Gen Con 2024 no cap Recap

TLDR: The most popular things from what I saw / games you should consider looking at:
Arcs was everywhere.  We had already played it before we went down, but if we hadn't we would have checked it out for sure.  Shut up and sit down drove this home in a YouTube video series.
The Gang is a cooperative game where you're playing poker.  There's more to it than that, but that's what I heard as the "selling points"  We couldn't get any because we woke up late every day.
Rock Hard 1977 Sex drugs and rock and roll baby!  This game was very hyped all weekend, similar to The Gang we weren't able to pick any up.

PROPS: 
Tyler for driving the whole time
RJ for housing
Josh for going with us and being awesome
Sugarfire for delicious BBQ
MVP booth attendant
JW Marriot
Evan for designing a cool game and teaching us how to play it
Ramen place for being delicious.
SCHLOPS
Greasy line cutting nerd
Ramen place for charging a lot for addons (despite being great)

Last weekend marked a historic Gen Con.  Me and more than 69000 (nice) of my biggest fans descended upon Indianapolis to participate in all sorts of shenanigans.  I keep saying that "we didn't do it right" but I'll share my story either way.  I used to live in Indianapolis and my only trip to Gen Con prior was for a Magic PTQ close to 2 decades ago.  Essentially this was the first Gen Con for all of the people I attended with.  This was the biggest Gen Con ever and I believe they totalled it at 77,000 people involved with the Con. I'm not sure if that's badges sold or if it includes vendors and supplementary stuff, but it's still impressive.  One of the coolest aspects is how much the entire downtown Indy area gets involved.  The event itself took place in the Indianapolis Convention Center. Every hotel in the area also had events or rooms or something going on for the event.  Lucas Oil Stadium (home of the Indianapolis Colts [football {sportsball}]) had an enormous 10 room escape room going on underneath.  I was told it sold out in a matter of minutes and we sadly forgot to check it out.  They also put tables out in the middle of the stadium for gaming (not sure if it was open gaming or not, we never went down to check). You can see the field shot as the cover photo for this blog post!  My mind was blown and my heart was filled with joy to see the entire downtown area take place in such an epic event.  It's great to be part of such a cool community. And now for the report of our adventure.

Day 0 (Wednesday): We (myself, Josh and Tyler) left on Wednesday for the 11+ hour trek.  The ride was pretty simple, with a stop in St Louis for some delicious BBQ (Props to Sugarfire).  We finally arrived at my best friend's (RJ) apartment around 1:30 AM and shortly after saying our hellos, we passed out.  Lot's of loud snoring and annoying air matress noises filled the night. . and every other night for that matter.  

Day 1 (Thursday): None of us tend to be early risers, so we planned on sleeping in a little, heading to my old local card shop to say hi to the owner, who I've known for about 20 years (shout out Game Time)  and get some food at the Ale Emporium in Castleton.  We were able to dodge the biggest crowds of people entering the Con by showing up late.  Parking looked to be a nightmare, as expected, but we found a lot that happened to have a gate that wasn't working, we snuck in, parked and walked up to the gate to pay and the guy working the booth said we didn't have to worry about it. . . score, saved $30 bucks. We made our way down to the convention center.  As we found our way to the will call to get our badges we saw an amazing Fiddlesticks (League of Legends champion) cosplay.  The line for our badges went very quick since we were arriving as late as we did.  We didn't really have anything planned going into the Con.  We basically decided to wing it, which turned out to be a little bit of a mistake. Most of the first day we spent mindlessly wandering around checking out some of the booths that looked interesting while keeping a group chat open to announce where we saw certain product.  Most of Thursday we were together but Josh roamed off on his own for a while.  We found a booth that had the Eclipse second edition expansions we haven't been able to get in stock and this is where our first schlops comes.  As we approached and patiently waited our turn, a greasy nerd walked in front of us.  Pretty annoying as the guy behind the counter was explaining some of the Eclipse stuff to a couple, he and his friend just snuck in between us and we just wanted to spend some money.  No physical harm came to anyone and after Tyler acquired the goods we headed over to a different booth.  We have been looking forward to Last Light for a while, and the expansion that makes it play up to 8 was available here so Tyler picked that up as well.  I would return to this booth on Friday, but we'll get to that.  At this point we were all sufficiently exhausted and decided we wanted to go get food and try to play a game.  The hall closed at 6 and it was inching closer and closer to that time.  We stopped at a very overpriced chocolate shop (Moonshine Chocolate) and got a couple snacks before a few of us headed back to the car to drop off our stuff and then reconvene for a game of Nemesis.  When we get outside it's raining, so once we got to the car we decided to rest for a little and drive a bit closer to the entrance.  Rain stopped and we headed back in to look for open tables.  After asking we found out that the JW Marriot had a big conference room open for gaming so we decided to head that direction, but we learned that it was on the opposite side of the convention from where we were so we changed plans a few times and found our way into a room that looked mostly empty around the Lucas Oil tunnel.  Turns out we didn't bring all the stuff we needed for Nemesis so we just cashed in our chips and left to go get some food.  Earlier in the day we had met up with another old friend who was at the Con and he invited us back to his house to play a game.  We stopped by Penn Station East Coast Subs for some dinner and then went to play Oath.  None of us had played it before so it didn't quite go quickly.  Around midnight, Barry kicked us out because he has kids and was going to be at the Con at open (10 AM) so we headed back to the apartment and crashed.  Barry was nice enough to try and visit the Capstone booth at open to try and grab The Lost Fleet, a Gaia Project expansion that was announced recently, but he couldn't get there in time.

Day 2 (Friday): Rough plans were made the previous day to meet up with the owner of Game Time for lunch, but he was too busy to get away so we got Ramen before heading downtown.  It was delicious.  Broth was amazing, could have used more chicken, and all of the extras like eggs and corn were fairly costly to add, but despite that little annoyance this was likely our best meal.  Running it back we drove up to the Lucas Oil parking lot but today we decided to go through the proper booth.  As we pulled up we said we didn't think it was the same guy that hooked us up the day before.  We pulled up, rolled down the window and Tyler gives him a big grin and says "I'm back" and the guy says "alright, go on in."  It definitely was the same guy and he was a real MVP cause now we've saved $60 bucks for parking.  Heck yeah!  We came a bit more prepared today.  I had looked up the booth numbers for the games that were requested for me to check out / pick up so once we got inside we all split up.  I successfully located Charcuterie and another game's expansion that I acquired for a local gamer and Josh alerted me to a Honey Buzz expansion that I didn't have yet so I picked that up for a friend as well.  I also decided to pick up Dungeon Kart because it looks like a Mario Kart meets Mutant League Racing as a board game.  We'll play it in the upcoming weeks and I might just make a blog about it! I made my way back over to the Grey Fox booth (where we picked up Last Light on Thursday) because I saw a game I wanted to look at a bit closer.  Reapers of Midgard.  It's a "spiritual successor" to Champions of Midgard, which is a classic worker placement game.  After hearing a bit about it and discovering that it came out a few years ago I moved over to look at a different game.  I asked about it and the booth runner pointed at a guy who had his back to me and said, "That is the designer I'm sure he would be happy to tell you about it."  He turned and lit up and started to talk about the game.  The buzz words I heard that were the selling points were "worker placement" and "tower defense" which is a pretty cool idea.  The name of the game is After the Empire. It came out a few years ago.  We exchanged info and he said if he could find a copy he'd do a demo for us later in the day.  I met back up with the group.  Tyler had watched a demo of a new Tabletop game and bought a Halo something for a fellow table topper.  Today we decided to actually venture over to the hotel to try and get a game in.  We had just planned on running back Oath now that we were more acquainted with the rules so we set out, started to set up and I got a text from Evan asking if we wanted to demo.  He got there shortly after and we set up, learned the game and played a few turns.  He had another game at 8 with a friend, and they were using the expansion that comes out early next year.  I was never sacked by the bad guys, but I didn't win in the short version we played.  Very neat game, we'll probably play it again if we find a copy.  At this point we were getting hungry so we left and headed back north and decided to have Torchy's Tacos.  Yes those exist here in OKC so it wasn't anything special, but a couple of us had never had it so that's where we went.  Getting back to the apartment we were in the middle of setting up for Age of Innovation, a Terra Mystica game (newish version), when the apartment folks came by and said that the common room was closed at 10, so we relocated to the hotel across the street.  4AM rolls around and we're finally finishing the game (RJ smashed us) and call it a night!

Day 3 (Saturday):  Another late start.  We get lunch at Portillos and head down to the convention.  At this point we had planned on just playing games most of the day because we had done most of the shopping we cared to do and had seen most of the things we wanted to see.  We decide to park in the hotel parking garage, as it's closer to both the convention hall and the hotel we were going to play games at.  This was a great decision.  We carried Age of Innovation in with us to play another round of that and as we arrived the parade for the cosplayers was going on.  I ran into Dani Standring, who I met last year at the WSBG and we chatted for a few minutes before going our separate ways.  I don't think she remembers me, but that's okay, she's the more famous of us so it makes sense.  We made our final rounds in the exhibit hall, checked out some of the outer hall rooms and then set our eyes on some gaming.  We found a table in the hotel (which was giga-packed today) and set up Age of Innovation for a rerun.  I am victorious this round by a single point. We pack up, do one last lap and head back to the car to go eat and play our last game of the trip.  We had some Texas Roadhouse and settled on a re-play of Oath so we could actually finish a game of it.  We did so (Josh was victorious) and then decided to call it a night around 1 AM so we could get some sleep before the long ride home on Sunday.  We had decided before the trip to leave fairly early on Sunday in order to get back in time to not be drained when we returned to work this week.  It was a pretty uneventful 11 hour trip, with the exception of a flying tire (no damage was incurred).  
Next year I plan on going in a bit more prepared.  I realized over the course of this trip that I need to be better about knowing Publishers and games and all that fun stuff, so I plan on educating myself a bit in the coming months.  Thanks for reading and maybe I'll see you in a couple of weeks after we get a game or two of Dungeon Kart.  If you attended Gen Con let us know in the comments section what you liked and disliked and what games you are excited for. And if you have any suggestions for content, you can let us know in the comments or email us and we'll see what we can do to make it happen!