By Harvey Mossman
I would like to thank you for making FaTDoG 2014 so successful. I hope everyone had a fantastic time. It was the biggest FaTDoG yet with more than 30% growth over last year. We had 114 attendees many who were new faces and that’s great to see. Gamers attended from as far as Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, upstate New York and southern New Jersey.
Collectively we consumed 36 feet of heros, 25 pizzas, 200 garlic knots, 20 pounds of side salad, 10 pounds of green salad, over 350 soft drinks, 200 cups of coffee, 4 gallons of orange juice, 86 bagels, 20 pounds of various cream cheese and a wonderful chocolate cake brought by one of the attendees. I definitely have a new appreciation for the quartermaster Corps of the Army!
The miniatures area was buzzing with some great setups. Thank you everyone who put on a game. Skill and artistry applied to wargaming is what makes miniatures so unique.
We had more euro games, which was nice to see. The historical board gaming area was bustling with games such as Axis and Allies, Sword of Rome, Fire in the Lake, Shogun, The Civil War Brigade Series, Angola, Hoplite and more too numerous to recollect. Everyone was truly having a grand time.
We had game designers attend who patiently taught their labors of love and demoed their upcoming products. Thanks again to Mark Herman who took the time to teach our group his wonderful design Fire in the Lake by GMT games. In fact, I enjoyed this so much that we set up another game at 10 PM and played until the end of FaTDoG. We had Hermann Luttmann demonstrating his 2 new designs for GMT called At Any Cost and Hammerin’ Sickles. Both are on the P500 list and only need a few more orders to “Make the Cut”.
We had wonderful support from all the game publishers, GMT, Columbia Games, Against the Odds, Victory Point Games, Dan Verssen Games, Academy Games, Compass Games and One Small Step, who donated and steeply discounted their products for the FaTDoG commissary and game raffle.
For the first time we had vendors selling games including John Grasse from Ye Old Toy and Soldier Shop, GameMaster Game Store, Legendary Realms and our own FaTDoG Commissary. They all want to come back for next year. The raffle went smoothly without taking time to announce the winners one by one (although I miss the laughter and comradery that brought) so gamers could spend their time gaming.
We had our first book signing and I would like to thank my friend, Seth Owen for making the trip from Rhode Island. We even had a small art show by David Miller, where we could view imaginative renderings of fantasy and science fiction.
The last gamers finally left at 12:30 AM Saturday morning and as tired as we were, we all seemed to just want to hang on a little bit longer so that FaTDoG would not end.
Thank you once again for everyone who attended or helped out in some small or big way. You are a fantastic, wonderful, intelligent, passionate group of people and I am proud to be in your community. We want to continue to improve FaTDoG and make it the gaming convention that you want to attend. So please don’t hesitate to send suggestions to us for next year.
