A Look at Toronto’s Breakout Con 2018

This past weekend just about every diehard tabletop gamer gathered at Breakout Con, Toronto’s big tabletop game convention. Only in its third year this convention is already getting much bigger. The convention has a lot of things going on for gamers of all types including:

• Tournaments for popular board games such as Catan, Pandemic, 7 Wonders and Kingdomino
• Fantasy Flight tournaments for their Living Card Games (Netrunner, Game of Thrones, etc.) and Miniatures games (Star Wars X-Wing)
• Exhibitors from great Canadian board game designers and distributors
• ProtoTO – an organization that helps designers playtest their prototype games
• Organized Role-Playing Game (RPG) sessions
• Workshops and Discussion Panels by industry leaders in the Board game and RPG world
• An auction for attendees to sell their gently used games at great prices
• Retailers selling games and other products at special prices

Above all else there are tons and TONS of games to be played. The convention provides a solid library for people to sign out games to play. But even better is their “Play to Win” selection. Games donated by publishers and sponsors for attendees to play. And after they are done they can enter their name in a draw to WIN the game! It’s always popular and draws in a big crowd. This year’s most played game in the selection was Sagrada, a beautiful game by Canadian designer Daryl Andrews. We absolutely love this game and recommend it to everyone we know.

Unfortunately board game conventions aren’t always tailored to kids. It’s definitely made for the adult hobbyist. However I was very happy to see a good number of children at this convention. I was even more thrilled when I see a family of 4 or 5 spending the entire day playing various games. Children were of various ages from 3 to 10. They were interacting with each other, pausing to pull out their sandwiches for lunch, laughing and having a great time.

I saw a few families browsing through the used game auction as the kids got excited to see a few games they like for great prices. I brought a copy of Magic Labyrinth to the auction (a game I will talk about in the future) and it wasn’t there at the end of the day so I was happy to know it found a new home with people who will play it (much like toys in Toy Story!).

At the end of the last day, winners for the Play to Win games were drawn and a number of kids eagerly waited for their names to be called. Some helped roll the die to randomly choose the winner. Not everyone can win, but it was good to see the joy in the faces of those that won.

One of the exhibiting vendors I’d like to highlight is Kids Table Board Gaming, a Toronto-based game publisher of children games ages 8+. They were providing demos of their first 3 games. Two have already been released with great reviews, Foodfighters and Problem Picnic. They have a third in production to be released very soon called Haunt the House.  And a fourth in development which they were playtesting at the convention called Wreck Raiders. We love hearing about designers and publishers local to our city so we hope to feature these games in the near future.

To finish off, here are a few photos from the entire convention. I hope to see you all next year!