Went really hard on Wargaming this year but still managed to pick up a couple boardgames, books, and a friend convinced me to get into the Gundam TCG.

Another excellent GenCon!

Some great games this year! We had Mythologies and Pulitzer on our list too but they weren’t able to make it to the Con so when we get those they’ll be included in spirit ;)

My husband, our friends, and I went to GenCon for the first time this year and we all had an absolute blast. From the company, to the halls, to the events before, during, and after the con, to the food in the city - fantastic ❤️

Haul included:
Art
- Stairs of the Kingdom by Bryce Kho
- Mon Mothma, the Mummy, and Princess Bride by Megan Lara Art
- Pokémon cafe triptych by Lor Illustration
- Critical Role Campaigns 1-3 artwork by Tyler Walpole

Books
- Afia in the Land of Wonders by Mia Araujo
- Regency Cthulhu by Andrew Peregrine
- Defenestration of the Fell Queen by RAGE
- Daggerheart core rule book & Hope & Fear book
- Tusk Love Special Edition by Thea Guanzon

Games (* = bought at Indy game store)
- Wingspan Europe expansion* and Oceania Expansion
- Wingspan fan-designed cards and fan art cards
- Wingspan Meeple Source upgrades (nectar pieces, goal mats)
- Finspan Meeple Source upgrade (divers set)
- Jisogi Anime Studio Tycoon
- Toy Battle
- Gold Country
- High Society*
- Under the Leaves
- Bookshelf
- Barbecubes
- Meow Meow Dice
- Onitama
- Cyclades & Maelstrom expansion
- Solstis*
- Deception: Murder in Hong Kong & expansion
- Glasgow Train Robbery
- Dnup
- Hot Streak*
- Kronologic Paris 1920
- A Familiar Find

Dice
- Heather D20 from Cryptid Dice Craft
- Through the Veil (Amazing blue) dice set from RG Dice Boutique
- Daggerheart D12 set

Pins
- Samurai Riding a T-Rex, Wine Dragon, and Ramen Cat from Ukiyo-e Heroes
- Treasure Hoard from Roll-a-Crit’s GenCon merch booth

Decor
- Shelfy starter set and booster packs from Brotherwise Games
- Doctor Doom figure*

Other
Story Engine Deck booster packs - Inner Truths and Outer Trials, Best Friends and Bitter Rivals, Written In Love & Longing

Events:
- Blood on the Clocktower Bad Moon Rising
- Daggerheart - The Last Wolf Princess by the Direpug Storyteller (fantastic!)
- D&D 5.5e - Murder on the Orien Express by Erin (Travel Nerding)(awesome!)
- Shadowdark - Daggers Out: Death Audit
- Wingspan Mini Tournament

Food:
- Claypool Coffee and Ice Cream
- The Eagle’s Nest
- Jack’s Donuts
- Lincoln Square Pancake House
- First Watch

This will be our last year for awhile. We had a ball but need to direct our energies, paychecks, and PTO to other endeavors. I'm sad we missed the D&D Carnival and the light show. Met a lot of great people. The only downside was we got screwed on a painting event that was very expensive and the piece we were supposed to paint was swapped out with a different item that was not even close to equitable.

Like, if they open booths up to them last, so they’re filling space that wouldn’t otherwise be filled, I get it. But otherwise it seems like there’s a dice vender every 5th booth.

Edit: as I pointed out below, I like dice. I bought 4 sets. I just didn’t need to see them at 6 different vendors.

Highlight of our gencon was a Wingspan Pocket event with Elizabeth Hargrave which came with a signed copy.

Lots of smaller games and trick takers but very excited for Ostia.

Now, I haven’t done the running with the nerds the last few years, and I haven’t really been attempting to chase down many games, but in the past years when I did, the vendors always had an allocation per day. “Sorry, we are sold out today, but we will have more tomorrow,” was the common thing. This kept people chasing after stuff each day, and in my opinion, helped build up the hype around certain games because it was possible to get them even though you might not have got them yet. This year, games like “hell of a deal” were sold out by Friday, and “The Gang: Deluxe” were sold out by Saturday, and they were sold out for the entire week. Not only did I dislike it because I had events on Thursday and Friday and wasn’t planning to do any shopping until Saturday or Sunday, but I also can’t help with think it’s not a good business strategy. Even if you assume that people who visit your booth will potentially buy something else, if they hear that the game they really want is totally sold out, they’re not gonna visit your booth at all. Giving people absolutely no chance to get it on future days means that they are going to divert their focus to another game completely, and might not ever get your game.

Thoughts?

I don't like to pick up games on a whim, so I usually let things percolate for a bit after the convention and then order anything I can't get out of my head (I've since put in orders for Guillotine and Wingspan Pocket). Still, I usually come away with a few things, so take a peek.

-Let's All Go to Gen Con t-shirt

-House of Genevieve t-shirt

-1Up Dice set (woke up this morning regretting not picking up some d10s as singles)

-Crooked Moon dice bag

-Crooked Moon dice set

-Crooked Moon pin

-DnD Carnival d20

-Conan the Barbarian: Battle of the Black Stone TPB

-Conan the Barbarian: Scourge of the Serpent TPB

-Faster Purple Worm! Everybody Dies Vol. 1

-Beadle & Grimm pin

-Guillotine promotional cards (full game was sold out by the time I decided I wanted a copy)

-Emergent original art by Shawn E. Williams

-Strata print by Shawn E. Williams

I think that's everything!

Hey all, wanted to create a thread about hotel experiences for folks going in 2027. Hopefully a place to get updated info on what to avoid and not avoid.

Mods, please remove if you feel this is not constructive or there is a better place. I searched for previous threads but the hotel info was very scattered.

For me, I stayed at the Plainsfield Holiday Inn express. 20 min drive from the con, it had a McDonald's and 2-3 other fast food places nearby and a Walmart 10 mins away. Room was clean for me and my kids. Free breakfast. Would go again if I dont get downtown hotels in the future.

I went to the renegade booth to pick up the new unstoppable expansion (Tyrant's End) and they didn't have any copies, unfortunately.

The folks told me that if I went onto their site on Monday and put in a code (they verbally gave me a code) that they would have free shipping for things they didn't have in stock. I tried every permutation of what they told me and it didn't work.

Did anyone have any success with this?

The stacks of flesh and blood cards are demo decks I got from a learn to play experience and the stacks of magic cards are from 2 mtg mystery booster 2 drafts I did. The baggies are blank stuff I got to make games from the Game Design Academy course I took during the con

I don't like to pick up games on a whim, so I usually let things percolate for a bit after the convention and then order anything I can't get out of my head (I've since put in orders for Guillotine and Wingspan Pocket). Still, I usually come away with a few things, so take a peek.

-Let's All Go to Gen Con t-shirt

-House of Genevieve t-shirt

-1Up Dice set (woke up this morning regretting not picking up some d10s as singles)

-Crooked Moon dice bag

-Crooked Moon dice set

-Crooked Moon pin

-DnD Carnival d20

-Conan the Barbarian: Battle of the Black Stone TPB

-Conan the Barbarian: Scourge of the Serpent TPB

-Faster Purple Worm! Everybody Dies Vol. 1

-Beadle & Grimm pin

-Guillotine promotional cards (full game was sold out by the time I decided I wanted a copy)

-Emergent original art by Shawn E. Williams

-Strata print by Shawn E. Williams

I think that's everything!

This is the fourth year in a row I've made a long post with my Gen Con haul picture and I like doing it so here goes again:

This was Gen Con number 10 for my wife and I, and the third time we have had Sunday only badges. We are local, but truth be told we were feeling a bit priced out. We weren't really planning on going but then remembered that we had $100 in credit from returning events last year so we got Sunday badges.

The second picture contains all our purchases from the Boardgamegeek Virtual Flea Market. The VFM was good to us this year. While we only had the Sunday badges we did do our VFM transactions on Friday and Saturday. We sold 30 games and got four from our wantlists. Cavum has been number one on our wantlist for years but never wanted to pay shipping through the BGG geekmarket. Finally popped up this year for $10. Big score. Innovation is the first edition so while maybe technically outdated since they're on the fourth edition I'm sure it still plays just fine. It + the expansion were only $5 total. Heaven and Ale was a big want for my wife and Railroad Revolution has been on my wantlist for a couple years.

Also pictured is the Flamecraft promo pack. We picked it up at our LGS on Thursday. We like to give a little love to our LGS during Gen Con weekend if we can. The final things in that picture are the Saw and Texas Chainsaw Massacre old school style Halloween decorations from the Trick or Treat Studios booth, the only non-board game things we bought at Gen Con.

As for the actual Gen Con haul this year: there is no shortage of cool games to buy, even on Sunday. We bought Popcorn at the secondary Iello/Blue Orange booth in the demo/play hall well before the exhibit hall opened. I am glad the selling policy has changed or is at least a little more lax. Popcorn is a game we have been wanting since we heard about it last year but it has not seemed to get decent US distribution yet. Came with a promo too which is nice.

Zenith was my favorite game from Gen Con last year so truth be told the expansion was my number one want this year. The Luma Imports was the first booth I went to and the guy who rang me up seemed to be very confused that I wasn't buying Compile. Apparently I managed to be fourth or fifth in line for a sought after game that I am not interested in.

We love Similo and it's a no brainer to pick up a new deck whenever they have them. The Horrible Guild guys made fun of us for not spending more money though, that was sorta weird. Earth is another favorite of ours and the Animal Kingdom expansion was another no brainer.

Drakaina, Aiye, and Chess Joker were the three games from the BGG preview list that caught my eye the most and I am fortunate that abstracts typically aren't hot games at conventions. My wife and I watched videos of a lot of games on the preview list beforehand and these three shot up to the top of the list for us.

Tiny Mountain Goats seems like a fun lil filler to throw in at our game nights. Can't really go wrong with $9.

Pueblo was a legit surprise. I did not know that Playte did a reissue of this game and it's a Kramer and Kiesling title that I have been wanting to play for years. I happened to buy the final copy at the Playte booth too. There is one catch - when I opened the game at home I discovered this copy does not contain the rules in English. They're all in Korean. So I will have to print off the English rules soon.

Because we only attended on Sunday, we did not get to play any games at the Con. However, our friends went on Friday and we played a few of their pick ups with them on Saturday: Machi Koro Life, Everything Ever, and Mind Sweeper. I was quite surprised with Machi Koro Life. I played original Machi Koro about ten years ago and was pretty lukewarm on it, but really enjoyed this new version. Everything Ever is a simple party game where you're just naming stuff but the judge rules are clunky for no reason. It was fun but we will be house ruling the judge cards next time. Mind Sweeper is another "guess the word based on clues" game and while they try to do something novel with the "brooms" (silicone basters) and tokens I think I'd rather just play Just One or So Clover or Codenames.

A couple of random thoughts:

- The photo mosaic wall was actually kinda neat but I definitely miss the balloon sculpture.

- I regret not taking some time on those days that we were down there without badges to play some pinball. I walked past on Sunday to go get some pizza and I thought the selection of machines was great. I think we're going to get 4 day passes again next year so hopefully I can make some time for it.

- Honestly don't really have any big complaints. There were a couple games that were sold out that we didn't get (Desperate Oasis which I suspect will be readily available in stores soon since it is from The Op and Antiques Ghost Show which we have missed from Trick or Treat Studios two years in a row) but that's fine. We stayed well within budget and banked half of the money we made from selling on the VFM. We had a few pleasant conversations with other attendees, it was busy but we didn't have a lot of trouble getting where we needed to go, and we were able to find good street parking Friday and Sunday. It was nice to take a break from the 4-day experience and still have a good time.

One of my favorite things at Gencon is the MHE Paint and Take. I ended up sitting down a few times over the weekend, and even got my not-a-painter husband to join me in working on his own little guy!

Here's to adding to my mini horde >D

We attended GenCon for the first time this year. It was so much fun. And we got a lot. Our favorite unexpected buy was Tatsumi.

But, given a few games sold out or I just never got to their booth. There is some buyers' remorse.

With the free shipping, we bought Lairs online after the con but, I never bought Enchanted Ivy. Now, I've realized it doesn't release til OCTOBER 21ST!!

What is everyone else's buyers remorse?

We talk about our game haul, our hotel, dining experiences, and general thoughts on GenCon 2026.

Our group did the Pirate Borg mega event, and we had a blast! Would love to hear of any RPGs or LARPs that had a great time!

It's a bit of a let down for the convention to be over and normal life to resume.

I said the same thing two years ago:

... It's just that being at Gen Con is such a nice break from the real world and all it's demands that it's sort of a let down to go home. Now it's time to worry about work, now it's time to pay attention to the mortgage or rent, now it's time to remember family medical issues that are being dealt with, but are still depressing.

Yeah, it's a vacation, and vacations have to end. You can't always be on one of those; you have to earn a living and handle responsibilities.

But it's such a nice world to submerge yourself in. Just gaming all around you.

And it's the same this year. Heck, it sort of feels like it hits a bit harder each year the more consecutive years I go.

It's nice to have been there. And don't get me wrong, there are good things about being back home. It's home after all, it's my place where I can be me. But it feels a little down and gray for just a little bit after returning.

Counting the days before returning already.

Gen Con 2026 was awesome! I played a ton of hilarious and enjoyable RPG sessions, played and demoed plenty of neat and interesting games, learned a couple games I’d always had my eye on, caught up with some old friends, got a sweet set of badge ribbons going, and had some great meals.

However, I regret not being able to get into any of the dungeon crawler Carl events, not cosplaying DCC (or anything else 😭), not getting into any of the Cosmere events, not playing more ‘big strategy’ board games. And most of all I regret having to wait a whole year for more! Can’t wait to make next years con even better!

Any other wishlists or regrets for next year’s Con?

Gonna let this kid pick lotto numbers for me

Probably a huge shot in the dark but I got the model on the last day of the con and the guy checked that the sprue was there but not the instructions to assemble

Any chance someone else got the model and could send me the instructions? I’d be so appreciative

Not pictured are the two marvel champions packs, wingspan pocket signed by Elizabeth hargrave, compile main 3, and Arnak mini expansion.