Genghis Con 2016 – Preview

Last year I posted a review of my 2015 Genghis Con experience and I plan to do the same this year. This year I am adding a preview to note some changes in my con plans and to be able to cut right to the chase in the review article (the post post).

Why Genghis Con?

I will spend an extended weekend at Genghis Con for the third year running. I live about an hour from where the con is held and it is not far from my office, so it is very convenient to attend. In past years I slept at home, but I will be staying two nights at the con hotel this year. Hopefully, this means I will get in more gaming! This is not the only major change to my con routine planned in 2016. This year my wife will also attend (which was the primary rationale behind getting the hotel room). She came for a few hours on the final day in 2014 to see what the con was like. Of course, this was probably the worst day since things were winding down and too many con-goers had not followed their con-123s. Despite the warning signs, she agreed to attend most of 3 days this year.

A Bit about Genghis Con

Genghis Con is held in the Denver area over the weekend prior to the Monday the US celebrates as President’s Day. The con had been held by the original organizers for many years, but was sold to a different organizer in 2015. The sister con, Tacticon, was the first with the new organizers and this is the first Genghis Con with them at the helm. Since I don’t attend Tacticon (held over Labor Day weekend), I am curious to see how/if the new organizers have changed the con feel much for attendees.

Genghis Con is primarily a gaming convention. The new organizers changed things up a bit and added the Artemis Bridge Simulator. Of primary interest to me is the addition of the Gen Con Game Library (or maybe some portion of it). I go for what is probably their most prominent feature, scheduled and open table top gaming and the library opens up the possibilities.

Volunteering

This year I plan to volunteer with the Envoy team to host a “Social Deduction Room.” I hope to spend a 6-hour shift or two teaching and organizing plays of some of the most popular party games. This will chip away at the available hours to get in an organized play and I will have to balance my time playing games with Lori. As it was in my first year, I expect her to only/mostly play games with people she knows, which is basically, me.

A Basic Plan

As in the past, there are two ways to get into the scheduled games; buy a weekend game ribbon or reserve and pay for individual games (at a buck an hour) in advance. Although I had reservations about buying the weekend ribbon in the past, I went that route again this year. The two major factors in this decision were polar opposites. On the negative side, there are fewer organized games, but less competition for seats (so far), and not as many that I “need” to play. On the positive side, the ribbon is required to use the game library. Unfortunately, there is no listing of the games in the library (that I can find), so this is bit of a gamble. Hopefully, not a big one, though. Certainly, in over 700 games I will find some I want to play and couldn’t otherwise.

Organized Play

As mentioned, there are fewer games this year and some of the games that I have played in the past that I would like to play again (e.g. Royal Palace, Caverna) are not available. Since I need to look for 2 seats instead of 1 for organized play this year, I think my chances are small in being able to play, but here is a short list of games that I might try to join.

Open Gaming

I have created a much longer list of games that I would like to play from the library if they are available. While it will be interesting to scan the library to see what it contains and maybe find a game that I must play, I figure the best use of the time is to grab a game off my list and jump in. Since I keep my gaming habit documented on BoardGameGeek, this was an easy list to create; simply filter games that I own from games I want to play then manually eliminate games in the gaming group. Done.

Off to Genghis Con

With the con less than two weeks away, I am looking forward to immersing myself in game play and hopefully meetup with some of the people that have played with me in the past.