Hi all!
I would love to hear about how Rat a Tat Cat goes.
Expo was great! :) I don't think we'll go every year, as although the tickets themselves are amazingly cheap, it's the travel/accommodation etc. If we lived nearer I think we would.
DCs did enjoy it, but were really flagging towards the end - it was very busy and noisy and busy and hot (did I mention busy? We didn't even attempt to get into the bring and buy bit). I think one year we might try and spend a bit of time there child free if we can.
However DS (6) absolutely loved playing the giant Castle Panic. DD (nearly 9) was a bit overwhelmed I think and spent a lot of time with the marble run and story cubes in the family zone. Still, they did very well, and in the end we had loads left of our budget and said they could choose any game each. DD chose Brainbox Science and DS chose Robot Turtles, which we've been playing a lot today. DD also spent some pocket money on a gorgeous little hand painted astronaut meeple. :o
We kept well within our budget and bought four - Marrakech and Iota, which I've been looking for for ages, and we each chose a totally new (to us) one:
I just kept walking past the Backspindle stall, where they were playing Codinca - it's pretty new, and I have to admit it was the beauty of the playing pieces that made me yearn for it caught my eye. I find aesthetics very very important when choosing games - it needs to be a joy to handle, IMHO! Anyway you have to swap and flip tiles to make particular patterns. Right up my street.
DH chose Dragonwood, as he'd been watching people play it and figured it'd be good for maths - it's really good. A nice intro to card/dice battles I think, as you have to figure out whether to risk attempting to capture creatures etc. I did laugh when I saw that one of the cards is a cute bunny - reminded me of Mystic Warlords of Ka'a which they play in Big Bang Theory (which is itself based on other things I guess, but I don't know much about those type of card games).
I have to say, as well as finding games I DID want to buy, it was also very helpful to play some games that I can now strike off my enormous wishlist (ok wishlistS, I have loads for different categories of game...). We played Quoridor, and while it was a nice game, I won't be buying it - it's too similar to Lego Minotaurus which we play a lot. We tried Concept, which keeps coming up on my Amazon Recommendations, but although it was fun and I can appreciate that it's a very interesting, er, concept (!), it's really not my thing. There was a balancing game, Chickyboom, that I thought looked really interesting, but it was far too easy, so my DCs are too old for it to be worthwhile. Fruit Salad was a little card game that just isn't the kind of game I'm into, and dare I say not very nice visually. [snob] I also tried Burger Boss which was interesting, but quite similar to a lot of other games, and [snob again] not 'nice' enough to really make me love it.
We played Quadropolis and Five Tribes, both of which I've seen recommended. Quadropolis I was like WTF 
until we'd played a couple of rounds, and I think if I played a bit more I would really get it, and enjoy it a lot. Five Tribes, I'm not sure really. We didn't play a full game as it was taking so long and we were all rather confused. Absolutely beautiful with all the little wooden pieces, but there were a heck of a lot of elements to it that were quite overwhelming. Perhaps playing it in a quieter place it would've been better. We did ask if there was a way to simplify it at first (like when we started with Ticket to Ride [Europe] we didn't bother with the station pieces at first) but there wasn't any clear way to do that.
Now the question is, I was given a voucher when I left my job last week - do I spend it on more games...?