Gaming Rules at Tabletop Scotland 2026

0:00 Hi, my name is Paul Groen and in this video I'm going to be telling you all about my trip to Tabletop Scotland 2026. Tabletop Scotland is an annual 3-day weekend event for board gaming, card gaming, role playing and all sorts of other things. It's been running for eight years. It started out in Perth in Scotland and it's moved a few years ago to the Royal Highland Center just outside of Binbury. In fact, the convention center itself is kind of on the airport grounds. It's right near a few of the hotels, and if you're flying in to Edinburgh, then it's really nearby. The organizers of Tabletop Scotland have invited me a few times to attend, but it's always been the distance and the time that's always kind of put me off going, but this is the year where I decided that yes, I'm going to make the journey up there. So, a big thank you to the organizers for inviting me there. And full disclosure on this, they did pay for my travel and they did pay for my accommodation at the event. I was also sponsored by some of the publishers that I teach games for. So, I ran some sponsored demos over the weekend as well. And this video is basically a bit of a video diary about my trip. Here we are at the train station all ready to go. It's the next train. And even though I live down in the deepest, darkest southwest of the country, it's actually a train that goes straight through to Edinburgh. It's going to stop multiple times, but I was very surprised that I don't have to change at all. So yeah, literally straight through to Edinburgh, get there in about seven and a half hours. And here's some montage footage of the train

1:32 journey through the English countryside. So I was about 10 minutes into the journey when I realized I'd left a few things at home. Most notably, the decks for Hub World Idolon, the starter decks, which I'd painstakingly printed out, cut out, put into sleeves, got all of the components ready, and then left them at home on top of a pile of toilet rolls. So, yeah, just one of those things. I'd planned to take the game with me and get some games of it in, but alas, that was not to happen. The journey itself was absolutely fine. It was a long journey. It was 7 and 1/2 hours to get through, but as I say, didn't have to change whatsoever. And I just sat there and spent 90% of the journey writing the script for the how to play video for Hub World Idolon, which I'm is not due for months. I don't even have the physical product yet because it's not gone to print yet. So, I'm getting well ahead of the game by writing the script in advance. The only thing that did go wrong with the journey was when I actually got to Edinburgh. So the train was about 10 15 minutes late, which means I'd missed my train that I was then going to get from the train station to the airport. And when I got there, I basically asked one of the people there who works there and said, "Look, I'm I need to get to the airport." And they said, "Ah, you need to take a tram. You need to go along here, turn left, up the stairs, go along." I was like, "Okay."

2:55 And I thought, "Well, this doesn't sound right. This is this is leaving the train station." And I thought surely I've got like a connecting train to the airport. So I I headed in a random direction and then I found an information booth. And I explained to them and I said, "Look, my train that I got here was 10 15 minutes late, which means I missed my train to the airport." And they went, "Oh, there's no trains to the airport." And I'm like, "But I'm sure." And I showed them the the ticket that I had and I said, "Look, I' i've got here. No, no, you need a tram. you need to go along here, turn right up the stairs along. So anyway, so I'm walking through the streets of Edinburgh. It's pouring it down with rain. I've not brought a coat and I'm searching for a tram stop and eventually I find this tram stop. And I and I get on a tram that is taking me to the airport. And then on this tram journey, I got asked for my ticket at which point I explained to the very nice lady and I said, "Look, I think I'm completely confused here. I don't know what's going on." and she explained that what I should have done is got a train from Edinburgh train station to a place called Edinburgh Gateway and then I should have got a tram from Edinburgh Gateway. So I did have a train ticket which was going to take me to Edinburgh Gateway but the people at the train station just directed me to the tram anyway. I got there eventually and once I'd got to the airport, I then had another bit of wandering around aimlessly trying to find where the bus was that took me to my hotel. But I eventually got there and the hotel was

4:26 really nice. It was the Holiday in Express which was directly I mean right next to where the convention center was happening. So I checked in, got my room which was all very nice. Had some food. I had the chicken katsu curry I think. And then I came up with an idea. I thought, "Ah, I wonder if the hotel can print out the cards for Hub World Idolon." And they said, "Yeah, no problem." So, I emailed them the file. I printed out all of the cards and then I sat there over dinner cutting out all of the cards one by one and just so that I had the cards with me, which was excellent. So, after dinner, I decided to head into the exhibit halls to see how setup was going and where I was going to be. And then I headed back to the hotel to try and get a nice early night. In the hotel, they have one of these vending machines, which if you're short of a board game, you can buy board games here. It's the Friday morning of Tabletop Scotland. It officially opens to the public at noon. So, there was a lot of setup going on last night, and the setup is still carrying on this morning. So, let's have a quick walk around and see what we can find. So, this is where I'm going to be most of the weekend. This is the Melewood booth where they do crocodile boards and they do gaming tables. I've got my demo here all set up ready to go. I'm going to be doing Cubano earlier on today and then I'm going to be demoing excursions and I'm also going to be demoing Revenant over the weekend. But yeah, quick look

5:56 at the exhibitors area. We got various things going on. We have miniature World War II brick battles, which is honestly not Lego, but it looks like Lego, but it's not Lego. But yeah, these look really cool. I mean, who doesn't want tanks made out of of Lego? But yeah, lots of different We got a Mine Clash booth here as well, so Mine Clash are being represented here. They've got a couple of demo tables going. There's a good mix of sort of war gamey stuff, roleplay stuff, and board game stuff. like Element Games. They do uh lots of painting things. I've bought paints and stuff from them in the past, so they do lots of that. There's a quite a few booths selling like t-shirts, dice, things like that. We've got some small publishers with their own games. We have Games Law who are here and just finishing setup. If you want to buy games, we also have Jimmy from Firestorm Cards. They're here as well. So, yeah, there's enough exhibitors here for you to come and buy stuff. If you want to buy stuff, look around and get some demos of games as well. Obviously, not as much as UK Games Expo, but as you can see here, there are various places that are doing demos of their games either in prototype form or whether they're actually finished, ready to go. Couple of other places that I just want to quickly mention. Well, you do have Chaosium who are here and KSM have been around for a very long time and they do lots and lots of cool Cthulhu stuff and Cthulhu related books and things like

7:27 that, but over the last couple of years they've branched out into starting to do board games as well. Now, I have a good relationship with Chaosium and they're going to be demoing the Old Ones origins games. And I've just spotted Sasha here. So, I'll just quickly say hello to him. Hello. You are on camera. Good to see you again. Uh, and this is Old One's Origins. So, this this is the copy of the game that's going to be at my house in a few days time, and we're going to be covering it on the channel. Um, but yeah, this is going to be their next big game. And for those people who don't know what Old On's Origins is, it's a re-implementation of the Forbidden Stars system, which is a much loved out of print game from Fantasy Flight Games. Same designer, so it's an updated version of that. But yeah, looking forward to that one. We have Hashett who have a booth over here. They're not here at the moment, but they will be here at some point. So, Hashet Games are going to be doing various demos of things that are going on as well.

8:23 And as I mentioned, Stalls selling t-shirts, selling games. We've also got Eerie Idol Games that have just arrived and they're setting up with their their big hit Old King's Crown. So, yeah, they're going to be doing demos of that and selling that. And uh I've been told that I might get a sneak peek of a new game that they're working on which nobody's seen yet, but they they've promised me a quick sneak peek of that. One of the other things that is worth mentioning is, as you can see, there's a lot of open gaming space at Tabletop Scotland. Over in the far corner, you can just see there's a bring and buy over there. There's also a games library over there for people to borrow games, whatever they want to play. Uh, and this is pretty much just for open board gaming. As I mentioned earlier on, there is a hole upstairs to this venue and that's where there's lots of different role playing games going on. The event itself doesn't start until noon on the Friday. So, at that point, my demos started and I had a couple of demos that day. I ran a game of Cubano. I was running that every day. So, this was my first demo of the convention, demoing that to some people. And then after that, Excursions, the new Galactic Cruise game, which is a shorter, lighter version of Galactic Cruise. I actually have a video of this which is going to be coming to the channel very soon.

9:38 Takes up to six players. And because there was loads of people that wanted to play, I decided that I would open it up to all six players. So, that was quite a tricky demo to do with all of the players playing simultaneously, but it went really well. After the demos, I ran a big group game of just one. This was an alternative version of the game which I designed myself which turns just one from a cooperative game into a team-based competitive game. We had 30 places and about well all 30 places had signed up. Unfortunately only half of the people turned up. So if you were one of the people who booked into the just one game and you didn't turn up then yeah thankfully there was a group of people there from another gaming group near Glasgow and they were brilliant.

10:27 They were in my demo of excursions earlier on and they knew that I was in a bit of trouble because we only had like 12 or 13 people and it wasn't really going to work for that amount of people. So they basically went, "Right, we're going to go and get some more people." And they went into the gaming halls and they picked up the rest of their group. So we ended up with about 25 people playing this event. And yeah, it was a good experience. Unfortunately, I forgot to take any photos or videos of it whatsoever, but as an event, it worked well. Right, this is the open gaming area at 900 p.m. on the Friday. It's not too busy. I've been told it's going to get a lot busier tomorrow as more people turn up, but I'm done for the day. So, I'm actually going to be heading back to the hotel now. And hopefully I don't know if they're still going to be open for food cuz I'm very very hungry. I did the just one event earlier on today, which went well. And uh Oh, I've got I've got somebody behind me

11:26 guiding you.

11:26 Are you guiding me through? Oh, thank you. I've got Richard from We're Not Wizards.

11:30 Hello.

11:31 Say hello, Richard.

11:32 Hello.

11:32 There you go. is causing causing trouble.

11:38 Go home and cause trouble. Right. I'll see you tomorrow.

11:42 So, yeah, hoping that the hotel has has food left at this time of night. I uh I I don't know, but we'll find out. But the just one event uh went very well. It it was it was good fun and it it worked and people seem to have fun and I did use the word defenistration and one person got it which was very good. Saturday was the busy day at the convention and for some reason I didn't get [clears throat] any videos of the exhibit halls, but yeah, it was really busy. It was not like jam-packed. You had still had plenty of room to walk around and that was one of the great things about the convention is that they had a lot of space between the tables, a lot of space between the exhibitor booths, but it was really busy on the Saturday. I did two demos that day. I did Cubano again in the morning and then in the afternoon I did a game of Revenant which was a difficult game to teach because it's a big heavy complex game. But thankfully the players were able to pick it up and they all had the same mentality that I do when I'm getting a demo of a game is that we're just going to play. We're just going to push buttons, pull levers, see what happens. And the players commented afterwards and said, you know, that was a really good game. They enjoyed it and uh yeah, it went really well. Also, in between my demos, I managed to sneak in a game of Huborld Idolon with Ian from Giant Brain. The photo on screen is his because I forgot to take one, but I'm glad after all of the efforts that I went to to print out those starter decks that I did manage to get a game in. Now, one of the downsides of it being very busy on the Saturday was the food trucks outside. There was a 25minute wait for

13:14 food. The food was actually reasonable quality, but yeah, there was a there was a 25m minute wait for food. You've just got to be aware of that if you're going there on the Saturday. And then in the evening, I got a short demo of Old Ones Origins. Now, this game is going to be on the channel probably before you see this video because Sasha from Chaosium, who was demoing it there that weekend, is currently, as I'm recording this, on a train on the way to see me. And tomorrow evening, so that is Wednesday the 9th of September, we're going to be doing a live stream of Old One's Origins. But here's a couple of pictures of it. And as I'm recording this, I realized that there's a whole bunch of stuff that went on at Tabletop Scotland that I didn't take any photos of or didn't mention whatsoever. They have a games library. They have a play test area. They have all sorts of other events going on as well. So yeah, there is more going on than just exhibitors, open gaming, and the role playing games.

14:11 Now, if you're a regular viewer of mine, you'll know that I donate all of my advertising revenue to charity. If you are not a regular viewer of mine, then I donate all of my advertising revenue to charity. And I'm always on the lookout for good, worthy causes to donate the money to. Well, it turns out that there was actually a charity there at the event, the Scottish Huntington Duns Association, and they had a booth and they were raising money and they had a big inflatable dragon. And I thought, well, this this is perfect. This just works out. So I spoke to Eve who was there and we're going to donate basically last month's advertising revenue to them which is I think somewhere about5600. So we're going to make that donation there. And I just wanted to say a thank you to everybody who watches this video but also everybody who watches all of my other videos because every view is a little bit of money and all of that adds up over the month and we're able to carry on doing this. Finally made it up to the upstairs rooms and I'm glad it's really busy today. So this is the role playing area. There's lots of role playing going on at Tabletop Scotland.

15:13 It's a big part of the convention. That's some of it. If we pan over here, there's even more. And around the corner there, there's even more. So, lots of groups playing lots of different role playing games. And we also have some smaller rooms as well. We have a blood on the clock tower going on here for those people who want to do that kind of thing. And yeah, lots of small rooms as well. I think there's Pathfinder going on in here and each of these small rooms still has, you know, four or five tables worth of people going on. So, yeah, I'm really glad that I've come upstairs. I don't do the role playing games myself anymore and I'd uh I just wanted to see this part of the convention. It's probably about the same size I would have thought as what I'm saying is the number of people here doing role playing games is probably about the same number of people here doing actual board games. So yeah, there's a really good representation of of role playing games here.

16:09 And for myself, I had two more demos today. I had another demo of Cuba Neo in the morning, followed by another sixplayer game of Excursions, the Galactic Cruise Game in the afternoon. And then with the convention over, we headed back to my hotel for some food and one quick game before deciding to call it a night. And out of the games that I brought with me, we decided to play Cubano. mainly because we only had time for either Cubano or Excursions and I just really fancied playing Cubano myself and I managed to get a victory by doing a very odd strategy and managed to get 93 points. But that was it. I headed back to my hotel room for a nice early night. Took stock of all of the gifts that I've been given over the weekend. Thank you very much to everybody who gave me these. A number of these did get eaten on the way home. Now, Monday morning and I am here at Edinburgh Gateway Train Station on the way back home. I decided to have a much less stressful day today and my train from Edinburgh isn't until 11:00 this morning. So, I got up early, had early breakfast, and basically I should have about an hour at Edinburgh train station itself, which is good cuz I'll probably grab some food there rather than on the train. But yeah, train leaves at 11:00 and then it's a straight through journey again for 7 and 1 half hours, I think.

17:26 And then Vickiy's going to pick me up at the train station at 6:30. So yeah, just on the way home. It's a little bit weird this morning. Saw the convention organizers at breakfast, but there's not many people still around. And the bar area last night was there wasn't many gamers there. Um it was mostly new guests arriving, I think, for for the week. And um yeah, just just a few people. So yeah, a lot less busy at hotels, I think, than I'm expecting, but that's because I normally go to the conventions where it's actually at the hotel itself. So, most of the guests staying there are gamers, but yeah, fairly subdued last night and then fairly quiet this morning. And yeah, just looking forward to a a train journey home where I can start sorting through the 2,900 emails in my inbox. That's today's job. I don't want to do it, but I never seem to have the time to sort out my inbox, and today's a good opportunity. And I think I got through about 10 emails and then got bored and decided to start reading some rule books instead for all of the games that I'm going to be covering this week. But that's it. That is my journey to Tabletop Scotland 2026. It was great to be there. I had a really good time. Met some patron supporters who I hadn't met before. So that's always nice. But also met some other people as well and caught up with a few people that some of whom I'd not seen for a very long time. Would I recommend going to the convention?

18:47 Yes, thoroughly recommend going to the convention. I think they've got plenty of space to expand should they need to. I believe their attendance figures this year was about 5,100 unique visitors. So yeah, uh whether I go back next year or not, it all depends. It came at a good time this year, but it is 5 days away from home and 5 days away from other things that I need to be doing. But the train journey up there was a breeze. So it's definitely something that I would consider going to again.

19:35 Heat.