‘Big nerd culture’: Hundreds of Utah wargamers gather to battle with dice, figurines

SALT LAKE CITY — “This is the largest tabletop convention in Utah, ever.”

That’s according to Shawn Bagley, an organizer for the Salt Lake Open, a series of gaming tournaments happening this weekend at the Utah State Fairpark.

Wargaming, the strategic simulation of battles, has been around for a very long time — perhaps since the dawn of civilization, according to Matthew Caffrey Jr. from the U.S. Naval War College. Now, it is equally likely to be found in the basement of an electrician or the backroom of a game store as the conference rooms of generals.

The Salt Lake Open hosts a gathering of wargamers from all walks this weekend, and true to its military tradition, takes place at a building on the Utah State Fairpark grounds that housed World War II Army Air Force pilots in the 1940s.

Walking into the event space is like entering a hundred different Wes Anderson movies at the same time. Each table is covered in dioramas of historical battles, the imagined planets of “Star Wars,” the realms of “Lord of the Rings,” or the multiverses of Marvel.

Competitors pace around each table, directing tiny figurines into battle, marking out distances with pocket sized tape measures, rolling great handfuls of dice into velvet bowls. In another life, some of these tabletop wargamers could have been Napoleon, Hannibal, Patton, or the no-names that were crushed under their boots.

“There’s a lid for every pot,” said the mother of one tournament participant.

This growing community is unknown to many, but the appeal of assembling and painting tiny, painstaking details onto fingernail-sized robot battalions has been a siren call to hundreds of participants in this year’s open, battling for $10,000 worth of prizes and bragging rights at the local game store.

Read the full story at KSL.com

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