At the last minute, last Friday I decided on a one-day trip to UK Games Expo, the biggest tabletop convention in the UK. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with it in the past; its sheer size makes it a bit impersonal, and as someone who’s not a fan of queuing or navigating between thousands of gamers, it’s never been an essential in the gaming calendar for me. But, as the last time I went was pre-pandemic, I decided to head over for a day, mostly in the trade hall, and see what was going down. And I actually had a really good time. Some thoughts.

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There’s a Lot of People

Expect to queue. I foolishly arrived as the hall was opening, and had about half an hour queuing to pick up my ticket – arriving the night before, or even a few hours later, might have avoided this. Wandering round the trade hall, you can expect to be flummoxed by pausing punters and slow-moving gamers. I found it useful to head outside (to ‘touch grass,’ as I believe the kids say) even half hour or so. The NEC has pretty brutal air conditioning, too, so if like me you’re prone to asthma and throat issues take some fresh air and expect to feel it.

There’s a Lot of Traders

With two and a half halls of the NEC, there’s a proper mix of big producers and small pressers here. It can be a bit overwhelming – even if you restrict yourself to just one genre – if you’re into miniatures gaming, board games or card games you’ll find even more to look at. Within this, it’s worth wandering around and seeing what new stuff is out there.

I already had kickstarter copies of Inevitable and Ronin, but it was great to chat to publishers on stands – and great that they’d timed the kickstarter copies before the con, too. A real find was seeing Wanderer’s Tome on their own stall, too – I picked up a print copy of Flabbergasted! – and you can expect to see more of that (and the games above) on here and on Unconventional GMs. Wanderer’s Tome is a new little publishing company out of Malta, and they’ve made a few really nice looking games that fit in a specific genre that nobody else is really doing. There was an Indie RPG stand too – I’d already got my preorder copy of Rosewood Abbey through the post, but great to see them flying off the stands at Expo.

You can see some of the trends in gaming coming through, as well – the trade hall was overflowing with copies of the (previously quite niche) Wildsea RPG – which I’m sure is because of Quinns’s useful and enthusiastic review of it; play-focussed reviews are the way forward, and Quinns is doing great work. He’s wrong about Vaesen, but I can respect his play experience as different to mine in a way I can’t with a review following a read-through.

The Hobby’s Doing Well

It does make you feel part of a massive thing, as Expo grows and grows. A huge variety of indie producers, gaming paraphernalia, and other stuff. And did I mention the people? 

And there’s lots more to expo than the trade hall. Next year, I’m resolved to do it properly, with seminars (maybe I’ll do one), games on demand, and all the stuff that comes with it. I had previously perfected the ultimate Expo hack – stay in the centre of Birmingham so you can escape the crowds and have an option of non-NEC food of an evening – and I’m going to commit to that now. Well worth a trip – even if you will have to queue a lot.

Did you get down to Expo? Any sights that I missed? Let me know in the comments! And, yes, I think there’s probably a cultural thing in size in that Uk conventions are often 20 people in a coffee shop instead of 20,000 in an exhibition centre. Small cons give the best gaming, in my experience – prove me wrong!