Trade Your Games At WashingCon

The greatest tragedy of our hobby is that there are only so many hours in the week to play games. Our sweet board game collections often outstrip the time we have to make use of them and so, like most of us, you probably have a few games that sit around languishing on your shelf. But worry not, those unloved games can now be converted into new (gently used), more lovable games!

Some of the industrious volunteers here at WashingCon have arranged a virtual flea market on Board Game Geek whereby you can put your old games up for swap or sale. By signing up on BGG.com you can decide which way you would like your games to be put up for exchange (sale, auction or trade). Then, after another participant arranges to trade for or purchase your game, you can make the exchange at WashingCon in September. You have nothing to lose (except games you no longer want) and everything to gain (specifically new and better games)! You’ll need to complete these deals ahead of time though, so sign up ASAP!

Please note though, WashingCon cannot enforce these trades. These are deals between you and the other good people attending the convention and you will have to hash out the detail between yourselves on the BGG forums. If a trade does not live up to your expectations we cannot fix it for you. We are very excited to provide an easy place where people can trade their games for new ones but we do not have the resources to police these exchanges - they rely on the BGG market and the goodwill of both parties to be completed satisfactorily.

Good luck and happy trading!

Early Bird Prices End Tonight

One last reminder, WashingCon is on September 7th & 8th but all badge discounts end tonight.

This is your absolute last chance to get badges at a reduced price so go grab yours now and don’t miss out!

Win a Free Hotel Room for WashingCon 2019

Help us get the word out about WashingCon and get a chances to win a free hotel room for the weekend of the event!

Do you know people? Do they like games? Tell them about WashingCon and for each person that mentions you at checkout you will receive an entry into our prize drawing.

There will be tons of prizes (shirts, swag, games, etc) but the grand prize will be a free hotel room during WashingCon. No metro rides to cut into game time for this winner!

The drawing will be in mid August so get your friends to sign up because the more folks you convince the more chances you get to win!

Early Bird Prices End on July 1st

Hello WashingCon friends! September 7th is only 75 days away and that means your chance to take advantage of early bird pricing is ending soon!

If you don’t have your badges yet you should really get on it because the current price of $50 for the entire weekend only lasts until July 1st. After that, two day badges return to the standard price of $65 until the day of the show.

So don’t hesitate, get your badges today and lock down some fun for September 7th and 8th!

Game Night at Astro Lab Brewery

WashingCon is back with another summer game night!

This time we will be hanging out at Astro Lab Brewing in Silver Spring on Friday, June 28th from 7p-11p.

So come out to play games while enjoying good pub food, great beer and the company of the WashingCon community. We’ll have a large selection of games available to play but feel free to bring extra.

The event is free to attend but it helps us out if you can register on Eventbrite so that we know how many people to expect.

See you there!

Games Night at Port City Brewing Company 2019

This year, as we have HEARTILY promised in the past, we will be holding a series of games night in the community leading up to WashingCon. The best part of our convention has always been just getting together to try out new games and meet new people, so why wait until September? To start it off this year the WashingCon staff will be back at Port City Brewing Company in Alexandria VA, on Thursday April 25th, with a big honkin’ pile of games of every type. We’ll be there from 6pm until closing time, teaching games, playing a few ourselves and just grabbing a beer with our fellow tabletop players. Games start at 6pm in the Brewery, but the Port City tasting room opens at 4pm so feel free to come early, grab some of Virginia’s finest beers and hang out until we show up. This is a FREE event but do us a solid and, if you’re thinking about attending, sign up below so we can let the good folks at Port City know how much space we’ll be needing. Looking forward to seeing you all there!

2019 Featured Designer: Elizabeth Hargrave

We’re excited to announce that this year’s featured game designer at WashingCon 2019 will be Elizabeth Hargrave, creator of Wingspan! Every year we hope to be a place where local designers can work on their games and share them with the community. Elizabeth has been at WashingCon every year since our inception, play-testing Wingspan and, now that it’s out in the wild, we’re very lucky to have her back again to show it off.

If you’re not yet familiar with Wingspan, it’s the engine-building, birdwatching, egg laying, scientifically accurate game for 1-5 players where you compete to score points off birds that you collect and place in their ecologically appropriate niches. If that has’t cleared things up you can read some of the very nice things that folks have been saying about it both here and here! And, If you’re a fan of interesting game design thoughts and local creators, please give Elizabeth a follow on twitter right here. She’ll be at WashingCon hanging out and demoing her game so come on out to say hi to her and give Wingspan a spin.

Ticket sales open Monday April 1st at 7pm and will be at the discounted price of $40 for a short time only, so make sure to purchase your tickets early for the best deal to meet the DMV’s most interesting new designer!

WashingCon 2019 Announcement!

WashingCon 2019 is officially happening! After much wrangling we are excited to announce that we will once again be bringing you D.C.’s finest two days of tabletop at our usual home, the Georgetown Hotel and Conference Center on September 7th and 8th.

Tickets will go on sale on April 1st at 7 pm. And, as we have done previously, two-day passes will start at the loooooooow price $40. Purchasing your tickets in advance helps us cover costs and get the convention up and running so we try to show our appreciation for those of you who get their badges early. Please note though that we cannot afford to keep prices this low forever and after the initial sale they will return to full price! So, to get the best possible deal, we recommend that you get yours as soon as they are available!

If you would like to be more involved with WashingCon 2019 whether through volunteering, making a donation or becoming a sponsor please check out our website right here. We’ll be reminding everyone about these opportunities in the next month but if you’ve participated in the past and are ready to do so again we encourage you to jump in!

Also please keep an eye on our website and twitter over the coming weeks. We’ll be announcing the various game nights, guests, and special events that we hope to bring to the DMV’s gaming community this year. We love putting all of this together and we’re excited that your continued support of WashingCon has allowed us to return again for a fifth convention. Thank you all and we’ll see you in September!

How'd We Do?

Thank you all so, so much for being part of WashingCon this year! We hope that each and every one of you had a great time playing some games and making new friends. We want this to be the tabletop convention that our whole community feels that DC deserves, and that you’re already excited to attend next year. In the meantime we’ve started working on making our convention even better in the future. But we can’t do that if we don’t know what folks did and didn’t like about WashingCon. So, with that in mind, we hope that everyone who attended will take a quick minute to check out our survey about this year’s Con. By providing us with your input we can make positive changes to our organization, events, transportation, and every other detail that impacts your experience. So please take a few moments out of your day, go here, and tell us your opinions! By doing so you not only help out the organizers, but also make WashingCon a better experience for all the gamers in DC. Hopefully we’ll see all of you in 2019 for an even better WashingCon!

Things You Might Need to Know

All of you have been so enthusiastic and helpful this year - our community, attendees, our volunteers, GMs and everyone else who who I have failed to mention - and we'd like to say: Thanks to each and every one of you, WashingCon is finally here! Today is the last day before DC's best two days of gaming with friends and so we have some important information regarding the con that everyone should take a quick look at. Most of this can be found on our FAQ right here, and we recommend you go there first if you have any questions. But just to make sure, we'd like to cover a few bases for everyone:

First of all, and most importantly, if you don't have your tickets yet now is the time and badges can be purchased here! You can't enjoy the finest in DMV board gaming without your admission and we'd hate for anyone to miss out. 

Parking is somewhat less convenient this year. The hospital has increased the rates at the garage adjacent to the hotel to $75 a day. BUT the garage at the bottom of the hill, about a five minute walk up to the conference center is still $25 a day. This garage is CASH ONLY and they require payment at entrance so please remember to bring your parking money with you! We highly recommend you use this visitor (southwest) garage, so as to not pay the dramatically increased rate at the other parking lot. See Georgetown's parking site right here for more information.

For those of you who prefer public transportation the free shuttle will be running again this year, back and forth from Foggy Bottom Metro station to the hotel. It will being running from 9 am each morning until 11 pm in the evening to make sure that everyone who wants to take the Metro can be accommodated. There will be a volunteer directing attendees to the pick up spot at the Metro so look for the person with the WashingCon sign and the bright yellow shirt.

We still have a few slots open for RPG's, events and, most importantly, our friends' North Star Games' Evolution tournament. Open spots are hard to come by the day of so, if you are at all interested, please sign up today! We hate to disappoint folks when they can't get a seat during the actual convention and it happens every year. Go here for the schedule and click through on the event of your choice to sign up.

On Saturday evening the main hall at the conference center closes at 11pm, but there will be late night gaming still going on at the hotel afterwards, in the west lobby. Some of us will be hanging out until the wee hours making the most of every hour of WashingCon so, if you can stay, and have a craving for after hours games, think about staying late. This is a great way to maximize your tabletop time.

If you have any more questions, please contact us through email, facebook or twitter all of which can be found here. We'll do our best to get back to you in the hustle and the bustle beforehand.  Looking forward to seeing all of you this weekend!

Dragon's Demize at WashingCon

WashingCon couldn’t happen without the support we receive from our community, and no one has been supporting us longer than our official podcast, Dragon’s Demize. With us now for all four years, Dragon’s Demize, the creation of Jakub, Greg, and Lesley, is a podcast of game reviews, RPG advice, buying guides, live convention coverage and much more. They've also created a whole mess of videos such as actual plays, Board Games Bistro (how-to-plays) and all sorts of other cardboard-focused content for your tabletop-loving soul.

With 120 episodes of their podcast already available, as well as dozens of videos, there’s something for every type of games enthusiast. So, if you like games (you do, or you wouldn’t be here!), please head over to their website, subscribe to their podcast and give them a listen! Jakub, Greg and Lesley will all be at WashingCon this weekend, helping out, talking tabletop, and casting some pod, so stop by their booth to say hi and ask them for some sage gaming advice. They’ve been supporting us for so long and we hope that you all will support them too by checking out their great content below on their website and twitch.

Final Week of Ticket Sales

WashingCon is coming up in just four days, which means that if you haven't grabbed your tickets yet, now is the time! We're really excited to bring you two days of tabletop games here in DC for the fourth year in a row, and we hope that as many of you as possible in the DMV's gaming community can join us. We will be sending out information very soon about parking, metro access, and all of the little need-to-know details for everyone who has already purchased their tickets. So, for all of you who have, keep an eye on your email in the next few days. Any for everyone else, badges are going much faster than in years past so, to guarantee your spot, don't forget to reserve yours ASAP. 

Math Trade Closes In 4 Days!

Want one more way to get some new games into your collection at WashingCon? Of course you do! As board game hobbyists a lot of us have collections brimming over with games we barely play any more. And the best way to find folks willing to trade games you want for the ones that just aren't making the table at your house any more is through a math trade. By signing up, listing the games you are willing to part with, and the games you are interested in trading for, the site's algorithm figures out the best way for the most games to be traded amongst participants. Then bring you games to the convention on Saturday September 8th, and exchange them for fresh, brand new (used) games! If you still have questions about the process, click the "learn more" button below for Board Game Geek's detailed primer. This costs you nothing except for your unloved games and few minutes of your time, so register now!

North Star Games Evolution Tournament

Our friends from North Star Games are coming back to WashingCon this year and will be hosting a tournament of Evolution, their strategy game of species and specialization! To win at Evolution you must guide to your species to victory by carefully selecting adaptations, while acquiring enough food to feed your rapidly evolving species and keep opponents at bay. Watch out for other species that evolve sharp teeth, though, or else you become the alternative source of food for your friends' creatures! This tournament will take place on Sunday at 10:30 am and has limited seating so sign up here. 

North Star Games will also be in the main hall demoing their amazing stuff and doing some play testing so come on down to their booth and check out games like Warsaw: City of Ruins, Most Wanted, Monster Match and many, many more fine products. They have been incredible supporters of the local gaming community over the last few years we're thrilled to have them at WashingCon again, representing the DC area's game publishers.

RPG Sign Ups Are Open!

What would a tabletop convention be without some RPGs?? Not a good one thats for sure. But there is no need worry about inferior convention-going in DC this year because our many generous GM's have volunteered their time again and WashingCon 2018 is proud to offer two days of tabletop RPGs! Sign up for the classic adventuring of Dungeons and Dragons 5th ed, the eldritch horror of Call of Cthulhu, the far future science fantasy of Numenera or many others. Dark, heroic or absurd, there's a story telling adventure at WashingCon for all tastes. Both Saturday and Sunday schedules have been set and sign ups are now available. These fill up fast so reserve your seat at the table ASAP! 

Event Schedule Is Up!

Most of you know that WashingCon is more than just our huge open gaming hall. Beyond providing you the opportunity to enjoy some new games with friends we also have events, tournaments and speakers for all of your additional gaming-related needs. Well, we're less than four weeks away and the schedule of events is now up! 

This year we have several tournaments back from last year such as Catan, Pitch Car and Carcassonne, as well as a ton of new new events like Codenames, King of Tokyo and Giant Between Two Cities! In addition we're going to have a series of panels with local designers talking about what it takes to create your own games, an introduction to Wargaming with Jason Matthews and the event that we are so excited to present: Tiny Dungeon!

Almost all of our events are free with your admission, but many require a reserved seat to participate. These seats tend to go fast so we strongly encourage you to sign up as early as possible, right here, if you want a spot!

We will have additional events being added as the details are figured out so be sure to check back here for details!

Opportunities For Aspiring Game Designers

One of the best things about tabletop conventions is the opportunity they provide for the games enthusiasts working on their prototypes to get them in front of tons of new people. New ideas and designers are the lifeblood of the hobby and we hope to do our best to encourage them at WashingCon! Due to the limited space in the convention, which you all know is crammed to the gills with gaming, we can only allot so much extra space to demos. Thankfully the folks from Unpub, the unpublished games network, will be back at Washingcon this year managing a demo area for all of you designers who are still working on their game. If you are an unpublished designer who would like a slot to test your game out with the public please go to Unpub's website and register for a place a WashingCon. Participation in Unpub is free but please note that we request that you sign up for no more than 2 slots as otherwise there will not be enough table time to go around for everyone.  And for those of you who feel that they are ready for more time or space to demo their product, WashingCon can, for a fee, provide a dedicated table for you to work on your product all weekend. These tables can be reserved by contacting WashingCon's staff here. Thanks and we look forward to seeing all of your ideas in September!

WashingCon Hotel Rates Available

Good news, everyone!

The Georgetown Hotel and Conference Center, where we hold WashingCon each year, has reserved a block of rooms at a discounted price for our attendees! We know that for many of you it will be inconvenient or downright impossible to make it back and forth from home to the convention in one night. And, for those of you who need to find lodgings in the DC area, the alternatives can be grim: find another hotel who-knows-how-many metro stops away from the Con or, worst of all, maybe even spending a night on a friend's spine-destroying air mattress. But you don't need to suffer like that for a weekend of excellent gaming! To maximize back comfort and gaming time while minimizing your travel we recommend staying with us, right here, at the conference center. 

The hotel will only guarantee the reduced rates if you purchase before August 7th so don't delay!

In addition, as some of you already know, WashingCon has an excellent slate of late night events as well. Two Rooms and A Boom, social deduction games and a whole lot more hit the floor right around 8 pm on Saturday. And once those wrap up, even though the main hall closes, we will still have space open, adjacent to the main hall, where the most die hard gamers can keep it going until the wee hours of the morning. We certainly will, and we hope a lot of you can join us. 

So, if you are interested in prolonging your gaming time, grab a hotel room Saturday!

Exceptional T-Shirts for Sale!

There are a lot of good ways to remember your WashingCon experience. Taking pictures, slapping your memories up on Instagram or reliving your board game glory by endlessly reminding your friends of how you came from behind to win the Ticket to Ride tournament. But NOTHING memorializes your convention-going like fine chestwear!

WashingCon's 2018 official shirt, available here, is the best way to wear your love for WashingCon quite literally on your sleeve. Emblazoned with this year's sweet DC themed logo, this is the shirt 100% most likely to make your eyes mist over while thinking "Damn that was a fun convention" every time you put it on. Guaranteed to lower analysis paralysis and substantially improve your dice rolls while looking stylish, these shirts can be purchased at our website and will be available for pick at the convention. Reserve your's today!

Calling All Volunteers

Making WashingCon happen is a lot of work. Throughout the year a handful of us set our time aside to make sure everything is ready to go in September. But when the actual day of the convention is upon us we need a heck of a lot of more help for it all to go smoothly! That's why we rely on our volunteers to help staff the convention and assist with registration, events, the games library, rules tutoring, and everything else that goes into making WashingCon fun.

If you like WashingCon and want to be a part of it, we'd love have you as a volunteer! In exchange for two volunteer shifts we will comp your badge so you can spend the rest of your time enjoying the weekend for free. In addition we will provide you with a sweet WashingCon 2018 volunteer's T shirt designed by the director. This fine chestwear immediately identifies you as a true board game enthusiast of substance and the only way to get one is to volunteer right here. We look forward to seeing you in september!