With almost 700 participants, Juneau’s annual board game convention sold out for a second time this year. Some people traveled from as far as Indiana and Massachusetts to play at Platypus Con. And the weekend-long event stayed open late — until the early morning hours.
A lot of players were deep in their games late-night on Saturday. In Centennial Hall, a room full of people competed in a Euchre tournament. In the main ballroom, tables of friends and strangers tried new games while local businesses ran booths selling games they could take home with them.
At one table, Tim Mikulski and friends were diving deep into the annals of capitalism with a game called Flow of History.
“It’s a card and also a coin economy game,” he said. “So we’re progressing from ancient societies forward. Right now, we’re discovering mercantilism, and yeah, it’s a good competition so far.”
Mikulski spent most of the day at the convention; at midnight, he was about 10 hours in and counting.
“We’re feeling ambitious for a late night, but I don’t know if I’m going to close it out,” he said. “Two a.m. feels real far away.”
Platypus Con Creator and President Josh Warren started the convention in 2015. About 130 people attended that first year and it’s since only gotten more popular. Some people come to qualify for state and national championships in games like Catan.
“A lot of the other board game conventions are just named after the town they started in,” he said. “And I thought that was boring.” So Warren named the convention after his favorite animal instead.
He was wearing platypus pajamas, fitting for the late hour, but he has other outfit options as well: “I have a platypus full suit with a blazer that I should be wearing because it’s warmer than this. And I do have a platypus mascot costume”
Warren said, after the convention, he’s actually traveling to Australia and New Zealand to see the elusive creatures in person.
Back in the ballroom, Pat Race — who owns the games and comics store Alaska Robotics Gallery in downtown Juneau — ran a booth with his best friend and co-owner. The two of them played a game in between talking to attendees.
“What a great event this is. The whole community comes out. It’s packed in here all day, and then you get these late night hours and this dwindling, sleepy crowd either hopped up on the chai from these guys over here or they’re cramming pizza,” Race said. “It’s just good, wholesome fun.”
He said events like Platypus Con bring people together.
“You get to spend time with people you maybe see in different contexts, and it takes away all that — I don’t know — we have these facades of professionalism, or the ‘getting through the Foodland line’ armor, and so it’s nice to have that all peeled away and just hang out,” Race said.
Barb Lake set down a very tall stack of games to return at the event’s game library, which housed all 2,540 games available to play at the convention.
Her favorite was one called Hues and Cues.
“It’s like a color matching game,” Lake said.” So somebody has to give you the color that’s on the board, and then everybody puts their chip as close to the color as they can get. It’s really hard, because your perception of what lavender is is very different than what your friends think it is.”
For Lake, the convention has become an annual tradition. She and her husband have come for the last five years.
“This is the event of the year for us,” she said.
She said it’s one of her favorite ways to spend time with her friends and meet new people. Learning how to play the games with other people, she said, can bring on a lot of different feelings.
“It is all of the emotions, so it’s frustrating, it’s confusing, it’s hard because you have to figure out how to play something totally new from the rule book, or you have to try and look up a video to learn how to play it,” she said. “So that part can be a challenge, and then when you get it and you like it, it’s like elation.”
Lake said they’ve ended up buying many of the games they’ve played at the convention, and now have their own game library at home to pass the time between conventions.
“We don’t drink, so we don’t go out to the bars. We’re not really, like, into a lot of the other events that go around in town,” Lake said. “But board gaming is what we do.”
