The Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo was a terrific success with respect to the Boardgaming Area this year. I would like to start by giving a huge thank you to all the volunteers that showed up to help out at the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo: Rande Farrel, Shana Froom, Robert Birtwistle, Pete McCarntey, Nikolas Hornbruch, Dave Young, Tim OConnor, Nate Thomas, Dennis Shmorong, Steven Sweeney, Jack Hernandez, and Darren Bezzant for helping to organize it all.
Thanks to our volunteers, the FallCon open gaming area was set up and ready for the general public as the doors opened, and within the first hour we had games of Dixit, Quarriors and Star Trek: Fleet Captains being played! Throughout all of Sunday our little area was bursting at the seams filled with all sorts of people coming in to sit in a game, ask questions about gaming and FallCon.
Our set up was a bit constrained on Sunday we ended up sharing table space with Underground Con and Club N3rd, but it was still a lot better than the three tables we had last year. Saturday started off early with some of our volunteers showing up an hour early to help move tables and rearrange our area to be more conducive to more boardgaming! A good thing too, with over 50,000 people coming through in 10 hours we were busy! From ages as low as six to.... well it's impolite to talk about age.... we kept a steady stream of games on tables.
The most popular was 7 Wonders, but in a close second was Quarriors. Other big names were Pandemic, King of Tokyo, Kingdom Builder, Dominion, Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, and of course Star Trek: Fleet Captains which our volunteers had running the whole Expo through. We ended up breaking our seams on Saturday and Sunday and had to over flow into both the miniature and CCG gaming areas to be able to keep up with the number of people we had interested in games.
Local published designers Roberta Taylor and Matt Tolman both showed up to help demo their games. Paul Saxberg and Orin Bishop were also in attendance demoing their prototypes for people to see. Shana Froom spent most of the Expo challenging passer-by's to games of Win Lose Banana. She ended up giving over 100 copies away to anyone who stop for a game.
Over all the event went very well. The FallCon banners were placed at the front entrance and back walls giving us excellent exposure. We had a lot of people asking what FallCon was, when it was, and how they could get involved. We are all looking forward to a great year as we lead up to our 25th Anniversary in September.
Let us know about your favorite moments from the Expo, gaming or otherwise, in the comments below!
Pete
