Published on March 13, 2023. Last Updated on April 30, 2023.
Held at the Harrogate Convention Centre in northern England, Airecon is second only to the UK Games Expo in terms of size. This was my second Airecon, and I’m happy to mention I had a great time. There wasn’t any one thing that stood out (perhaps my first play of Blood on the Clocktower late Saturday night?), and once I’ve caught up on some other stuff I’ll have some time to get around to my notes…
I helped to transport the games bring brought in from the bring-and-buy on Thursday night – from where players were bringing them in by the front doors back to where they’d actually be sold during the con. Presumably it was set up this way to avoid having lots of gamers walking through the exhibition hall while it’s still being set up (an area that required you to wear a high-visibility vest). Whatever the case, it was a bit of work I hope they’ll figure out a better way for next year.
The convention opened open gaming on Thursday night, which was in the same area as the Playtest UK demo tables. Between helping move the drop-offs for the bring and buy and seeing what was going on behind the scenes, that was most of Thursday afternoon and evening – not quite a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, but an early realization that even without a scheduled list of tons of appointments, you still needed some intent and intentional planning to make the most of the event.
The Friday morning featured snow. Lots of snow. The BBC talked about how roads were challenging and trains were delayed… but as it turned out, the roads cleared by early afternoon and things melted almost as fast as they arrived. It started out a bit slow, but more than enough people were around to make the place come alive.
The thing that distinguishes Airecon from other conventions I’ve been to is the open gaming. Most cons have at least *some* open gaming space, but here it’s the priority. I don’t know the exact size of the areas provided for it, but there is easily several times as much space for it versus the trade area. Even through Friday afternoon, it seemed like many people were making a beeline for open gaming, then eventually meandering back through the trade area to see what was new. It’s not the sort of con where you might announce new games, but there were a few new games available here.
My game Shell Company, set up and ready to show what the cards looked like.
I settled into the demo area, an area with a couple dozen tables by the entrance to the hall, which was sandwiched between two open gaming areas and a short walk away from plenty of stuff (despite feeling a bit sprawled out, nothing was more than a 5 minute walk away from anything else). Nothing was for sale here, and it was a much more natural fit to have the playtesting tables here instead of the in the exhibitors area.
Playtesting and open gaming carries on after the exhibition area closes, and the queues for the beer got a bit longer. (I had the chance to try out Ryan Laukat’s Eight Minute Empire in the picture above.)
Over the course of the con, I ended up playtesting several games, helped brainstorm a couple of games with other designers, and got all three of my games to the table multiple times. While it’s great to playtest with other designers, l really appreciated and enjoyed seeing the gamers playing and getting into the flow of what I had created. I headed up to the board game pub quiz a bit late, quasi-joining a team near the door and trying to help on what felt like a very hard quiz…
Saturday was unsurprisingly the busiest day by far, which started busy and only got busier. I meandered a bit, got some playtests in, played in some other playtests, and talked to some amazing folks…
The Watch It Played crew doing a Q&A session with fans. I’m told one of the first questions had to do with the plaid on display, and yes I’m sad I missed their answer.
Jollyboat, anyone? The last official performance of the day had plenty of geek humor, parody songs, and improvisational skills when dealing with tech issues.
While lots of people seemed tired from the day before, Sunday had a sense of urgency – people to meet, games to collect from the bring and buy, and so on. I ended up needing to leave to ensure I had plenty of time to make my bus… which naturally entailed collecting unsold games from the bring-and-buy, packing everything to be ready for the road, making sure I had everything, saying goodbye-for-nows to a bunch of people (and missing the chance to meet some people!), before ultimately getting on the bus back to the Leeds bus station to get back to Birmingham…
Being busy running around and talking to publishers is great… but there’s something refreshing about enjoying the games and catching some of the events and other activities around a convention.
See you in 2024, Airecon!
