Gen Con 2026 After Action Report (29 July to 2 August 2026)

Indianapolis welcomes us again

It has taken a little longer to get this report written than I had hoped, but here we are at last. A convention on the scale of Gen Con demands some planning on the part of an attendee. This was the 10th time I made the pilgrimage since we started attending again in 2014, after a lapse of more than three decades, so I have the routine pretty well practiced by now.  After taking last year off from running games, my brother was ready to be back at it this year, so we agreed that we were going to run two sessions of Dragon Rampant and two sessions of Burrows and Badgers, each for six players. All of them were to be titled “Strange Women Lying in Ponds”. We bought our badges (admission to the convention), but were not lucky in the February lottery to distribute the available downtown hotel rooms. We decided that we would stay with my brother in Bloomington and commute in the one hour drive each day.  My wife therefore elected not to attend this year, and we settled down for the next milestone, the publishing of the preliminary events list in early May.  Two weeks later the attendees’ event wish lists are processed.  When the dust settled from that, I had a personal schedule with two games, two seminars, and two dance events in addition to the four games we were running, and we had filled 23 of the 24 seats on offer in our games.

I’m going to digress here with a minor pet peeve. My brother and I have often heard people offer the opinion that Gen Con should arrange more of their favorite game, whatever that might be.  Gen Con organizes the spaces and runs the ticket distribution system to allot players to games, but they do not run any games.  All games are provided by companies who offer games to promote their wares, recruiting  whatever gamemasters may be needed by whatever means are available to them, or they are provided by individual gamemasters, either independent or gathered into gamemaster collectives, who volunteer their time, energy, and personal collections of material to run whatever they feel inspired to share. If someone wants to see more of their favorite game (especially older ones) at Gen Con, the best way to make that happen is to submit an event and run it. One does not need to let their hobby rely on the industry. I will hop off my soap box now… 

Since I needed to haul a fair amount of stuff to do my part in running miniatures games I decided that I would drive this year.  I have been regularly soloing on trips to visit my father, a distance of 560 miles, so I didn’t think that the 620 miles from my house to Gen Con would be that much harder.  I did figure I would need a recovery day after the drive, since my brother’s house is another 50 miles past the Gen Con location.  I set off on the morning of Monday, 27 July, and reached his house after thirteen hours on the road, including the rest breaks.  We used Tuesday to make sure everything was organized, laying out and repacking the troops for the Dragon Rampant game and finalizing and printing all of our handouts.

Three warbands sorted and double-checked

We took a leisurely trip up to Indianapolis on Wednesday after lunch to sample the “Day 0” activities, including sampling the food at the Block Party and attending The Stink, an ice breaker gathering to unofficially kick off the convention. (I do not have the credentials to be a participant in the Trade Day activities on Wednesday for educators and industry people.) While at The Stink we ran into Nelly from the long running vlog Nelly’s Nerdy Adventures and I ended up on the Day 0 report talking about looking forward to running some games. (It’s around 6:00 minutes in…)

Setting up for “Strange Women Lying in Ponds”, DR version

We got up to Indy on Thursday morning without any issues, loaded our scenery and miniatures into our collapsible wagon, and hauled them to our assigned tables, with a little side trip out to the Block Party to pick up my morning caffeination from the Helm Coffee tent.  They appeared to be doing a brisk business everytime I stopped by, and I remembered them fondly from previous Gen Cons. We had been assigned to Tables 21/22, Green, Hall C.  As you can see, the Green area was denoted by the table cloth.  We discovered that we were in the last row of tables next to an aisle, with the back entrance to the Exhibit Hall on the other side of the aisle, so we had a lot of people wander by to see what we were up to. 

For our Dragon Rampant version of “Strange Women Lying in Ponds”, we placed three warbands on each side of the central pond, with a command hierarchy (from first to third) designated.  The Lady of the Lake, depicted by a Ral Partha Elf Princess (catalog 01-021), would hear the entreaties of the most senior surviving leader on each side, and lob a scimitar, as it were, to whichever one first convinced her that they had what it took to rule the kingdom.  Bonuses to the entreaty roll were available to any side controlling the auxiliary objectives on either side of the table.  We set it up that way hoping that each player would feel that they were contributing to the overall effort.  

Note the table designator signs. A lot of effort goes into organizing for smooth running.

The Centaur general and some of his crew work to seize the Dragon Stones objective.

Eventually senior challenger leader made it to the pond and was granted the sword

For convenience, and not to spend too much time laying out a backstory that was irrelevant to the actual play, we designated the two sides the “incumbents” and the “challengers”.  In the first run, the challengers just barely got the sword, needing the die roll boost from controlling one of the auxiliary objectives, and managed to get it off the table.  

We were pleasantly surprised to find that all six of our pre-registered players showed up, although we had anticipated that anyone willing to sign up for a game at the same time that the exhibit hall was due to open was likely serious about playing. They all seemed to be having a good time, so we were happy to be running the game for them.  They were a mix of grognards and younger people, and we took the opportunity to jest that most of our miniatures were older than the young people.  While some of the miniatures may have been recently production from Ral Partha Legacy or Iron Wind Metals, I don’t think we had anything on the table originally sculpted after 1985. In addition to Ral Partha, our warbands included figures from Heritage, Hinchliffe, Minifigs, and even some early Citadel Dark Ages historicals from about 1980, before the release of the earliest edition of Warhammer.  One passer-by noted that it had been a long time since he’d seen that many “true 25s” in one place.  Our scenery was more recent.  We relied on commercial scenery this year, with mats from Cigar Box Battles and trees and pond from Monster Fight Club, along with a few more vintage pieces, such as some 1980/90s resin buildings from Hovels to form the village, the second auxiliary objective.

From this angle, you can see that we were right up against the Exhibit Hall

In submitting our events, we had allowed ourselves one hour to reset and find a bite of lunch between games.  I packed my lunch, since an hour is scant time to forage at Gen Con.  Our second game on Thursday was the only one that was undersubscribed, with five players signed up for the six seats. However, all five of them showed up, and my brother played the extra position.  Interestingly, for a game involving as many dice as Dragon Rampant, the second game played out as a near duplicate of the first.

Overheard from a passer-by, “Any game with a triceratops is already awesome!”

Once again the challenger leader rides up to the pond to be granted the sword

Once the games were over we packed everything back in the wagon and took it back to the car.  We then had time to spare to visit the Block Party one more time for some food and conversation with random fellow attendees about how their convention was going before we headed over to the stadium for a game we were both going to play.

Sometimes they play a different game here

The whole playing field of Lucas Oil Stadium is made over into more gaming space.  With the extra high ceilings and the industrial air conditioning, the stadium is a pretty nice place to play.  My brother noted that we should consider requesting it (again) next time. 

Kingmaker

We had signed up for what turned out to be a three player game of Kingmaker, in the current Gibson Games edition.  We have played more of this as the earlier first Avalon Hill edition, and I’ve even played the original Ariel edition.  In fact, we played the Avalon Hill edition when my brother visited in May, so that version was relatively fresh in our minds.  It ended up being my turn to be the goat (not the GOAT!); my faction managed to crown Edward of March (Yorkist #2) after Richard (Yorkist #1) died when plague struck York, but I was stomped on by my brother who revealed the office of Chamberlain of the County Palatine of Chester with 200 extra troops in Wales (guess where I was…) before I could escape.  I spent the rest of the game (not too long) trying to build up a faction to re-enter the scuffle, but we noted that the 3rd player could win by summoning parliament and assigning his faction most of the unclaimed offices, so he did.  Really, we had had a long day and had that hour-long drive to get back to our beds, so it was not the winter of our discontent, so to speak. 

We had arranged Friday to be a quiet day, with the expectation that we would get our shopping done and sit in on the Gen Con auction for the miniatures and the collectibles.  I was mildly disappointed in my morning seminar, as it turned out to be focused on getting your “actual play” channel to work, and I was hoping for something more actionable for my next home roleplaying game.  

The Gen Con Exhibit Hall is ridiculously huge

I had prepared for my visit to the exhibit hall by annotating a copy of the map with the booths that I knew that I wanted to see, and I got through most of them on Friday after the seminar.  I had to keep the shopping light as I had everything with me in a book bag (unless I wanted to try out the new bag check vendor implemented last year).  I did stumble into an opportunity when I found that the line was short at Ginny Di’s booth, so I was able to meet her briefly.

I thought she always carried a sword?

After lunch I played a short game of Dragonbane under the auspices of the Free League team (see above regarding sources of games). We accomplished our objective within the two hour window for the game and avoided a dangerous combat.  This was good for the characters, but did mean the GM didn’t have a chance to show off Dragonbane’s combat system, which is pretty good.  I’ve run Dragonbane at home, but hand’t had a chance to sit down and play. 

Auction lightly attended at some point during “miniatures”

After the game I met up with my brother at the auction.  If I had been a colletor of Battle Tech or Ogre miniatures, I would have been in luck, but as I am not I was able to keep myself from buying anything without too much trouble.  I even took a turn through the Consignment Store without finding anything that had to come home with me.  

Downtown Marriott’s Gen Con themed hot dog stand

The auction has space at the downtown Marriott, and I noted that they had put up a Gen Con tehemed hot dog stand this year.  Part of the atmosphere of Gen Con comes from the fact that a lot of the service industry downtown plays along with us.  So, to encourage them to continue to play in the future, I decided to have a hot dog for dinner between the “miniatures” and “collectible” sections of the auction.  Happily for my budget, there was nothing in the collectibles auction that I was deperate to own, so I did not buy anything. My brother had his eye on a rare set of Fineous Fingers miniatures, but eventually decided that getting home safely was more important, so we packed up and drove back. 

On Saturday we were back with our other two games of “Strange Women Lying in Ponds”, although this time the contenders were anthropomorphic animals as our rules were Burrows and Badgers, also published by Osprey Games.  As with previous years, we did not think it wise to try a multi-player version of B&B, so we set up three parallel two-player games.  Getting the sword from the pond was just a slight re-theming of the “capture the paychest” scenario we’ve used in previous years.

My board; different Cigar Box Battle mat, but more Monster Fight Club

As usual I got too busy gamemastering to take too many pictures. Most of the complications of B&B are in the warband creation phase, and we bypassed that by handing out pre-generated warbands.  Nevertheless, it takes new players a couple of turns to come up to speed with the rules, so we keep busy. Continuing with the trend noted above, all six pre-registered players showed up for the morning game, including a couple who had played with us in a previous year.

All three boards and six warbands laid out

Let the games begin

We reset the boards, had a bite of lunch (packed again), and then played our afternoon session.  I will admit that we were completely amazed when, for the fourth time, all the players showed up.  Now I know that everyone intends to show up when they buy their tickets, but travel mishaps and illnesses occur, and by Saturday afternoon I would not blame anyone for being too tired to show up.  In fact, that’s one of the reasons why we chose the run the two-player games on Saturday.  We can run with any even number of players, and one of us can substitute in if we should have an odd number.  Our record for the weekend was a first for us: 23 attendees for 23 tickets sold; perfect attendance!

We decided we’d have a decent dinner before heading home but it had started raining, so we found ourselves at the downtown Marriott again; their restaurant is acceptable.  That’s where we were when the tornado warning alarms went off.  Happily for us, that didn’t take long to clear, so we were able to head home after we finished dinner.

I didn’t really take any pictures on Sunday.  I had a seminar on fairy tales, and two sessions of English Country type dancing, all run by the wonderful ladies of The Revel Alliance.  It would have been more fun had my wife been able to make it, but I was still glad to take a little break from the gaming and be active for a while.

Getting home after Gen Con took a while.  I left my brother’s on Monday morning and stopped for the night in the Detroit area to visit my father.  I stayed over an extra day with him and then finally drove the rest of the way home on Wednesday.

It was Friday before I got the car completely unloaded, took a picture of my shopping, and packed away the miniatures I’d taken along. At my age, burning the candle at both ends requires preparation and recovery.

Overall it was a great time, and I am hoping to be able to go next year.  I’ve been thinking about what games it might be fun to run …

Gen Con: The Aftermath

Sunday morning was rainy at Gen Con, but the Block Party was still going, so I could get some coffee. There was some shopping, and some dancing, and I have been on my way home since yesterday morning, with visit with my father to break up the 12 hours of driving. I shall hope to get the proper After Action Report posted by Saturday.

Gen Con Day Three — Played

Both of our Burrows and Badgers games ran yesterday and all of the players looked like they were having a good time. All twelve pre-registered players showed up, giving us a perfect record for the weekend with 23 of 23 showing up to play. It would appear there is a taste for some indie minis games at Gen Con ….

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Gen Con Day Three — Setting Up

We have half an hour to spare in setting up for today’s games. We will be running two six player sessions of Burrows and Badgers today. We ought to try multi-player B&B sometime, but for Gen Con we have opted to stay with 3 one on one set-ups. Past experience leaves us confident that this will work.

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Gen Con Day One — Grognard Time

After running our two games today, we are relaxing by playing the current Gibson edition of the Ariel/Avalon Hill 1970s War of the Roses game Kingmaker.

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Gen Con Begins (officially)

My brother and I arrived at Gen Con yesterday for the unofficial Day Zero kickoff. Today we are starting off with an 0900 official game of Dragon Rampant for six players, and repeating it at 1300. The first game went well, and we hope the second game will go well too. More to follow in the After Action Report.

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More July Games

A Surprising Day for the Home Guard

 The week of the 5th of July was a busy on.  I’ve previously posted about the game day I had the opportunity to engage in with my elder son Norman on Tuesday the 7th.

On Thursday the 9th it was time for a HAWKs Geezer Game.  Duncan Adams has been hosting the Geezer Games since August 2016, shortly after he retired. However, I was only able to start joing in the fun in January 2025 after I finally retired.  These games are typically held from 10AM to 2PM, on the Thursday of weeks in which there isn’t a HAWKs meeting.  Many different games have been played across this series of get togethers, though we have been playing a lot of Combat Patrol since I joined up.

Duncan was playtesting a hypothetical scenario for Historicon for six players involving British Home Guard, a landing party from a German submarine, a downed aircraft crew and so forth, in a British seaside town. I ended up controlling a party of Home Guard (miniatures depicting the cast of Dad’s Army) and a group of shotgun-armed women of the Women’s Land Army.  Overall this was a fun departure from the usual straight-up WWII tactical games we’ve been playing.  I have always enjoyed a multiplayer game with hidden objectives, possibly at cross-purposes.   

The Land Army meets the Luftwaffe

While the Germans eventually succeeded in their overall mission of rescuing the one surviving aircraft crewman, my forces acquitted themselves well.  The women, in particular, accounted for three of the four crewmen, but the last one slipped out of range and a parting shot from the shotguns had no effect.  As the picture above shows, it would be nice if we could somehow play Combat Patrol and keep the table cleaner, but it is a somewhat marker-heavy game.

On Saturday the 11th I went back down to Norman’s house for a rare second visit in one week.  We had two games on our agenda.  The first was the Dux Bellorum game we didn’t play in our Tuesday get together. I checked my records, and the previous Dux Bellorum game we played was back in April 2024, over two years ago, so it is no wonder that the rules needed a bit of review.

British (Welsh) attack a Saxon camp

After some discussion we chose an attack on a camp as the scenario. I took the encamped Saxons, which allowed me a moderate advantage in my force balanced by a disorganized starting position.  Norman took a mostly mounted force of Welsh, the game’s collective nomenclature for post-Roman British with less Roman influence than the alternative Roman-British army list.  We noted that this ended up being reminiscent of  the raid on Catraeth in Y Gododdin, which may be better known to wargamers in its retelling by Rosemary Sutcliff, The Shining Company.  

It didn’t take as long for Norman’s force to come to grief as it did for the Shining Company.  We were reminded that cavalry just doesn’t have the staying power in this game to go toe-to-toe with infantry warbands for too long.  Nevertheless, it was a fun game, and we resolved (again) to play it again sooner than two years from now.  

Norman observed that the rules would be good for a Tolkien game, and I have been considering painting and basing some Prince August fantasy figures to populate such a thing.  I’m also reminded that it is a compact game; the base table size recommendation for using single 60mm wide bases as units would be 3’ by 4’, so it should fit on most dining room tables. We also had only six and seven stands respectively in the game, so it doesn’t necessarily require very many figures.  This puts it in the same category as something like DBA.  I wrote up a review after our first game back in 2012, but it might be worth doing a revised review on the basis of additional gaming.

After we cleaned up Dux Bellorum Norman set up the day’s main event, a Proxia battle also involving William, my second son.  

He chose a scenario from the Red Book (Grant and Asquith, Scenarios for All Ages), “Making the Best of a Bad Job”, in which a tired column of troops on the march blunders into an encamped enemy force while attempting to transit the table.  A battle ensues that neither party would have chosen. William took the role of the Occiterran commander and the encamped force, and I had the marching column.

At the end of the day, I had successfully exited some of my troops, but the casualties incurred in preventing William’s counterattack from cutting access to the road left me below the troop level need for a victory (i.e., I lost…).

It was an interesting game, and we are always glad to see Norman’s impressively painted Proxian forces on the table.

Following that game there’s been a bit of a hiatus.  I had planned to be visiting my father in Michigan, but moved up my trip by a day when he was having some issues and needed some help.  The planned visit precluded Historicon this year, but I’ll be finishing up the month with another visit to Gen Con. I hope there may be time for another post or two before the Gen Con After Action Report, but we shall see.  My brother and I are hosting four miniatures games at the convention, two each of Dragon Rampant and Burrows and Badgers.