Gottacon!
Early this February was the fifth iteration of Gottacon, a gaming convention in Victoria, BC (actually Saanich). And it was my second time attending. I didn’t really talk about it here last year (because I fail at blogging), but I’ll try to cover the basics and give brief impressions of both events.
So, some basics: Gottacon covers pretty much all games that don’t involve running around. There was a small-ish corner devoted to the most hallowed nerd afflicition, pen and paper role playing games. There were endless tables for Magic: The Gathering, which is apparently still a thing. There were even more tables devoted to miniatures and their foam-based battlefields. And yet more tables in the back, covered in computers and monitors. And a few more tables with bigger monitors for console gaming, and a few trusty CRTs for retrogaming. And yet more tables for board games and card games.
Awesome.
It wasn’t all gaming, though. In the middle was a dealers section, selling stuff from electronics to dice to armor. At the front was registration, the silent auction, a refreshments stand; all the non-gaming things needed to survive the weekend.
And, with the exception of the dealers, everything was open 24 hours a day for the entire weekend. Which is just… awesome. Yeah. 
Highlight of 2012: Sabacc, definitely. Or, as I called ’til I found out the name again this year, “Star Wars Poker”. It’s the game Han Solo played when he won the Millennium Falcon. It’s … poker-ish, with a strong randomizing element — after each player’s turn, there’s a strong chance that the cards in hand that aren’t frozen have to be returned to the dealer and replaced with random cards. So yeah. I stumbled across it while it was starting at midnight, Friday night, and ended up playing ’til I conceded defeat at 4 AM. I nearly won it all! .. and I was actually winning for most of the night, and knocked out a good three people while at it. But I played my final hand badly and the other remaining player won the special pot, giving her the lead.
Yeah, awesome.
Highlight of 2013: … Actually, this feels kinda wrong, but I think my favourite thing from this year’s con was just having more friends around. Last year I knew Gavin, Carson, and some of the IRL Events people, and that was about it. This year I had more friends going, knew more of the volunteers, and that just made it… groovy.
I look forward to next year’s con.
