The Night before Gathering of Friends 2014

I realize it sounds like bragging whenever I mention the Gathering of Friends (GoF) to my friends or family. I don't apologize. It is one of the great highlights of my year. If I could I would invite all my friends to come along. However, I can't. Last year was my first chance to experience this glorious gamer geekdom, and it lived up to the hype.

Alan Moon & Me (chess board made by Stephen Sauer)

For anyone unaware what the Gathering of Friends is, the event is an invite-only board game convention hosted by Alan Moon (designer of numerous amazing games, best know for Ticket to Ride). The event includes about 400 people from around the world. I believe we have about 15 countries represented + about 40 States/Provinces represented from US/Canada (and with almost 30 different publishers in attendance too). The event started tonight and continues for the next 11 days. I plan to arrive tomorrow.

So tonight is my christmas eve. I am scrambling to get all ready for my board game Christmas. I just gave myself a christmas shave (I decided to go with a Mennonite beard to represent my region). I will struggle to fall asleep tonight, thinking about all the excitement of tomorrow, and when tomorrow finally arrives, it will be filled with quality time with my gamer extended family, opening lots of colourful boxes and playing with new toys.

I will do my best to share some pictures and/or stories of upcoming games I see at GoF. Last year I managed to see at least a dozen games that were unreleased. I will hopefully discover some gems to highlight.

Also, I have 4 prototypes I will be shopping around to publishers (working titles: Caffeine Rush, Ninth Inning, Hex & Ladders, and Shopping Cart). Additionally, I will be representing 2 games from fellow Game Artisans of Canada (working titles: Slither by Micah Fuller, Birds of a Feather by Stefan Alexander). I will do my best to keep people posted about who I pitch to and how they went.

Furthermore, I will be showing my game The Walled City by Mercury Games, around at the Gathering. Really excited to show the game around to a few people. Sorry but I can't leak too much details about my game yet, but stay tuned! The one thing I can say, because it already was mentioned on BGG News (so cool!) is Josh Cappel is the artist for The Walled City! Anyone who knows his work (Pandemic, 1960, Belfort, Endeavor, Garden Dice, Kings of Air & Steam, New Amsterdam, etc) will understand why I am so excited about this. And also I am proud to call him my friend. So double win!

Game Artisan of Canada - amazing board game designers + me

And I will be hanging with a bunch of amazing game designers so I will get to play test some great prototypes too!