Last weekend I had another fun gaming weekend at a local board game convention – TimpCon!

It was the first time I’d been to TimpCon which is a relatively new board game convention and it’s super close to where I live.

The big board game convention in Utah is SaltCon which I’ve loved going to for more than a decade. But with an organized board game event even closer now, I couldn’t pass up the chance to go to TimpCon.

I’m happy to report that it’s a very well-run event with plenty of gaming goodness.

TimpCon Board Game Convention

There are 3 main things I anticipate when going to a board game convention: Playing lots of new games, playing with friends, and meeting new people who enjoy playing board games.

And while I didn’t hit the first item (playing lots of new games), I did score well on the second and third on my list.

For my inaugural time at TimpCon, I met up with a friend who hadn’t been to a board game convention before. His brother also came and we met up with some of their gaming friends as well. And they were all fantastic to play games with. So chalk up making new friends right out of the gate.

TimpCon is a smaller event that spans just 2-days (Friday and Saturday) – which makes it a great option as a way to dip your toes into what a board game convention is like.

There were a handful of exhibitors with tables set up around the conference center gaming hall. They covered a wide range of gaming related areas from new games to learn, local game stores with games to sell, and various board game accessories (like 3D printed dice towers). Periodically the event organizers held a prize drawing for participants who had visited every exhibitor.

There was a Hot Games section with 4 games set up with dedicated instructors ready to teach anyone who wanted to learn those games. We took advantage this perk to play Furnace – an engine-building economic game with a cool auction to start each round.

Since I like to explore new games, what I really like to see at a board game convention is a big game library where you can check out and play all sorts of games. At TimpCon, players can check out one game at a time. As there were a number of us playing together, we’d each choose a game and take it to an open table to play through them in succession.

Of course, as always seems to be the case, our desires are larger than the amount of time we actually have to play. So we didn’t get to play everything we’d checked out before the days were over.

As we wandered the many shelves of the game library, I saw many games that we love to play as a family that my friend and new-found friends hadn’t played or heard of before. So instead of grabbing new games, I was more than happy to teach these favorites to the group. Thus, most of the games I played at TimpCon were games I was already familiar with rather than new to me.

Here’s the list of games we played (a number of them more than once):

• NMBR9
• Century: Golem Edition
• The Quacks of Quedlinburg
• Ascension
• Between Two Cities
• Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King
• 5-Minute Dungeon
• Furnace

I didn’t play as many games as I normally do at a board game convention because I just didn’t have enough time to spend at the event. But I had a great time and look forward to going again next year.