All Things Fun!
2010 GAMA Trade Show (GTS) Blog
Follow Ed & Dina's Adventures in Las Vegas as they learn about all the new game releases for 2010!
Day One
Okay, so I'm telling you about day one a little late. It's Vegas guys. There's lots of stuff happening.
Our flight was delayed which put our evening plans off track. Of course it did give me time to do some power walking through the Philly airport. As most of you know I'm on a major get fit and healthy plan, so I decided to use the time to get my exercise where I could. Our original plans for the evening included a quick drive thru of In-N-Out Burger for a very late lunch then hotel check-in and later a nice dinner. Turns out In-N-Out was the only meal of the day. Not that we minded. You've all heard us wax poetic about this place. It is by far the best burger joint ever. Yeah, I know. I just told you I was on a diet and then I went and had a hamburger. But I did mention that I did laps at the airport????
We got to converse with our friend James Takenaka from Bandai while we waited to check in. I'll talk more about Bandai after their sponsored breakfast on Wed. After settling in and checking in for the show I decided to give lady luck a try.
Day 1: Casinos 1 Din 0. Better luck tomorrow.
Day Two
Day 2 began at 6am. Lucky for us we were still on East Coast time. We headed down to have Breakfast with the guys from Mayfair games. They have developed a new program where they demo some of their games to retailers and then we get to take copies home to show you guys. Pretty cool huh? It's a great opportunity to learn about new games as well as some that have been overlooked. One of the games that we played was The Downfall of Pompeii. I think I love this one because you actually get to throw your opponents meeples into the volcano. In a surprising turn of events we met up with our friend Ray Wehrs (Wells Expeditions, Calliope Games) wearing a Mayfair company shirt. He told us that he is joining forces with Mayfair to bring a new line of family friendly party and light strategy games to market. Product line to be announced in the 4th quarter. (You heard it here first.)
Ed went to a couple seminars on some technical stuff so I decided to give the casino another chance. We walked over to the Paris hotel for a healthy lunch and then back for a meeting with Wizards of the Coast to see about their future product releases. Ed is obscenely happy about the return of the D&D Red Box. For those of you not familiar, the Red Box was (and will be again) a perfect entry point for D&D roleplaying. They will also be releasing an entire line of parallel D&D 4.0 products tailored to new or returning gamers. Also on the horizon is the release of another huge figure in the D&D minis line as well as D&D board games. The first of which is set in Castle Ravenloft.
We then caught up with our friend Aldo from Impressions and headed into our dinner meeting. Easy to diet here since the food was not so great. Thankfully WizKids provided us with some great news that made the dinner worth attending. Not only did we get to see the two previously unannounced chase figures from the forthcoming Brave & the Bold set, we got to take them home. That's right guys. We'll have these babies along with a buy it by the brick piece on display in the store starting Saturday. News of other future releases include; a Brightest Day figure set, the next Marvel set which will be Web of Spider-Man, and the next DC set which will be DC 75. The Web of Spider-Man will include a 300 point duel character Iron Man/WarMachine and pieces from the Siege storyline. The DC set will celebrate 75 years of DC Comics and include characters from the White Lantern Corp. Many of you will also be happy to know that they will be bringing back the Halo line.
After dinner was more game demos, including Nuns on the Run which reminded me a lot of Scotland Yard except instead of all the players going after Mr X, the Abyss is chasing all the novices who should be in bed but are instead running amuck of the convent. I should tell you I won.
We then got to play Casino Vegas. This is the newest game from James Ernest. James taught us how to play. In this game you purchase property and manage casinos and try to outscore your opponents. The game play was unlike anything we had seen before. This will be out sometime this year from Mayfair Games.
Back to the room to write up my notes. It's 2:00 PST. Looks like I'm not on East Coast time anymore.
Day 2: Casino 2, Dina 0
