May is here, and it has already been over two weeks since the end of PPG CON 2019. I wanted to personally thank each and every attendee, vendor, and volunteer. I am humbled and honored that you chose to spend your valuable time and resources with us in our little town of Manitou Springs.

We are so very excited to announce that next year’s convention dates have been set! PPG CON 2020 will be May 15th – 17th, 2020. Badges will go on sale October 1st, 2019.

Here are some fun stats about PPG CON 2019:

• 42 Hours of gaming
• 223 Attendees
• 7 Vendors
• 397 Total Check-Outs
• 235 Unique Games Played

Top ten game checkouts from our Vault:

• 12 x Drop It
• 7 x Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra
• 7 x Junk Art
• 6 x 7 Wonders Duel
• 6 x Gizmos
• 6 x Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition
• 5 x 5-Minute Dungeon
• 5 x Catan
• 5 x Magic Maze
• 5 x The Climbers

Lastly, we are planning a Brews & Bits open gaming night in the next couple months. Stay tuned and game on!

The post PPG CON 2019 Stats & PPG CON 2020 Dates Announced appeared first on Pikes Peak Gamers.

Read the full article:https://koaa.com/news/covering-colorado/2019/04/14/tabletop-board-game-convention-happening-in-manitou-springs/

The post KOAA News 5 Featured PPG CON 2019 appeared first on Pikes Peak Gamers.

Crokinole with Jose

Saturday, 10a – 12p

Love dexterity games – or “Dex” games as board gamers call it? Try your flicking prowess and enter our Crokinole tournament. No experience necessary, and a good time is assured! You may sign-up with a partner, of come solo and we will pair you up to take on another team of two. Crokinole is a cross between shuffleboard, horseshoes and curling. Each round takes about 15 minutes as you vie to be the first team to score 100 points! See you there!

Tichu with Smiley

Saturday, 1p – 4p

Come play Tichu, a climbing partnership card game. As your gaming sommelier, I can tell you that Tichu has elements from lots of card games, but in a very unique package, which makes it my favorite! Like other card games, you can make bids, you pass cards before playing and you group the cards in various combinations. It also has a couple of special cards, you don’t have to always play, and sometimes you can even play out of turn. If you’re new to the game, allow me to teach you Tichu, and be invited to play a couple of games, where the winning team will ultimately win a prize!

Texas Hold ’em with Eric

Saturday, 8p – 12a

Doyle Brunson, Daniel Negreanu, Johnny Chan, and Phil Ivey are just a handful of the incredible poker legends that won’t be joining us for the 2nd annual PPG Con Texas Hold ‘em tournament. This is your chance to add your name to the list of poker greats. Only one other person in the history of the world has ever won the PPG Con tournament…could you be next? This is a completely free tournament with some great prizes going to the top finishers. Players of all levels are welcome, even if you have never played a hand in your life. Join us Saturday night at 8:00pm and make sure you sign up early as space is limited and we expected to fill up fast. We look forward to seeing you across the felt.

The post Tournaments – What to Expect appeared first on Pikes Peak Gamers.

• There’s a parking lot behind Manitou Springs City Hall that is for city staff Monday-Friday 8a-5p. The parking lot is open to the public outside of those hours on a first come, first served basis.
  
• Hiawatha Gardens Parking Lot
  
• Street parking around Memorial Park on El Paso Blvd and Manitou Ave

Purple – Parking lots
Yellow – Street parking (mostly free except directly in front of the convention hall on Manitou Ave.)

The post Parking for PPG CON 2019 appeared first on Pikes Peak Gamers.

93 New Games!

• 1775: Rebellion
• 5-Minute Dungeon
• 8Bit Box
• Arboretum
• Arkham Horror (Third Edition)
• Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra
• BANG!
• Blackout: Hong Kong
• Bus (Pack o’ Game)
• Cacao
• Captain Sonar
• Century: Eastern Wonders
• Century: Spice Road
• Chimera Station
• Code 777
• Coimbra
• Colony
• Colorado SpringsOpoly
• Dice Forge
• Drop It
• Elfenroads
• Exodus Fleet
• Fireball Island: The Curse of Vul-Kar
• Flag Dash
• Forbidden Desert
• Forbidden Sky
• Gaia Project
• Geisterjager
• Gizmos
• Gloomhaven
• Go
• Great Western Trail
• Guildhall
• Gulo Gulo
• Harvest
• Hive Pocket
• Hue (Pack o’ Game)
• Inhabit the Earth
• Insel der Schmullger
• Istanbul
• Junk Art
• La Granja: No Siesta
• Last Will
• Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game
• Leo
• Lift it! Deluxe
• Mage Wars Academy
• Maharaja
• Megaland
• Memoarrr!
• Mogul
• Muse
• My Village
• Newton
• Nocca x Nocca
• Pandemic: Fall of Rome
• Patchistory
• Power Grid: The Card Game
• Push
• Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition
• Reef
• Revolution!
• Rise to Power
• Road Hog: Rule the Road
• Robo Rally
• Secret Hitler
• Shadows: Amsterdam
• Shop ’N Time
• Snowdonia
• Sonar
• Spirit Island
• Spirits of the Wild
• Taco Party
• Tags
• Teotihuacan: City of Gods
• That’s Pretty Clever
• The Estates
• The Oregon Trail Game: Journey to Willamette Valley
• The Quest for El Dorado
• The Wizard Always Wins
• Tiny Epic Zombies
• Trade on the Tigris
• Underwater Cities
• Valletta
• Vast: The Crystal Caverns
• Venetia
• Voodoo
• We Didn’t Playtest This At All
• Wendake
• Werewords Deluxe Edition
• Wordsy
• Yellow & Yangtze

The post 2019 Vault Additions appeared first on Pikes Peak Gamers.

I hope that you all are as excited as I am that we have some vendors at the convention this year. One of our vendors, Four Levels, will be bringing a demonstration of their eponymous game to PPG CON here in a week, and I had the privilege to playtest it.

It’s an abstract game, like checkers or chess, where the game doesn’t really have a theme, but you’re just trying to accomplish the objective. In this case, it is to get four of your pieces in a row. On your turn, you simply play your next piece on any square on the board. There are three kinds of pieces – a cube, a square with a hole in it that the cube can fit into, and a solid square. Cubes and holey squares can share the same space; otherwise, there can only be one piece per square. There are four, four-by-four grids stacked on top of each other where you can play your pieces, and four in a row can mean horizontally, vertically, diagonally, and in either two or three dimensions.

To make a really great abstract game, you need three elements. First, you need a simple ruleset. A simple ruleset lets you focus on the strategy and also makes it easy to find opponents. Second, the gameplay needs to have depth. A game worth playing needs to have interesting choices. Third, it should have an unusual look. Done right, an uninitiated person walking up in a coffee shop will ask what you’re playing because they want to understand the mystery presented by the bizarre object on the table. This game does all three items well. In particular, I find the strategy quite interesting because after just a couple of moves, you’re locked in a tense battle where a false step has you lose the game but you need to find the edge required to defeat your opponent. I admit that I’m not very good at it, but that has not deterred me from enjoying every play of it.

The game is currently in late-stage development, and so Jack, the game developer, has some interesting ideas to make the game even better. Among them are a three-player variant, a scoring system, and perhaps having a game last until all the pieces have been played, so as to maximize the number of four-in-a-row combinations. I highly recommend that you check out his booth and support his upcoming Kickstarter, which is scheduled to start July 1, 2019!

Four Levels: Website | Facebook

The post Vendor Playtest: Four Levels appeared first on Pikes Peak Gamers.