As you may remember, last November we attended the fabulous SDHistCon and really had a great time! The games were great, the interactions with designers, developers, publishers, other content creators and gamers was fantastic, the weather was beautiful and the environment was very chill and interesting. The San Diego Historical Games Convention Summit 2024 will be held this year from Friday, November 8th through Monday, November 11th at the S.E.S. Portuguese Hall of San Diego. If you are interested, you can reserve a badge for $90.00 from the following link: https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhistcon-2024/badgetypes

But I would recommend that you act quickly as they only sell 100 badges and they have already sold 56 of those!

So why should you attend this gaming convention amongst all of the other legion number of conventions offered out there? First off, the focus of the convention is a bit different than your normal convention as the mission of SDHistCon is “to create a diverse and supportive gaming community dedicated to playing, discussing, designing, and promoting historically-based board games. Through this commitment, SDHistCon seeks to serve both the existing historical board gaming community as well as grow it through the addition of new voices and perspectives”. This focus makes this wargaming convention a bit less intimidating and a bit more open and friendly. I am not saying that other Cons are bad at this but SDHistCon truly feels different! Almost like a room full of gaming friends just hanging out. Laughing. Talking. Discussing, and sometimes disagreeing. It is much less hectic and more congenial than other Cons that I have been to and I really appreciate that.

I also truly enjoy that you have access to some of the best designers in the business. Those that attended last year included Cole Wehrle (John Company, Root), Matthias Kramer (The Hunt, Weimar: The Fight for Democracy), Alex Knight (Land and Freedom), Kevin Bertram from Fort Circle Games (Shores of Tripoli, Halls of Montezuma), Tory Brown (Votes for Women), David Thompson (Night Witches, Lanzerath Ridge, Undaunted: Normandy), Harold Buchanan (Liberty or Death, Flashpoint: South China Sea), Jason Matthews and Ananda Gupta (Twilight Struggle, Imperial Struggle), Dan Bullock (1970: Revolution in Iran, In the Shadows), Joe Schmidt (Levy & Campaign Series Volume V: Henry, In the Shadows, The Landing: Gallipoli 1915), Justin Fassino (Levy & Campaign Series Volume VI: Seljuk), Jason Walonoski (Levy & Campaign Ancients Volume I: Epipolae), Sam London (Firefight Tactical) and many others. It is just always so great to be able to meet the designers of some of your favorite games and just to get to know them a bit better.

2 of the most lovely people you will ever meet – Matthias Cramer and Engin Kunter.
2 fabulous young designers in Justin Fassino (left) and Jason Walonoski (right).
Another rising star designer Alex Knight with Alexander (what is that face?)
Dinner with Sam London and Kai Jensen.

Finally, there are always so many great games being played. Published games galore, but also many new prototypes that you can get an early look at, play and even provide some feedback and insight on so they can improve them. Last year, I was able to play several unpublished games including Firefight Tactical, Night Witches, Lenin’s Legacy, The Promised Land, In the Shadows, Blood & Tyranny, Microverse and more. Just a fantastic opportunity to see some new things. I also really like being able to play larger multi-player games such as John Company, Arcs, Liberty or Death and a host of other games. And if 2-player hex and counter is your thing there were plenty of those going on as well including Salerno ’43, Blind Swords Series games (Revolution Games was there), and more. In fact, this year we already have a game of Great Battles of the American Revolution: Savannah with designer Mark Miklos and a game of Blind Sword Series Sedgwick Attacks with content creator Grant Linneberg from Pushing Cardboard. We also are going to run a few events and plan to get as many games in as possible over the 4 days we are there.

Also last year, at the conclusion of each day, I wrote a series of Daily Debrief posts that summarized the games we played and people we spoke with that day and you can read each of those at the following links to get a better idea about what to expect:

SDHistCon Day 1 Debrief Post

SDHistCon Day 2 Debrief Post

SDHistCon Day 3 Debrief Post

We shot a full debrief video on our experience and you can watch that at the following link:

We are attending this year and we really hope that many of you can join us in lovely and sunny San Diego. Our wives will also be with us and they are planning to make an appearance at the Con as well…albeit briefly as they told us “they aren’t geeks and won’t be playing games in San Diego”. This is a fair statement but we hope to see many of you there!

-Grant