GAMA Trade Show

I just got back from GAMA trade show in Las Vegas. I had a fun trip overall with Mike and our friend Tyler. Our mission was to get as many retailers as possible to sign up for Tasty Minstrel's Retailer Mailing List. We got a lot of contact info and handed out a lot of plush dragons. I also got to say hello to some people and do some networking. I looked at some games from some designers, and I believe James Earnest will be sending me one of his games to see if Tasty Minstrel wants to publish it. James no longer publishes his own games, he just takes the ones he thinks are really good and shops them around to publishers. I think it would be good to get a couple good games from some well known designers into Tasty Minstrel's line, so I look forward to seeing what James sends me.

On that note, I got a submission from Bruno Faidutti the other day. I had just enough time to print and cut a copy of it before jumping in a car to Vegas - I'd hoped to get a chance to play it there. Unfortunately that didn't happen, but I hope to give it a try on Monday.

The only games I played at the show were...
Eminent Domain: I played a couple games of ED with a few people, and it went over pretty well.

Terra Prime: I didn't play Terra Prime, but I gave a lot of retailers the quick description of it.

Homesteaders: I demo'ed Homesteaders 2 or 3 times during the PSI sponsored Game Night.

Ascension: Rob Dougherty, a name I recognize from the old Magic: The gathering days, was demoing a deck building game called Ascension. I played 3 games of it (and won all three, yay!) and was interested because I'm also working on a deck building game. I feel that Eminent Domain is a different scope from Ascension, just as it's also not really in the same category as Thunderstone or Dominion as a straight deck building game. The whole idea was to use deck building as a mechanism in a larger game.

At the show I also got my hands on a couple new games that I'd like to try out:
Space Junkyard by Mayday Games didn't look that great at first, but reading the rules it sounds pretty interesting. I also picked up a copy of Merchants, by Catalyst Games - a Reiner Knizia game that looked interesting.

I'm looking forward to playing some of these games!