S.A.L.Y.

Been a while, been a while…..

You know, I’m the sort of guy who likes things to be very simple. Very often, I am let down. In recent days, I am making the switch from a Mac to a PC, and things I knew how to do before have become mysterious and elusive…. like computer unicorns or copies of Union vs. Central with the tiny dice.

All the same, a few years back a friend of mine in the Canadian Armed Forces introduced me to the above acronym which is used fairly liberally in the organization of military events and happenings. Same As Last Year. Perfect, and couldn’t sum up a better feel for my hopes and plans for this years Hattanooga. Small differences for sure, I hope more people can find their way to us and there are of course more games to play than last year. But all in all, our guests will leave with sore minds, new friends and full bellies. (I promise to order less cake this year, I’m pretty sure I created 4 new diabetics last year)

So, even though I hope to keep it simple and to keep it same-ey, here’s a small list of things that will be slightly different for those of you who attended the previous 2 years. For those of you joining us for the first time this year, you won’t know the difference. Yay!

• We have new and revised (and more streamlined) version of 18DO by Wolfram Janich.
• A new game in development from the prolific Lonny Orgler.
• Local designer Marc Voyer and his pile o’ prototypes. (Including a very nice variant of 1817 set on a map of North America.)
• This years Winsome set. (I don’t know about you guys, but I loved every game this year)
• 1828 by JC Lawrence (as well as his other previous titles)
• New Age of Steam maps, I’m pretty sure we’re over 100 now.
• Many new PnP titles, including 18Zoo, 18OR, 18OH, 18IA, 18MM and others.
• To incentivize people dragging friends along, we’ve started to knock 5 bucks off of admission for attendees for each new person the bring along!

As usual, we will provide the digital grab bag, cheat and spreadsheets and anything else that makes it possible to cram in more train games and just get people playing. We have several old hands at the event and we encourage people just getting their feet wet to make the trip and drink the Kool-Aid. A lot of work goes into something like this and it couldn’t be done without the help and hands of so many. Thanks to everyone who helped last year and will no doubt step up once more. More to come in the weeks ahead, if you have any questions or have specific requests about games, getting them tabled or if you just want to chat, drop a message to hattanoogacon@gmail.com.

Choo choo.