Saturday was spent sitting at various tables in a giant room with a giant stone fireplace placing pieces of plastic, wood and cardboard on top of other, usually larger, pieces of cardboard. This was Gaming Hoopla. As a pure gaming convention, I would rate it a definite 1 on the binary scale. No mucking around with lines to see celebrities, no big announcements, no wasting time at vendors digging through boxes of old mouldy stuff looking for deals (there was only one selling about 50 games at most): it was all about sitting down and playing games. People were exceedingly friendly and would either just ask you to play a game or, as you were sitting down to play something, would ask to get in on the action. My only complaint was that the room (though big) smelled of MEAT the entire time and giant wafts of MEAT-AIR would blast into the gaming area from the kitchen.
Games I got in on:
Agricola
Rush N Crush
Dungeon Quest
Arcanum
El Grande
My favorite was probably Rush N Crush. It just really captured the feel and intensity of a race with guns (and I won by wrecking my buddy’s car right at the finish line). Though it may not be a play all the time game, I think I may pick it up. All in all, a great little CON in the town where it all started and a good time.