Little Egypt Wars 2012 Wrap Report

Turnout was about average with 105 total, including visitors and dealers.  According to the records, we had 30 judges, 35 pre-registered, 19 registering at the door, 3 dealers and 17 visitors.

Pathfinder was the most popular event, with about 40 players showing up to play PF scenarios all day. Thanks to all the Pathfinder judges who ran and to Seth Gipson for co-ordinating

Boardgames ran consistently all day, with at least 2 going off each slot.  Non-Pathfinder RPGs didn't do so well, with only Gary Smith's Kill Kill Kill, Die Die Die and Brandon Hale's Carbondale Creepers running, though both ran with full tables.

Anthony Landers' Blood Bowl Khemri Cup tournament went off, but with far few players than hoped, mainly due to most potential players opting to wait for the Chaos Cup tournament in Chicago the following weekend.

Magic was lighter than normal, with only five players showing for the Standard tournament. Attendance picked up to 10 for the evening's Mini Masters tournament.

Yu Gi Oh pulled decent numbers, though lighter than for a normal Saturday tournament at the store, with 8 players for the first two slots, dropping to 5 by the evening slot.

Warmachine had a couple of players, not great for the con but it generated enough interest that the game will now run twice a month at the store. 

According to the surveys dropped off at registration, the oldest players were still under 40, most are local residents, Pathfinder was the most popular game played and St. Louis was the furthest an attendee came to come to the con.

Fat Pattles did much  better than last spring, mainly because of the addition of the hot Sloppy Jacks.  If the con moves to the SIUC Student Center for next spring, which we are considering, we won't have them there, due to the Student Center's contracts.  If the con stays at the civic center, we certainly will invite them back.

The con committee will have its first meeting to plan Egypt Wars 2013 on Sept 27 at 5:30.  If you are interested in helping plan next year's con, consider this an invitation to the meeting.

More on Little Egypt Wars

For those interested in more statistics from this year's LEW, we had 115 full attendees. with 26 judges and 89 players, with 6 visitors  Pathfinder was the most played RPG event with 2 tables rnning in slots 1 & 2 and one table at  7 p.m.  D&D 3.5 was next strongest, with one table played in each slot,  followed by FAST, with one table played in botht he 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. sessions.  Various World of Darkness games  ran in the morning and afternoon.  There RPGS are definitely ones the con will solicit for next year.

Magic pulled 20 players for the Standard tournament and about half that for the evenings Commander tournament.  Since we were able to provide prizes to the Magic tournaments without busting the convention's budget, that's a practice we will endeavor to continue in the future.  Yu Gi Oh pulled 11 players for all three sessions so we will plan on running a full slate of Yu Gi Oh next year, hopefully adding Pokemon into the mix.

Boardgames ran at least 2 tables in the 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. sessions and 1 table during the 7 p.m. session.  Thanks to the Centralia judge group for running the boardgame room.  We hope to get a highly visual game such as Lego Wars or Clay o Rama in for next year's event.

Miniatures was the real suprise, with only 5 people turning up for the day long Warhammer 40,000 event.  While they had fun, the all day event wound down long before the end of the second session.  Hopefully a Rogue Trader run next year will pull more people.We had a little interest in the Warhammer Fantasy Battle Rogue Trader, enoug that we will run at least one WFB session at Egypt Wars and a couple of games of HeroClix.

Everything You Wanted to Know about Little Egypt Wars

but were afraid to ask.  This is an assortment of responses to comments that appeared on the surveys we handed out at the con.

Attendance:  A major complaint was not enough people.  We agree and would like to see more people attend.  This weekend saw a lot of festivals in the area, including the Murphysboro  AppleFest and Golconda's Shrimp Fest, plus Cape Girardeau had Pathfinder in the Park.   Attendance actually only ran about a dozen people less than 2010's event and most of those not attending this time, according to our records were judges.

Dealers--Yep, we would like to see more vendors attending.  However, Carbondale is a relatively isolated area, a good two hours or so from the closest gaming store.  Most aren't willing to drive this far for a one day event.  We did have actually have three attending:  Terry Richardson selling Magic singles, Kevin Collier selling painted 40K miniatures and Scott Reed with HeroClix, Yu Gi Oh singles and assorted RPG books and trade paperbacks.  Hopefully you bought something from them as them making sales is the surest way to encourage them to come back and tell others that this is a good event to set up at.   Even if they don't have exactly what you want, spending a few bucks and buying HeroClix, an old trade paperback or a miniature is the best way to show you appreciate them coming and encourage them to spread the word so you have a better selection next time.

Food--From our conversations with them, the Knights of Columbus, who cooked onsite the first couple of times, didn't do much better than breakeven on sales here, so they didn't give us a yes or no on the spring Egypt Wars until about a week or so before the con, which didn't leave us any time to find another food vendor.  We tried a couple of other groups but couldn't get a clear answer for them, so decided to contact Fat Patties. This was Fat Patties first time dealing with this type of event so they had some bugs to work out and have said they will re-design their offerings for next spring, including offering hot food onsite.  Incidentally, the reason Diet Mountain Dew was only available in bottles was because the con-com requested that Fat Patties make sure they had Diet Mountain Dew available, as we knew how popular it would be.  Unfortunately, FPs distributor did not have Diet Mountain Dew available as a fountain drink, so it was bottles or nothing.

Advertising-  We will be posting notices about next spring's EW (scheduled for April 14-16, 2012) on more sites, included Board Game Geek as suggested.  Any other suggestions for places to post are certainly welcomed.