Gen Con is coming up, it’s still a ways out, but let’s talk about what you might want to think about prepping ahead of time. Because, there are some elements that it’s nice to plan for. I already wrote about using the event list, but now that that is done, what else might you want to think about?

Keep Looking at Events

When Gen Con events catalog went live, I think there were just shy of 20,000 events on the catalog. That is now over 21,000 events, so around 1,500 events have been added. A lot of them won’t interest you and a lot of them will be hard to track down when they are added. But if you missed out on events, about now is when I’d start looking to see what new events there are in time slots that you maybe want an event. I’ll get into why you want to do that now.

Review the Gen Con Game List

Another thing that you can start doing is reviewing the games that’ll be at Gen Con. Every year Eric Martin and others work and create a list on Board Game Geek. You can find that here. That is going to be hundreds of games that you can demo or buy at Gen Con that will be there for the first time in whatever state they’re ready for.

This is a list that grows a lot from now until Gen Con and just went up about a week ago. More publishers will be adding things to the list. And, especially, as they know stuff can or can’t make it to Gen Con because of shipping timing, companies will keep the list updated. Every Gen Con I go through the list over on Malts and Meeples but that is closer to when I leave for Gen Con.

Tickets

Yes, you should already have your tickets and your housing and your transportation figured out by now. And some elements, like getting into the Gate Ten parking, those are done, you can’t get into them anymore. But what I mean by this is know how you’re going to get your tickets for the events you signed up for. I always have them shipped two me but you can also do will call and pick them up at Gen Con.

The benefit of doing will call is that if you add events late you might need to pick them up there anyways. But the downside is, you go to get your tickets at the wrong time, it’s going to be line. The upside of shipping, you avoid that line and you avoid the line for getting your badge, it comes to your door. Downside, it costs extra to get it shipped. Know what works best for you, I prefer shipping, but that is just me.

Double Check Your Housing

If you are in a hotel, this is not an issue. But for people who are AirBnB or VRBO like I do, double check it. Odds are no issues, but there are some sketchy people out there. And there are some people who get out of the AirBnB or VRBO and might just drop it. So keep an eye on that, the odds are extremely thin and you’d know if that was the case. But double check your housing, if you are flying, make sure you get your travel confirmed, but these are big and obvious things that you should be doing so I won’t harp on them.

Final Thoughts on Early Gen Con Prep

This is about when I think you can start ramping up for Gen Con again. Especially with the Board Game Geek preview and verifying your events. Events in particular, I didn’t mention it but with the tickets and badge shipping, your time to get event tickets shipped to you is limited. So if you want to get all your events shipped, you need to add them now. Otherwise some will ship and some will be at will call.

And then with the preview, use it to plan what you want to see and track down. I like it for knowing some things that I want to demo, I’ll have a list of 10, and some things that I might want to buy. Both of those lists will come out closer to Gen Con, but when it comes to the dealer hall, that’s going to be one way to plan your attack browsing knowing what some things are that you want to find.

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