Archon

 Archon 48 takes place this weekend at the Collinsville Convention Center. We have attended since the 1990s when the organizers held it at the long demolished Henry the 8th hotel and look forward to seeing old and new friends again.

Archon

 The Store will set up at Archon SF convention in Collinsville Il this weekend. If you are in the area or attending the Convention, stop by and say hello. and mention this blog post for a free die.

ConCave

 The store will set up at ConCave in Bowling Green Ky this weekend. If you are at the convention or in the area, stop by and say Hi.  Show us this post and score a free die.

Cape Comic Con

The store will set up at Cape Comic Con this Friday, Saturday and maybe Sunday. Sunday depends on how good sales are on Friday and Saturday. If you come by to see us, please be sure to wear a mask.

Convention Map

Casual Game Revolution magazine has put together this handy map showing game conventions, of which they know, throughout the world. See if one is located near you.  St.Louis has at least 4 in the area.

Chambanacon

As is our annual Thanksgiving tradition, the store will set up at Chambanacon this year, November 27 through 29. Due to hotel availability, the con has moved from its long time home in Champaign-Urbana to nearby Bloomington-Normal. At least it maintains the tradition of locating in hyphenated towns.

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.

Trollcon

The store sat up at Trollcon this past weekend. Trollcon is a convention sponsored by Troll Lord Games focusing on TLG's house game, Castles & Crusades. Interstinly, last year about half the events that went off were D&D 3.5 and 4.0. This year, hapily, most of the events playe were Castles and Crusades. Guest of honor was Larry Elmore, who was rahter surprised at the 89 person turnout, since his convention manager had told him to expect a thousand people. Slight miscommunication there (not on Trollcon's part though as they had never said anything to Elmore's person about a thousand people).

Also in attendance was Aldo Ghizzoi, best known for Free RPG Day, who spent most of his time playing boardgames from the very well stocked Trollcon game library. I got in a game of Bohnanza with him, which I surprisingly won by 1 coin.

People traveled from quite some distance with attendees hailing from Arizona, Pennsylvania and somewhere on the East Coast, solely for the opportunity to play C&C with the creators and the chance to try out the new Fields of Battle mass combat rules, which went over pretty well as the TLG rack was emptied of them by the end of the con. Head Troll Steve Chenault even ran a C&C game for players under 14, which went over quite well from what I saw. The kids certainly seemed to enjoy it.

I guess the Magic tournament went off OK. Hard to tell as it was run by a local store and the players stayed shut up in their own room all weekend. The advertised Warhammer 40,000 tournament didn't go off. Apparently a local store decided to run their own competing event against Trollcon's and all the local players decided to go there again.

All in all, small turnout (but up about 30% from last year) and everyone I spoke to had a good time. And that's what counts.

Ennie Award Nominees

The Ennie Awards have pretty much replaced the old Gamers' Choice Awards and focus on the best tabletop games and supplements released during the past year. Unlike the Origins Awards, the Ennies focus on the RPG side of the industry, so no categories for boardgames, wargames or miniatures rules and the minitures category focuses on those porudcts useful to RPG gaming.

Voting for the Ennies starts on July 24 with the winning products and publishers announced at GENCON in August.

Trollcon

The store is set up at Trollcon in Little Rock this weekend. The Troll Lords Games guys are regulars at the now in limbo Egyptian Campaign so I thought it was only right to return the favor. Very heavy on Castles and Crusades here.

Official Origins Report

Here's the offficial report on Origins from GAMA:

Thanks for another great Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio! If you had a chance to make it to the event, you were one of over 10 thousand gaming enthusiasts who enjoyed the show. Although attendance numbers were down by approximately 18% from 2008, day-pass ticket sales increased by nearly 16% which means more people were introduced to the hobby this year than ever before.

This year also saw an increase in sponsors for Origins, more vendors in the exhibit hall, expanded open gaming, an impressive Art Show and Art College, and many other great events and seminars. Special thanks to the 250 volunteers who offered their time and talent to this year’s event. Without their assistance, the Origins Game Fair would not be possible.

2009 ORIGINS AWARD WINNERS

The Game Manufacturers Association's (GAMA) Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design, GAMA's retail members, and the attendees of this year’s Origins Game Fair have chosen the best tabletop games in a number of categories. Congratulations to all the nominees and winners.

Here are the categories with the winners:

BOARD GAMES
Pandemic
Published by Z-Man Games, Inc.
Designed by Matt Leacock

CHILDREN’S, FAMILY, AND PARTY GAMES
Say Anything
Published by North Star Games
Designed by Dominic Craphuchettes and Satish Pillalamarri

HISTORICAL BOARD GAMES
Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear
Published by Academy Games
Designed by Uwe Eickert

CARD GAMES
Dominion
Published by Rio Grande Games
Designed by Donald X Vaccarino

COLLECTIBLE CARD GAMES
Magic the Gathering: Shards of Alara 1
Published by Wizards of the Coast
Designed by Bill Rose and Devin Low

FICTION
Worlds of Dungeons & Dragons Volume 2
Published by Devil’s Due
Edited by James Lowder & Mike O’Sullivan

NON-FICTION
Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales
Published by Atomic Overmind Press
Written by Ken Hite

MINIATURE FIGURE GAME RULES
Classic Battletech: Tactical Operations
Published by Catalyst Game Labs
Designed by Randall N. Bills and Herbert A Beas II

MINIATURE FIGURE OR LINE OF MINIATURE FIGURES
Star Wars Miniatures: The Clone Wars
Published by Wizards of the Coast

HISTORICAL MINIATURE FIGURE GAME RULES
There was a tie in this category.

Field of Glory Miniature Rules
Published by Osprey Publishing / Slitherine Software
Designed by Richard Bodley-Scott

and

Song of Drums and Shakos
Published by Ganesha Games
Designed by Andrea Sfiligoi

HISTORICAL MINIATURE FIGURE GAME RULES SUPPLEMENTS
RISE OF ROME (Field of Glory Supplement)

Published by Osprey Publishing

HISTORICAL MINIATURE FIGURE OR LINE OF MINIATURE FIGURES
SS-Panzerdivision ‘Das Reich’ Panzerkompanie (GEAB06) [15mm Line]

Published by Battlefront Games

PLAY BY POST
Hyborian War

Published by Reality Simulations Inc.

Designed by Paul W Brown III

ROLE-PLAYING GAMES
Mouseguard Role-Playing Game
Published by Archaia Studios Press
Designed by Luke Crane and David Petersen

ROLE-PLAYING GAME SUPPLEMENTS
Serenity Adventures
Published by Margaret Weis Productions
Designed by Alana Abbot, Billy Aguiar, James Davenport, Ted Reed, and James M. Ward

GAME ACCESSORIES
D-Total die
Published by Gamescience
Designed by Dr. A. F. Simkin, Frank Dutrain, and Louis Zocchi

Andrea Kruse

GAMA Communications

Diecon

Store was at Diecon 9 this year. Attendance ther ewas about 550 which was the best attendance since #4. Attendance was way down at the L5R Kotei with only 69 people playing, down about 40%. Magic play was up, mainly due to the strong prize support provided by Heroic Adventures. Warmachine play was flat. Some regular attendees from the past didn't show this year but they were balanced by the number of first timers that played. A whole lot of boardgames were played as well.

Cape Comic Con

over at the Cape comic Con this weekend. The Star Wars miniatures tournament went off, but all the players but one were Castle regulars. Too bad as I was hoping to find a few more players in the area. The Cape 40K players were out in force and had a good Apocalypse tournament. Hope to see a few of them over at the Rogue Trader on the 9th.