A New Home for the Canadian Heritage Collection

As many of you know, September is the month where the Canadian Heritage Collection typically releases its annual Master Catalog of Canadian Games. While I don't have a 2012 Master Catalog for you, I do have some good news that bodes extremely well for the Catalog's future as well as for the future of the Canadian Heritage Collection itself.

Back in July of this year, I entered into discussions with an Ontario-based organization called GamesForAll that is working hard to grow and celebrate boardgame culture in Canada through a variety of initiatives ranging from retail to event support to publishing and more. We've agreed that their spirit and intent is closely aligned with that of the Canadian Heritage Collection and that they're well equipped to continue growing and improving upon the CHC in the years to come. On that basis, I made the decision to transfer the rights and responsibility involved in the Canadian Heritage Collection over to their team and am now assisting them with the transition.

Belfort sold out, D-Day Dice breaks records, and more...

According to the designers, Belfort is officially sold out from the publisher's warehouse, with the last copies going to Canadian distributor, Lion Rampant Imports. Meanwhile, feedback on the game has been extremely positive. Fans rated it the best game of BGG.con this past week and BGG power reviewers Ender Wiggins and Jeff Temple have given it a very positive and lavishly illustrated review (which is only to be outdone by a recent "Condo of Mystery" webcomic about the game being released page by page.

Here are some quick comments about Belfort from the BGG site:

• "Beautiful board and components. Very good design on board. " - Paul Smith
• "Solid combination of worker placement and area control mechanics." - Marc Buchanan
• "One of the two best 2-player meaty, thematic, worker placement games that is fun and the only one that also has area control." - Jimmy Okolica 
• "A simple, beautiful worker placement. There is a lot of replay in this little box and a ton of sexy components." - Wesley Kinslow
• "Fun game. Fun art. Puts together a host of familiar euro mechanics, but in such a way that is stronger than the sum of its parts. Definitely recommended. " - David Siskin
• "Great game. A much deeper game hides behind a pretty face. Worker placement, area majority, and resource management at it's finest." - Gustav Åkerfelt 
• "This game is as good as it looks! The worker placement is stone age easy and the area control leads to some cut throat interactive gaming." - Zack Stackurski
• "A nice mix of worker placement and resource management." - Andrew Mason
• "Game of the Year 2011?" - Joel Eddy
• "This is simple game that at the front seems like a family game, but it has quite a lot of strategy and agonizing decisions. Excellent components." - Paul Nomikos
• "Such a fun game. A great blend of worker placement and area majority. It all seems to fit together well to create a fun yet challenging experience." - Mike Jones
• "Wow! Worker placement, Area Management, and Variable Phase Order in a wonderful integration without being dry dry dry. Fun! Fresh! Addicting!" - Peter Elsenheimer 
• "A great worker acquisition + worker placement + area majority game, and one of very few games I've playtested that left me aching to play again." - Matt Musselman

Games Stores Across Canada

So how many independent boardgame stores are there across Canada (not including large chains like Chapters, WalMart, or Toys R Us)? When I first launched the Canadian Heritage Collection a little over a year ago, I counted a little over 300 online and brick and mortar retailers.

One of the resources I came across at the time was an excellent BoardGameGeek Geeklist by Shawn Woods of Halifax, where he maintains a running tally of Canadian Game Retailers. While it's not comprehensive, he's been updating it again lately and is currently sitting at around 130 stores. If you spot any gaps where your friendly local game store should be, you can correct the issue by sending him a Geekmail via the BoardGameGeek website.

2011 CHC Master Catalogue now available!

Welcome back, everyone! As you can see, I've been busy restructuring the site and giving it a fresh coat of paint. I encourage you to check out the new Gaming Canadian page for a big list of useful links that really highlight the depth and diversity of the Canadian board game industry. If you know of more links I should be adding, please let me know and I'll be happy to add them.

Even more importantly, the hard work of September is done and we now have a brand new 2011 Master Catalogue of Canadian Games. It's bigger than ever and full of plenty of new and revised "Did you know..." trivia callouts providing insights into the Canadian industry. A big thanks to all the advertisers who helped make this year's catalogue possible and I look forward to everyone's feedback on how we can continue to improve the catalogue in future years.

Happy Birthday!

Happy 1st Birthday, CHC!

I launched the Canadian Heritage Collection in September of last year and, as I compile the 2011 Master Catalogue of Canadian Games, I'm excited to see the project taking on a life of its own.

The 2011 catalogue contains another 50% more games than last year and lots of new and updated trivia about the designers, publishers, games, companies, organizations, and awards that make the Canadian specialty game market such a fascinating topic. We're currently tracking games from 25 Canadian publishers and almost 50 individual Canadian designers. Barring any last minute additions, the content is now largely complete and the advertising continues to come in. For those of you who've already spoken to me or who remain on the fence, a gentle reminder that the deadline for advertising assets and payment is the end of September as the 2011 catalogue will be releasing early in October.  Contact me if you have any questions.

The Games of Summer

Another crosspost from the latest "Canadian Made, Canadian Played" newsletter. In it, we cover the acquisition of Z-Man Games, provide overviews of some new and upcoming Canadian-designed games, and keep you informed of some upcoming Great Canadian Board Game Blitz tournaments in your area.... Enjoy!

Boardgames in Bloom

Happy Easter long weekend, everyone. In case anyone's keeping track, March pretty much slipped away from me. This was largely thanks to the fact that, in my new Operations role at BioWare, I've been overseeing the finalization, launch and patching process for our latest video game, Dragon Age II. The game has faced mixed reviews and its share of both fair and unfair criticisms but sales remain strong overall. The first major patch is out and improving the experience for a large number of users and we're hard at work on another, as well as a variety of other initiatives across the franchise. I try not to talk too much about work on this blog as I have to be pretty careful about what I say. Nevertheless, that should give you a pretty accurate high-level view of what's been keeping me busy lately.

A sneak peek from the Canadian Heritage Collection newsletter...

New CanadiaN GAMES REVIEWED!

With the holiday sales season upon us, most of the new Canadian game releases of 2010 are now available from distributors and making their way into the hands of eager customers. With that in mind, I thought I'd share some of the customer reviews and commentary coming from BoardGameGeek, a popular gaming site among game enthusiasts. While commentary on the site doesn't always reflect the opinions of the broader market, it nevertheless offers some interesting insights into how you might want to present a given game to your customers. Read on to hear what people the world over are saying about some of the latest board and card games designed and published right here in Canada...

A Little Help From My Friends

Two By Two is expected to make landfall somewhere along the Pacific coast this Sunday. From there it will go to the warehouse of central wholesaler Publisher Services and then out to various distributors such as Lion Rampant here in Canada, ACD in the US, and Alliance for the US and worldwide. Online and brick & mortar retailers will include Two by Two in their regular orders from these distributors and the game should ultimately start appearing on store shelves sometime around the end of the month. The publisher had a few advance copies flown over from the actual print run (rather than preliminary proofs). Many of those will be going out to different reviewers and industry press but one should be arriving on my doorstep sometime tomorrow.

So, with the game almost in the hands of the general public, I thought now would be a great time to offer my thanks to all of the people who've helped along the way.

Announcing the Canadian Heritage Collection

As I alluded to in my previous post, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the Canadian board game industry, its long history of innovation, and the robust and very active state in which it currently finds itself. Despite that long tradition and current health, however, there appears to be a bit of a disconnect at the retailer level. In speaking to retailers, I've found that many are unaware of the full extent of that heritage and all of the exciting new developments that are occurring right here at home. Rather than simply blog about that disconnect, I've decided to take action and tackle it head on.


So, without further ado, I'm very happy to announce the Canadian Heritage Collection, a Canadian content education and labeling initiative for the specialty games market. The initiative consists of two parts:

Talking Shop

I've spent my last couple of weeks of evenings and lunch hours dropping in on the various boardgame retailers here in Edmonton. It's been a great opportunity to talk shop with the owners, and leave them with copies of a Two by Two Retailer Flyer that gives them some information about the game and where they can order copies. For those reading, go ahead and forward copies of that flyer to any retailers you think might be interested.

As a game designer, I'm way at the beginning of the pipeline but store owners are right at the very end, actually putting copies of my games into customers hands. It's always useful and interesting to listen to them, get a feel for the challenges they face, the markets they serve, and what I can do to help them sell my game. They were all wonderfully enthusisastic and very happy to take the time to talk shop and share insights into their business.