Tabletop Together: boardgame convention tracker
Tabletop Together is a free online service for boardgame enthusiasts to keep track of boardgame conventions and game releases.
If you are into boardgames, you are probably also interested in boardgame conventions. If you are lucky enough you live close to one of the bigger or smaller conventions, or keep track of what is going on online on sites like Boardgamegeek.
Hundreds of games get released each year during the bigger conventions, and it is usually a good idea to go through release lists to pick the games you are interested in before the convention starts.
This is important for a number of reasons: first, because you may want to preorder games if possible, or be at a booth of a hot game early as hot games sell out often at conventions. Second, because it helps you with your budgeting on top of that.
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While you can use Boardgamegeek's excellent -- and new -- preview tool for that, you may also use Tabletop Together's convention tool as well.
It covers major boardgame conventions such as Spiel in Essen (lucky me), GenCon, Origins Game Fair and the UK Games Expo.
It is necessary that you create a free account before you can get started. Once done, you are asked to pick a default convention. It makes sense to pick the next one you are interested in or attending.
Once that is out of the way, you can start wading through lists of boardgames that are released at the convention.
The site offers three major options to do that:
- Browse the full listing, or a filtered listing of boardgames.
- Check out the top games and expansions for existing games based on user activity on the site.
- Use the built-in search.
Games are listed with lots of information. You get a cover shot if available, name and publisher, playtime, price if known, available languages, and categories for that game.
You may set a priority for each game -- ignore, maybe, like, want, need -- and also add notes and preorder information.
This is handy, as you get printing options based on these priorities. You may list all your wants and likes for instance, and print those out, or sort the listing by hall instead for a better understanding where you need to go to check out, demo and purchase games you are interested in.
Tabletop Together links each game to Boardgamegeek so that you can open the site to look up additional information on the games you are interested in.
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