What a Summer!

Well, as you can tell I have been absent from this blog for far too long. The summer is both a busy and slow time for me and the store.

The store sees leagues slow down and attendance at events wain as summer is the time for being outdoors, on vacation and enjoying yourself before the cold of winter slap you in the nuts. Yes, I skipped fall completely because we really don't get a fall season do we?

So the summer was busy with the Store's 4th Anniversary in July, a couple MtG and Yu-Gi-Oh releases plus of course our regular miniatures events. Infinity pretty much stopped over the summer, as did 40k. We plan to kick off a couple leagues pretty quick and get those going.

RPGs suffered as well. Encounters dropped from 2-3 tables down to 1 and now is rebounding. The Pirates of the Plains' Game Days dropped from 4 to 2 tables. Luckily they are expanding their games and numbers are coming back up (more on that later).

MtG and Yu-Gi-Oh still show how popular they are. Over the summer we were hosting events that brought in 20-30 players on a Friday (MtG) and Sunday (Yugi). It's pretty cool to see that trend increasing.

Myth-a-Con took up most of my time over the summer, especially August. Conventions are a love/hate thing for most organizers. We love to put them on and really enjoy seeing everyone playing and having a great time. We hate all the stress and time that we do have to put into them. I was pretty much a basket case the week before the con as there is always a ton of things that need to get done last minute (like buying food) and dealing with your volunteers to ensure they are all accounted for can be headache enducing.

But in the end we had another fantastic convention. Yes, there will be another one. No, it will not be in January. ;-) Myth-a-Con is scheduled for the September long weekend for the next few years. This gives all of us time to recharge, look at the convention and adapt/improve it.

I need to thank (in no particular order) Gwen, Abbey, Shauna, Keith, Paul, Brett, Scott, Ryan, Chris, Sean, Corey, Andreas, Stephen, Bruce and Eugene. I more than likely missed someone, and for that I appologize. These people mentioned DM'd, Judged, cooked, administrated and more for this convention and they put a ton of hours in to make the convention run as smoothly as possible.

The other major event that kept me busy is the purchase of a LARP Chapter for the Alliance rule system. Live Action Role-Playing is gaining steam in Calgary and I had several players approach me about helping out. Never one to shy from a challenge, I went ahead and purchased a LARP Chapter. Now there is a large group of players getting set to create characters, build their armour and weapons then go hunt down the evils of the world we created. It will be a VERY interesting spring/summer next year. Link here for Alliance LARP

Now we move into September and get ready for the big Christmas push. Our events calendar starts to fill up again with lots of new activities and of course the longstanding ones. It should be a fun winter for sure!

Cheers!