Since its beginnings in 2015, the San Diego Historical Games Convention has had a strong presence from GMT Games. SDHistCon Summit 2023, set to be held from Nov. 3-5 at the S.E.S. Portuguese Hall of San Diego, will be no exception. GMT designers and contributors confirmed to attend so far include Gene and Rachel Billingsley, Mark Herman, Jason Matthews, Ananda Gupta, Kai Jensen, Joe Schmidt, Justin Fassino,Terry Leeds, and convention organizer Harold Buchanan. But beyond that, the event will feature plenty of opportunities to learn and play GMT titles. Here’s more on the event and what to expect from it.

The venue: The United Portuguese S.E.S. Hall features a grand ballroom that will be a great gaming space. It’s also in a tremendous location: two blocks from the San Diego harbor, a few miles from the San Diego airport, and surrounded by delicious restaurants and affordable hotels. It will be open from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. 

The organization: The mission of San Diego HistCon (SDHist) is to create a diverse and supportive gaming community dedicated to playing, discussing, designing, and promoting historically-based board games. Through this commitment, SDHist seeks to serve both the existing historical board gaming community as well as grow it through the addition of new voices and perspectives. Recent events run by SDHist include this convention last year, the 2022 Summit Award (given to Red Flag Over Paris), an online convention this March, and SDHistCon East at the U.S. Naval War College this August. 

The events: Each SDHist convention comes with a wide selection of teach and play events, many by the designers themselves. The Wargame Bootcamp team will also be on hand with their famed teaching approach, and SDHist staff and volunteers will run several teaching events as well.

This year’s convention will feature a mix of historical game designers, publishers, influencers, and gamers. Attendees will have the opportunity to see and play games that no one else has seen with our various protospiel events. Designers will also demo games under development, and publishers will show off their best and brightest new and upcoming historical games. The convention will also feature panels and presentations on a variety of topics, including history, media, publishing, and community development.

The SDHist team is working on selecting the four finalists for the annual Summit Award. All four finalists will be available for play at this convention.

At past SDHist events, some of the GMT games taught have included Atlantic Chase, Twilight Struggle: Red Sea, Liberty or Death, Empire of the Sun, Flashpoint: South China Sea, Conquest and Consequence, Rebel Raiders on the High Seas, and many more. The events schedule for this year’s convention is still being finalized and will be published as we get closer to November, but expect to see a heavy GMT presence there with both new and classic titles. 

Open gaming: There will be significant open gaming space available throughout the convention. Attendees can bring games they like and arrange games in advance via the convention Discord server or other platforms, or simply find people to play with at the event.

Pre-convention events: Registration for the November convention comes with access to the convention Discord server. That server will feature several pre-convention Zoom discussions with notable designers and influences in the historical gaming hobby, with access available both live and afterwards exclusively for convention attendees. One presentation, from designer Geoff Engelstein (Versailles 1919, Zheng-He: Admiral of the Ming Voyages) on the future of historical gaming, is already available on-demand for convention attendees. A full pre-convention event schedule is under development and will be published soon.

Registration: The staff at SDHistCon endeavor to make registration for the convention as painless as possible. And if you plan on playing some of your favorite GMT games, they recommend the following steps:

Register for an SDHistCon 2023 badge. Space is limited, and sales are far ahead of prior years, so those interested should do this as soon as possible.

Event “tickets” will be available to all convention badge holders. These tickets will be used to guarantee your entry to a particular game or event. The tickets are free, of course, and are only used to make certain no specific game session/demo is overbooked. The event schedule will be released in October, and event tickets will be available soon afterwards.

---