Well, another summer is nearly over, and that means it’s time for the “Best Four Days of Gaming”… well, in my case, maybe the “best 10 hours of gaming”?!

As has been my standard practice, I try to fit as much gaming goodness as I can in a single day of the country’s largest boardgaming convention. (Ed. note – if the weather is bad Saturday, my outdoor plans may be canceled and I might end up getting another day at Gen Con…)

I awoke stupidly early (0515) to get ready for my drive to construction-ridden Indianapolis.  The trip is only 110 miles per my GPS from my house, and the first 107 miles were fairly uneventful, though slow as at least twenty of those miles are single lane due to construction on I-74.

Things changed for the worst when getting into the city itself with those final three miles taking nearly 45 minutes.  Every year I make a note of when I start my trip to Gen Con, and I keep getting up earlier and earlier – and end up arriving later and later.  This year, the gridlock was simply horrendous.

In years past, some of the major intersections had police presence to help control the flow of traffic- but none of Indy’s finest were to be found this year.  Lots of intersections stuck with people trying to sneak through the light.  Furthermore, there is A LOT of construction going on without very little signage – so as lanes mysteriously closed without warning, bottlenecks surely formed.  It also didn’t help that there is major construction on two streets directly abutting the convention center.

Of course, none of this is in Gen Con’s control – but man, it was kind of a cluster****. Two of my early meetings were canceled because my counterparts simply were stuck in traffic themselves and weren’t at the con by the time of my appointment!

Anyways, after a frustrating drive, I pulled into my pre-booked garage and headed to the convention center.  The media room is always well organized, and without much delay, I had my badge, a fortifying cup of coffee and the program book.

Crowds were heavy, and as in recent years, the con was completely sold out before the doors even opened.   I did not get a picture of “The Running of the Nerds” this year, but watching the crowds rush in at the opening bell is definitely something worth seeing.  Search for it on your favorite social media site…  I’ve always wondered how they manage to check badges during this surge…

My first game this year was a new one from Mattel – Swing Shot Tower.  This is a take on the fairly common bar game, but here, you have multiple pegs to try to latch the ring on.   If you succeed, you take the peg as a scoring point.  Stupidly simple, but yet, so much fun.

Mattel also had a surprise (well, at least to me) game – Deep Sea Diamond Dive from Gunter Baars, and it’s a fun game where you try to find diamonds on the board, but some of them are stuck to the board! Another game that seems so simple of an idea, yet I couldn’t have come up with it…

Next up was Arcane Wonders where I saw a newly-arrived Crescendo by Christewart Conrad.  You try to get your cards in numerical order, getting some clues from the backs of the card which tell you the range the card is in.  Each card also has a special action on it allowing you to peek at cards, swap cards, steal from other players, etc.  Looks really neat, and I’m hoping to get a review copy mailed to me soon.

Van Ryder Games airshipped in their new paragraph game, Tales of Myth & Legend.  I’m anxiously awaiting a chance to play this one as it looks fantastic.  Beware that this will barely fit in a Kallax by itself. It’s truly ginourmous and must weigh over 20 lbs!

Van Ryder also had an awesome life-sized version of Final Girl to play out in the main hallway.  I didn’t get a chance to try it, but it was quite popular and the crowds watching it were enormous.

Another highlight for me was seeing the finished version of Kano at the Matagot stand. Playerse compete to create their own Emakimono—traditional Japanese painted handscrolls—by skillfully arranging vibrant paint pots. The game elegantly blends tactical resource management with spatial optimization as players navigate a shared central mat to collect the pigments needed for their masterpieces.

I LOVE the art in this game, and I feel like the company is trying to stress this as well – this is the first game I can remember where the artist name is in bigger font and better location than the game designer!  It is a superb game (I’d played a few versions of the prototypes over the past few years), and I can’t wait to get the final product on the table.  The first cartons were airshipped to Gen Con, so if you’re at the show, this is your chance to get it now before what might be a while to get to the retail market.

Next meeting is with Luma where they were showing off the newest version of Not Alone, an all against one game.  The components are much improved now and there are now two sets of action cards that you can play with – so much more variety in the game.

(This is the face you have to make when the Alien catches you.  Note that Steph and Michael photobombed me, with the same face as they were so surprised that I could have been caught).

Had a quick stop at Paverson to see how Class of ’89 was coming along, and it still looks fabulous.  As a previous high school yearbook editor-in-chief, this one is super interesting to me, and I can’t wait to try this.  Hopefully this fall!  Ringyo also is coming along nicely, and was recently funded on KS, so that will also be produced soon…

The masterminds at Restoration are working on their next revamp – this time turning Star Wars: The Queen’s Gambit into The Lord of the Rings: The King’s Gambit.  Wow, it looks pretty awesome already.  I still own the original, and I’m anxiously awaiting the time when I can have the two of them next to each other on the shelf.

Also, if you’re at the con, you can stop by and get a free Gen Con only promo for the game that you don’t even own yet!  That’s a bold move, but one that has attracted plenty of people to the stand.

I’m really looking forward to Hell of a Deal from Smirk and Dagger.  This cooperative game  pits the players against The Devil Himself & all the minions of Hell. Of course, they all cheat! To compete, you’ll have to cheat like Hell… and the more you do, the more doomed you all become.  I’m hoping that this is the poker-based cooperative game that really clicks for my group.  (apologies to Curt for the unflattering picture, but this is the best one I have of the game!)

My one big miss of the show is Mythologies. I mean, I got to see it and it looks incredible – but the games are stuck somewhere in shipping la-la-land, so they weren’t ready for pickup at the time of my meeting.  Each game begins with a unique combination of four mythologies, creating a “Sanctuary” where players will compete to select powerful entities. You’ll use your strategic wits to draft cards, invoke deities, activate special abilities, and complete divine trials. But choose carefully: placing a card might grant immediate rewards, but those depend on the pantheon level the card is placed in, and sometimes you need to sacrifice your creatures for a greater gain.  Players will draft cards and put them into their own tableau – scoring points based on placement as well as how they meet the two scoring criteria formed by the board.  I am super pumped for this one to hopefully arrive via mail soon.

I managed to get 1.5 demos of Mercenaries Wanted, coming soon from Cephalofair.  Instead of a dungeon crawl, this is a handbuilding game with a lot going on.  We played through 3/4 of the game, and man I was really bummed that we couldn’t finish it.  Plenty of interesting decisions in the game, and so much fun had with Rodney and Justin Bell at the table.  I had also crashed Eric Martin’s demo earlier in the day – and since he’s already written it up in depth – I’ll just link to his description at his new blog – https://www.wericmartin.com/mercenaries-wanted-at-gen-con-2026/  

Though I’m sure most of the readers here are already aware of Board Game Beat – I’d highly recommend checking it out if you haven’t heard of it!

Finally, ended the day with a demo of Viking Route – a cooperative game from Ares.  Your team is piloting a ship around dangerous waters, and the cool thing here is that the ship is represented by a compass, and the heading on the compass and thus of your ship is determined by the magnetic pieces around the board.  It looks super cool and is a very unique mechanism.

To end the night, some decent Detroit style pizza at Futuro, and then 15 hours after I left the house, I returned home to sleep off the Best Day in Gaming for 2026.

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor