Concrete Cow 26.5 

Saturday 19th September 2026 - Wolverton Milton Keynes

1. Why I Went

Because of real life, I’d been forced to cancel several convention visits in the middle of the year. It was always my intention to get back into the hobby at some point.

Concrete Cow is a uniquely low-pressure event. You don’t have to decide if you’re going to attend until the actual day of the event. No booking tickets in advance. No planning. No submitting games.

You just get up in the morning and decide if you want to go or not. I felt able to attend. So I did.

2. The Shape of the Convention

I’ve been attending and reporting on this convention for many years - since before I started this blog. It was in my published convention diaries of a decade ago. So this should all be familiar to you.

Concrete Cow is a one day event. It takes place twice per year in Wolverton, a suburb of Milton Keynes. It is easy to get to and even has its own railway station.

It takes place in a community centre on the main road through the town and is right next to a massive supermarket. It is a perfect venue for a small convention.

The event is based around playing TTRPGs. There is a trade stand, a bring and buy table and a raffle (boo!) but people mainly come to play games.

There are three sessions, morning, afternoon and evening. Most people attend for the first two sessions only. That’s what I usually do. It gives me time to travel home to Birmingham and avoids the cost of staying in a hotel near the convention.

I caught a train from Birmingham and arrived in Wolverton at about 9am. The walk from the station takes five to ten minutes. Passing the supermarket I went in to buy a meal deal for my lunch later, before carrying on to the Convention.

When you arrive you pay £5 to get in. You write your name on a sticker you put on your top and get given a lottery ticket. If you’re offering to referee a game or two, you place down sign-up sheets for those games that you have prepared yourself in advance - possibly based on a template available on the web-site.

There are a pile of blank sign-up sheets. If you suddenly feel like offering to run a game, you can write one on the spot. I browsed the sheets for the morning games and there were several good ones on offer so they certainly didn’t need me to pull one out of my bag.

At 9:45 there is a brief intro. People new to the event or people offering to referee a game in the other slot come up first to choose and sign up for their morning game.

One game instantly booked out at this stage! As it was a Call of Cthulhu, horror game with adult themes, the players were directed to a side room.

The organiser has a pre-generated list of the digits from 0 through 9. She called them out one at a time. People with that digit as the last digit on their lottery ticket came up to choose and sign up to a game. My lottery ticket was number 187, and 7 was the last digit called - so I was in the last cohort of players to sign up. But I was flexible in my choice of games and there were still spaces in several good games. I quickly snagged the last space in a game I’d had my eye on for a while and we all left to go to a side room.

I missed out on the - always interesting - horse trading section where referees had to decide whether to run with half-filled games or cancel their game to sign up for another one. Things always work out somehow.

3. Games Played and Games Run

Slot 1 - Saturday 10:00 - 13:30

This was a game of Mothership. It’s been published quite recently. It’s based around horror in spaceships in space - Alien, Event Horizon, Pandorum, Firefly Reavers etc - but without being tied to a specific IP. I’d been aware of it for a time but never actually played it.

The Game Master had submitted three games - one on each slot - to the web-site before the event. So I’d already read about the game and knew it was one I’d be happy to play.

There were 6 pre-generated characters - a Scientist, a Marine, a Teamster (the blue-collar worker), an Android, a Criminal and a Law Officer. I chose to play the marine.

To cut a long story short, our ship was unexpectedly wrenched out of hyperspace into a sunless system - with a dead planet and moon - full of dozens of wrecked ships. In order to fix our hyperdrive we - of course - had to investigate the nearest wreck in order to find parts.

Of course that was full of a mystery, dead bodies, strange noises and - eventually - some extremely unpleasant alien beasties.

The game played out exactly as I was expecting. Like most horror games things were designed to go badly for the characters. The rules are based around the stressed-out characters panicking and freaking out their comrades.

I had a great time ignoring all the side threads and playing my marine pedal to the metal. I tackled the big bad monster head on, unloading my pulse rifle into it whilst manoeuvring into a position to open the airlock. Despite my best efforts my character didn’t die. One of my crew-mates rushed in to save me and it was him that got torn apart in my stead.

The game finished a bit early, before 1pm, because of our efficient play.

I’d had a good time and had successfully got back on the convention circuit. I decided to leave it at one game so I wasn’t travelling back to Birmingham in the evening. If I had stayed for the afternoon game, I would have had first choice of games to make up for being last in the morning - the order of selection is reversed to be fair.

4 Play Reflections

My experience of Concrete Cow is that most of the Referees are good and players are friendly and flexible. It is just a very laid-back convention.

I hadn’t been able to find my dice before coming but as expected, the Referee was organised and professional and was able to lend me everything I needed. I really enjoyed my game and am sure I would have had a similar experience if I’d stayed for the afternoon.

5 Cost, Time, and Value

Headline figures

Convention cost (ticket): £5

Travel cost (train ticket): £20

Accommodation cost: £n/a

Total convention-specific cost: £25

Total hours of gaming (played and run)*: 7.5

*(I have based this on me playing in both the AM and PM session. It was my choice to leave early.)

Approximate cost per hour of gaming: £3.33

Cost of a pint of Lager: £n/a - no alcohol in the community centre.

(There is a pub opposite, if you want to a pub lunch or to go for a drink in the evening.)

6 What I Took Away

Concrete Cow is a small friendly, supremely well-organised convention. It is extremely brave of the organisers to set everything up and wait to see what happens on the day but this makes it an incredibly low-stress event for attendees and is still only £5 to get in.

It has my highest recommendation. If you are anywhere near Milton Keynes - which is pretty much any of you from the Midlands to London - this convention is one which should be on your “must attend” list.