KantCon features new web-based game playable by everyone on site

By Brendan Howard

Almost every board game, miniature game, and tabletop role-playing game played at the KantCon Tabletop Gaming Convention July 16-19 at the Overland Park Convention Center will involve a select group of people: whoever’s at the table at that moment. Grab a board game from the library, sign up for an RPG at a particular time, or wrangle up some strangers or friends to kill some time with a card game you’ve bought from the vendors: There’s your crew for the game!

One game, however—courtesy of 2026 KantCon sponsor MeetMax Games—will be

available to play for free on smartphones and other internet-enabled devices at any time during the convention with any of the attendees who’ve chosen to play.

At the registration table will be a simple QR code to play a deck-building trading card game. No apps and no downloads, promises MeetMax Games partner and game designer Rikki Tahta: “You just make up a username, if you want, and off you go.”

Here’s how it works: On your phone on a standard web page will be a virtual deck of cards. You walk around KantCon whenever you’re there, visiting different stations, and deciding which cards to keep or discard.

“But to make your deck better,” Tahta said in a recent interview, “you can trade cards with other people.”

Don’t want to talk to other people? Find the cards you can around the convention at stations and build your best deck. But if you want to, say, meet some people and share a friendly moment of trading, then you’ll be living out the game’s best feature: social interaction and gamesmanship.

Make your best hand with the highest score by the cut-off time at the end of the day, submit that hand, and you’ll be entered into a daily drawing for a prize.

Is it hard to play? Will instructions at the QR code web page be clear?

“If you don’t understand exactly what you’ve got to do, then we’ve done a bad job,” joked Tahta.

The game is also fine to play solo—collect your cards, play your hand, call it a day. But Tahta also wants the door cracked open for folks who want a little friendly way to strike up a conversation.

“I'm just giving people who want an excuse to talk to somebody else some angle on what to talk about,” Tahta said. “You can not trade with people, and you could maybe pick a great set of cards, or you can just trade with your friends. But if you meet someone or you're playing another game with them at the table, and you want to say something other than, ‘Isn't it nice weather we're having?’ … you can go, ‘Hey, you playing this game? Do you wanna trade cards?’”

Tahta is hoping that social traders and soloists alike will try out the free game, whose design draws from work MeetMax Games has been doing for years creating group games for as many as 500 people for corporations, events, or family fun.

MeetMax games like Elephants on Mars and Robolympics aren’t designed to be educational, Tahta says—just fun. And when people have fun together and get to know each other, there are always benefits.

“Large-group games are magical, because you get a special energy from a group,” Tahta said. “You get that sense of, ‘Hey, we all did something together!’”

If you’re curious Tahta said that MeetMax is designing off-the-shelf games, but they’re not ready for prime time yet: a Pandemic-style game for up to 24 players and a mystery game to hunt down objects hidden in your home, your school, the church social hall—whatever.

Stay tuned in the next six months to a year for KantCon sponsor MeetMax’s future games, and enjoy the big convention-friendly deck-building game on site this year July 16-19.

Brendan Howard is a freelance podcaster, writer, and editor based in Olathe, Kansas. He was recently ordained as a rabbi by the Jewish Spiritual Leaders Institute in New York City. His podcast is brendanhoward.podbean.com.