‘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.

“These are all groups of gamers that are alive and well, that nobody knows exist,” Bagley said.

Mario Capizzo is the president of Utah Wargaming and has been organizing tournaments since 2015.

Our very first year, we had around 100 people play and we only have like one or two game systems,” Capizzo said. “This is our third year, we have over 400 participants this year and 13 different game systems.”

It’s gotten so big, that the Utah scene is rivaling some of the biggest gatherings in the U.S. and is performing as one of the biggest markets for these types of games.

“Utah just has a big nerd culture in general,” said tournament organizer Abigail Hansen. “There’s a lot of community effort to make it grow.”
Gen Con, the largest gaming convention in the United States, is also happening Saturday. The game system Hansen is overseeing at the Salt Lake Open has the same amount of participants.

Many players that spoke to KSL.com noted the openness of Utah’s gaming community as a primary motivator for participating. “The community was like, the best I’ve encountered in any card gaming or miniatures gaming, ever,” said one player.

The games have experienced player growth from the rise of streaming on YouTube and other platforms, along with the release of companion fantasy novels, animated series, audio dramas, and intellectual property licensing. “In the past several decades, things have substantially changed and expanded,” said Capizzo. But the real reason people are coming together seems simpler.

“Honestly, the biggest way that the game spreads is word of mouth,” Capizzo said.