Convention season is here, and I’ve attended my first event of 2026. Wanting to change things up a bit, I ended up going to the first year of a board game convention, which was, fortunately, close to home. I’ve played board games at conventions, but have never attended one entirely devoted to them, so this made for a unique experience.

First, the selection of board games was very nice. They had a plethora of games I was familiar with, but even more that were new to me. I found quite a few games that I’m really wanting to add to my collection, like Zombicide. I only attended on Saturday and honestly figured I’d play a few games and go home. I ended up spending about 10 hours at the convention and only took a break to go get lunch.

The selection was amazing, and the layout was really nice too. There were signs you could get for tables looking for players, and others for tables needing someone to help with the rules. We never struggled to master any of the new-to-us games because there was someone there who knew the rules well enough to teach us how to play. The convention also featured a wide variety of tabletop RPG games. I didn’t play any of them this time around as I just wanted to walk around and try a bunch of games, but there was plenty of space for those playing them to really be able to set up the game and get into character.

The space was great as the tables were very spread out and organized into two categories. Those for games planned in advance, and tables for those who want to grab one of the games in their library and have fun. The convention also featured a costume contest and a raffle for various board games. You get so many raffle tickets just by attending, but you can also purchase more. For select games, simply by playing them, you can also earn raffle tickets. This part of the convention was on Sunday, so I missed out on that, but it made me very tempted to go back just to try my hand at winning them.

There’s only really a couple of downsides, and they are very minor. One is just that it’s the convention’s first year, so turnout was great, but not perfect. Games that I registered for in advance didn’t happen because not enough people joined in to make the games playable. That wasn’t a big deal as we still had so much to do, and I’m sure that’s something that will get better as the convention continues to happen. The only other problem is the venue, as it got pretty hot for a little while in the middle of the day.

So Bluegrass Gaming Con was a wild success. The local area is really starved for events with things to do, and I feel like this is absolutely what was needed. It had the kind of variety of games needed to keep you busy the entire day, plenty of space to play the games in, and was extremely organized.