Blerdcon 2026’s tabletop offerings tracked with the convention’s expansion. What started out as a one hotel convention now covers three hotels in Arlington’s Crystal City. And what started out as a single tabletop room in the host hotel now has its own hotel space with multiple rooms. Just like with our coverage of Blerdcon every year, Montel Thompson, who goes by @NavyMontel, oversees the room with a strategic vision of promotion and preparation.

A twenty-year navy veteran who started off playing Dungeon and Dragons along with Gamma World in his youth, he now has a team with Eric Pinkney and Jose Morales and the many other volunteers that keep the room busy with multiple offerings.

The sponsor of the room was Atlantis Gaming, which has two stores in Hampton Roads area. They had a large area selling gaming merchandise, and Amelia Wood from Atlantis Gaming was teaching people coming to the room the social deduction game Blood in the Clocktower along with other games like Hello Kitty, Stardew Valley and Final Girl.

Interestingly, another social deduction game, Werewolf also was a large hit with the players of Blerdcon.

Thompson travels to other conventions such as PAGE (Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo) promoting Blerdcon and then also extols the virtues of these other conventions on his YouTube Channel to Blerdcon participants and the larger social media universe. GiN caught sight of him at the most recent PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia.

We got time in for a brief interview with one of the tabletop masters, Jose Morales, on Sunday, the final day of Blerdcon 2026.

GiN: How do you explain the success of this year’s Tabletop Room and why these games are so popular now?

Jose: I think that the popularity of our games and Blood on the Clocktower that Atlantis ran just shows that there was a lot of humans that are basically saying, ‘Maybe we’ve gone a little too far. Maybe we do want the human interaction. Maybe I’m on the phone, and I’m online all the time and that’s okay.

But honestly, I can’t wait to get the opportunity to be in front of another human being and play a game.’ I think the craving is there for it.

GiN: What is your origin story for Blerdcon?

Jose: (laughs) I was big into Magic at the time. I was just playing. I was a volunteer. Not even a volunteer at that time, actually. My first year here, I just came as a participant, as just a paid customer coming in. I played Magic the Gathering that year. And because I just started getting into it, I started volunteering too. And here I am!

So, you can’t run a tabletop game room and not think about the Magic players. You’re always consistently going to have to think about your Magic players.

They will come in big groups even if there’s not a tournament, and it is just a way that they can be social, you know. They will be there in the room for five, six or seven hours at a time.

This year Blerdcon even had a Call of Cthulhu table run by Jill Price.

GiN: How did that happen?

Jose: Well, she (Jill Price) just came in on Friday and introduced herself. She asked if we had space, and could we just let her sit? And then she did the legwork. She said if you just give me the space, I’ll get the people. I don’t need more than four or five people, and do you mind if I just kind of run a game and teach it? And for us, it was another option that we could provide the con-goer.

GiN: What other games are popular this year? We see a lot of people playing Blood on the Clocktower.

Jose: Atlantis has some social games they wanted to demo. One of them was Blood on the Clocktower. And so, we said yeah, absolutely. We would love for you to go ahead and do that. They cap it around 15 just because of the space and stuff like that. But we made sure we got them the space.

It’s also just good, the social aspect in that game, with a low barrier to entry. You don’t need to have a deck. You don’t need to necessarily understand the rules because there is a person to help run you through the scenario. So, you can just jump into the game, and it doesn’t require that you do anything other than just be yourself.

GiN: There was a lot of talk about the game Werewolf this year. Can you tell us how that happened?

Jose: Camille, Russ and Dom (Blerdcon Convention goers) asked, ‘Hey, we do this werewolf thing, do you mind?’ And we said, sure, give it a try. And it was a big success last year, so they came into this year even more mobilized! We were fortunate enough to give them their own room. Because, yes, we want that to be a part of the tabletop game experience, but it can get a little bit louder. There’s plenty of props, right? And so if someone got killed, they got a black rose.

 A Wonderful Tabletop Gaming Environment

Taken as a whole, the fun and camaraderie evident in the entire tabletop games room really spoke to organizers who gave the people a wide diversity of games and great game masters to support the experience.

Trading card games were very popular at the convention, with Magic the Gathering (from 1993), Yu-Gi-Oh! (the anime-based trading card game from 1999) along with the newest game on the block Disney Lorcana (Disney characters and themes mashed together from 2023) getting lots of players. Players showed up with their cards, many times playing in their cosplay gear, meeting fellow trading card enthusiasts and were making new friends.

In addition to the card games, role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons were represented by Mark J. He had characters based on the award-winning video game Balder’s Gate and miniatures, and he even had a slide show that gave new players an introduction to the game. His view of the history of Dungeons and Dragons and their various editions were all represented by famous movie super spies, with First Edition being Sean Connery and the newest by Nick Fury of Shield.

As Jose mentioned, this year Blerdcon even had a Call of Cthulhu table run by Jill Price. I played one of those games, and it was excellent. It was deadly, exciting and run in a way so as to teach new players how to play and enjoy the game. My character ended up dying, but the rest survived. The table didn’t have any trouble finding players.

We can’t wait to see what new offerings Blerdcon’s tabletop gaming arena will have next year!