Bad Moon Cafe

Opened in 2018 South London’s Bad Moon Cafe quickly established itself as one capital’s best spots for wargaming. Housed in a bright airy space with an industrial design, it’s almost certainly the only gaming space I’ve encountered where the owner was keen to show us their toilets. 

If it wasn’t for the presence of several massive gaming tables you might mistake it for a shop selling something like art books or Japanese denim but, as the name suggests, Bad Moon Cafe is a space with Warhammer very much at its heart.

We spoke with one of the co-founders, Hugh Wyeth to find out more.

Hello Hugh, so Bad Moon Cafe, how would you describe the place?

Bad Moon Cafe is London’s Premiere tabletop gaming venue – we believe we have the nicest space to play tabletop games on the best tables with a great atmosphere. 

Bad Moon Cafe encompasses a large space of wargames tables for things like Warhammer, a cafe and bar area for socialising, eating & drinking and a board game library for customers to access. We’ve created the most lovely community of people in the past 6 years!

And why Bermondsey? Having lived just around the corner a few years ago I don’t remember it being a hotbed of wargaming.

We think of Bad Moon Cafe as a destination venue, which is to say our “catchment area” will be huge compared to a conventional high street business. That means the exact location is less important than it might otherwise be – we have some flexibility to sacrifice prime location for a larger space (and more affordable rent!). 

Bermondsey as an area is great though as it’s central, near Borough and London Bridge stations whilst still allowing us to rent a large space. There’s also a couple of great gaming groups in Bermondsey and the surrounding area already!

The first time I visited I was blown away by the space itself. Industrial, spacious and modern it felt a world away from some of the dank gaming basements I've done time in. What was your background?

The founders all come from different backgrounds – retail management, property sales & management- I’m from architecture & design myself. We had all met in one of those dank gaming venues and we still have a lot of love for those places to be honest. 

So what prompted you to open the place?

It was clear that the resurgence in tabletop gaming was fuelled by people for whom those venues weren’t ideal – they’re older, have partners and/or families and want a nice place to spend their time in!

It’s harder to persuade your partner to come play some games if the space isn’t nice and welcoming. Being in London as well, playing Warhammer means lugging your army box around the city with you to get to the venue. We felt we owed people a really nice space that justified that effort!

Now, besides Warhammer what other games can people have a go at there?

Warhammer is still the primary focus of the venue in that it’s the founders’ primary interest and what a big part of the space caters for. All the Games Workshop systems are played here and some others too – Marvel, ASOIAF, Kings of War, historicals are all pretty common sights and have great communities. 

Nearly half the space is given over to the cafe and high tables which have access to the board game library, and we host frequent Magic the Gathering, Flesh and Blood and other TCG games in the same space.

You described it a destination venue, is there much of a local community focused on the store too?

I’d call our “Local Community” most of London really – barely any customers live in the vicinity, but as a lot of them work in London, I’d call that our community! There are a few great wargaming groups nearby as well though – LWG is the largest and we’ve had a great relationship with them for a while.

Just as we're doing this there's a new version of Age Of Sigmar on order, and there's been a huge influx of new people to Warhammer over the past few years, from your perspective is the scene in a good place at the moment?

I think we were really well placed for the big increase in wargamers in the mid 2010s- generally people now in their 30s returning to the hobby after a 10-15 year absence. 

It makes for a great blend in the scene – lifelong fans who have always been the backbone of the Warhammer scene, and a new influx who have created a really lovely community, particularly in the tournament scene. It’s meant there’s more Warhammer players than ever right now and it’s allowed us to open BMC in the first place! 

There’s a really good mix in the Warhammer scene right now of brilliant painters and hobbyists, many of whom enter tournaments and run events, and broader representation in the community is always improving.

There's been a lot of interesting more narrative focused indie wargames of late, do you get much of a sense of those making any inroads into the Warhammer community or is there still a bit of a clear divide there?

It’s always a hard question to answer, especially from a store – whilst we’d love to be more proactive in promoting games, stocking other manufacturers etc, from experience it ultimately results in a loss in investment as they’re just not popular enough. 

Warhammer is just such a titan in the gaming space that you have to base your business on them. I haven't seen a game challenge a GW system yet – I think X-wing almost looked like it might several years ago but obviously that didn’t work out. 

I’m personally very much into other systems – Osprey produce so many great miniature-agnostic systems, Snarling Badger’s Deth Wizards is great fun, Drowned Earth, Gaslands – but ultimately I play all of them with 1 or 2 friends who are casual miniature wargames players. 

Community is everything in tabletop gaming and it’s nigh impossible to create one of any decent size! 

It can create a divide, but we always try to support the non-GW games as much as possible from an events perspective- Marvel for example has a great community lead who’s made one of our most thriving communities that meets up every week.

You've been open nearly 6 years now, so what's been the highlight of running the place so far? 

I still love seeing people use the space. 

There’s an odd sensation of being in a space that you’ve planned out with mates and thought “we’ll make this space like this so people use it like that” and then being there and seeing people use it is so fulfilling. 

Building a community is incredible – I’ve made so many friends from people coming to BMC – and customers telling us the BMC community is a lifeline for them in London.

Obviously you had to negotiate the covid lockdowns, but apart from that what's been the hardest thing you've had to deal with since opening?

The community rallying to us in lockdown was extraordinary. The Covid lockdown was very hard – I remember the day before it was announced I was walking to the cafe, we’d been opened over a year by that point and had been really busy, and I saw the cafe almost empty. It broke my heart. 

I think other than that, the hardest thing is probably figuring out our food offering. 

A kitchen is a whole other business that is tough to take on, so we have an in-between solution right now that we’re really wanting to improve!

And if you could go back and give yourself one bit of advice from just before you opened what would it be?

In terms of advice, I’d say the most important thing to remember is you’re opening a business, not a room of stuff you like. 

I think that’s the major point of failure for so many hobby and nerd-focused businesses, that they open a store and fill it with the stuff they love and the business plan – how they intend to make money – is a secondary consideration. 

We’ve already had to change what aspects of the Cafe we emphasise and give space to to help us remain open.

Looking forward, what other plans do you have for the future of Bad Moon Cafe, do you see yourself opening any more sites in the future?

We’re near finishing our round of renovation for the cafe – new gaming mats, new board game library, new toilets, aircon and acoustics are now all complete. 

I think we’ll always seek to reinvest money into the cafe in this way whenever we can and we’d love to open more Cafes, though London rents do make it extremely difficult!

BAD MOON CAFE, 159A Great Dover Street, London, SE1 4GZ
badmooncafe.co.uk

This feature originally appeared in Wyrd Science Vol.1, Issue 6 (August '24)