Hello Reader,
Closing the 2024 event, other conventions, & thanks.
2024 Messen Annual Community Event Closed
We had three wonderful days of community and gaming this weekend. Lots of competition, comradery and awards. Thank you to everyone who attended. As mentioned in the closing ceremony, magic happened.
Messen is more than the annual event however! Get on the Messen Discord Server to see what other things are happening as well. Home Messen is this weekend. Come join!
Also, there will be a 2025 annual community event. Just starting the planning now, much more to come in the next few months. To tide you over though...
Other Conventions
If you liked the community event, I recommend the following conventions for tabletop game playing.
CascadeCon in Bellingham - this is run by O.Shane who attended this year's Messen event. The community focuses mostly on boardgame play, some vendors, a rather magnificent selling tables (100s of games), a touch of game design, and the community is wonderful. There are other types of games being played there as well. The view is spectacular.
DragonFlight & OrcaCon. These are the big middle weights in the region clocking in somewhere well over 500 people. You have to find the fun in these, but honestly, it's not hard to do. Given the size of the attendees, there are lots and lots of activities and events going on as well as play.
DragonFlight has a very impressive library of older games from kids games to Hegemony. Probably a 4-6x the size of the Messen library this year. Lots of miniatures and RPG and things I don't really understand, but its apparent someone spent several months in their lair creating for the joy of others to experience.
OrcaCon is the poly-gamerous tabletop convention. All types of games right out of the gate: board, RPG, miniature, that 2 player card game with commanders and land in them... lots of different types of games across the tabletop spectrum. A real and positive focus on accepting all types of people too which is vital for many communities. Inclusive from start to end this one.
Thank you
I owe rounds of thanks too many people who contributed to the Messen annual community event. Here are just a few, in no particular order, except for the first:
Sarah Guthrie: Sarah is a force helping to propel Messen to unexplored places. She rounds my sharp edges in decision making and thoughts with kindness. Beyond the interpersonal skills she brings, she is a founding member of the Messen Order of the Mule by going to Spiel and packing games around the halls with me over the years. Sarah taught a tournament game this year and served as a general sounding board for months and months of ideas and my own fretting. A fount of ideas.
Scott Cones and Whit Tice: These two gentlemen served as a proto-council for the Messen Community event over the last 12 months. They patiently provided advice and sagacity as I zig-zagged around the decision making leading up the annual community event.
In particular, Whit helped analyze the 2023 survey, taught a game for the Castles of Wonders Tournament, and is always there as a friend and a professional guide. Ask him about an amazing pizza place in West Seattle.
Scott Cones: Scott is one of my life-time friends. We met back in Sasquatch, a convention that served as a major inspiration for what Messen is today. This year though, Scott provided help with organizational advice, wrote articles for this newsletter, taught in the Castles of Wonders Tournament, sponsored games, and helped maintain focus on connecting over meeples as I tutted about money and ticket sales over the last 12 months.
Justin Bright: Helped come up with the game ranking system, taught a Castles of Wonders Tournament game, sounding board and inspiration for ideas. Wonderful PAX West partner.
Yuchie Zhang : Many of you were able to experience Yuchie's wonderfulness this year and last. Yuchie is a force of nature when it comes to connection. Additionally, she is the principal designer for the board game rating system. She also brought many of you to Messen and has made tremendous connections for me in many ways that are certainly going to play out over the next few years. Ways we don't understand yet.
Bernease Herman: Bernease, while she doesn't know it, helped me get out of a couple of slumps in my thinking and attitude at a couple of points. She also leapt in to help out in a number of ways and was an inspiration to me in planning the community event.
Greg Lindsey: While sporting an impressive brain, he also provided a lot of brawn. Served as a sounding board for ideas for Messen and helped schlep the games to the community event. Super helpful.
Ross Williams: Ross taught so many games, great fun to play games with (abandon hope of winning though), and provided several seed ideas in brainstorming sessions. Ideas that found their way into the annual event. Kind and very friendly.
Kris Gould: Our ally at Spiel. Kris as a publisher has a booth many gaming conventions; Spiel was one of them. Kris graciously offered Sarah & I a place to temporarily store games while we hunted for what became the community event library. Kris also generously donated games to the prize pool and brought his own games to supplement the library.
An inappropriately short shout out to Jonathan, Tim O&G, Joanne, Evan, and all those that sponsored, volunteered, & taught games. Thank you.
Ok, I'm going to sound the music on myself. There are so many more to thank in big and small ways. Likely in ways I don't even know.
Respectfully,
Tom Guthrie
