Anyway, there's a convention report to wrap up!
UK Games Expo 2015 - Day Three
So the Sunday morning wasn't as bad as I expect due to +Greg Barr plying me with drink... I did my "usual" though...
What does that mean? Well with my day job I do a reasonable amount of travelling, mostly to Manchester which has the added benefit of meaning I get to pop into Fan Boy Three. Anyway, I'm used to getting up on the last day of a trip and basically being packed and ready to go far too early. Not sure when that started but anyway, I did the same this time around. Woke up at 7, showered, dressed, breakfasted, bag packed, bag put into car and checked out all before 8:30.
Given there were 4 of us in the car on the way down and even though my i30 has a reasonably sized boot I did wonder how we were going to fit all of our purchases in. Similar challenge to the one I had coming back from Gen Con of trying to fit everything into the 1 case but this time I had other factors to consider. Not least of which was the haul of games bought by Greg, +Ross Hendry and +richard talbot. Fortunately Greg had managed to re-sell his 2 EXTRA copies of Star Wars : Armada that he'd bought on the Friday to people he was playing D&D with and also fortunately Richard had managed to arrange for someone else to take his more bulky purchases back up the road with them. So that really should have made it easy to get everything in the car, right?
Well my purchases were fairly modest (for me) -
Pretty much all of that fitted into my suit case and Gen Con bag so at least I wasn't needing any more space.
Ross needed the most (he bought lots of board games) and Greg has no willpower.
So I'd got my case into the car and went for some last few hours of browsing. We'd aimed to leave no later than 2pm so there was a fair bit of time for random last minute purchases.
I took more time going round the trade halls on the Sunday, really just trying to identify (beyond the obvious gaming retailer and publisher ones) what the other traders were. There were a few artists there (including Wayne Reynolds of D&D / Pathfinder fame) and you had the obligatory t-shirt sellers too. I think because of the way the con had to split up the traders though there was a definite feel (for me at least) that the smaller traders were almost "relegated" to the smaller halls. Probably unavoidable to a certain extent but it was a bit odd.
The play space was as ever completely maxed out right up til the point that we left which for a Sunday at a con I was pleasantly surprised by. I think that is a great testament not only to the con itself but the audience it's built up and nurtured over the past 10 years.
Ross, Greg and I met up for some lunch in the restaurant whilst Richard was off doing stuff at the British Isles Traveller Society stand. This was a reminder that a) the price of food was a bit high and b) the food whilst decent wasn't actually that good. That said though it filled us up.
The topic of "If we were to organise a con what would we do?" resurfaced and more brainstorming was done of what could be done. As ever Greg knew which buttons to press with me and I probably (likely) went into semi-rant mode.
After lunch there was time for another circuit before meeting up with Richard and the game of "does it all fit into the car". We successfully completely this puzzle like the expert gamers that we are and with that said farewell to UK Games Expo 2015.
The drive home was relatively painless even if we did get lost trying to find diesel for the car before hitting the motorway (was a necessary stop for supplies though).
Safe to say that I had a really good time as did everyone I met. The con has a bright future and with 2016 involving a split site model by using part of the NEC I think it could be a very interesting time.
I have some thoughts on what could be done differently next year but I'll save those for another post...
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