Where to start?
This is probably going to be a long one. So you might just want to go off and make a brew a first.
Right, back? Sitting comfortably? I’ll begin…
The TL;DR or for us older folks, the bottom line, headline is it was ok at best. The word I’d use to describe it is meh.
Let’s first look at how the show was marketed to the public. Back when they first announced it, the justification by the magazine and its publisher for having the show at the end of September was it was between Gencon and Essen. So you would get to see all the Gencon hotness and maybe early Essen stuff. This was a great justification, should pull in the crowds, and distinguish it from UKGE a bit. If I have one complaint about UKGE is that it gets very few big game announcements or previews. These are saved for the top 3 conventions (Origins, Gencon and Essen). I think on this front that the show failed to deliver. It had Keyforge, which was probably the biggest game to come out of Gencon, and there was enough space to meet the demand to play it. I didn’t notice lots of people having to wait to get a game, there seemed a constant flow of games. But I’ll come back to this because I’m starting to touch on another point of mine.
Continuing on the marketing theme. The show seemed to be like a super secret people weren’t aware of. Yes on the publishers social media and the magazine they were pushing it. But thats a small subset of the gaming community in the UK. I did hear that there were ads on bgg, but thats not something I saw. So it’s not surprising that attendance seemed, ok was low. Hardly anyone knew they show was on. Some only found out days before when threads on facebook groups started asking who is going?
The show had a lack of identity in my opinion. The banner at the entrance to Alexandra Palace was tiny, and easily missed. In side there was a lone sad Pandemic photo thingy, where you could poke your face through the hole and seem like you were one of the specialists in the game. That was the only hint you were queueing up for a board game expo. Then the walk from where they collected/checked your ticket to the show space nothing, it could have been a dentist convention. There should have been banners and standees all over the place advertising the show, and board games.
Support by publishers seemed a little none committal. Apart from the big Keyforge banners/posters you had no real idea it was the FFG stand, same for the Asmodee one.
As the above photo shows, FFG couldn’t even be bothered to get out the nice terrain they used at UKGE for Star Wars:Legion. Other rival skirmish games had some nice terrain set up to show off their games. Which really surprised me when FFG with their flagship miniatures game didn’t. I know that the cost of having table space at this show was more costly than UKGE, so this would have been a costly marketing exercise for them. Maybe they are waiting to see how the show shapes out before going to the expense of purchasing special show specific branding.
On the expense side with the low footfall, I was hearing that some of the retailers were not making costs, and there was a little resentment directed towards one or two retailers that were undercutting the rest. I could illustrate this with Forbidden Sky, it was on sale from various vendors from between £27 and £35. Great for us punters looking to save the odd pound here and there. But if you are trying to at least cover your expenses for being at the show, not great news.
It wasn’t a big show. Lots of space to grow. But without doing any demos you could see everything in 30 minutes max. Now for us punters the low turn out of visitors worked in our favour. No fighting through crowds to get to stands to see what was on offer, you got time to chat with exhibitors, and it was easy to get a demo of a game (most of the time). Plus it was not crowded, and you weren’t being shoved around while walking around the uncrowded aisles.
There was a reason why the open gaming area was like this photo below a lot of the time.
Most of the people were instead out on the stands getting demos. Great for the publishers.
Which reminds me one or two of the demos could have been managed better. We waited over 2 hours to get a game of Pandemic Fall of Rome. Mainly because a group of wanna be youtubers wanted to play the complete game, analysing every move and card as they went along. If they weren’t oblivious to the none discreet loud sarcastic hints about finishing up then they were being bloody minded and downright inconsiderate to all the others wanting to try the only copy of the game. A bit more balls from the person running the demo would have also avoided this unpleasant experience and allowed more people to try the game.
Wildlands was by appointment only. Found out after the show there was a copy along with The River sitting unplayed in the tiny games library in the open gaming area! Wish Osprey had pointed this out, I could have tried the game (none of the Sunday slots were at a convent time). and our group would have definitely jumped on playing The River.
The seminars suffered from the same problem as UKGE in 2017. Over loud annoying tannoy messages.
Oh food at the place was as expected average and expensive. £9 for fish and chips, chips alone £3. The pulled bbq meat stall £6.50 for a bun/roll with not a very generous serving of meat.
But they did do something right. Well partially. It was a nice touch having the shuttle bus from the expo to Wood Green tube station. Wish we’d known about it Saturday morning, would have saved our group a bus fair and uphill walk (I’m so unfit these days). And that is the down side of this great idea. We found out about it after we had arrived at the expo. A friend asked about it at the tube station and no officials there knew anything about it. But the receptionist at the Travelodge did!
I liked the location (despite it being London). And Wood Green had lots to do out side the show. Apparently there was a board game cafe there (the show organisers and them should have been promoting it I think) which we only found out about too late on the Sunday. But there were plenty of places to get food from, two cinemas. And free parking at the Travelodge and really helpful staff there.
I’d gone to the show not knowing what to expect. I came away feeling disappointed. Two days there was too long in it’s current state. If I come back to a possible second show next year it will be for only the day. I feel a bit cheated on the whole “get to see the Gencon hotness”. This felt like a trial run for a real show. A testing of the waters. There are a lot of things that need improving hopefully the publishers after show rap up will not have rose tinted glasses and see the faults (which are fixable) and make the necessary changes to give us in the UK a much needed second great board gaming show.