Concrete Cow 19b - Wolverton Milton Keynes - Saturday 14th September 2019

Concrete Cow 19b - Wolverton Milton Keynes - Saturday 14th September 2019

TLDR: Even with understated promotion and reduced numbers, still one of the best events on the UK calendar.

I’ve written about Concrete Cow more than any other convention. It is a long running, well organised Games Day held twice per year in Wolverton, near Milton Keynes. The venue is a bright community centre with good facilities on the main high street right by a large supermarket and a short walk from the railway station. It is easy to get to and a great location for this kind of event.

There are three game slots in the day - morning, afternoon and evening. However, it isn’t cost effective for most people to stay for the evening slot. (I would miss my last train back to Birmingham, for example, so that last game would cost me the price of a hotel room.)

Classically, there is pre-promotion of the games people INTEND to offer, but there is no prebooking and everything is decided on the day. You can just turn up and offer a game at the event at the last minute if you want.

This was the second Concrete Cow of 2019. Compared to some of the newer conventions around - who had been all over social media, jumping up and down promoting themselves (I’m looking at you BurritoCon, Grogmeet and The Owlbear and the Wizard’s Staff) - promotion for this Concrete Cow seemed rather subdued. There were only as handful of games listed on their web-site in advance. (To my shame I’d been slow submitting mine.)

When I arrived (easy journey as usual) there were about 40-50 people present. Lower numbers than the convention’s hey-day. (I’ve see 90 people there at times.) There were a great selection of 9 games offered in the morning, including my Star Trek original series game. 

Sign ups were by the copyright Concrete Cow lottery ticket method and went smoothly as always. Most games filled. I got 6 players. This event attracts a lovely, friendly clientele who just want to have FUN. We had a great game with much scenery chewing. Scotty saved the day despite The Enterprise being destroyed by those pesky Klingons.

Lunch was sandwich deal from the supermarket next door - though there are numerous food outlets on the Main Street if you prefer chips or similar.

Two traders - the ubiquitous and wonderful Leisure Games and one other who I didn’t check out - had arrived during the morning to ply their wares.

Afternoon signups are in reverse order to the morning, which is fair. There were a similar number of games to the morning but some people seemed to have gone home. My afternoon game (Year of the Rabbit) got no signups, probably because I’d stupidly missed my name off the sheet. So I signed on to a Firefly game using the new “Scum and Villainy” rules. This went well because it’s seems that if you run this game straight out of the book, you’d can’t help but get an authentic Firefly adventure. Great fun. I lost count of the number of callbacks to the original TV series we made. As typical for Concrete Cow we had a superior Referee. The Convention does attract a high class of hobbyist.

I cut out before the charity raffle and travelled home early.

Many people present noted the lower numbers than usual but the event ran perfectly at this size. It remains one of the best Games Days on the circuit and certainly sets a standard all the new conventions should aspire to live up to. It’s cheap, easy to get to, attracts great, friendly, people and ran perfectly for the number of people that came. There’s just a sneaking suspicion that if they don’t heavily promote the 2020 events, numbers might continue to dwindle as people are attracted away to the newer, shinier events. Which would be a shame.

10/10. The perfect day out. Everyone should come. Use it or lose it folks.