SaltCON Report
What’s SaltCON, you ask? This is what they say about themselves on the website:
The mission of SaltCON is “to bring people together with games.” Come play with your family and friends. We have exhibitors, prizes, game teachers, tournaments and a huge game library to try out new games. We have board games, card games, party games, role playing games, dexterity games, miniatures games and more!
My husband is the gaming geek. He’ll play almost anything, but he especially likes complicated board games, RPGs, and living card games.
Before we started dating I was only a party game girl. You know, Apples to Apples, Mad Gab, Battleship, any sort of rummy…stuff like that. It took the hubby a while to convert me to tabletop board games that had more strategy involved than Ticket to Ride.
He slowly won me over, starting with Lords of Waterdeep, and now I’m a fan of many (but not all–I’m looking at you, Mage Knight) tabletop board games.
I still don’t do RPGs (D&D style, for those of you who don’t know), and my patience for Magic style card games is limited. So not a total convert, but he’s pretty proud of his accomplishment.
This was our first trip to SaltCon, which is a local gaming convention. I expected a bunch of geeks, lots of games, and loads of stuff to buy.
I got all of that, but what I didn’t expect was the SCOPE of the convention.
There weren’t just a few tables to play games at, there were like a hundred .They were tucked into every nook and cranny of the conference center. I expected the vendor room to be much bigger than the gaming room. Boy was I wrong.
The hubby is always complaining that he wants more games. We have like two closets full of them, so I always wonder how many more there could be.
Apparently there literal are mountains of them.
I saw people dragging those wagons people take to their kid’s soccer tournaments full of games into the conference center looking for people to play with them. Others were being taught and played by fans or creators at tables. Still others simply sat down with a game, put up a sign saying they needed people to play with, and the people came.
It was INSANE.
I’ve been to FanX / ComiCon, writing conferences, and even Star Wars, Star Trek, and Lord of the Rings conventions, and there are plenty of nerds and geeks at those gatherings, but this was on a whole different level. I saw probably ten people I knew from other places. Most of them seemed surprised to see me there. I guess I don’t ooze the gamer vibe. Which I’m fine with. 🙂
We played something like seven new games over two days. We also spent way too much money. Which isn’t unusual for the hubby and games.
The con itself was well run, although being first timers we were confused about how things worked at the gaming tables and had to ask for help a few times. Still, all in all it was a good experience. We’ll probably go back, but need to save some money beforehand. 🙂
