Baycon 2025 Convention Report
The last full week of April 2025 saw the return of the Baycon board game convention in Exeter, in the southwest of the UK. With Baycon being in the southwest, and with me living one county over in Cornwall, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s pretty much automatic for me to attend every year. Shamefully enough, this was my first time attending. But hey, maybe it’s a new convention, and it just hadn’t been on my radar, right? Wrong. This was Baycon’s 37th iteration.
In my (admittedly meagre) defence, Baycon falls just a few weeks before the UK Games Expo. Taking more time off from work and away from the family isn’t always easy, but I got the green flag, so I booked myself in at the venue, the Exeter Court Hotel, and went along.
We are utilising the facilities
Baycon is another of the play-style conventions that I like the most. There are no halls of vendors looking to make your car heavier on the way back home, while simultaneously draining your disposable income. It’s just rooms full of tables and chairs, just waiting for you and your friends – or some people you didn’t know until five minutes before – to sit down and play some games together. Baycon is a lot like Gridcon and Full Board Gaming (read my coverage of Gridcon 2024 here) in that respect, and if you’ve never been to a convention before, I strongly recommend one like this before heading to something like UKGE or GenCon in the US.
It might sound like a convention of this sort would be a pretty simple thing to host. Rent some space, stick some tables and chairs in, job done. The truth is different, though, and there are a lot of ways for a play convention to get it wrong. Baycon, happily, gets it right at pretty much every turn. The tables are big enough to play anything you care to throw at them, but even if you need something bigger, it’s easy enough to push a couple together. The chairs are the standard kind you’d expect at any seminar or wedding reception; hard-backed and although the seats are padded, your ass will thank you every time you stand up.
The food was decent enough for a convention. Lunches of chips with something, baked potatoes or sandwiches, and the evening meal specials were actually really nice. I had a freshly-made Thai green curry one night and a chicken Madras the next. Breakfast is what you’d expect, with a Full English on the menu and a buffet of cereals and other bits & pieces to graze on. What really stood out as a nice touch were the full jugs of ice water in each of the gaming rooms. It sounds like a silly thing to mention, but it’s great to be able to take a few steps and top up on fresh, cold water.
To top things off, I ended up in a triple room which was clean and quiet, and the bed was excellent. I don’t always sleep well in hotel beds, but this one was firm and not too hot. Good times.
Of the people, by the people, for the people
We don’t go to conventions for the food and beds, though. We go for the people, and Baycon is a prime example of why. If you’ve been around the hobby for any length of time, you already know how many intersections of demographics the ‘board gamer’ Venn diagram includes. The most obvious place to see this is when you attend a really big convention, such as UKGE, because people will travel long distances and you’ll see tens of thousands of people there. Smaller conventions don’t always show the same level of representation, but Baycon made a good show of things.
Most notable was the age range of the people playing games. It’s not that unusual to see older people at board game conventions, but I saw whole groups of people who were definitely in the – what’s the most polite way to say this – post retirement age bracket. It made me feel happy to think of the decades of games I’ve still got ahead of me, with any luck. What was really great was to see the number of children in attendance. Yes, there was the usual sight of people pushing babies in pushchairs, but there were also pre-teens there playing games all weekend. This matters.
I spoke to one of the organisers, Clive, after the event who mentioned that being family-friendly is important to them, and I can see why. After 37 years of Baycon, kids who came to the early ones could already be bringing their own children to come and play. As the dad to a nearly-13-year-old who would survive on a diet of little more than YouTube and Fortnite if it were up to him, the value of a screen-free, socialising-heavy weekend of games and good company is not lost on me.
While I felt like the new kid in the class when things like the Sunday closing speech were happening, Baycon is super friendly, and I was made to feel welcome. It’s clear that there are attendees for whom this convention is extremely important. A chance to catch up properly with people who matter. A rolling fixture carried forward to each new calendar every January. Don’t get me wrong, I still knew plenty of people there who I really appreciated being able to catch up with, but the prospect of some new, regular friends is always appealing.
A few thank yous now. Thanks to everyone who played games with me. Paul & Paul for our epic eleven hour session of The Elder Scrolls. Marton, Cath and Ian for the games of Dune Imperium: Uprising, Fishing, El Grande, and the welcome return of Maria. The Anarchy was also great. The Hadrian’s Wall 1.5 I’ve been wanting. I was especially pleased to be able to get a game in with my other convention friend, Marcus, and to play Galactic Cruise before heading home. As always it was great to bump into Graham, Ian and some of the others I know from around the country.
Thanks to everyone involved in the organisation and running of Baycon, and to them for even organising a whip-round, which all of the staff at the hotel get a share of.
If you get a chance to attend Baycon, please do. It’s a wonderful event full of lovely people, in a quiet, beautiful part of the world. I’ll be back next year, as I’m sure most, if not all, of the 40+ other first-timers will be.
