Arizona Game Fair Recap

Well Arizona Game Fair has come and gone and I have survived! This was my first time attending this event which is normally a all Board/Card convention, this year I was the first actual miniature game to be hosted (Yes X wing was there, but I look at that as more of a board game than miniature game), which was CAVSO. I also was brought in to run the Paint & Take for the event, which was sponsored by Talon Games. 

I ran about 20 people through the CAVSO demos, which all but one had never played a true miniature game. All that played this weekend had a blast and loved the game,  so I would say that it was a hit!

CAVSO Demo Table, thanks to Robert for lending the terrain!

A packed table for CAVSO!

Besides the demos, as I mentioned I ran three Paint & Takes with CAVSO models. Talon Games sent a bunch models to use as well as Reaper paints. My friend Richard who recruited me to AZGF, bought the brushes to use for the event.

CAVSO models on display to inspire painting!

Two full packed tables for the Paint & Take

Each session had 12 folks signed up and all but a few had never actually painted anything before. As I said before, this is primarily a board and card show, so not many painters there. Now with more board games having cool miniatures, more folks are looking to paint there miniatures in their board games. So this was a great excuse to pick up a brush and test out their skill with out having to invest in paints and brushes. Once again folks had a blast painting and for most, these were the first miniatures that they ever painted.

So how was the rest of the event? Well from what I saw of it in between my demos or classes, tit looked like it was pretty well handled. There were lots of board games and when I went over to the RPG room, it was packed! The vendor area had a good selection of shops, including Imperial Outpost. All of the shops present had good selections of items, although not to surprising, none of them had any miniatures. All the folks that played in the demos or went to the Paint & Take were asking me if they could buy any of this there, which sadly I had to point them to the Reaper website. I imagine that with more miniature games, the vendors will respond by bringing more minis next time.

And because of the success of the events I ran, it looks like i will be going back next year to host more games. In fact I will be running a few Fistful of Lead games next year at the event. How do I know that, well I went and did a bad thing the other day, I ordered two bundles of Sarissa Precision of Old West terrain!

So next year, we will have some Old West Action going on at Arizona game Fair. I am also meeting with Richard to discuss just what sort of miniature games should be show cased at future events. Now, I need to wait to get my new toys, so stay tuned for some new terrain.

TK

Arizona Game Fair

Well,

This up incoming weekend I will be out at Arizona Game Fair, running a few events. Now Arizona Game Fair is primarily a card and board game show, but they are trying to branch out to other games such as miniatures.

I will be running a few demos for CAV Strike Operations as well as running a paint & Take sponsored by Talon Games. The nice thing is that Talon Games has provided all the miniatures for the give away as well as a few books to give away for CAV Strike operations.

So why am I doing this? Well that's a great question! You see I sort of hung up my organizers hat a few years ago after I closed down Gathering in the Desert. It became a lot of work to put on the event and besides a few folks, I really didn't have much help. Now I always envisioned linking GitD to a bigger event, but for the longest time we had no such events in the valley of the sun.

Also about a month ago a few folks approached me asking what did it take to put on an event. I told them they were nuts from starting from scratch and that they should join up with another established game event. Well that got me thinking, if we ever wanted to have a miniature based con here in the valley, then we would have to grow it with another event.

So hence when my friend Richard approached me about Arizona Game Fair, I thought I better put my words were my mouth was. So I made a few calls and figured out what I wanted to do. Funny thing is, about two weeks ago I organized the Taco Bowl Blood Bowl day, I had another organizer approach me to run a few more miniature games at another local con, CritHit . So it looks like the events are starting to happen, so it seems I will be busy rather soon.

So if your are available, come on out to mesa to play a few games...

TK