantasy on in the near future.
TOWNIE(S)
By Irving Benitez aka Jellyfishlines.
Full disclosure time, once again. Irving and I have both worked on Sprigs & Kindling and will both be on The Lands Remaining.
What’s it about?
A game about how a town changes over time, using the Lost & Found engine which was built from Artefact and Bucket of Bolts by Jack Harrison. This time you’re looking about a Rust Belt town and what happens after capitalism guts a place full of living people. The system has you play an object, and in this case it’s a town and how it changes over time.
I’m not someone who lives in the States and I’ve never been there (or will go there in its current form), but this kind of town fascinates me.
Campaign: https://itch.io/s/179104/art-for-townies-drive for the game, which is mechanically finished but currently wants some art. It’s on ‘reverse sale’ on Itch rather than another crowdfunding platform due to restrictions on SSI in the US. While not necessarily there with all the bells & whistles of a ZiMo project, it’s still part of the month.
Conclusion: I have already bought this as part of Solo But Not Alone 6. If it still needs more direct contributions, I’ll add to it.
I HAVE LIVED A THOUSAND LIVES
By Rachel Bennett
What’s it about?
This is a solo RPG about reading and entering the worlds of different books (also movies, TV, etc, but mainly books). You go through five books and are changed by them. The project mentions that this is a shamelessly self-indulgent game, and yeah, it sounds it. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
You’re starting a small business and trying to keep from doing anything too evil. Like torturing puppies, for instance. This is another game that uses a block tower to see how much you can keep or fail to keep your values.
I’ve used a similar game at my workplace to show collaboration in pitching, I’d be interested in seeing how this would work to show how compromises in service of capital.
A cyberpunk noir game where two runners (human, hybrid or android) are trying to find proof about whether a gang leader’s dead or not. It uses the 24XX system which I’ve yet to try myself and is mostly looking for art and funds to make a starter adventure.
Conclusion: Followed but not backed. A good reminder that I should check out 24XX at some point.
DRAGONFLY MOTEL: A ROLEPLAYING GAME OF DREAMS AND MIRAGES
By Thomas Munier & Bläckfisk Publishing
What’s it about?
A revised version of Dragonfly Motel and threatened/promised to be weirder than Bläckfisk Publishing’s previous works. You play travellers lost in a trap of dreamlike slices of life.
The intent is sessions from 30 minutes to two hours, involving everyone in character and setting creation. There are two modes: Feathers (accessible, intense) and Roses (demanding, profound). It sounds pretty surreal and intriguing.
SEX/VIOLENCE/POOP 3 is an RPG printed on toilet paper. Players are slaves on Turd Planet and rebel against their Master, who’s played by the GM. Printing a game on loo roll seems like the act of a strange mind, but also I love that RPGs can be this kind of thing.
HEX & THE PUNKS has players as punch magicians with two stats: Hex and Punk. It sounds a bit Lasers & Feelings, but with flipping coins.
We Were Punks has no actual mechanics, but is an epistolary game about the punk scene, mainly involving making things up about it.
Conclusion: Following, but not backed. I’m a fan of Côme’s work though, so we’ll see.
ON CALL
By VJH Creations aka VJ Harris
What’s it about?
You’re a werewolf with a phone job, on call to deal with any of your pack’s issues as you actually can’t shift in the full moon. It’s a 1-2 player game and sounds like a fun mix of urban fantasy and mundanity.
Conclusion: Backed! How could I resist a pitch like this?
FINAL THOUGHTS
There’s more out there, I know there is. I already have items earmarked for a second article.
Before Zine Month started, I saw some folks mentioning that there was likely to be an abundance of AI art in entries and I’m pleased to say that I only found a few. Obviously none will be covered here.
One thing to note is that almost everything shared here is actually written and some have seen a basic/prototype release already. It’s normally best to launch late into the work so that you’re not trying to deal with making the project, printing and fulfilling it all in the post-project time. I’m still sitting on some Zine Month entries from last year, after all. I’m pleased that it feels like projects have been doing more to be organised like this.
Stretch goals are still present in most of these projects. Fortunately they’re not ludicrously ambitious which again, would be a mark of concern in a project’s ability to get fulfilled.
I didn’t really pay attention to Zine Month projects prior to the start of the month and I like what I’m seeing so far.
The X-Men: Age of Revelation event has ended. I’ve covered each of the miniseries and one-shots in a previous post but that was published before the finale came out.
I was at my dad’s for New Year, so I had to wait a couple of days before picking up a copy from my comic shop. I’ve read it a couple of times and I have a few thoughts.
What Happened?
Apocalypse and Charles Xavier invaded Earth with an army from Arakko in a full-page piece of art which felt evocative of the House of X first issue cover. They met up with the Amazing X-Men and one-armed Wolverine. Scott and Logan have a reunion and hug, then get to the fighting.
Kid Omega and his off-brand Omega Kids (the previous ones were killed) take on Professor X and he’s killed before Psylocke can murder Quentin. Of course, all of this is a moot point, as Revelation explains to Apocalypse that he wanted all of this. The American government wasn’t going to let him keep going for too long (although the current state of things in the real world feels like everyone will let America do basically anything at the moment). The X-Virus is all connected to the land and everyone mutated by it, so now it’ll make everyone into a single mind. Tentacles attack everyone and Beast gets all panicky about sending him and Scott to the present. That happens, but oh no, that wasn’t the Hank McCoy everyone thought it was (I called it!). Future Scott’s back, says that Hank wasn’t there and has a doomed attack on Revelation’s tentacles, but it’s all doomed. Everyone is Revelation now, as is Earth.
As Hank said, this wasn’t a battle to be won, but a warning. It wasn’t like Days of Future Past or Age of Apocalypse where it’s solved in the story. Instead, I guess we’ll have to wait to see what happens in the epilogue and Shadows of Tomorrow to see how it can be avoided.
I appreciate a silly reveal, even though overall this didn’t land for me.
There were a lot of seeds of things in the miniseries, did any of them pay off here?
Amazing X-Men, Book of Revelation & World of Revelation: Yes, the finale directly carries on from them.
Binary: Jean took the Phoenix back over and protected the town I forget the name of. Somehow despite being Phoenix she ended up in the flesh orb.
Laura Kinney: Sabretooth: Laura was dead and her weird-looking son didn’t resurface with Apocalypse’s invasion force.
Longshots: Ha! No. All the stuff with the power plant and television didn’t really do anything.
Iron & Frost: Tony sent a signal to the past which didn’t come up here, but I assume will in the present.
Rogue Storm: Storm was in a celestial hunting ground, Rogue Red was alive and heading somewhere with Gambit, I assume after Unbreakable.
Sinister’s Six: There were Sinister or Havok-style crystals on some leaves. They don’t show up.
Unbreakable X-Men: This was pretty self-contained with a happy ending until this issue kills Gambit & Rogue (Green? I assume?) in a single panel.
Omega Kids: After killing the Omega Kids, some outlined, unnamed Omega Kids show up.
The Last Wolverine: Logan lost an arm and came to his senses. This one actually does pay off in the main series. I so thought they were going to offhandedly have him taken over again.
Radioactive Spider-Man: There wasn’t anything left here, but he does visibly end up absorbed into the flesh orb.
Cloak or Dagger: They had a complete enough story and I assume are in the flesh orb.
Expatriate X-Men: They looked like they were going to storm Philadelphia and then didn’t appear in the finale.
Undeadpool: Everyone was dead apart from the Expatriate X-Men, so there was nothing to follow up.
X-Vengers: The American government were helped by the Avengers, mentioned probably flippantly about a peace treaty and then the threat of them eventually doing something was enough for Revelation to get his plans moving. The Avengers end up in the flesh orb.
The one editorial note pointing to a miniseries.
So what did this serve?
A reminder that there are too many titles
Most of the Age of Revelation titles had a counterpart in the From the Ashes X-Men era. X-Men, Phoenix, Laura Kinney: Wolverine, Storm, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, Exceptional X-Men and Deadpool were all replaced. From the Ashes had recently finished Psylocke and Magik series, too. It’s times line this where you look at the list of comics and go, “am I getting too many?”
The answer is yes, but something is broken in me and for now I’m still getting them.
A pretty good final page reveal
I’ve given the event a lot of crap, and I kind of saw the OG Beast reveal coming (although I had a second of wondering if it might be Dark Beast). It’s still a fun reveal and given Brevoort seems eager to get rid of anything from Krakoa, it’s a surprise.
The final reveal of the issue.
Obvious story-to-event bloat
Everyone’s said it and they’re right. This feels entirely like it was a story arc in X-Men which was made into a massive event. It could have been a six issue arc and incorporated both Amazing and Book, maybe with a linked one-shot if they must, the same way that Ghost Boxes accompanied Astonishing or the Age of Alpha-connected issues.
A couple of good miniseries
Cloak or Dagger was good. Unbreakable X-Men had a lot of art changes, but was still a fun companion to the original series. Rogue Storm looked good. I think that’s about it.
Only three books meant anything
Amazing X-Men, Book of Revelation (and World of Revelation) are the only real ‘core’ books and The Last Wolverine is the only one which links to the main events in any way.
Tentacles fall, everyone dies.
Unfortunate comparisons to other “Age” events
Age of Apocalypse – 38 issues (39 with X-Men Prime)
This is the big point of comparison. Age of Apocalypse replaced each of the eight X-Men comics with four-issue miniseries, showed the wider world and preludes in a couple of two-issue series, then opened and closed with one-shots. Each title paid off to some level in the conclusion. Astonishing and Amazing X-Men were the ‘core’ titles, while Factor-X showed the bad guys. Weapon X showed an invasion force, Gambit and the X-Ternals brought the M’Kraan Crystal, Generation Next brought Illyana Rasputin and X-Calibre brought Destiny. X-Man brought himself, but he’s just like that. Each title felt like it told a story and pointed to the finale.
Age of X – 11 issues
This is what Age of Revelation should have been, to be honest. Oft forgotten and we entered the event knowing something was off from the start. It was only New Mutants and X-Men Legacy, but had the wider X-Men cast and a couple of one-shots. I really enjoyed it, and there were longer ramifications for some characters. The world is different all of a sudden one day, all because of Legion (and his imagined Moira, which feels like an unintentional call-forward).
Age of X-Man – 32 issues
This may not have been a perfect event, but it was great fun. While Uncanny X-Men went through a grim phase, all the other X-Men characters were in Nate Grey’s weird alternate world where he believes all the relationship drama is the worst bit of the X-Men instead of the best. His ‘utopia’ is retro-tinged in its style and has some great stories which pan out in six five-issue series. NextGen highlighted Glob, Amazing Nightcrawler was a bit of a weak link but still entertaining. X-Tremists and Prisoner X would prove to be fantastic introductions to Vita Ayala and Leah Williams to the X-Books, where they’d later return.
Bonus Comparison: Days of Future Past – 2 issues
Oh yeah, this also raises unfavourable comparisons to the two-issue story which put Kitty’s mind in the future and vice versa. This is effectively a reverse DoFP, but the future events won’t affect the present, just show how bad things can get.
No actual fix to the future in the event
It felt odd that Cyclops is sent back and nothing seems to have happened to make this grimdark future not happen. With 3K Beast around and aware of the X-Virus, if anything the future feels more likely to happen in some form now.
X-Men Omega closed out the Age of Apocalypse and had Bishop fix the past. Age of X ended and had epilogues in the event. Age of X-Man Omega closed out the story and that world, depositing Nate Grey in his own weird other space.
I get that, Hank, but I feel like it’s still a bit of an inconclusive ending to 52 issues.
Hopefully something good in the actual X-Men comic
We’ll see. We do need to find out how the heroes stop this grim future. Unless maybe that doesn’t happen and the “Shadows of Tomorrow” are that it still looks certain. Cyclops and 3K Beast have fun clashes ahead, and we’ll see if any of the hints of the future do anything. Also if anyone will care.
In my self-imposed marathon of reading an X-Men comic (or an arc for a spin-off), I would probably take three weeks to get through this and I don’t know if I can bring myself to do that. I’m already preparing a From the Ashes era emergency stop and pivoting to the Legion of Super-Heroes if it doesn’t buck its ideas up.
Hopefully the Shadows of Tomorrow era will be interesting. Tom Brevoort’s mentioned throwing a lot of stuff against the wall, hopefully he’ll find something that sticks instead of cancelling a bunch of series and having mediocre events. We’ll see.
Cyclops realises he’s in the grimdark future. Oh, and Hank is, too.
I’m a big X-Men fan and have been from a young age. I’m currently reading through 2012’s X-Men comics in my family marathon, as well as of course the present day issues.
I loved the Krakoan Era (2019-2024). It took some big swings and while there were a few hiccups along the way, I think that as a whole it did a lot more interesting things than several previous eras. I’ve been fine with a lot of Tom Brevoort’s work editing Marvel books, but the main thing I heard was that he was going to be, “a steady hand” for the X-Men line going forward. A truly double-edged phrase.
From the Ashes has had some good, bad and mainly mid titles in the time since it came out. It hasn’t felt as fully backwards-looking as I feared (it didn’t default to the 90’s cartoon/comic styles and the school), but it also hasn’t really felt propulsive. NYX had a good take on young adult mutants living in New York and dealing with having a land, a culture, a people, and then nothing. X-Force and Phoenix were painfully forgettable. X-Factor was poor man’s X-Statix despite loving the creative team behind it. X-Men and Uncanny X-Men have had some great moments and some poverty uninteresting ones, both released at a frantic pace which feels eager to outdo the output of Krakoa. Exceptional X-Men didn’t feel like a core ‘X-Men’ title and being released monthly made it feel slower than the others, but it was probably my favourite.
The first event, “X-Manhunt”, felt incredibly disorganised, with little purpose or connectivity to it, aside from getting Professor X off the board. Age of Revelation threatened to be similar, but bigger. The anniversary of the Age of Apocalypse was upon us, so it’s been celebrated with a Giant-Size Age of Apocalypse one-shot as part of another event, X-Men of Apocalypse as a miniseries written by Jeph Loeb who will probably ignore any continuity since he last wrote X-books, and then Age of Revelation.
They’re doing that Ryu/Cyclops pose.
Doug Ramsey won a contest to become the Heir to Apocalypse, aka Revelation. He’s spent time away from other mutants, hanging with Warlock and Bei of the Blood Moon. Recently, he’s arrived at Cyclops’ Alaskan X-Men base, looking to join them. As they’re let in, we see a glimpse of a dark future.
Cyclops and Beast have been sent X years into the future, where things are pretty grim. The X Virus mutated or killed any humans who came into contact with it. Wildlife has taken over the infected lands. America’s fragmented (more than it already has). Revelation’s powers have allowed him to control people like Wolverine and ‘Babel’ people who he doesn’t like, taking away their ability to communicate or understand others. The X-Men are a resistance force and they’ve brought the minds of Cyclops and Beast to the future to help them.
This all takes the form of four one-shots and sixteen three-issue miniseries. That’s a lot. Age of Apocalypse had two one-shots, two two-issue miniseries and eight four-issue miniseries, by comparison. Age of X-Man had six five-issue miniseries and two one-shots.
I had a mixed reaction to the start of Age of Revelation. A number of the titles had interesting concepts, some felt like odd choices. It all felt like a lot and aside from the design on the sidebar of the comics, it didn’t feel visually distinct. When Amazing X-Men reached its midpoint and revealed that this 54 issue event was just killing time while Future Cyclops was in the present trying to kill Revelation, the wind was taken out of me a bit. This only increased when the first three miniseries ended and my main reaction was, “that was all a bit pointless.”
But will Age of Revelation? (No)
Let’s have a closer look though. Maybe in rereading them I can see if there’s any connective tissue between the Age of Revelation as a whole and if they actually tell any good stories. [The following is an expanded version of a thread of mine from BlueSky]
Amazing X-Men
By Jed MacKay, Mahmoud Asrar, Matt Wilson & Clayton Cowles
Scott knows what’s up.
Amazing X-Men feels like the ‘core’ title, especially as it continues directly from Age of Revelation: Overture. A theory I’ve heard is this was a story arc pushed into a massive event.
The ‘truth off’ in issue two is fine, and leads to a fun Cyclops moment. The biggest problem is that we find out that Scott’s been Days of Future Pasted and the actual relevant actions relating to this grimdark future are in the past, so none of this is likely necessary.
The final issue reveals Doug wants to make everyone a hive mind. I think that’s what he did as Truefriend in New Mutants Vol 3. Beast is kind of sus and A arrives with Professor X.
Again, it all feels like parts of a future story in the X-Men ongoing which didn’t need to be all of this.
Binary
By Stephanie Phillips, Giada Belviso, Rachelle Rosenberg & Travis Lanham
Carol as Binary as Phoenix
Binary’s got an alright concept where Carol’s the Phoenix and using all her powers to keep her hometown safe. The thing is, Phoenix can do vastly more than protect a single town. Also why was Madelyne Pryor suddenly interested in being the Phoenix? Her conflict has always been about being a real person and not Jean.
Does it tell a complete story? Yes. I remember it more than the current Phoenix run which is saying something.
A good story? Not really, it’s got the hook, but I don’t buy Maddie as the villain.
Does it add much to Age of Revelation? It features Babels, kills Carol and Phoenix is still here, protecting this town. She’ll have to abandon it in order to reach the finale
Cloak or Dagger
By Justina Ireland, Lorenzo Tammetta, Andrew Dalhouse & Joe Caramagna
Cake or Death?
Cloak or Dagger is a surprising highlight as the pair are married but have a Captain Marvel/Rick Jones thing where they can’t share the same dimension. Also Fenris are here being dickheads, forcing the X-Virus on people. There’s a human soldier who’s helping the pair but immediately sides with Fenris when he becomes mutated. Eventually, Cloak and Dagger’s daughter who’s trapped in an in-between dimension pulls them both together for a time in order to save the say.
The story’s pretty simple and gets rid of the divide for a bit in issue two. This didn’t need to be an Age of Revelation title, and it’ll be interesting if they adopt some of this for the present day.
Still, I enjoyed it as a whole.
Expatriate X-Men
By Eve Ewing, Francesco Mortarino, Raúl Angulo & Ariana Maher
Rift aka The BMX Bandit
Expatriate X-Men’s about a flotilla of X-Men trying to get a dark elf looking guy to Limbo for Mystique, only Melee’s going to betray them and needs to leave him behind. She’s also seeing him.
Illyana’s inexplicably a parent now to another child who’s a bit of a nothing character. The ships are wrecked, the team escape and are heading to the finale by train. The characters are fine, this series feels a bit disjointed.
As a story it’s one which feels a bit spotty. It is fairly core to the Age of Revelation world and I assume will tie in to the finale.
Iron & Frost
By Cavan Scott, Ruairi Coleman, Roberto Poggi, Yen Nitro & Joe Sabino
Iron King takes over Tony yet again.
I’m still shocked that those maniacs made me care about Emma & Tony in the Fall of X. Iron & Frost has some alright ideas, but falls foul of being both too short and repetitive at the same time. Emma’s heart is punched out and Tony’s a robot man. She’s trapped in diamond form and looking for a solution while in theory Tony’s after a cure to the X-Virus, but has gone a bit mad.
It’s a complete enough story with some alright moments. Ultimately the attempts to save Tony and Emma fail, Rhodey’s killed, but a message is sent back in time. Maybe this will result in something?
Is it good? I guess it has its moments and could have been either two or four issues. Is it tied to the Age of Revelation? Maybe, but it could actually end up linked to things in the present.
The Last Wolverine
By Saladin Ahmed, Edgar Salazar, Carlos López & Cory Petit
A man too happy to be in this world.
The Last Wolverine has me more invested in Leonard the Wendigo than any of his present day appearances. Leonard, powerless Kurt and Heather Howlett (?) are going to rescue the brainwashed guy Wolverine. This involves going from Canada to America and finding Logan. Luckily he’s there and pretty much everyone dies trying to get Wolverine his brain back.
Much to my surprise, someone accomplishes something in an Age of Revelation spin-off!!! Heather hacks off Logan’s arm and they beat him up enough so that Revelation’s brainwashing goes. I don’t know how he’ll stay that way in the finale, though…
Oh my god it actually accomplished something which isn’t in the main title or opening & closing one-shots.
Laura Kinney: Sabretooth
By Erica Schultz, Valentina Pinti, Rachelle Rosenberg & Cory Petit
Not going to lie, she wears it well.
Laura Kinney: Sabretooth is a very thin story. She works for Revelation, betrays him to drop her weird son off to Gabby & Akihiro. She’s brainwashed to hunt them, feels bad and stops, is brainwashed again. Then her son explodes, killing Laura, Gabby & Akihiro.
Did it tell a complete story? Yes.
A good one? Not really, it was thin, repetitive and abrupt deaths of everyone makes it feel a bit pointless. Like most of the ones above, could have fared better as a one or two issue story to tighten it up or a four issue one to actually gain time to do more.
We did see some of this future world and Arakko, and Alex may pop up in the finale, but probably not.
Longshots
By Gerry Duggan, Jonathan Hickman, Alan Robinson, Yen Nitro & Ariana Maher
The Longshots
For a title called Longshots, the titular hero only appears occasionally with Spiral to provide commentary.
Mojo gets a team together to sort out a power plant which is interfering with his broadcasts. Wonder Man and Hellcat lead the team, while Bishop does some odd time travel until he’s killed. Basically everyone dies, just as Wonder Man and Hellcat hint at reconciliation and a possible future series. While I like Hickman, his humour doesn’t always land and grinds a few axes from his last run.
Does it tell a complete story? Yes.
A good one? Eh, not really.
It’s more connected to AoR than I thought with the Power Plant, but it could have been anything and doesn’t feel like it fits in this world.
Omega Kids
By Tony Fleecs, Andres Genolet, Fernando Sifuented-Sujo & Travis Lanham
Some bad kids.
Omega Kids is a mixed bag as Quentin Quire tries to handle teaching kids who only know this version of the world and while they speak about things like gendered terms, they’re also dead-eyed extremists, killing for Revelation.
Quire’s conned into a psychic illusion by them, manages to stop it and an assassination attempt on Revelation, then kills the kids. A weird mix of interesting that Quire’s contending with newer forms of his old ways and their casual extremism.
It did tell a complete story and delved into some of the AoR society, but didn’t go far enough about the radicalisation of the youth into willing and (over)eager enforcers of Revelation’s will. Adding consideration about things like gender and ability to them muddied the message, too.
Radioactive Spider-Man
By Joe Kelly, Kev Walker, Chris Sotomayor & Joe Caramagna
A good sentiment, a poor story.
Radioactive Spider-Man feels like a “What If…?” story extended into three issues. Spider-Man’s doused with radiation, living with Cecelia Reyes and his aunt transforms into a murderous monster she doesn’t remember and can’t control. She’s accidentally let out of stasis and Spider-Man tries to save her despite everyone saying he can’t. Ultimately, he can’t.
It is a complete story that barely feels part of AoR. As I said, should have been a What If story, It also gives Miles the terrible name “Spin”.
Rogue Storm
By Murewa Ayodele, Roland Boschi, Neeraj Menon & Travis Lanham
Storm auditioning for Conan or Slaine
First of all, Roland Boschi’s full page spreads are astounding. I kind of like the Superman Red/Blue thing with Rogue as it’s a rare moment of acknowledging that there would have been X years of superhero bullshit going on.
I had to reread it a couple of times. Storm’s been causing (more) climate catastrophes as she’s containing Eēgūn. Akujin, a new character, convinces Rogue Red and Uncanny X-Force to hunt and kill her five years into AoX and three reads in I cannot tell you why. Maybe I’m being dense.
Uncanny X-Force die five years into AoX, as does Rogue Red, but Storm brings her back. This is a story missing pieces, with some cool visuals. I assume Gambit’s getting Rogue Red back for the big finale, I’m not sure why, as Unbreakable was off on its own.
Whee!
Sinister’s Six
By David Marquez, Rafael Loureiro, Alex Sinclair & Ariana Maher
Yet another ragtag team of misfits for Alex to play with.
Hellions was good, but what about Second Hellions? That’s Sinister’s Six. The team’s made up of Havok and a few others infected with the X-Virus despite being mutants, another doomed alternate reality Alex Summers child, Venom and apparently it’s a surprise Revelation made the X-Virus. I did check and it’s not said overtly before this, but I think it was entirely able to be guessed.
There’s a cure to the X-Virus, but everyone dies. Lorna’s Venom and the crystal body of Havok might be doing weird things, or it might be Sinister doing things at the very end. Ultimately this all felt a bit pointless.
Unbreakable X-Men
By Gail Simone, Lucas Werneck, Carlos Villa, Mario Santoro, Davide Tinto, R.B. Silva, Alessandro Cappuccio, Ramón Rosas, Luciano Vecchio, Tiago Palma, Espen Grundetjem & Clayton Cowles
Gambit as time passes and grief lingers.
Unbreakable X-Men feels self-contained, with Rogue sacrificing herself to stop Galactus, Gambit losing his sight, Shuvahrak wakes up and the former Outliers have to get back together to stop her. The art’s nice, but shifts through a few artists I assume to keep up with the schedule.
Is it a complete and good story? Yes, although it feels disconnected. It’s a nice look at a potential future life for the Outliers. It’s also a rare happy ending. Like Radioactive Spider-Man, it feels like this could have been a What If story.
Undeadpool
By Tim Seeley, Carlos Magno, Guru-eFX & Joe Sabino
Wade going all Jason Vorhees
Undeadpool’s pitch of a sane(ish) mind in a slasher monster body sounded alright. He’s trying to help the one member of the Alpha Warriors he didn’t kill & eat to reach the X-Men.
Cable appears a few times, infected with the T/O virus and fighting Deadpool until Fearless boosts his powers, revealing she’s an aspiring chorister who could have fixed Deadpool. Luckily he kills her before she kills the X-Men, but his powers go into overdrive, killing him.
Was it a complete story? Yes. It was fine, although I’m not a Deadpool fan. It felt pretty futile, ultimately, but the presence of the Expatriate X-Men made it feel a little more grounded in this world.
X-Vengers
By Jason Loo, Sergio Fernandez Dávila, Aure Jimenez, Rain Beredo & Joe Sabino
Dani’s due her time in the spotlight.
X-Vengers is a terrible name, and is an insulting name the public have given the team. The surviving Avengers are mutants now: six-armed Hawkeye, weirdly variable Scott Lang, water-based Black Widow, Warlock-Vision and Shang-Chi who can shatter everything. Cannonball’s also there and Moonstar’s leading the team. They fight the Kree who invade for some reason and then there’s a weird techno-virus thing to deal with. Also there’s a lot of Revelation here.
The villain turns out to be MODOK who’s trying to get the humans and mutants to fight… for some reason. It’s kind of a complete story, but aside from the New Mutants reunion I don’t care.
World of Revelation
By (1) Al Ewing, Austin Alessio & Travis Lanham (2) Steve Foxe, Jesús Merino, Wil Quintana & Travis Lanham (3) Ryan North, Adam Szalowski, Chris Peter & Travis Lanham
Professor X, just happy to be invited for once.
World of Revelation is an anthology one-shot. In a rare move for one of these AoA type events, Professor X is alive! Also Al Ewing gives us a fun mostly prose journey through Arakko before their appearance in third issues of some other titles.
Apparently Doug babels people by yelling, “Babel!” Also we get Franklin weirdly mutated, recording history and then dying. Eons later, the timeline still isn’t fixed and HERBIE has all his records. Two mostly alright stories showing the passing of the age of heroes.
The first story’s the closest there is to anything which feels useful to read for the wider Age of Revelation, but you can kind of guess that Charles and A are returning from all the other series.
X-Men: Book of Revelation
By Jed MacKay, Netho Diaz, Sean Parsons, J.P Mayer, Fernando Sifuentes & Clayton Cowles
Dougie’s upset.
Book of Revelation is the other ‘core’ feeling title, unsurprisingly also a Jed MacKay joint. It’s an evil palace drama with Doug and his choristers, a ghostly Kitty Pryde and Elbecca, a new Chorister trying to survive. Also to kill Apocalypse!
The Elbecca treachery’s kind of fun, watching her take down Fabian Cortez, a man who is only good when he’s being clowned on.
Elbecca reveals her treachery to Revelation and gets stabbed. Revelation reveals he’s been hoping for an infiltrator as summoning Apocalypse to Earth is part of his plan to merge everyone into one being. I guess we’ll see how that goes soon.
Getting ready for the finale.
So… there are some positive moments in the event, it’s not all bad, but I do have some issues:
Aside from some key players, most characters look the same as they do in the present, and act like they just skipped from there to X years in the future with nothing in between.
There’s not really a consistent art style aside from the cover design. Age of Apocalypse was wild jRPG glam and Age of X-Men was funky retro. This is just more of the same.
The stories are too thin in three issues and have enough room to repeat themselves. Most of them accomplish nothing. As I’ve said earlier, if they were one or two issues they’d be a tighter story and at four they might have had to develop characters and arcs.
Everyone’s said this, but 52 issues is too many. Sixteen miniseries is too many. A lot of them also deal with the same things. Find a cure, kill Revelation, but none accomplish it. Too many are torn apart by bickering, treachery and ultimately futile missions. Worse, Amazing told us this was all worthless as Future Cyclops is the one fixing things in the past.
There were already too many new characters and issues in From the Ashes, like they’re doing their best to outpace the Krakoan Era. This adds even more new people, I assume in the hope of finding a Blink. Let’s do a round-up:
Akujin is Diet Spiral and a traitor without any discernible reason behind her actions.
Alex Creed-Howlett didn’t do much.
Zane Creed died off-panel.
Fourier was nothing.
Chris Summers was yet another doomed Alex Summers child.
Curtis, Nell, Ayla and Bailey didn’t leave a distinctive impression to learn about them individually.
Fuze didn’t do much.
Cecelia and Hank share names of other, better characters.
Elbecca/Virta was a little interesting.
The Alpha Warriors were some potentially fun ideas, insulted and killed.
Rift was just a guy in a bike helmet with energy powers.
Lyrebird was a dark-elf looking guy who inexplicably somehow had a kid with Illyana and was a traitor
Nika was another kid who didn’t really do much, although this one was a captive and then dead.
Captain Jenson’s the mutated ex-military traitor Man-Bat type.
Flex & Scritch are a couple who are helping Cloak & Dagger, and they don’t do much.
Ayla is Cloak & Dagger’s daughter who’s less dull than the other children, but keeps making me think about the Legion of Super-Heroes.
So far a lot of the Age of Revelation series didn’t feel too necessary. They did all read a lot better in three-issue chinks rather than individual issues. The style is pretty similar to the current era and it feels like this has mostly been to trick fans with broken brains like mine into buying 52 comics instead of just having a four to six issue storyline in Adjectiveless X-Men.
This is being published before the final issue, so we’ll have to see if it can stick the mediocre landing, surprise me by being good or be the reason I won’t continue my daily X-Men marathon beyond this point.
Is Calico summoning Seahorses for her, Ransom and Gambit one of the best visuals of this event? Probably
The good news is that none of the hosts feel like Alan Rickman’s character here.
Charlie and Miles have ‘gifted’ each other episodes of Star Trek to talk about, both good and bad. The problem with being casual about Star Trek is you just don’t know all of what’s out there. That’s what the Casual Trek mission is for, after all.
This year the gang are doing something different, talking about a film that’s adjacent to Star Trek, and even some Trek actors say is the best Star Trek movie: Galaxy Quest. They’ve even got guest stars Reanna Reid-Lobatto and Sean Corse from off of the Famicom Dojo joining the festivities.
So sit by the fire, get a nice drink and listen to some nerds getting rabid about a fun film, even if it has Tim Allen in it.
0:03:47 – What Non-Star Trek/non-Galaxy Quest Thing We’ve Been Enjoying: Pokémon Legends ZA, Taskmaster,
0:21:49 – Galaxy Quest Preamble
0:33:12 – Galaxy Quest Recap
0:54:51 – Thoughts on the movie
Talking points include: The Mojoverse, the Junkions, chilli, needing to cuddle a Pokémon, Detective Pikachu, Pokémon Legends ZA, John Pertwee’s Doctor Who episodes, conventions, Thought Bubble, Sean learning about names from the UK, Westlife, Santana, Chat Out of Hell’s Westlife episode, Charlie’s musical knowledge comes from Rock Band, Miles’ anecdote about how he saw Galaxy Quest (funny, charming), Charlie’s anecdote about watching Pokémon: The Movie (thankfully short, of questionable legal status). Charlie pitching 2000 AD, “some of the old tentacle action”, Sam Rockwell, Susan from Seinfeld, fandom in media, “Duct Tape Boy”, what is wrong with Monk from Monk, convicted felon & narc Tim Allen actually being okay in this, Airplane, The Shining, Three Amigos, favourite non-Christmas Christmas movies. Oh, and occasionally Galaxy Quest.
Casual Trek is by Charlie Etheridge-Nunn and Miles Reid-Lobatto
Thought Bubble is the event for comics creators in the UK (and beyond). That’s what I’ve always heard about Thought Bubble. It’s a convention I’ve been meaning to go to, but there have been too many factors in the way.
It’s during National Novel Writing Month and I was running the Brighton community for a while. It’s right near Christmas. I didn’t have the money and everyone always goes on about how expensive it is. I go to a lot of conventions each year and would be abandoning my partner yet again.
I don’t have those excuses this time… well, Christmas is always going to be a factor, but that’s fine and this is actually a convention my beloved would enjoy going to!
After faffing about a lot, I pulled the trigger, booked a hotel and tickets for the con. After years of seeing a lot of people I’ve collaborated with, wanted to collaborate with and was a fan of going there, I was going to join them!
The Journey Up
It’s quite the train trip to Harrogate, but I had my partner and my Kindle accompanying me. As we got closer I’d see some people sketching on the train. Comics people were less easy to spot in the wild than board game people, but they were still there.
Apparently we didn’t have the worst of it. Speaking to Matt Hardy, the traffic and the weather meant an eleven hour drive. Others mentioned similar amounts of time and one even had a breakdown on the way. On BlueSky there were several people mentioning flights into Leeds being rough. It sounds like trains were the way to go.
The Premier Inn
The hotel was… fine. I saw some comics folks taking breakfast around the same time as me and Emma. We had a view of The Majestic from where we had breakfast. It was taunting us by looking all fancy and Overlook-ish. The worst of it was a lack of plugs by bedsides, although Emma did find one on her side, and someone who was snoring loud enough to get through the walls to our room. I’m used to a bit of noise and can get to sleep through most interference, but it was incredibly distracting.
Harrogate
Harrogate itself looked pretty and had a few book shops to check out with our remaining time on the Friday.
There were some Christmas decorations up, although the theme seemed to be, “ominously red”. With an evening ahead of us, we went to the Everyman to see both the little comic shop section and the third in the Now You See Me franchise. It was incredibly stupid, but in an entertaining way. Emma was even given some fancy playing cards which were a promotion they had a lot of going spare as not enough people turned up to the premiere.
Ominous redness
Saturday
We had breakfast, went out of the Premiere Inn and luckily saw someone who was headed to Thought Bubble, so we were guided to the optimal route over to the entrance.
The halls were incredible, like a smaller comic fair stretched out to eternity and with nary a Funko Pop in sight. We had a couple of missions to do which would help us orient ourselves to the con.
First up, I had to drop off Explosion High to the WIP Comics stall and introduced myself to the folks there. I’ve contributed to the digital version of the most recent WIP anthology, but still feel fairly new to their group. I picked up a graphic novel for Mike Armstrong (of WIP and Explosion High fame, also a dear old friend from my days as a sixth form comic nerd). The final early mission was to see Matt Hardy to check in and see how he’s doing.
Matt, selling his wares.
He was busy doing his sales patter and had already been having a good morning selling Thunder Child. The comics looked gorgeous, and I also got to see physical copies of Vehi-Kill in a collected format. It’s the book that sold me on Norrie and Faye Stacey as people I needed to collaborate with.
Speaking of which, I only briefly saw Norrie, who Matt introduced me to but I only realised it was him after we’d parted ways. He wasn’t exhibiting and I didn’t get to give him the attention he deserved. Hopefully we’ll meet again before too long.
After a week of faffing around writing and re-writing a pitch for the 2000 AD writer’s talent search, I put my name down. Up to twelve people would be selected and there were about twelve when I went to the stand. Later in the day, it had already run to several pages, so I wasn’t sure about my efforts.
Emma found a sticker trail which took her most of the day and for £2 looked like an incredible time. She found so many stalls she wouldn’t have gone to without it and had made a note of several places to go back to and buy comics from.
As far as famous folks, I didn’t really speak to any of them, but I saw people chatting to Kieron Gillen and Paul Cornell, I saw the mysterious ‘box of treasure’ Al Ewing left behind at his stall when he was busy either on a panel or wandering about.
I think I was the one to crack out of me and Emma, when I saw some cute bird badges and a book of interviews about Marvel’s Ultimate Universe. I’m a sucker for inside baseball talk, so I had to check it out.
I saw Doctor Doom and Valeria Richards, and told Doom I was an admirer of his work.
The Dooms
There were a lot of panels I’d put down to check out and made it to two of them.
Silence! To Astonish was a convention classic and I admit I’d only heard of both podcasts when they had a crossover with some other comic podcasts (and Al Kennedy’s appearances on them in the years since). They had Kieron Gillen, John Allison, Al Ewing and Megan Huang guest starring, answering some bizarre questions, doing challenges like sewing trousers or at one point taking over the podcast.
The panel (mostly) looking very awkward as they had to shake themselves out at the start of the show.
Next up was 2000 AD – The Galaxy’s Greatest Panel. As readers here will know, I’m late to 2000 AD but have fallen in love with it over the last few years. Chloe Maveal (aka KLO-E from the 2000 AD podcast) hosted Garth Ennis, Sean Phillips, Jock and Kelly Kanayama on the panel. It was my first time seeing most of them in person and good fun going through their history with the comic.
Having spoken to Matt about the fabled mid-show party, I was told to head to the Majestic instead as it wouldn’t be as loud and there would be some comics folks to chat with. I went to dinner with my beloved and as she has a vastly smaller social battery and had some work to do, she went back to the hotel while I went to the Majestic bar, ordered a whisky and awkwardly sat around looking for any comics folks. There was an Indian wedding which had some great fashion, but was definitely not anything comics-based. I worked on my two-minute pitch for 2000 AD and eventually saw some comics folks congregating near the front of the area.
Once I found comics folks, I had a really nice night, chatting with Dave Taylor, Bruno Catarino, Barry Nugent from Geek Syndicate, and one more person who sadly I didn’t ever get the name of. Matt Hardy and Rob Jones came by after a little while, so it was a night filled with old friends and new.
I didn’t take any photos of folks at the Majestic, but did see the now legendary toilets.
Sunday
We got up with enough time to chill with breakfast and check out, then walked over to the convention unaccompanied this time. I was still going through my pitch in my notepad and seeing if there was anything I could trim or change.
Emma was hunting down the harvest stamp trail which luckily I’d realised Faye Stacey was organising. We went to their stall and grabbed a list, then Emma went off scouting while I had a bit of a wander.
One of the posters.
As time drew near to the pitch panel, I bumped into an old customer of mine from the comic shop, who was also one of the backers I knew from my old Explosion High Kickstarter. We compared our experiences of the con until I realised it was time to head to the panel.
Writer’s Talent Search
I was nervous about pitching and what the other competitors would be like. An edgelordy looking guy was muttering about heckling in the 2000 AD panel and fortunately didn’t actually do it. The group were lovely and we were all psyching each other up at the front of the queue to get in.
The judge’s panel
The panel were Rob Williams, Leah Moore and Paul Cornell, with Michael Molcher hosting. I’d heard him on the 2000 AD podcast, and it’s always interesting seeing a podcast host in person for the first time. He was good at acting like he was goading gladiators to fight, but also really being pretty supportive.
I was early in the running and drawing on the confidence of pitching my project rather than myself, I feel I did pretty well with “A Bird Pecks at a Mirror”. I made eye contact with the panel and with the audience. I kept to time (I think… Molcher didn’t tell me I’d gone over). After my pitch, I made notes, trying to get names of the other competitors and how their pitches went. The winner and honourable mention were definitely my two favourites (other than mine).
While it feels like a terrifying experience up front, I found it pretty exhilarating to do. The people were all nice and the panellists were genuinely interested in the pitches. Paul Cornell was very thorough in his attitude towards what a Future Shock needs. Rob would get folks to go back and elaborate on some elements, freed from the two minute pitch time. Leah picked up some fun hooks and genuinely seemed to enjoy a lot of the suggestions.
Personally, I intend on going to Thought Bubble again and I want to try pitching again. I know it’s a bit of a lottery, but it was a fun one.
I met up with Matt and Emma afterwards, explaining what went down at the panel. Emma and I had a last wander round the halls, collected my unsold comics from the WIP stand and eventually made our way back to the station for the long ride home. There would be some time to wait, but we had a lot of comics to entertain ourselves with on the way back.
My half of the comic haul and a little bit of Emma’s half on the other side.
We’re still concerned with the Delta Quadrant as this episode of Casual Trek covers episodes from Modern Trek’s animated series concerning the Voyager, the Delta Quadrant and all assorted antics. First up is the Prodigy Season one mid-season two-parter ‘A Moral Star’ where Dal and the Protostar gang plan to actually do a Starfleet with a little bit of heist antics as they try to break out the prisoners of their old home and then in Lower Decks’ ‘Twovix’ as Boimler grapples with the possibility of promotion, the crew of the Cerritos discover that when there’s an outbreak of Tuvixes, Janeway was 100% right!
Episodes Discussed: A Moral Star (06:36) and Twovix (35:35)
Talking points: Dan Dare (SPACE HYPER HERO), Hades II, the dark history of the Mushroom Kingdom, more of the Dark History of Charlie’s time with Dave’s Comics, the one time the Holodeck safeties breaking was a good thing, Janeway is definitely cottagecore, 80s cartoons were great nostalgia, but modern cartoons do have some superior moments, Mantzoukis in Taskmaster has coloured our heroes opinion of Jakim Pog, many many references to Katamari Damarci, Janeway was right killing Tuvix, does Riker regret not having sex with his transporter clone? we make Tuvix a verb, an American is a Tuvix of Espresso and Water, what happens when coffee reaches Warp 10? Miles sings two separate theme tunes.
PEDANTS CORNER: The TOS episode Miles refers to is ‘Is There In Truth No Beauty.’ Miles and his wife DO have the Katamari Damacy soundtrack on vinyl, important to know.
The episodes can be found on all podcatchers, on Spotify or using this link:
I love a convention and 2025’s been a surprisingly big year for me with them (with two left to go between Thought Bubble and Dragonmeet). The thing is, a gaming convention is more than just games.
Here’s my list of top five non-game things from Essen Spiel 2025, presented in no particular order:
Runner Up: StreetPass
The welcoming green glow of Nintendo’s StreetPass notification.
I love my 3DS. It was my favourite console for years, beaten only by the Switch. StreetPass was a fun thing which meant I took my 3DS everywhere with me for a long time. If you passed someone within about 30 feet or so, you’d get a copy of their Mii avatar, puzzle pieces for several Nintendo-themed puzzles and games.
Unfortunately the 3DS is no longer a popular console and while I’ll take it out sometimes and get a StreetPass hit, it rarely happens. That said, I had three whole StreetPass hits!
Käsebrezel
My increasingly DeVito-esque form, thrilled at the cheesy pretzel.
On the first day of the con I was eager not to get analysis paralysis when ordering food, so I just went for a giant pretzel. That was pretty good. Then the next day I discovered one of the food stands also sold them covered in cheese. Amazing.
The Weird Music We Blamed on Overly Fancy Gaming Tables
I still reckon it’s one of these.
In some of the halls you could hear a sudden burst of music starting and stopping. It was distracting during some of the teaches being given to us and we weren’t sure where it was coming from.
Steve and I were both talking about gaming tables with some aspirational thoughts to him moving and me moving some rooms around in my house. Some of them were ludicrous, with lighting, effects and in one case a central map which could be raised and lowered. We decided it was probably the tables making the noise.
I did actually find one of the sources of the noise in the pizza food truck in the outside part of the galleria. It would occasionally blast out some radio and with open doors, maybe that was where some of the noises came from, but I’m still going to say that they were all overly deluxe gaming tables.
The App
A slightly overstuffed shortlist. Check out my other list to see what I actually got round to!
I try and give up on the UK Games Expo app each year, so I was doubtful about the Spiel app. Then Steve explained what they’ve done and I instantly downloaded it.
The app has a map of the eight halls, a list of events, vendors and games, and they all work beautifully.
I checked off around 50 vendors to check out and half that in specific games, putting a star on them in their respective categories. The map part could zoom into specific halls so you can see the stands. Even better, you could select the star and view your favourites on the map. This was incredibly helpful. You could also get it to plot out a path between stalls and check them off as you saw them.
I admit I put too many things on my app, but by Sunday I had enough checked off to make more dedicated battle plans about where to go.
Weird mascots
I’m very familiar with the Catan sheep at each Expo and sometimes you’ll get things like the Feed the Kraken designer bringing a soft toy octopus, but this con went to the next level.
Here’s a selection of mascots I saw, a number of whom were disturbing, but always a delight to find.
This marshmallow is me after four days of Essen
A sad donkey.
A monkey at the Lego stand, wondering where things went wrong.
The Spiel mascot, ominously watching the audience off the side of the Spiel Talks stage.
The company
These nerds.
Last and definitely not least is the main reason for going along… the company. Steve is one of my oldest friends, having been shoved in my direction by a mutual friend who said he wanted to learn about RPGs. We met Alex a few years later when he went to our Magic (and other CCGs) night. The pair were part of some of the formative years of me as a roleplayer and were more than just players in my group. We were a family, and while folks have moved away, had families of their own and gaming groups of their own (in Alex’s case all the way across the world), I still love them both.
The pair were very patient with me sharing my varied hyperfixations (X-Men and indie RPGs mainly), and it felt incredibly comfortable being able to just hang out with them at a convention with no real expectations. While we’re all older than we were at other cons, we would leave the convention early, grab food and play some games before turning in. Steve showed us the start of Peacemaker Season Two on one evening when we were all gamed and people’d out. Unfortunately the noises Alex and I made during the night meant Steve making a self-proclaimed ‘nest’ in the hallway in our AirBnB, but other than that, it was an extremely chill time.
We’ve said we’ll have to do something similar for our joint 50ths, and hopefully we’ll be able to meet up some time before then, too.
A massive display of Dobble Catan, taken to torment my partner with.
Essen Spiel is big. Really big. It’s difficult to play everything, especially when you’re really awkward about hovering awkwardly by a table for ages. Not that it stopped us by the end, but early on, the three of us were a bit twitchy about it.
Here are a few notable games I saw, with the caveat that I didn’t play them so they may be better or worse than my impressions.
Don Quixote: The Ingenious Hidalgo
By Llamascape Games
A surprising amount of things from a tiny box.
The very first game we saw was this one. It’s in a little storybook-style box and has you all taking the role of people boasting about your accomplishments. I made a joking comparison to Hare & Tortoise for the similar case, but actually the race to all control the narrative direction is strangely comparable.
The boasts are all entertaining and include things like fighting windmills, if course. It’s part of a series with Moby Dick coming in the future. I’m going to have to keep an eye on this company.
Canadian RPGs!
This isn’t really like the others, but still worth talking about.
Oh Canada! You’ve got some nice RPGS
I didn’t expect much from the RPG scene here, but there was a lovely big stall of Canadian roleplaying games. I got to gush with the people at the stall about the works of Avery Alder and about Mothership.
I ended up picking up a small Mothership trifold adventure.
The Long Catan
It’s such a long Catan!
I love how tabletop games and analogue game technology has advanced over the years. This lends me more to a ‘cult of the new’ than an old gamer, but there are some I still love. Carcassonne, for instance. On the other hand, there’s Catan, which I feel I don’t really need to play again.
There was a really long Catan game, which I think was attempting to build a record. It looked cool, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Catan Dobble
Speaking of which…
A game I don’t care to play and a game I can’t play with my beloved as she’s far too good with it. I had to share this with her, more as a shared in-joke between us.
Galaxy Trucker: Do What?!
By CGE
No seriously, do what?
I don’t know what the expansion contains and didn’t pick it up as I’ve not been able to get Galaxy Trucker to the table enough. Still, this expansion has the same name as an exclamation my dad would shout, so it tickled me.
Squirrel Away
By Floodgate Games
Some more candidates for ‘most edible-looking components’
I was waiting for Alex to pick something up and didn’t want to get in the weird German fan game pen, so I hovered elsewhere. There was a fun game about hiding little plastic gem acorns from each other in a hand, shaking them and people guessing what’s there.
Winnie the Pooh: Serious Detective
By CrowD Games
I love the contemplative expression Pooh has.
A cute cover goes far, and a (let’s face it) generally incompetent Winnie the Pooh solving crimes sounds like a fun idea. I didn’t see more than the cover and a skim of the back of the box. It looks like you’re travelling through scenes trying to solve puzzles.
Junk Art Revolution
By Ludonova
I love Junk Art. I think it’s something about my dyspraxia where I love tempting fate in a completely free environment. Or that I’m thinking all the time about how not to knock into everything while other people don’t think about it as much, so that’s given me practice for the game.
So what is Junk Art Revolution? I imagined a standalone sequel with new pieces or something like that. No, it’s a new printing of the game, with a couple of changes.
The person at the booth excitedly told me what they are:
Three new city challenges (which you can see online in their rulebook)
You can now agree to use two hands instead of one when placing pieces.
I think I’ll stick with my edition.
Kingdomino Second Edition
By Blue Orange Games
I guess this is prettier.
Again, I was faced with an interesting prospect. What is this new edition of Kingdomino? They’ve released Queendomino and several other versions of the game.
This time, the person at the booth said:
They’ve polished the art to make it a bit fresher
There’s a scorepad
Again, I think I’ll stick with my version and the brilliant scorepads in the BGStats app.
Jisogi: Anime Studio Tycoon
By Esperanto Game Studio
A really pretty worker placement game.
My app was decluttered enough to make questing through the halls a lot easier. That said, we came to the Esperanto Game Studio booth way too late and they’d sold out of their game. There was still a copy to check out.
Jisogi’s a worker placement game about all the stages of making an anime series. You start out with some pre-burnt out creators and gain more over time, putting together the ideas, the writing, the art and so on. It sounded simple, but was very pretty. Apparently a reprint campaign is coming soon.
The Presence
By Purple Lantern Games
We didn’t manage to get into a game of this, but it looks fun. It sounds a bit like a cross between Mysterium and Betrayal at the House on the Hill.
Magnetic Wall Holders for Board Games
By Fryxgames
I’d worry they would fall off the wall whenever I walked past them.
I’m sure they’re good, but this felt like inviting disaster, especially with a chunky Terraforming Mars box on display. I’m amazed it stayed on.
Those were some games and game-related things I encountered at Essen Spiel but did not get around to playing. Did you play any of them and have anything to say about what I missed?
This year I went to Essen Spiel for the first time in 23 years. My first experience was a whirlwind 22 hour road trip there and back with my friend Graham. It was fantastic but overwhelming. This time my friends and I were attending as our mostly-belated 40th birthday presents as two of us passed that landmark during lockdown.
I wasn’t attending as press, but I decided to make some notes anyway, and thought I’d share some of the games I played at Spiel. Let’s start with the new games, as that’s what anyone looking for details on Essen Spiel would be after.
Hobbit: There and Back Again
By Reiner Knizia & Office Dog
I didn’t manage to get a photo of the game, so here’s the area in Spiel with Dr Knizia there signing things.
My friend Alex was explaining the Lord of the Rings trick-taking game too close to Asmodee’s Lord of the Rings section when we were summoned to try a roll & write game based on The Hobbit. Good folks that we are, we obliged.
Hobbit: There and Back Again is a roll & write game presented in little books each player has and individual chapters which differ in the goals but use similar components.
We played a shorter version of the first scenario, where we charted the paths of dwarves to where they mooched off Bilbo. The dice have path lines, but also bread as they’ll need to eat, wizard hats which allow you to select specific results and swords which help endgame scoring. As the dice are used in all scenarios, some elements may take the back seat like swords did here (you’re unlikely to need bread against Smaug unless you like really well-done toast). That said, as a sword lover, I ended up with quite a collection.
The game felt simple for a roll & write and enjoyable enough. It felt a bit basic compared to some, but for all I know, scenarios will get more complex as time goes on.
Bohemians
By Jasper de Lange & Portal Games
A day in the life of a down and out artist with a lot of muses.
This was on my list of games to check out, even though all I knew was the theme: down and out artists in 1890’s Paris. I’d run a Paris campaign for The Yellow King which had me doing a ton of research into the era and field.
After a few flybys of the Portal Games stand, we finally got to sit down and play a shortened version of the game.
Bohemians is a deck-builder which sees you taking on a type of artist such as romantic or visionary, and a job such as journalist or beggar. You start out with a basic deck of activities and try to build up inspiration, but you also need to interrupt your day with (ugh) work or you start to get hindrances. Inspiration’s used to buy new habits, muses, trigger abilities on the atelier and eventually get objectives like “A mildly positive review in a paper”.
I have never felt so called out by a game, but I also loved it. Each day told a short story of bumming around Paris, hanging out with a muse, entering a manic episode, arguing politics in a coffee shop and writing like crazy through the night. Again, so very called out.
I think I bought four or five muses and only one actual card for my deck, but still did fairly well.
Afterwards I raced to get a copy of the game (and sadly missed out on a promo). I’m curious to see how it plays and I think my only concern is for the longevity of a fairly small deckbuilder, but I loved my experience with it.
Finally!
Shall We Dance?
By Saashi & Saashi
My dance hall, with everyone coupled up for once.
I love the clean design and set collection ideas of Saashi & Saashi. This was another booth which we had to do several laps of and then awkwardly hover near in order to get a game in. My friend Steve and I played while Alex wandered off elsewhere as there were only two seats available in a demo.
Shall We Dance is a game of collecting pairs of dancers split up by colour and style. Each old man is paired with an old lady, the blondes are together and so on. You draft cards from a central wheel, picking from face up and face down piles, adding a number of a type to your dance floor. As an example, you might place three pink men and then if an opponent has any single pink women, you steal them. The pairs score and you’re trying to place them from your hand or nab others’ by summoning them to your dance.
There’s also a rarity of the dancers, which can make some plays easier or riskier as you go.
The game was fine, I had a good time with it, but remained on course to pick up Bus & Stop which I preferred the theme of and was there for.
Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor
By Kosch & Lookout Games
My tor, all full up with nature.
I love a good nature theme. Throw in a sheep on a moor on the cover and you’ve got my interest.
We managed to sit down with a couple from Florida to play the game and fortunately, none of us had played a Forest Shuffle game so we were all learning.
You plant trees, shrubs or moors which will be populated with all manner of flora and fauna which are on split cards, offering choices but also requirements about where they want to do. Dragonflies get points for having a variety of species while rabbits can burst into a tableau, scoring points off other cards. This is a point salad game, where most things will score you points, but you want the best way of getting them.
I found myself swarming my first trees with rabbits, forgetting I was aiming for somewhere for a badger and playing with birds on moors. Steve was going before me and harvesting dragonflies and bats. Alex was being Alex and had found a way to combo some moors and trees so that he would get a ton of points without having to deal with animals unless absolutely necessary. It was impressive to see every tactic have potential and if not for cost and encumbrance, I would have sought it out at the con.
7 Wonders Dice
By Antoine Bauza & Repos Production
The dice box and some results.
I admit I came into this game with low expectations. Me and my partner watched a review of 7 Wonders Dice and didn’t really see much of a point. The boards looked very similar to each other and like a simpler Hadrian’s Wall.
Each turn someone shakes the box of dice which is where your resources, commerce, military and so on come from. There are ridges splitting them into sections making the dice cost 0, 1, 2 or 3 coin, plus whatever the dice would normally cost. Buying resources discounts things and there are progress chains like in a lot of roll and write games.
Pretty quickly a lot of us had most of the resources and were free to expand where we chose. A French man on the other side of the board and I were both celebrating whenever we’d expand the science track. The military track was alright, with full points given if your opponent didn’t have defences, or reduced ones if they did and no penalties for that player. Wonders themselves were fine, but easily overlooked and the leaders section took a little bit of understanding in the late game.
The full game with six players took 26 minutes after the teach, which is only a little shorter than 7 Wonders games I’ve played in the past. I don’t think it replaces the card game, but if you prefer a roll & write or a smaller box, this is a nice option.
Unmatched: The Witcher: Steel & Silver
By Noah Cohen, Rob Daviau, Justin D. Jacobson, Brian Neff & Restoration Games
Gerry versus the Ancient Leshen and a wolf.
I’m not a very competitive person, but I like the Unmatched games. They’re short and pretty, pushing players together and giving an in-built time limit when your deck runs out.
Steve bought Unmatched: The Witcher: Steel & Silver as it had Gerald and Ciri in it, as well as a big monster in the Ancient Leshen.
Like the other Unmatched games, you move your character on a point-to-point map, playing attack cards on opponents, defending against them and playing scheme cards which change things up. It’s a simple mechanic, enhanced by the unique abilities each character has and the way they interact.
Gerry is a beast, with a selection of gear to pick from at the start of the game which feels in keeping for him. Whenever his equipment would come up, it was an interesting moment.
Ciri is a character who starts fine but gets better and better as the game goes on. A number of her cards have little bubble icons on them and when they’re in the discard pile, they make some of her cards much stronger. Eventually, the powerful ‘feint’ card in every character’s deck won’t even work on her.
The Ancient Leshen is slow but has wolves to help kettle enemies. It also has the ability to heal and to teleport which make up for its weaknesses.
In the game we played, I was Ciri and starting in the middle of things, my unicorn perished and I was taken down by Alex’s Geralt before a slow duel between him and Steve’s Ancient Leshen. The expansion has ongoing schemes which are what caused the healing and were brutal to have to deal with.
I may have died first, but it was fun to watch even on the sidelines and Steve bought the Robin Hood Vs Bigfoot expansion later to give Geralt more things to hunt.
Peanuts Talent Show!
By Koudai Tateno, root & CMON Global Limited
The thrilling central board and Snoopy meeple.
We went past the sad-looking CMON booth on day one expecting just to see one person weeping given their recent financial problems. A few days later, it was packed with their little games. Yes, CMON do have little games they make. If they still exist this time next year, maybe that’s the main thing they’ll do.
I’m a big fan of Peanuts, so when I saw a trick taking game about the characters putting on a talent show, I had to drag Steve and Alex into it. You start with a small deck of numbered cards and if you win the trick you get points and the other players get money to spend adding more cards to their deck. The cards mostly go above the starting and have abilities which play off the cost but were to be ignored for the first game, causing a bit of an imbalance with one of them.
If you win a round you get a little Snoopy with a trumpet meeple, and that’s the best part of the game. The choice of characters didn’t really feel like it fit (Charlie Brown shouldn’t be as high as he was and Schroeder shouldn’t be as low). This felt pretty low effort as a licensed game and possibly my worst game of the con.
6 Nimmt: Baron Oxx
Michael Kiesling, Wolfgang Kramer & AMIGO
I know this looks really dull, but it’s very good fun.
We all love 6 Nimmt and had played a bunch of it before the con in a coffee shop. There are a lot of variants which just add a number, but this one intrigued us by changing things up.
You have five rows of cards with numbers, coloured bull heads and an amount of points you score if you take them.
Players get a deck of 20 cards taken from the main stack and draw four which they’ll have to play through at a time. The numbers are just the order of placement for this version of the game, and then the card can go anywhere, as long as the colour of one bull head matches a colour on one of the tows. The sixth card placed will pick up the previous five cards and establish a new row, and the sixth bull head of a matching colour will do the same. This makes for a chaotic game of treading carefully or (often in my case) choosing violence.
This was great fun and we stayed in the Amigo area playing a few rounds. There were only German copies at the show and they were all sold out by the time we started hunting for them.
Miskatonic Tales: Journey to Innsmouth
By Eric Dubus, Olivier Melison & Chaosium Games
Our investigators
I generally consider myself as more someone who talks about and loves RPGs than board games, even though I really love board games. Any RPG stalls at Spiel had me hovering around them for a bit, and that included Chaosium.
I backed Horror on the Orient Express which had yet to see public release when they were promoting Journey into Innsmouth, so I steadfastly ignored it. Looking at the game at the con it felt like a more narrative Eldritch Horror or FFG Arkham Files game.
The game purports to be a 15 hour game, but not all in one sitting. This is split between three stories each with their own book. Characters have a prebuilt deck of cards with automatic successes for some skills or potential successes through die rolls.
It may have just been the demo, but it felt very much like we were pushed through the experience, stuck together in each room and moved through sometimes before we were done.
Alex, Steve and I had been playing Vantage and loved the experience, so unfavourable comparisons had to be drawn. I love Lovecraftian games, despite the daft old dead racist behind it, but this is one I think I’m fine passing on. I really hope this doesn’t reflect on what Horror on the Orient Express will be like.
Ink
By Kasper Lapp, Chris Quilliams & Final Score Games
My ink pots. They’re meant to be that way round.
Where I was taken in by Bohemians, Steve was entranced by Ink. We managed to find a time when Final Score were a little quieter to get a table.
Ink is an abstract game where you’re trying to use up your selection of inkpots, half of which are only able to place on two specific colours. Some of the tiles have spots with numbers on in a section, allowing you to place one or more inkpots when you reach that number of continuous tiles. So if I’ve got a light blue 4, then I need four tiles of light blue which connect. As well as locking in a pot on the numbered tile, I flip some others and put them on any non-numbered spots, clearing more of them from my set. The reason these are flipped is because there are ways of moving or removing them, making them open for re-use.
The rondel for tile selection allows people to enter the same space and to dart across the whole thing, but each time you complete a full circuit you pick up a random tile which blocks things off. There are randomised abilities which trigger when you complete longer groups of tiles and then the final rounds had a fun stand-off between the two players who were still going.
I really enjoyed this, and it’s a very pretty game.
Collect!
By Jérémy Ducret, Johannes Goupy & CMON Global Limited
Foil cards and very daft-looking animals.
Back to the CMON booth, as Steve wanted to try a card game which looked pretty nice.
Collect is a simple game of collecting animals, all of whom have abilities. You draw a card from one of two decks and if it’s your first one, you can return it to the top of a deck and pick again (after showing everyone).
If you have four of a kind in a row on your line then you win, which can be tricky as you’re placing any new cards on the ends of your line. The abilities manipulate this, with crabs moving cards, parrots predicting the next draw and so on. Chameleons are wild and there are even two types of card which add new victory conditions. Lions win the round if you have seven different cards and octopodes win if you have three pairs.
The first three wins grant half a crown and the fourth is a full crown. Either way, if you get a full crown then the game’s over. This way there’s always a time limit of that fourth round, but if someone dominates two rounds then that’s it.
This was a really enjoyable little game I could see being an opener or closer to a night of games.
As a post-Spiel report, Steve’s said that “The Derpy Game” has been a hit with his kids.
Use Up All Your Sick Days
By Dylan Coyle, Andrei Ebreo & Charming Games Collective
The stack at the end of a game.
This was a prototype game about animals using up all their sick days without getting into any conflicts with colleagues trying to do the same.
There are two different game modes to this game, with a cooperative mode which is played using a kind of calendar frame.
Dylan, Alex and I played the competitive party mode, where you’re trying to be sick on consecutive days to others, played in real time. You’re trying to follow either days or play a run of matching animals. If you don’t have a play, you can play a card face down and at a later point say, “I’m back!” and play a card. There are celebrations like Halloween, Labor Day and such which count as wild cards. Players are looking to get their hand empty and it’s some light fun in the style of games like Happy Salmon.
Like Bohemians, there was an amount of bleed and talking about former employers where this was a thing.
Use Up All Your Sick Days will be on Backerkit soon.
Elemystic
By Jamie Sabriel, Antonis Papantoniou & Wise Wizard Games
An example spell.
I was introduced to this game in the UK Games Expo press event and figured it’d be something fun to play with my partner, who’s a big Star Realms fan.
Elemystic is an interesting game which feels like it’ll be a grower.
You play wizards with 10 health each, trying to combine elements to knock lumps out of each other. Each round one card is set aside, then one is given to each player and kept secret. The remaining six cards are drafted so both players have four cards, one of which is a mystery to the other.
Players one-by-one play their cards down to make a combination spell, with only the one in front providing the speed of the spell and special ability. Each spell has a top and bottom attack and defence stat, so once again, only the front one will get both, with the others only using what’s on the top. Spells really vary things up, so Shadow swaps one players’ attack or defence. If you’re losing then Water gains a massive attack as well as the damage. Earth has high stats but no ability. Some games put down tokens, like Thunder which once per game can cover the front of the opponents’ spell, ruining all but the numbers on the tops of the cards.
The game is short, and I’m curious to see how the replayability goes. We were discovering combinations and fun choices in our game, and I don’t know whether there’ll be a limit to that.
Propolis
By Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, Shawn Stankewich, AEG & Flatout Games
My city of bees.
Bees! In Cities!
This was a nice game about expanding your hives by placing bees on facedown tiles to get resources and more bees, then building new structures which often disposes of your bees which are represented with cute little ‘beeples’. I went heavy on bluebells and some wild resources. In the end I hadn’t noticed I was one building away from the truncated endgame and rushed to finish things before others could make their engines grow. I’m sure I wouldn’t have done as well if this was the full game, but had a good time anyway.
A quick rundown of older games we played:
Red 7: Or “Better Fluxx”, a great pregame game.
Lovecraft Letter: We love Love Letter, and this added some fun twists
6 Nimmt: I’ve mentioned this already, and again, it’s a wonderful game
Sniper Elite: I’m the one Etheridge who’s not a big World War II person, but this was enjoyable.
Cascadia: One of the games I really enjoy and am always perplexed about why I haven’t added it to my collection yet.
Heat: Pedal to the Metal: I did terribly, but had a fun time.
Vantage: I’ll review this properly in the future, but we played it twice and had a great time.
Lego: Monkey Palace: One of my few wins was this game for children which I thought I was doing terribly at. I don’t know what this says about me or the game.
Star Trek: Chrono Trek: I had to buy Star Trek Chrononauts. Each game ended a bit abruptly, I’m not sure if this fixes Chrononauts or makes it a bit too short.
Flip 7: I liked the gameplay loop but had the worst luck, only scoring two hands in this blackjack-style game.
Bohnanza: Dahlias: I last played the original Bohnanza with some random folks at a GenCon UK and didn’t really care for it. Putting some lovely Beth Sobel art on it definitely helps, compared to sentient beans who look like they should be on a list.
Things in Rings: The concept was cool, the categories felt like too much, and I’m pleased Alex roped me into a demo as it was really enjoyable.
Star Realms: I bought a full-art anniversary version of the game as I needed a second copy.
Carcassonne: I’m always up for Carcassonne and we were at the airport, so we played it on my iPad while waiting to board.
The monkey palace!
That’s it for me and board games of the show, both past and present. There was no way I’d get round everything, so if you went, what did you enjoy?
I’ve taken part in National Novel Writing Month for so many years now. It’s been a useful exercise and a community I’ve loved taking part in (even co-running for a while).
I have several drafts of novels which were made during NaNoWriMo and I’m even proud of some of them, even if they need work. This year, I’m not taking part.
NaNoWriMo, the organisation, has closed after several troubled years, poor decisions, scandals and so on. It’s such a gloriously simple idea that it persists, even if it’s not got a company behind it. Write 50,000 words in a month, so approximately 1,667 words a day. It’s a good task and one I would often exceed.
After my mum passed away in 2016, I found writing difficult, and losing a number of other family members, a mentor and a beloved pet in the years since created a kind of emotional battering which left NaNoWriMo as the only time I could squeeze out much creativity at all Despite all that, I’ve managed to get comic work during these years and made RPG supplements, in addition to the prose I’d make in NaNo.
This year I’ve finally been able to go part time to write for a day a week which has been incredibly helpful, although I’m still not as productive as I’d like. I guess I never will be, no matter how much I write.
So does this make for a perfect NaNoWriMo environment? Maybe. I’ve still got the final act of an urban fantasy book and the back half of a book about burnt out superheroes attending conventions to finish at some point. I’m going to use the weird freedom of being without a NaNoWriMo organisation to put a word count into or a community to lead or take part in to focus my attentions.
I won’t be taking part in National Novel Writing Month, but I will be trying to write a couple of pages of comic scripts a day. I have had multiple projects fighting in my mind for control and I’ll try to get first issues of both written to see how they feel.
Red Rails is a pre-WWII vampire story about people fleeing Weimar Germany just as things are falling apart. A vampire ends up in a carriage with a (formerly) wealthy family. He’d been working with artists in Berlin and was fascinated with their son, a musician. There’s going to be some romance, art and bloodshed as things go horrendously awry. It’s a big Child of All Nations meets Interview with the Vampire.
A Forest in the Sky is a dystopian story about an expedition from an environmentally-shattered world into a strange other dimension where nature still exists. I wasn’t entirely sure how to show all of it and listening to QAA talk about tech oligarch doomsday preachers made me break the back half of it finally. This may be 1-2 issues and is very much a space for climate rage to get itself out. One day I’d like to finish my scripts for Explosion High 3, Amnesiac City (three of eight issues are written) and Past Futuremann Vs The Moon Mummies, but I’ve put them off until things look promising for any of them to come out. I’ve also been noodling on a serial fiction thing, but I’ll go into it if it works for me.
Faked Tales 