GenCon 2016!

 GenCon 2016 was amazing!  For those who don't know, GenCon stands for Geneva Convention, hearkening back to when it was originally held in Geneva Wisconsin and is the world's largest (board) gaming convention!  Last year was awesome because it was our first time going so it was all new and exciting, but this year was equally if not even more great. 

 This year, we had a whole group going, including Katelyn and Kim who had recently moved here, Jeanmark and Abigail, and Abigail's brother Richard.  One of the big pluses for this year was that we spent more than one day there, which is great since Indianapolis is a 3 hour drive away.  We left Wednesday night and headed straight for an Escape Room!  Katelyn and Kim had recently done one for Katelyn's 25th birthday, but for the rest of us it was our first time and it was really fun!  Our mission, through a series of puzzles and searching, and logic, and laser dodging (nice work Abigail) was to steal the Mona Lisa and escape, and we did it! 

 

 After stealing the Mona Lisa, we headed to the convention center to pick up our badges (free! Thanks Peter!) so we didn't have to deal with it in the morning.  We thought the lines would be shorter at 11pm on Wednesday, and maybe they were, but they were still pretty long, spanning the whole length of the convention center!  It moved pretty quickly though and we were soon on our way to the hotel.  After a bit of a mix up (why would you have two hotels with the exact same name only 1/2 a mile from each other?!) and another mixup with Expedia, we finally got to bed.



















The next morning we were there for the convention's opening ceremonies, and then split up.   Katelyn and Kim headed to their first event, a game of Giant Star Trek Catan! Abigail, Jeanmark, and Richard headed to our first event, a cooperative game of The Captain is Dead, where Jon and I would join them as soon as we finished our first mission.  We had recently played a game at Breckenridge called Above and Below, which we'd fallen in love with.  It was a super beautiful story telling game and with worker placement mechanics.  We had since kickstarted its sequel, Near and Far, and on the kickstarter page, one of the pledge levels had been the expanded content to Above and Below.  BUT, we also knew that would be available and cheaper at GenCon, but only in limited quantities, plus the artist, designer, and company manager would be there to sign copies!  So we made a bee line there to snag our copy, and luckily we got there early enough to get near the front in line and get it, and then headed over to the Captain is Dead.  

Most of the rest of the day was spent exploring the massive exhibit hall with all its massive vendor booths and demo games.  One of my favorites is the meeple booth :)  Later in the afternoon Jon and I had our next event, a game of Giant RoboRally which was awesome!  It was computer programmed so we put our actions into a cellphone and then the robots moved on their own!  I was Wall-E and Jon was the bright green Android robot.  We did pretty well and it was really cool.  

 Dinner was fun.  Jon and I didn't have any more events for the day, but Jeanmark, Abigail, and Richard had an event at 7 and Kim and Katelyn had an event at 6, so Jon and I just held the table for everyone :)  We walked over with the first group to the Indianapolis City Market, which was like this giant food court place we'd heard about.  Turns out it was mostly a lunch place, but one of the few places that was open was a vegan place...perfect!  It was amazingly delicious and gave us a discount for having GenCon badges!  We played one of our new games, an expansion to Star Realms, over dinner and by the time Kim and Katelyn had finished their dinner, Jeanmark Abigail and Richard had finished their event and and then we all headed back to the hotel.  We played some Sushi Go Party and Concept together at the hotel and then most of us went to bed while Abigail and Richard, the brave souls, went to a Whose Line is it Anyway at 11 and got back to bed around 2am :) 

 

Friday, our last day there, started out with doing some role playing with Jon and Katelyn's friend and owner of GenCon, Peter.  There was a large group of us, between the 7 of us and Peter's friends and family, and it was a super interesting role playing experience.  There were 12 of us, and each of us played one of 4 characters in one of 3 different stages of life.  Kind of awkward at times but mostly really interesting and thought provoking.  At that point we headed back to the exhibit hall for some more browsing and game trying (Jon and I tried 7 new quick demos of various games over the two days).   We all had one more event, a seminar on gaming and Christianity, which was ok.  We met up for lupper at Noodle and Co. and had a delicious dinner and one last time together as a group before Jeanmark had to head up to Wisconsin for work and took Abigail and Richard to their Air B&B.  Katelyn, Kim and I did one more pass through the exhibit hall and a few last minute purchases before leaving GenCon 2016.  A quick trip for some celebratory fro yo before leaving Indy and then the trip was over.  Until next time Indy; see you for GenCon50!