Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University.  This week, Scott Thorne looks ahead to the key events at the Alliance Open House.


It’s September, meaning it is time for the annual Alliance Open House.  Though the industry typically views the summer as convention season, the big shows during those months, Gen Con and Origins, focus on the consumer, with retail stores as an afterthought, which is fine.  That is their purpose.  During the spring and fall, the trade shows and distributor open houses take place as the focus shifts to higher up in the channel of distribution as stores decide what products to stock for the holiday selling season (a good 40% of retail sales will take place during the last quarter of the year).

Are they worthwhile to attend?  I generally say "yes" assuming they are within reasonable travel range (or in the case of the GAMA Trade Show, "Yes" period).  Over the years, the distributor trade shows have morphed from tables set up in the warehouse with a publisher set up at each one into multi day events with a full slate of programming, demos and face time with publishers and manufacturers, of which I count well over 100 in attendance.

Looking at the schedule, several events caught my eye.

Keyforge.  Fantasy Flight Games has an entire hour slotted to present and explain the company’s new Keyforge game, developed by Richard Garfield (see "Richard Garfield’s ‘Keyforge’ Puts a New Spin on ‘Unique’").  I am looking forward to the presentation and hopefully a demonstration of the game, since I have looked over the description on the website and discussed it with my Asmodee rep, Aaron, at Alliance and I am still not sure about how the game plays and how each set will be unique. Hope to get that cleared up at this presentation.

WizKids Paint & Take.  Friday night, this event is always popular, especially with a hard-to-find Dragonborn as one of the figures participants can choose, though that Owlbear looks pretty nice as well.  From the website:  "WizKids and Alliance are happy to host this year's Paint & Take event on Friday, September 7th, from 6:00-8:00pm.  Each retailer can choose 1 of 3 free miniatures to paint from WizKid's D&D Nolzur’s Marvelous Unpainted miniatures line. It's a drop in and out event, so stop by anytime between 6-8pm on Friday!  Paints and brushes for this event are sponsored by Vallejo."

Asmodee NA.  Befitting its position as the top specialty boardgame company in the US (Hasbro and Mattel sell more but boardgames are almost a sideline with them) and its position as an Alliance exclusive company, Asmodee NA has three-and-a-half hours blocked out on Saturday morning, including breakfast, which generally has an overview of the previous year and a preview of upcoming releases, the aforementioned Keyforge presentation and another hour and a half presentation blocked between the two looking at the rest of the company’s lines.  If there is a question and answer period, I would expect the recent sale of the company and the likelihood of a special Star Wars-related game release this fall.

Add to this special presentations from CMON (copy of the game demoed and the chance to win a $1500 shopping spree), Renegade Game Studios (demo and get a copy of their game Gunkimono) and Saturday’s Calliope Games - Peer to Beer Event, which I assume involves you and your peers drinking Calliope’s beers.  Looking forward to seeing people there.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.