We ended up catching the tail end of Tacoma’s first gaming convention, ConTac, and I had a blast! They had a ton of games to , plus quite a few things for sale. There were about 25 people playing at any one time. It was a very chill and much better than expected.

We got to try out Kings of Tokyo. Very disappointing, since I read nothing less than outstanding reviews. I think I just rolled shitty, and couldn’t evolve my mutant, the King Kong dude. And when I did, the evolutions weren’t as great as the others I was seeing.

Then we played some Carcassone, since Jin and Jessica have never played before. Amara got first place, and I got second. Somebody else got a distant third. It was sort of embarrassing. We played with two of the expansions. Inns and Merchants and Lakes and things. I didn’t get why they’re considered essential to the game.

At the end, I tried scoring a promo card for Spartacus. The head guy said I could have one, but then never gave it to me. 🙁 Even after buying Dominion: Intrigue. Oh, and I really wanted Prosperity, but they didn’t have it. Still should be a fun expansion.

Funny story. The seller asked where we heard about the con. I said Reddit. After a pause, he asked where. I said /r/ boardgames, Amara said /r/Tacoma. Later in the car, we realized he heard “read it”, and was asking where I read it. Saying /r/boardgames probably didn’t help us. It turned out okay in the end, though, since he gave us a flyer with a link to their meetup group at the GameMatrix store. Fun times ahead!

Other thoughts: nobody introduced themselves to us. We read Ryan’s namecard. He owned the games we played. ConTac and GameMatrix really need to hire designers and SEOs; googling for game stores doesn’t bring them up, their website is awful at a glance, and their pamphlet they gave us looks like it was created by a middle schooler with no help from his parents. And why is it every time I go buy games, the most awkward interaction I have at the store is with the cashier? Maybe it’s just coincidence. Maybe it’s just me.

Rereading everything, it’s a wonder I enjoyed myself as much as I did. I think I just like playing board games. A LOT.