Friendship Con: Our very own gaming convention

About six months ago, I was telling my board-game friends that I was going to BGG Con again, after having an awesome time last year. My one friend had this crazy idea to have our own convention, without the need for traveling and in the comforts of our homes, since they all couldn’t get away for an entire week to Dallas for BGG Con. I’m like, sure, let’s do this!

We decided to keep it as a convention of 5 friends, naming it Friendship Con! We took this event very seriously. During the planning stages, we voted on a list of games we all wanted to play, a schedule for said games, divided up who was in charge of learning the rules for a particular game, locations for gaming each day (we spread it out among 3 people, so that no one home would become overrun by us), and, of course, menu options. The host home would provide an easy breakfast, and then sandwiches for lunch, and then a quick healthy dinner. One of the cons that my friend had mentioned about going to BGG Con or similar events was that having limited access to cheap, healthy food because you either paid a premium at hotel restaurants or had to leave the gaming area to find other eateries, which resulted in less gaming time.

We also had swag for our convention! I enlisted a graphic-designer friend to create a logo for us, and I got T-shirts printed for all five of us. I also ordered bumper stickers with our logo and tumblers from meeplesource.com. My other friends created coasters with our logos and glassware etched with gaming items. Lastly, we had prizes! Who doesn’t love swag? Winners of the games would be able to pick out a prize, which ranged from board games, books, framed art and a gift certificate to Broken Token.

So last Wednesday, Friendship Con began. And it was a glorious four days! On Day 1, we had scheduled Roll for the Galaxy, Kemet, Terra Mystica, Acquire and Eclipse. Gaming was scheduled from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day. We realized somewhere around Terra Mystica that we were falling behind on the schedule, so we decided to bump Acquire to another day. It was my first time playing Roll for the Galaxy, Kemet and Eclipse. Kemet I was pleasantly surprised by. It’s an area-control game that’s lasts about 90 minutes. Which is the complete opposite of Eclipse, which lasted us about 3 hours and late into the night. We totally blew our 10 p.m. deadline. But we decided to start later on Thursday to make up for it.

Day 2, we started with Arkham Horror. My friend had surprised us by making character cards with our faces and names! I seriously squeed so hard! We played with our characters and their new special abilities but ultimately lost to Chaugnar Faugn. We then ended up playing Francis Drake, Chicago Express and Acquire. It was my first time playing Chicago Express and Acquire, and I’ve realized that I need to brush up on my stock-game strategy. I did not do well in Chicago Express and Acquire, which is all about timing it correctly when to purchase stocks in railways or hotels in order to maximize your payout. We ended gaming a little before 10 p.m.

We started Day 3 with Concordia, which ran over schedule, but it was fine as everybody enjoyed it. Only two of us had played before (I love the game; it’s on my next tier of games after my top 9), and everybody else was surprised by how meaty it was. After Concordia’s brain drain, we decided to play a game we were all familiar with: Battlestar Galactica. I love, love this game. I ended up being a human and losing badly by morale after two of us ended up in the brig and then a cylon played his supercrisis card. Lastly, we played Dead of Winter. And it was another horrible loss! We immediately lost 3 people, which sent our morale spiraling after starting at 5 morale. I think we played two rounds on a medium-level scenario and lost. Ikusa was also on the schedule as we had so much fun playing it last time, but we decided to drop it since it was already getting too late to start the game. We then called it a night a little early to prepare for Twilight Imperium on Day 4.

Day 4 … the only game we played was Twilight Imperium. And that was enough. I did some tweeting during the game, because it lasted 9 hours! And that totally doesn’t include the 2.5 hours explaining the rules. Man, this game is heavy. It’s the first 4x game I’ve played, which stands for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate. That it was. You build the galaxy with hexes and everybody has their home planets. You go around taking strategic or command actions in order to conquer more planets, complete objectives and battle other players.

The game is supposed to run about 4 hours, but since we were all new to the game, there was considerable time spent looking up rules and clarifications, and then just deciding what to do. It was epic!! I ended up coming in third place, mostly because I had totally forgotten there was an end-game card in the stack of round objectives. I think I could’ve squeezed out another victory point. You win the game by having 10 VPs, or when that card comes out.

And there you have it, folks. Four straight glorious days of pretty much non-stop board gaming among some of my closest friends. We are already talking about what we could’ve done better and are excited to try it again next year! For me though, I’ll be at BGG Con in one week. I can’t wait!