SaltCON 2012

We returned to SaltCon in Salt Lake City, Utah this year from February 17-18.   If you’ve been following us, you might remember that we won the Ion Award competition at SaltCon last year with our game Pizza Theory, and connected with Gryphon Games to publish it.  Well, this year was the grand unveiling of the first shrink-wrapped copies of Pizza Theory on the one year anniversary of the award.

It was awesome to get our hands on the final product, and it was fun to introduce the game to new players with the clean artwork and components (no longer a prototype)!  You can see pictures of the game pieces and the box over at Board Game Geek.

We also hosted an official Pizza Theory Tournament along with Rick Soued of Gryphon Games, which was a blast.  We started with 18 contestants, and narrowed it down to 2 finalists after two rounds (with two wins to move on each round).  To round out the Final Match, Greg and I alternated as the third player, until someone could get 2 wins.  Those final games were intense, and I only got one win in the 4 games it took to select a winner.  Sadly, Greg was unable to win a game, which goes to show how deserving the finalists were!

While we didn’t have any new entry into the Ion Award competition, we had some friends among the finalists.  Wade Herrboldt, from our own Gamescape Designer’s Guild, was a finalist with his game Nix Six.  And the winner of the 2012 Ion Award was a designer that we met at KublaCon last year, Joseph Kisenwether with his card game Rocks!  Congratulations to both of them and all the other finalists.

It was another great year at SaltCon, and it was, once again, well worth the drive.

-Brian

Ion Award

Writing from SaltCON in the great snowy Utah.
Pizza Theory won the Ion Award for best strategy game! We also immediately got two offers from publishers at the convention. We will update you with any developments, so come back soon!

SaltCON

After some internet research for Board Game Design competitions, Greg discovered the Ion Gaming Award. A “design competition that recognizes unpublished or newly published tabletop gaming designers. ”  Sounds perfect!

We submitted the descriptions for Pizza Theory and Empower by email back in November 2010.  Pizza Theory was accepted as one of the 4 finalists in the strategy category (out of 22 games in 2 categories).  So we get to present Pizza Theory in front of the judges at SaltCON.

SaltCON is a gaming convention in Salt Lake City, Utah on February 18, 19 2011.  I’m driving out to Utah with my wife and Greg for the Con.  None of us have been to a convention out there before, so we will get to meet a lot of new people.  And my wife is looking forward to seeing some snow, I just hope there isn’t too much on the drive.

-Brian