Hello fellow (hopefully soon-to-be) Con-goers.

It is I, Dr. D, here to tell you how I am planning to attend the upcoming Adepticon 2024. I wanted to use this article as a sort of guide for anyone who may not have attended a major convention before and to help elucidate what you need to think about in order to go to these events. That way if someone wants to go, or is doing everything they can to avoid me they will know exactly where I will be so that they can be anywhere else.

As always, it is a good idea to give the proper credentials. I have been going to wargaming-themed conventions since I was going to community college. I believe the first big nerd convention I ever went to was GenCon 2014. Being a big wargamer, my friends and I had all imagined that going to one of these was a sort of pilgrimage. For a very long time we thought the privilege of going was WAY out of our price range or ability to do.

I am here to inform you that when we actually started planning it out and realized that it was much more possible after we put all of the costs in front of us. It was very doable to do on a VERY small budget if you are willing to put the money where you want it and no where else. Being a very poor college student that was working 35 Hrs on a 10$/hr schedule put me in a very low tax bracket, but we managed to make the trip every single year for about 4 years straight. You just have to go into it with a plan.

Now that I am an even older man-child, I have learned certain skills……..that have allowed me to make the trips much more physically and emotionally pain-free. Thankfully, most of these methods are even legal! (That was a “I occasionally do illegal foot pictures for money joke,” Taylor.)

Credentials established, let’s get to planning out an event. We will use Adepticon 2024 as our example for this year, but this framework can be used for any event going forward. The prices might change as time goes due to inflation on the price of moose farts or whatever, but the concepts should always remain the same. I will be giving some of the tips and tricks that I have learned with my years on this Earth, but I am sure other people will have skills that I have yet developed. On account to spending too much time playing stupid games instead of reading books like a big nerd.

So, lets assume that you have to travel further than 4 hours to get to the event. Anything shorter than that it would be easier to drive. This means that the price for traveling part will probably be 1-2 tanks of gas. Which is more than likely cheaper than a flight. Assuming that, the things you need to consider for every single convention are:

• Airplane Ticket
• Hotel Ticket
• Con Ticket
• Events
• Vendor Hall
• Food While At Event
• Doing Stuff Around the City

When I plan an event I try and break it down to roughly what I think the overall price will be and then budget accordingly. I will assure you that if you do not keep your prices or motives realistic the price of the trip will easily go up 30% and you won’t even realize it until you get back home. Let’s take this topic by topic. I will include a specific tip at the end for people who are not wealthy since everyone should have the opportunity to come to these kinds of events. I get what being a poo boi means.

Airplane Ticket

A good rule of thumb for buying airplane tickets is to get your ticket about 3 months before the flight date. If you buy your ticket too soon they are not worrying about selling seats yet, and if you do it too close to your event then they can increase the price since they are fulfilling a need at their convivence. The 3 month period is a sort of sweet spot for purchasing tickets. Expedia is a great tool for these situations since they compared prices between the different airlines. Many websites like this exist and you can pick whichever one you like the most, but if it gives you the ability to put certain flights on a watch list you can sit and wait for the best priced flight over time.

My one rule for flying is that you must make sure that if you are bringing models for an event, you MUST keep them as your carry on since airline companies are prone to sending bags to the wrong place. If you can not get all of your items into a single bag then it is worth checking your clothing since you can buy these when you land, but getting an entire army is going to be much more difficult.

I created a council of the people that were closest to me in terms of distance to ask for a few options on what bags could serve this purpose and wouldn’t you know it they gave me a few options. Many of them were homeless and thus attacked me, but I managed to scrap together some useful bits of information in-between their crazed screaming.

This bag, the ENHANCE Portable Miniature Figure Storage & Carrying Case is probably my bag of choice from the recent proliferation of different model game bags. It has the ability to carry all of the things you need for a con going experience. This includes things like tape measures, widgets, books if your games need that, and potentially some self-respect. I think this bag is a great choice since it can most likely serve any game that you could want to play as long as the model count is not too high. You can more than likely fit in more than one skirmish game and you might even have some room for putting stuff you want to bring back or a place to put some clothes if you are especially pressed for space.

It also looks like something a gentleman would bring to a duel and carry around his family heirloom dueling pistols, and that sounds kinda thugnificent. Please use this blue text if you would like to support the network by picking one up.

The other option I was informed about was the ONULISS Miniature Storage Case. This one is made of wood so I imagine it smells of rich mahogany and rich people smells. I personally have never owned a bag that contained metal trays, but this could be an excellent choice for anyone that is playing a game that requires larger models like 40K or tall Marvel Crisis Protocol miniatures. If you have been magnetizing your bases, this is a perfect lead into this product since it is ready for your transporting needs. This is a great option if you have the ability to put your extra gubbins in another bag or keep it in your square hole. This one comes with the surprise savings of not having to purchase foam as well.

That’s a trade secret. (This is in no way an actual trade secret.)

Plus who doesn’t love dinosaurs. If you would like to purchase one and help us out, CLICK ON THIS BLUE TEXT TO DIRECTLY HELP US OUT.

IMA POOR BOI DOH

Remember that the more inconvenient the flight, the less expensive the flight will be. If you get a redeye flight or make the flight on a day that people are less likely to fly, like a Monday, it will make the overall price cheaper. To help save some change I will commonly put clothing in my model carrying bag since it will save on some space. Most airlines will also allow you to bring a backpack since it doesn’t count as a technically carry on? I am not sure how that works and I am not a plane scientist, but I commonly pack my backpack with books and clothes for the trip and use my model bag as the carry on.

Hotel Ticket

The Hotel is important to plan with your plane ticket since you will need to make sure you have somewhere to sleep the night that you arrive. I plan this around my work schedule since I try and get to events the night of a work day so that I can have the maximum amount of time at the event. I think you get the best results if you fly in the day before the event starts since the first mornings are usually very exciting and filled with opportunities to make some memories.

Best case scenario you are able to get a room in the convention hall. I usually like to cut costs as much as possible, but I CAN NOT STRESS enough how convenient it is to be able to buy something from the vendor hall and just be able to go to the room and drop it off. This also works best if you are playing multiple games throughout the day or you are someone who is going to want to take a nap or something during the event. The amount of time and stress you will save just being able to take a short walk and a elevator ride up will make it SO worth it. The conventions will usually also have a decent rate for anyone who stays in the hotel, but this will vary by event. The main issue is going to be getting a room in the same hotel since they tend to sell out in seconds after they are put up.

Thankfully, most big conventions will have multiple hotels that are included in the block. Even if the main hotel is full, events like Adepticon will provide shuttles to help get you back and forth from a hotel that could be further away. This is very convenient and helps save some jingle since you will not need Uber or Lyfts to go back and forth from the hotel.

IMA POOR BOI DOH

If you are willing to travel, you can usually find cheaper rooms in hotels that are not in the city themselves since conventions are usually in major towns. If you are lucky, you may be able to find a BnB situation that works out better, but what you save in a hotel room is likely going to be canceled out by the increased cost of going back and forth from the hotel unless you have something that can counteract that like a local friend with a car or the ability to fly through the air at high speeds.

Con Ticket

This is one of the situations where you don’t get much wiggle room. The convention ticket price is usually set, but some cons might have some kind of coupon code that could make it slightly cheaper. This will vary from convention to convention.

Events

Events are usually the reason you are going to the convention itself. My general rule of thumb is to go to the event for a specific main event and then build your convention experience around that. For the upcoming Adepticon I will be going for the main Infinity Event on Saturday and Sunday. This means that the other days can be used to do other events or just wander around the vendor hall. I plan on going to the Marvel Crisis Protocol Team Event with my friend since that is on the Friday. This leaves my Thursday open to wandering the vendor hall and pranking people I walk by throughout the event.

I would write down or plan which events you would like to go to. It is possible that you will not get all of these events due to many of the mainline events selling out ridiculously fast when the tickets go live. YOU DO NOT WANT TO SHOP FOR WHAT EVENTS YOU WANT TO GO TO AT THE MOMENT THE TICKETS GO LIVE. This will mean you will most likely get NONE of the more popular events.

As a friendly reminder, January 7th is when tickets go live for Adepticon 2024. I can not stress enough how fast you must be in order to get your events. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

IMA POOR BOI DOH

It is not always a constant that an event will charge you for events or if it all covered by the event ticket. It is a good idea to keep this in mind if you are trying to limit how much you spend. Take it into account with your budget.

Vendor Hall

This is another thing that can vary wildly from event to event. Events like Adepticon will have large vendor halls from a CRAZY variety of companies. This is because Adepticon is the best in conventioning technology. If you go to events that are more tournament focused they are likely to have vendor halls, but they will be much smaller in terms of size and selection. Something to keep in mind while planning your trip is that the vendor hall can quickly become an area of what they call phantom costs. This is one of the areas of the trip where your budget can be quickly thrown to the wolves if you go too quickly. When planning my budget for a trip, I attempt to allocate at least $100-200 for evaporation once I walk into the hall.

Something that tends to happen is that the hype of the event and the excitement of seeing so many people who love what you love in the same place is going to inspire you to want to buy SO MANY THINGS. Something to keep in mind is that many of these companies sell these things on the internet and can ship them directly to your home. This means that before I make any purchase decision I pause to considered a few things.

• Am I able to transport this back home easily if I buy it?
• Is it a convention exclusive?
• If I wait a day before I buy this will I still want it?
• Will I have anyone to play this game with me when I get back home?

Now I don’t want to be Captain Buzzkill, but it is important to consider the logistics of what you are going to do with the stuff you buy. Many people will buy things that they did not consider at events and will horribly overspend at events. This can occasionally cause issues with going to future events since they will have “points of discussion” with signifigant others or their own emotional reaction of remembering how much they spent at the last event.

IMA POOR BOI DOH

If money is an issue, you are going to want to skip the vendor hall altogether or walk the entire hall to plan what you think you can get away with. Nothing feels worse than spending all of your budget at the start of you wandering and then finding something you have been chasing after for months was there just waiting for you to pick it up.

Cost of Food

When you are far away from home you are going to have to consider what you are going to eat. This is going to heavily depend on the location of the event. Going to something like LVO will mean all food is going to cost more due to the nature of the city, and cities like Chicago and Boston will also have slight increases in the price of food due to the nature of tourism-based economies. I always try and keep in mind that you will probably be spending 40ish bucks a day on food if you think about lunch and dinner.

IMA POOR BOI DOH

Eat cheap stuff. Stuff like Subway and fast food restaurants will be nearish to the convention areas. I would try and make every dollar count by getting food with protein or healthy fats since these will keep you satisfied longer. Nothing sucks more than starving while trying to enjoy something you only get to do once a year.

Heading Into The City

I am much less experienced in this category than all of the other ones, but I figured I would throw this in here. If you are going to a convention in a big, cool city and intend to spend time with people that you love, it is possible that it will go into the city. This means going to specific restaurants or you have a signifigant other that really wants to see a specific building or historical area. These are easier to plan for since they usually have listed prices, but make sure you incorporate the cost of travel if you are Ubering or using mass transits like the bus or Subway.

IMA POOR BOI DOH

Stay in the convention area or your hotel room. I noticed that when I spent most of the time in the board game library I was not out running around town or the vendor hall. Sometimes it helps to be unloved! (That was a depression joke, Taylor.)

Conclusion

So these are the things I personally think about when I am planning on going to a major con. The main reason I made this article is to help put into perspective how easy it is to actually go to these events. If someone goes to an event like Adepticon and really tries to pinch their pennies in areas that they do not find important it is actually surprisingly affordable to go. Everyone should have an opportunity to go to events like this since they are, in my opinion, life-altering experiences when it comes to things like Adepticon or Gen-Con.

I have made friends that I still talk to throughout the year at major events and I really hope that me writing this article helps ONE person create a friendship like that.

Something to keep in mind is that January 7th is when tickets go live for Adepticon 2024. I can not stress enough how fast you must be in order to get your events. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED AGAIN.

You can always find me on EVERY episode of Arachne: An Infinity Podcast where we talk about all kinds of stuff that I hope everyone can enjoy. NOT just Infinity players. If you would like to support the network and ME specifically, please sign up to the Patreon at the Digital Nomad tier since it helps me continue to write and create guides for the lovely people that follow this wonderful network.

Keep it popping out there and START PLANNING SOME EVENTS.