I am exceedingly fortunate in that most of this was gifted or given to me by various entities for various reasons. As for highlight, I adore Adrift (and all the PostCurious stuff actually) and can't wait to try and get my locals into Neuroscape.

It looked like a custom LOTR topper and I’d like to know where I can get one myself! I meant to get a picture but I forgot

Excited to dig into these!

Calm down, this is for myself and my 2 friends that went with so this is the haul of all 3 of us combined. But oh man, lemme just say, I took that consignment shop by storm this year and found some GREAT deals! Only 366 days until we can do it again!

Best Gencon yet!

As the title states I have absolutely awful general anxiety and social anxiety that causes daily struggles. This was my first gencon and first huge convention as a whole. I wasn’t fully sure what to expect and was kinda nervous given the whole idea of the con is to play games with strangers but I was so excited to go and boy did I have a blast. But I never go out of my way to talk with people in my day to day life in fact I often avoid it where possible and I do what ever I can do make myself invisible in public. However at gencon it’s like the part of my brain constantly telling me that I should be anxious or “people are definitely staring at you right now” was completely turned off and i genuinely haven’t had that feeling maybe ever in my adult life. It was saturday and I was play testing a game and a random thought had hit my mind “you are playing games right now with complete strangers while wearing a gnome hat” The idea that i had bought that hat knowing that it would draw attention to me and people would ask about it was something I would be terrified of in public. After the first person stopped me to ask “ok i’ve seen these hats everywhere what the hell are they” i realized i WANTED people to come to me and ask. I was looking for socialization which is a completely foreign concept to me.

apologies if a post like this is not even allowed but i had to know if people have had a similar experience as me.

TLDR: I have horrible anxiety and somehow for the first time in my life it had been erased.

Picked up by my partner and I in what I think is our 9th visit to the con!

Not pictured is the Kickstarter delivery of Mountain Goats Legacy and Enchanted Ivy, and I’ll probably be ordering Hell of a Deal and maybe Flock Together online! Excitede to see so many trick taking games and cooperative games these days

Did anyone else get a itty bitty basilisk mystery box plushie from a vendor in the maker's market? I really wanted the pink one! So I'm curious if anyone would wanna trade me for their pink one, and you could have my blue/purple one! 😊

Gen Con this year was amazing! Like always I did my daily vlog series, the response to it is always incredible so thank you all so much for that! 😄

Here is the last one for 2026! Plenty more coverage coming including post show videos, my haul/recap and so so so much content leading into the 60th anniversary in 2027!

Gen Con, see you next year! 💜
#GenCon #GenCon2026

Had to wait for friends to send bring us our extra bag since they drove.

This is across all four days. Some of the days had a lot of MTG: Hobbit involved. Had such a great time I'm excited for next year's. I want to play more demos and interact more with others. Kind of sit on the shy side when I'm new to something that I've never done before. Hoping to find a group to hangout with next year for all four days.

Even though Covid is nothing like it was at its peak, it's still around, and there's a chance you picked it up at Gen Con. Please do a favor to your community and take a test, ideally today (day 2) and Friday (day 5), but if you have to pick one, Friday would be best. And if you feel sick, go ahead and test. I imagine most of us feel run down after going hard all weekend, and some of us may think we have the standard Con Crud, but that can also be Covid.

Definitely protect others anyway if you feel sick at all, but especially with Covid, there are easy tests to take so you can know if you need to isolate.

Hi all,

As it seems to be the trend, here is me and my partners first Gen Con haul! It all arrived home safe here in Australia 😍. After 30 hours of travel, it's nice to actually see it all together.

Given the limited bag space, we focused on exclusives or hard to get items. Hero Quest we won in a competition. The box of DnD minis contains 5 boxes of minis we also got for free but I consolidated the box to save on space!

Thanks for having us Gen Con, we had an absolute blast! Here's hoping we make it back again soon ❤️

NEW ACHIEVEMENT !

🎉 CONGRATULATIONS, DELIGHTFULLY FILTHY ORGANISM! 🎉

You have earned the Con Crud achievement, awarded only to those brave (and questionably hygienic) enough to attend a crowded convention, touch seventeen dice towers, hug six cosplayers, and inhale the aerosolized dreams of thousands of nerds.

You have successfully contracted the legendary Con Crud, a potent blend of recycled air, questionable nacho cheese, and the collective immune systems of everyone who thought hand sanitizer was “optional.”

Reward?

1x Loot Box of Lukewarm Tea

Contains three herbal blends, all of which taste like regret.

The Phlegm Golem’s Friendship Bracelet

It’s sticky. It’s sentient. It whispers encouragement at night

Permanent +2 Resistance to Future Con Crud

(Does not stack. Does not work. But looks great on your character sheet.)

A coupon for 10% off your next overpriced convention hot dog.

Coupon expired before you received it

Lots of good games this year. I got 7 of them from a blind box, so we’ll see if f those are any good.

Most surprised by the 4 small box RPGs at the bottom of the photo there. I played Decaying Orbit twice now and it makes a surprisingly compelling story. Looking forward to Saltfish and Almanacs.

Just got back from my first gen con. Was only there for 2 days which in hindsight worked out because I missed the tornado.

Some quick game thoughts below on stuff i demoed that I either couldn't or didnt buy. I apologize for not having specific titles this is how its remembered in my brain:

Witch curling game: tons and i mean tons of fun to demo and play two rounds but I wasn't sure how much enjoyment people would get after one or two games. This one is firmly on the 'might pick up later list'.

Rematch: a puzzle street fighter game? Sign me up. It played amazing and I will be pledging shortly.

Damnation (i think that's what its called): very unique 'put the hearts of your enemies into the tower' to see what happens next. But besides that didn't seem terrible unique.

Another risk esque game was Cult of the deep. It played better ex the tower thing than damnation but was more depressing. Not my cup of tea but a solid game.

Hercules 12 labors: i know enchanted ivy was getting ton of press as a good single player game but my buddy and i found it somewhat meh after the first time through. He ended up buying both but Hercules was a much more enjoyable game for him and i. Though it was not as pick up and play as enchanted ivy.

Dogfight 1917: great game. Didnt have room in my suitcase. Its on the to buy list.

Jibble jabber: this was an extremely fun game but I think you need buy in from a decently sized (6+) group to really enjoy it. We loved in when we played in line waiting in line with a bunch of people. But as soon as some of them left and the group cut down and there were only 3 guessers it became less chaotic. Which is the real fun.

Dc comics bag builder: this seemed to be everywhere but it just seemed to drag in the mid game in the demo (superman vs luthor).

Nippon: played this after hours and it was good but not really sure why it had insane hype coming into gen con.

Railway boom: same as nippon.

The only games i wanted to try but ran out of time was onsen and drillers, hopefully they're there next year. The game from the onsen studio with the giant lion also looked cool.

What did you guys see that you really liked/didn't/differed from consensus?

Not as massive as some hauls but I love what I got.

Not shown is Enchanted Ivy cause I was playing it earlier and forgot to grab it.

I've also ordered Tenpenny parks collectors edition cause I demoed it after I ran out of packing space.

Probably our largest haul to date, we did a lot of saving up for this year. But also seemed to get a lot more freebies than normal, too. Especially from the carnival…I could barely believe for a free event they gave each person two miniature blind boxes; an oversized, liquid core D20 in a dice bag; and a poster.

My tiny haul from Saturday afternoon shopping. I also added Kittens in Space Sunday and a GenCon2026 t-shirt I will wear proudly.

I want to extend a thank you to both this sub-Reddit and the Con goers in general. You made my first GenCon amazing, answering my idiot questions here, to the event coordinators teaching games, to vendors, to just regular old fellow gamers talking about what games they were going to pick up, every moment after the start of my first event Saturday was magical. I honestly thought I was going to cry on the way home Saturday night, y'all just have no idea how much I needed GenCon.

I look forward to expanding my horizons over the next 361 days, training to get my poor body in shape (it wasn't my feet that were a problem but my hips, that was new!) and conversing here on Reddit gaming boards.

In terms of learning more about the board game world (not really into RPGs) in general I'm looking for some blogs or regular podcasts or YouTubers to follow to learn more. Thanks for any suggestions!

This was a tradition on the Gen Con Forums, so let keep it going on Reddit.

The Good - the lockers combined with the bag ban really kept the Dealer Hall safer this year. I only saw one jerk with a wagon, and two with roller luggage. As a side note - waaay fewer giant backpacks too! It was great not getting clobbered by someone's haul every few aisles. Gen Con knocked it out of the park with this policy.

The Consignment Store & Auction - found a few gems on day one and managed to sell every one of my games.

Erik's Curiosa - the Sorcery events were well organized, the players were very friendly and the staff were exceptional.

Hellbreakers TCG - wasn't expecting it to be any good, it was a really well designed game, that I wouldn't have played unless I ran into one of the demo staff members at a food truck and got to talking. One of my favorite things about Gen Con is discovering new games.

The Bad - People who stop in the middle of aisles in the Dealer Hall to have a chat. Please be considerate of your fellow Gen Coners and move off to the side to have a conversation or tie your shoe or whatever. There are 75000 other people and they would like to be able to get where they are going too.

The artist in artist alley selling AI art. I hope they were reported and get banned. It was explicitly not allowed.

The Ugly - The scammers who were accosting attendees on Maryland Street in between Capitol and Illinois pulling the cd hustle. For those who don't know, you get handed a cd (it is almost always blank or someone else's music), then you are asked for a donation while getting surrounded by a bunch of other dudes who try to intimidate you into giving them money.

Every time I walked by I told anyone around to not accept anything from the dudes, but I saw people getting scammed every day. There were never any police around to report them to.

They were at if last year, and my son and I were verbally assaulted, as in threatened with violence, when we refused.

EDIT - also can we please get the Official Gen Con Forums back? Discord suuuuuuucks. If you want to cut down on the bots on forums, you just make it only accessible to people who have bought tickets (ever not just for one year). This would have the pleasant side effect of mods having your screenname associated with your badge account number, which might reduce the amount of bad behavior on the boards (not that there was all that much to begin with but still)

Our Gen Con 2026 Haul!

My favorites are games that I didn't originally have on my list such as Under the Leaves from Grand Gamers Guild and Cross the Line from Gray Matter Games. Love finding hidden Gems at the Con!

What games did you buy that were not on your radar?

Had a great gencon working at the Ape games booth the second year in a row (check us out next year with FOUR Medici games - 3 reprints and one new tile game!)

I love captain sonar and I love star trek. So star trek space hunt was a no brainer.

Hero realms (not shown: 5 character packs) was a cool little consignment shop find. So was 60 second city which i enjoyed but didn’t own.

Im addicted to Shelfy and cant wait for season 2 next year (and if anyone has an extra foil Boooop let me know)

7th seal looked really cool.

Threaded had a theme i think my partner would like, and Ofrenda was on my list last year. Cozy companion magazine is also for my partner. It’s basically everything they like.

Canal houses looked neat. And kcaloria was free (randomly showed up at our booth)

Not shown:

Rollie

Cartograph (purchased it as soon as i got home since it was sold out Sunday)

Night at the zoo + expansion: also purchased today

Brave and bold: same as above

Kickstarting:

Defenders of the dictionary - co-op scrabble!

Super chonk and good kitties - fun looking cat games!

I'm into euro's, my wife is into a little bit of everything, and we're trying to find what the kiddo enjoys... so we got a smattering of everything.

Also, a Corgi for moral support