MACE 2006. What a BLAST!

Well, what can I say? What a fantastic year! This year, MACE was bigger than ever with more evets, more things to do and more variety. The gaming industry may be in trouble, you could not tell it if you were at MACE.

Of course, all the usual thanks and shout-outs – my lovely wife Stephanie, Jeff, Karen, Patrick, Steve, Kim, Greg, Jessica, Jordan and everyone else. All the GMs did well (and I’d like to hear from you if you did not). I had a few no-shows, a few bail-out when they had full tables, but overall a fantastic weekend. For those people that signed up for games only to find the GM gone or not show up, I am sorry. There were not many, but there were a couple and it really bothers me when that happens.

One particular no-show was an unfortunate situation. Steve Long fell ill late in the week last week and was not able to show. So his Heroes game had to be cancelled. I am sorry for those people that signed up for his game.

To start with, the special events were all well attended. From the Settlers tournament to the SG LARP, from the Magic Tournament to the L5R tournament, from the Warmachine tournament to the WoD LARP… They all got players. The Dungeon Survival game was busy all weekend and congrats to the Friday night evil team for winning. The Killer game had 21 people… the most we had ever! The Magic tournament had 22. The Settlers tournament had 8 people. The SG LARP had 15-20 people playing and they saved the world once again. All my games made, with more people that I had ever expected.

We did seem to take a hit on the miniature games side. We had more empty tables for that than I expected or wanted. But that was made up by the special events, the LARPs and the RPGs. Going in, I did not have as many board games on the schedule as I would have liked. But there were MANY pick up games, which I like.

One thing that more than one person said to me was they asked if attendance was down because the rooms seemed a little less populated. That is actually not the case. Attendance was not down, I can promise you that. It was not much higher than last year, but it was not down either. We had good attendance. But we also spread things out more. So the main gaming room was not always packed like ti was last year, which cut down on noise. Also, we had more to do, including the Treasure Quest game, more LARPs, more games up stairs. Taking Dungeon Survival upstairs also took away a lot of the RPG people.

Like I said, attendance was good. We had a lot of new faces and a lot of old friends come back after a long hiatus. If we had low attendance, the special events would have tanked and they did not. Jeff measures attendance by the number of badges he makes and he told me that total we had about 425-450 or so made. That’s good attendance numbers for us.

I don’t think I have seen more gaming at MACE in its 10 years. It was amazing. I do appreciate all the hard work of the GMs and those that supported them. You all did a great job. Special thanks to Sam Hinton for the Treasure Quest game; Jim Clark for running the Settlers tournament; Matt Holmquist and his buddies for a VERY successful Dungeon Survival; Clint Black for a great Savage World tournament; Warren Buff for running the Killer game and sitting at the gaming table for way longer then I expected; Jessica McGlothlin and Jordan Anderson for being a huge help in the SG LARP; The guys at Dragon Dungeon Games for their support of the Heroscape tournament … and anyone else I forgot to thank.

Now we have mini-mace 2007 in Jan to look forward to. I hope to see you there.

Thanks to everyone again. I had a blast and I am still recovering. I said this to someone on Sunday as I left… there have been years that I left MACE feeling unfulfilled and somewhat disappointed. I have not had that feeling in the past couple of years and this year was especially fulfilling. I thank you all for helping make this weekend so fulfilling for me.

And finally, once again, I really have to thank my wife for being so incredibly patient with me and my hobby. Without her support, I could not do this. She stayed at the hotel and spent most of her time taking care of our daughter, and she deserves special thanks for that.

Thanks again.

Ron, a very tired Gaming Coordinator