Aire Con 2018 Review

I don’t go on too many weekend getaways but this weekend just gone I visited the mystical town of Harrogate… for Aire Con! A gaming convention I previewed a couple of months back. Now you can digest the full final experience so that you can decide whether to make the trip up (or down) next year!

I must confess that, despite joking about it, I was actually getting a bit apprehensive about the long trip north. While I was of course armed with a suitable dragonglass blade to deal with any white walkers I encountered, the thought of 3 hours of trains after a long week of work and the knowledge I was missing a whole day of the convention AND having to leave early on the Sunday did leave me feeling a bit down. I really needn’t have. It was a fantastic time!

Now, obviously a weekend spent playing board games is a great time regardless, especially when it is spent amongst friends! So what makes Aire Con different from the other conventions I’ve written about in the past? There were two obvious things: the first was the fixed closing time of 11 pm, which certainly gets in the way of my usual into the early morning gaming but I was surprisingly not too bothered by this and, besides, the next door hotel has space for those looking to keep the night going a little longer!

More importantly, the trade area. Aire Con has a small area of demo tables for companies and designers to show off their games, as well as a few traders selling games and accessories. This makes it something closer to a miniature UK Games Expo in some ways. I got chance to try out Vadoran Gardens, the new game in the City of Kings universe, and to catch up with my old friends at Yay! Games (Ominoes, Sandcastles, etc). It was a little small though, without really offering much else that I hadn’t seen before at earlier UKGEs. The demo area for designers was a bit out of the way off to one side too, and easy to miss if it wasn’t for Bez’s wall of cats.

However this is not the main draw of the convention, more like a cool extra. Maybe you’ll find something neat or spot a deal amongst the stores, but the majority of the space is filled with open gaming tables (protip: The comfier chairs are on the right as you walk in!) There was plenty of gaming space for the attendees, never feeling too cramped even at the height of Saturday. This was another departure from other conventions I have attended! The space, I mean… the room itself!

Aire Con is held in Harrogate convention centre and that provides a very big space! Mostly in a single long room too, without extending vertically to the echoey emptiness of the UKGE’s vastness. It gives Aire Con a surprising sense of cosiness given its size.

Sadly, not everything works perfectly. The central spot for the trade area worked well up until 6pm when it had to close and was surrounded by barriers, blocking the most convenient route between gaming areas/games library and toilets, which was a minor nuisance. There were things like ‘Players Wanted’ balloons and game sign up sheets but didn’t seem to be very clearly marked and, I fear, were easily missed. Perhaps I also just missed this too but an information guide with a map would have been useful. I know I missed a talk that would have been interesting to attend had I had all the information about what was here on hand. This all feels like wrinkles that will be ironed out now that they’ve got a feel for the space they are using.

Of course, that doesn’t excuse the tea scam. It seems organiser Mark Cooke has come into possession of a vast quantity of mugs that he was attempting to foist on people by the shadiest of means. Charging twice as much for a small cup of tea unless you had one of his mugs. Outrageous behaviour! I mean £2 for a cup of tea! That’s… still far less than I’d pay at the hotel based cons…

In fact, food and drink was very reasonably priced. There wasn’t a huge food selection in house but the pizza wagon was excellent and the beer was pleasant and there are plenty of places to eat nearby. Indeed, Harrogate made for an excellent location, both being a very nice town to wander through, and compact enough that reasonably priced hotels, pubs and eateries were never more than a 10 min walk away from anything else. The trip may have been a little more arduous for me than for most gaming trips I go on, but it was well worth it!

 

Rating: Cool

(Because… airecon?)

 

What I got up to!

 

Playing games!

Labyrinth: The War on Terror – not exactly a quick game usually I had a blinding game of this as the US, successfully bringing my kind of peaceful governance to the middle east.

Pulsar 2849 – the latest big box from Czech Games, I’m looking forward to reviewing this after another play or two.

Polyhedron Collider-cast – I, along with a hearty collection of media folk, took part in an epic Q and A on the Polyhedron Collider couch, which goes to show they know nothing about furniture. I’ll be sure to post it up on the website if it recorded well.

Cyclades: Titans – I’m a big fan of the base game but this was my first taste of the expansion. I liked it well enough, but I think the team mode we were using (with 6) dragged the game out a bit too much for me.

Castell – a new title from Renegade about the towering human structures called Castells from the Catalan region of Spain. A perfectly approachable game on the surface hides some brutally deep gameplay.

Cockroach Poker – a quick end of night game that proved I should go to bed earlier! (I lost, ok!)

Crisis (twice!) – The economic worker placement game that throws some deliciously heavy criticisms at the Greek debt crisis. I’m hoping to have a full review of this out soon.

Vadoran Gardens – The latest, far lighter, title from City of Kings publisher Frank West. Will have a first impressions article of this out for the Kickstarter next month.

Calimala – an Essen 17 release that combines a mountain of area control and a very clever action selection/scoring mechanic that manages to be really quite amusing for what, at first look, appeared to be a dry Euro!

And that was my Aire Con! If you were there, what did you like about it? If not, what games did you get to play over the weekend?