Earlier this fall I went to Essen and to BGG.CON, but many people have already written reports and geeklists about them. But this past weekend I went to a 2-day event that seems unmentioned on BGG until now, Pionek (which means "pawn"), in the Polish city of Gliwice. (Thanks to organizer Ignacy Trzewiczek (trzewik) for telling me about it, and for offering crash space in his company's office: Portal, the publisher of Neuroshima Hex!) This was the 5th Pionek event. I had a good time, and it was cool to see what a homegrown convention is like in Poland.

In contrast to Essen (tens of thousands of people in a modern convention center) and BGG.CON (500+ people in rather luxurious hotel), Pionek was small and cheap (maybe 100 people, with a nominal admission fee of 1 zloty, i.e. less than a dollar!) and took place in a "dom kultury", i.e. a building where different groups can rent space for cultural/social events.

We were in 2 rooms on the third floor (4th floor by US reckoning), with the only men's room on the ground floor. But it was a good space with enough tables, and a stage where announcements were made from occasionally, and a corner with many games brought by people to share, like a smaller version of the library at BGG.CON. The selection of games played reminded me a lot of BGG.CON, i.e. a lot of somewhat heavy eurogames as well as a lot of shorter games including some abstract strategy games. I didn't notice any hardcore wargames or CCGs or RPGs.

Here is an announcement which lists many of the games that were there:
http://www.gry-planszowe.pl/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4409
There was free coffee, tea, juice, snacks too.

A language note: As far as I know, I was the only American there, and one of only a few non-Polish people. I am still learning Polish and still have a lot of trouble understanding Polish speech, but enough people were able to speak slowly or use English that I didn't have any real problems on the language front. And I got a lot of practice with certain key phrases like "it's your turn", "I'm losing", etc...

Anyway, I had a good time and met lots of cool people, and I was impressed at what a good event it was on such a shoestring budget - clearly a labor of love.

PS: I've since decided that I'm not a fan of these "games I played", "games my game club likes", "games I want", "games I own", "games I'm thinking of buying", "games I own but only played once", etc type geeklists, and prefer geeklists that talk about some common property inherent to the games in the geeklist, e.g. "good solitaire wargames", "games with spinners", "multiplayer games that work great for 2 players", "games with sewer movement", "games about detectives", etc. That's because I like to look at game articles and see what geeklists they're on to find other games that have something inherent in common with them.

So this should be my first and last list of games with nothing inherently in common.