Tuesday, November 13, 2007

BGG.Con 2007

This weekend, my wife and I are going to Dallas for BGG.Con 2007, hosted by www.boardgamegeek.com (hence, the BGG). BGG is a fantastic website for board game information, pictures, discussions, trading, sales, and pretty much anything else you can imagine relating to non-video gaming. I became familiar with the site as an undergraduate, but I didn't really get into it until my wife and I began attending our Friday night gaming group at Great Hall Games in Austin.

We are really excited about going for many, many reasons. First off, you get to basically spend three days gaming your heart out. You can play in tournaments (such as the Tigris and Euphrates tournament on Saturday), test out prototype games that aren't even on the shelf yet, or just try out stuff with your friends from the game library that has over 1000 titles. Second, you're doing all this with great people who love games. We are particularly looking forward to hanging out with our dear friend Mischa from New Orleans once again. (I am anticipating some late night Jungle Speed, Mischa!!!) I hope that our group from Austin gets to do some fine dining at least once together. Third, it's like taking a mini-vacation -- in the middle of the semester! Nothing like taking off for an excursion in the middle of school. I have rarely done this, either as an undergrad or a grad student, so this is pretty cool.

We are participating in the "math trade" as well. This is basically a very complicated multi-person trade. In other words, A sends game to B, B sends game to C, C sends game to A -- except there are over 85 people involved. Mischa is running this one. I'm getting some really cool stuff, like Battlelore, Attika, and Colossal Arena. I'm trading away some good games, but I think K and I were interested in some new acquisitions anyway. This is a great way to do it!

I'll blog about what happened next week...