PrezCon has officially started. If are interested in tabletop games and you are anywhere near the Charlottesville, Virginia area, you will want to check this out.

This is from the opening heat of the Tikal tournament:

Here’s a couple of guys learning a new one from Columbia Games, The Last Spike:

This is the Civil War themed Battle Cry:

This looks like some people running Firefly with a couple of the expansions:

And here is one of the ultimate hard science games on the market right now, High Frontier:

A lot of people come mainly for the tournaments, which are both competitive and friendly. (If you want to learn new games, this really is the easiest way to do it.) Other people show up to specifically play some of the more complex games that are a little more difficult to get together outside of the convention scene. (If there are cats at your house, you can’t leave the board up, after all!) Still others come for the game auction, to playtest their games, or to kibitz with the many publishers and game designers that are here.

My advice is to come before Saturday if you’ve never been before. A lot of the scheduled games are finals or semi-finals by then and a good chunk of the gamers are flat out exhausted by then. So take a couple days off and come play some board games!