As you may have heard in the podcast, I went to Dice Tower Con in Orlando this year (my third year at Dice Tower Con). Out of the two different board gaming conventions I've been to, Dice Tower Con is by far my favorite, just because of the awesome open gaming experience - both in available space and in the amazing library.
This year I didn't go to any of the events (I didn't want to wait in line for an hour), so I spent almost all my time doing open gaming. I also wandered around the vendor area (some demo gaming, some buying games), went to the flea market, and visited the world's largest McDonald's with Flip the Table!
My 'vacation' was exhausting. Over the course of the 5 day convention, I played 56 unique games, 49 of which were new to me (a lot of learning!). Each day I played 10 or more different games. I also got to cross a bunch of games off of my list of 'games I want to play.' Obviously, I can't go over all the games in this blog (well I can, but I don't want to), so I'll just go over some highlights.
KublaCon is a gaming convention held on Memorial Day Weekend in the Bay Area, California. Since I live 15 minutes away, I go every year. I believe KublaCon started out as an RPG convention - it has an online system for signing up for different RPG events, and it has a lot of rooms for RPGs and miniatures gaming. But it also has some tabletop gaming, which is primarily what I'm interested in. This year, I spent a lot of time playing games with old friends and new friends.
Throughout KublaCon, I was able to play 25 different games, 10 of which were new to me. Since there are way too many games to talk about, I'll just mention some of the highlights (and show the pictures I remembered to take).
I started off the convention Friday night with Millennium Blades (Amazon), a meta card game about a collectible card game (CCG). You get to draft cards, buy cards, make a collection, and make a deck to play in a 'tournament' against everyone. There are a whole bunch of cards - with a starter deck of 118 cards, plus 12 packs of boosters (12 cards each) added each game to make the main store deck, that's over 250 cards in the game! Also, there's tons of variety, so in the 3 rounds of play, I made 3 different tournament decks, all with different types of combos and ways to get points.
Convention season is right around the corner! In the inaugural episode of Board Game Blitz, Ambie, Cassadi, and Crystal discuss some games they've been playing recently including Ghost Blitz, Medieval Academy, and Carcassonne. We then discuss games that are great to play at conventions whether you're looking for something long and epic (like Twilight Imperium) or quick and portable (like Zombie Dice). In the "Accessory of the Week" segment, board game bags are the item of discussion and we share our preferences for moving our games around when we travel to conventions or other gaming events. Crystal also asks for feedback regarding what color she should choose for her Game Canopy bag that she recently backed on Kickstarter. In this week's "Board Game Etymology" segment, Crystal discusses the origins of the word "convention." Finally, we discuss some convention tips we've learned over the years.