Hello Everyone and welcome to our coverage of EGX 2017 day 1. We are at the National Exhibition Center in Birmingham. This year EGX is taking up a fair chunk of the NEC, halls 6,7,8,19 and 20 and its nearly all expo.

First impressions of the event is that its going to be a big and busy one. Taking up this many halls and with so many people walking through the NEC, the expo is going to be packed this year! We went into the ticket collection hall, collected our press passes and headed into the main expo hall.

We spent a fair chunk of the beginning of the event completing the Intel Treasure hunt. The challenge is to visit the 6 stands that have partnered up with EGX, and collect a sticker from each stand that is applied to your lanyard and hand the completed lanyard back to the Intel stand. You are then entered into a prize draw for some awesome prizes including an Intel I7-7700 processor, a new HP Omen Laptop and a load of other great prizes. Everyone that completes the treasure hunt also gets an intel goodie bag of merchandise, and the pen and water bottles included were very nice. Given we wanted to see as much of the event as possible this was a great way to see a fair chunk of the event, and explore the event.

We also met up with Dave from Blockships and had a go at one of the three new gamemodes that are being shown off for the first time here at EGX, this time where the crusher does not stop. We will be brining you an article very soon with more information all about blockships, and if you are at EGX, you need to see the game if you have not already. Blockships are in the Tentacle Collective near the entrance to hall 7 all weekend!

We spent a lot of today looking at what was in the Expo and what was on display. We have got a lot of pictures that we will be editing and uploading onto Flickr shortly after we get back from the event, so keep an eye on all our social media for those!

If you want to learn more about EGX, you may find some of the following links of use.