GAMA Trade Show 2017: Wrap Up

–Scott Rubin

CLICK HERE FOR A GAMA PHOTO GALLERY TOUR!

The GAMA Trade Show 2017 has come and gone, but we’re still poring through our copies photos and notes from the event! There was so much cool stuff to see, not to mention all of the great people representing many of the best companies in the industry in attendance. Here we’re going to do some quick hits on outfits, games, and more we just couldn’t leave out from our coverage. Let’s go!

Ares Games: Tons of products were on hand from this games giant including the Wings of Glory aviation miniatures game and board games like Divinity Derby, the Hunt for the Ring, horror board game Last Friday, Sword & Sorcery, Stay Away, and much more.

B&B Games Studio: A relative newcomer, B&B currently offers BetaBotz the robot building card game and the Refuge: A Race for Survivalfeaturing great zombie miniatures that you can paint as you like. Up next in the company’s catalog is Destiny Aurora: Renegades, a hefty sci-fi board game featuring multiple panels representing conflict among the stars and on the surface of planets with some really cool miniatures of characters, aliens, and spaceships.

CMON: While CMON (Cool Mini Or Not) continues to produce inventive new games it’s making huge leaps and bounds into the licensed market and that was apparent at GAMA. On display from their partnership with Eric Lang were both Rising Sun with its samurai and demon figures and the fantasy game Arcadia Quest: Inferno, along with the film-based The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire board game. But the big crowds were there to see the first introduction of A Song of Ice & Fire Tabletop Miniatures Game featuring the Stark vs. Lannister Starter Set! Whether you read the books or watch the Game of Thrones HBO series (or both!) it was awesome to see characters like Robb Stark, a dire wolf, the Mountain, and more coming to the gaming table.

CritSuccess: A perennial favorite at gaming conventions, CritSuccess was on hand at GAMA with their fantastic Dice Rings. These guys are great and I love their product having backed them when they were just a Kickstarter looking to get off the ground. I’m so happy to see their success and hope that everyone out there picks up a cool dice ring or two.

Cryptozoic: If you’re unfamiliar with the gaming scene you may only know Cryptozoic from our coverage of their neat collectibles for DC Comics, Ghostbusters, and more, but they’ve been around for a long time in the gaming sphere and had a lot to show off at the recent convention. Their DC Deck-Building Game series continues with Confrontations, and just some of their other licensed games include Rick and Morty, Anatomy Park, Teen Titans Go!, and Attack on Titan: The Last Stand. For all of your gaming needs Cryptozoic offers Mighty Meeples with DC’s Series 1 and Ghostbusters out now and Street Fighter on the way. At the booth were also some game pieces fully painted and some upcoming Street Fighter collectible products like the 7” vinyl Knock Outs and blind tin mini figure Lil Knock Outs (both coming this summer).

Fantasy Flight Games: While we were unfortunately not able to attend Fantasy Flight Games’ panel presentation, there was an eyeful of their products on display in the exhibit hall and we’ve got the photos to prove it. There you could check out the latest like the Netrunner: Terminal Directive campaign expansion, A Game of Thrones: Hand of the King party game, Runewars Miniatures Game, and the Star Wars Destiny dice game that’s super popular right now. Of course, no FFG display would be complete without Star Wars miniatures, and on hand were Imperial Assault packs for Rebels’ Hera Syndulla with Chopper and BT-1 with 0-0-0. And for the X-Wing Miniature Game we saw the massive C-ROC Cruiser Expansion Pack plus the Imperial Light Carrier and Hammerhead Corvette for Armada.

Halfsies Dice: Let’s face it, it’s tough to come up with something truly new and unique in the world of dice, but John Wrot has done just that. His Halfsies are two-colored dice that aren’t mottled and mixed but rather split down the middle! Halfsies come in a variety of cool color combinations perfect for PCs and monster races and are guaranteed to roll randomly and smoothly. John brought a bunch of sets to GAMA for attendees to check out and they were a huge hit.

Hawk Wargames: Leaving figures to the other guys, Hawk Wargames excels at making incredible vehicles and spaceships, and that’s just what they had at Las Vegas with a simple but impactful booth presentation. Surrounded by racks of product were fully assembled and painted minis from their Dropfleet Commander and Dropzone Commander games, and these things are beautiful. If you’re into spaceships and cool sci-fi/post-apocalyptic vehicles and you DON’T know Hawk Wargames then this is the place for you.

Jasco Games: Jasco has an incredible list of licenses from which it’s made some really fun games including but not limited to Street Fighter, Cowboy Bebop, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The big draws at their GAMA booth included the aforementioned Buffy board game, the newly released Top Gun Plot Twist Party Game, and of course Jasco’s epic Mega Man Board Game.

OffWorld Designs: They may not be a game manufacturer but OffWorld Designs clothes gamers and that’s awfully important in my book. Always a hit at GAMA (not least for the free shirt they make each year), OffWorld makes all kinds of geeky t-shirts, other apparel, and accessories. Chances are extremely good that whatever your fandom is it’s on at least one of their shirts. Also, the OffWorld Designs people are just really darn nice.

Q-Workshop: With the motto “all dice tell a story” Q-Workshop provides a line of premium dice in many flavors including fanciful designs, heavy metal, and much more. The company also makes unique themed dice for a ton of board games, miniatures games, and characters including Lord of the Rings, Call of Cthulhu, Infinity, Conan, Polaris, Knight Models (Batman, Joker, Suicide Squad), Battletech,Shadowrun, Doctor Who, Arkham Horror, Ingress, Pathfinder, and the list goes on. If you love a game or genre there’s an excellent chance Q-Workshop has dice for you.

TCGPlayer.com: One night of GAMA Trade Show 2017 I had the pleasure of attending a keynote address by Chedy Hampson, CEO of TCGPlayer.com. If you’re unfamiliar, TCG is the go-to website for buying single cards (and miniatures) for games like Magic The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokémon, and more. For 2017 (and literally starting as soon as the talk was over), they’re embarking on a whole new project called TCGPlayer Pro. With a quick and easy signup a comic book or game store can get its own unique domain and webstore hosted by TCG with a huge amount of customization via simple and straightforward widgets. You can set up rotating banners on your homepage, advertise specific products you’re selling, customize calendars, and much more. Selling couldn’t be easier as the back-end of the site works through TCGPlayer including their customer verification process. But, as cool as all of that is it’s just the tip of the iceberg. A Pro account comes with a special webcam connected to the system. Place just about any card from a popular card game under it and it recognizes the item and brings up a treasure trove worth of information about it. This includes the current market price, your store’s price if you’ve set one, what cards combo with it for additional sales, your inventory, etc. Are you pregnant? A pregnancy pillow is a large, specially-engineered pillow designed to cradle your pregnant body to facilitate better comfort and better sleep. It offers you support in places to prevent muscle strain, and helps to reduce pressure points. Looking for pregnancy pillows? Explore https://pregily.com and you will find TOP maternity pillows 2020 – We found the best pregnancy pillows and supported maternity pillows on Amazon, including a full-body pregnancy pillow, a U-shaped pregnancy pillow, a down-filled pregnancy pillow! This powerful tool makes any employee an expert on all card games and a strong sales force. Plus, it works as an effective inventory system for any amount of card singles and you can use it for in-person sales as well. Those are just some of the formidable applications of TCGPlayer Pro, so if you happen to work in a comic book/game store or know people who do, send ‘em to http://seller.tcgplayer.com/tcgplayer-pro/tcgplayer-pro for more information.

That’s just a slice of the huge pie that is GAMA Trade Show, one of my favorite conventions to attend each year. Hopefully you got a look at some cool games or miniatures that’ll get you into your local venue this year, ‘cause there’s a whole lot of great products on the way from some great companies. Make sure to check out our GAMA Trade Show photo gallery for all of the action and we’ll see you next year!

CLICK HERE FOR A GAMA PHOTO GALLERY TOUR!

–Scott Rubin

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