BritCon 2024. A personal impression.

I’m a day back from this show and I still don’t quite know what to think.

To put my attendance into context, I had a reason to be there – picking up and dropping off painted figures, the venue is a little over an hour away from home and I had nothing else planned for that Saturday. I’m not a competition player but I read the website info’ and thought “well this doesn’t sound too bad”.

Things didn’t start well. Nottingham is like so many British cities that have in recent years been converted into one sprawling campus, with faculty buildings blocking line of site and an impenetrable one way traffic system which make access a bit of a trial. This was not helped by the website advised parking site, ‘Q Park on Talbot Street’ not actually being on Talbot Street but on a side road off said street but when you are relying on a sat nav, once you have arrived at and gone along the street you are into the one way system circling the city as you reprogram the sat nav and start again. It took me nearly an hour and that was pure luck because it just isn’t signposted. Once out I then had to ask directions because the car park has two exits and there are no signs to the university. My car park fiasco was rounded off when I left, £10+ and that was with a 45% off voucher from the university 😮

The venue itself is great. Like a lot of modern university buildings it is big on glass and height so inside is very light and airy. Facilities included a very well priced coffee bar, a proper bar and a cafeteria, absolutely no complaints there. Internally it is a bit of a rabbit warren and that may account for me missing some things although I think the organisers need to do some work on this, a printed floor plan would have been very useful. I have no interest in the rugby club style performances of the TFL crowd but there was one game I fancied taking a look at but just couldn’t see any signage indicating where it was. There was signage to a ‘Bring & Buy’ but that wasn’t advertised on the website so I didn’t bring anything to sell, perhaps it was just one of those, ‘if you know, you know’ things.

The show is primarily a two day competition fest and that was in full swing when I arrived and unusually, quite interesting to watch. Full marks to the organisers for getting that number of rule sets and players smoothly operating in one space and on some pretty fancy terrain. I don’t want to do it but the games seemed to be being played in a friendly competitive spirit and hats off to all those taking part.

In terms of the trade it seemed, well a bit thin. Now that could have been due to the size of the area allocated or traders having to spread their presence according to the potential returns in these more trying economic times. Certainly a number of bigger names such as, Warlord, Dave Thomas, West Wind, TAG and Sarissa were there along with a number of second tier traders, some I knew and some I didn’t; Mark at M & C Painting deserves a special mention for his dedication to not just selling his extensive range of paints and basing materials but also being every ready with advice and tips on the use of the products. I’m not sure how well any of the trade did over the weekend but there never seemed to be much of a customer presence throughout the day.

Reflecting on the day I’m still not sure whether I’ll go again. The car park fiasco, well lesson learnt. The venue, absolutely fine, the organisers just need to do a better job on the internal signage/maps or I need better glasses. If you are just a punter turning up for a browse then I think you need to consider carefully how far you are travelling and what you are after because as best as I could tell there were no demo games or participation games to distract, unless of course I simply missed them.

Well that’s it. A parsons egg as they say but for others maybe a perfect day out.