GMT West – 20th to 23rd April 2017 – Ventura County Boardgamers

Full

GMT West aka The Weekend at the Warehouse is a twice yearly gaming event that takes place at the GMT Games warehouse in Hanford, California. GMT basically let a bunch of rabid gamers take over their warehouse for 4 days, and what a great job the GMT staff do in accommodating us.

The cool thing is 80-100+ gamers take over the warehouse, stare in awe at stacks of impressive games, and then we get to play all sorts of games, not just games published by GMT Games themselves. There are usually a number of game designers in attendance. You get to talk with these game designers, and play their new game designs. Many gamers have aspirations to design a game themselves. It is always enlightening to talk with an actual game designer who have turned that desire into an actual game.

Let us not forget Mike Lam who runs a Down In Flames area, and has been doing so for donkey’s years.

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Thursday

Games were already in full swing when I arrived in the early afternoon.

This was before the errata was revised.

Eric, Karl, and Greg with another game of T&T

T&T was a popular game. Sandy (left) came all the way from London.

Yup, there is such a thing as too many cards

It was good to see Pyramid Lake so full.

A good multiplayer game to wind down with.

Otherwise known as Samurai Swords

Jerry has some very creative game ideas.

Oerjan came all the way from Sweden. He run a playtest corner for COIN games

On Thursday night we wound down with a horrible game of Cards Against Humanity. I had to pick this winning answer.

On Thursday night some horrible people wound down with Cards Against Humanity

Battle of Flerus from the Musket and Pike system

Pick a card

The white cards alone filled one table

Every time I looked Terry was playing Twilight Struggle, he was also using the Turn Zero expansion

Friday

The weekend was in full swing on Friday. The squeaky ceiling vent was oiled, but the nearby welders added their symphony of noises to replace

More T&T, I think this was the single most played game

Terry and yet another game of Twilight Struggle

18Ireland with Steve, Mike, and Morgan

Eric, Matt, and Larry playing Unconditional Surrender

Yet another game of T&T, this time it includes Brett and Steve

Bomber Command

1914 Race to the Sea

The new Mark Herman game was a popular game

Greg showing 7YW: Frederick’s Gamble to Mark Simonitch

Kurt and Mike playing Nightfighter

Greg demoing his game 7YW: Frederick’s Gamble

Fellow Brit’s Jon and Sandy were newcomers to Nappy Wars. They had a fun time playing the game three times on Saturday

Roger Miller playtesting a new Rinella game

Wing Leader

Hands in the Sea

Brett showing Terry and Mark his baseball game

Sandy and Jon learning Nappy Wars

Pericles

Sword of Rome

Greg and his game 7YW: Frederick’s Gamble

Falling Sky

Kurt showing his game Fields of Despair, to Roger

Saturday

The main day of the Weekend started with doughnuts, was punctuated with copious pizza, and ended with a great game of Battlestar Galactica. So say we all!.