3rd Annual 24 hour Board Game Marathon to Benefit Turner Syndrome Society of the US 11-9-13
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Author Archives: Geekjock
3rd Annual 24 hour Board Game Marathon To Benefit Turner Syndrome Society of the US DATE SET!!
It’s that time of year again! The time when all the big planning and the “Save the Date” comes out for this fantastic event.
This year’s 24 Hour Board Game Marathon will take place on Sat November 9th 2013.
The location again as in past years, will be the wonderful friendly local game store The Gamers Armory in Cary, NC.
Please stay tuned, in the near future I will have our 2013 First Giving site live and more information on how YOU can help us in raising funds and awareness for TS and how you can have a TON of fun at this year’s event!
2nd Annual Gamers For Cures 24 Hour Board Game Marathon to benefit Turner Syndrome Society of the US Recap!
All of the Marathon Players at the start of the 24 hours
On Nov 10th 2012 we had the 2nd annual Gamers For Cures 24 Hour Board Game Marathon to benefit Turner Syndrome Society of the US.
During last year’s event we managed to raise just over $7,000 for the charity. To read the write up from last year you can go HERE!
After last year we wanted to reach for the sky! We wanted to set our goal at $10,000 raised, a lofty goal no doubt. So throughout the year we, as a group, talked about Gamers For Cures to anyone who would listen. I mentioned it a ton on my podcast, The Geek Allstars and we made sure all local gamers knew of the great cause. In fact I even went out to Gen Con with a few BGG buddies of mine (Adam O, Chris Kirkman Eric Martin, and John B.) had some business cards made up for the charity to spread the word, and spoke to anyone who would listen at booths about our event. Fast forward a few months and a trillion more begging mails and handshakes, and it was finally time for this year’s events (to save you some time reading about the planning and more on the gaming/fund raising part!).
The day finally arrived. We would be gaming from 8am Sat. morning until 8am Sunday morning, at the same GREAT FLGS as last year, The Gamers Armory in Cary NC (www.gamersarmory.com). Crystal and Scott are amazing owners and really reach out to their customers and the community, not to mention run a top notch and truly Friendly, local game store. This year we had a little over 20 total pre-registered “marathon” players, whom all donated an entry fee to play for the full 24 hours, as well as a handful of players who bought “overnight passes” which did not include the full day of meals but did include access to the store for the full night of gaming. We provided some great swag bags for the marathon players as well as breakfast from NY Bagel and Deli, Cinnabon and Chik fil A , lunch from Jersey Mike’s and dinner from a great Pizza place (Primo Pizza) which is located conveniently next door.
Among some other highlights were the plethora of raffle prizes and door prizes for the big day. We had a ton of great sponsors without whom we simply could not have had a successful event. There is too many to list so I will show you a snapshot of our T-Shirt which has pretty much all of them. BUT, I do want to thank a few of them in print as well. A HUGE thanks to Eagle/Gryphon games, The God-Father himself of the event Stephen Buonocore and Stronghold Games, Fantasy Flight Games, Dice Hate ME Games, AEG, Arcane Wonders, Martin Walace and of course our friends over at Game Salute.
To sum up some of the uniqueness of our raffles is easy. We had a wall of 80 YES 80!!! Items which we had corresponding boxes numbered (1-80) to in front of them on the counter. Attendees would buy raffle tickets for 1$ each, sign them and place them in the appropriate box of the game in which they wanted to win. This way, if you see a great game you want you can stuff the box full for that one game to help your odds of winning. Naturally nothing is written in stone. I stuffed the heck out of the box 
for Crude and Article 27 and Crystal (who put 2 tickets in EACH) won both of them.
But alas, that was not the only raffles we had! We also had a big raffle in which the top prizes were as follows:
1. iPad 3
2. Mage Wars
3. Defenders of the Realm + Hero Expansion 2
4. MTG:from the vault—Legends
5. Dreadfleet
6. DHM Viva Java+ Geek Spansion, + Carniaval w/ Sideshow Expac
Was that all for things to win? NOPE! Not only those but we also had hourly raffle drawings FREE each hour on the hour for every single person in the store to win great door prizes.
So enough selling it as fun b/c it 1000% was a blast. What all did we do???
Well a ton of games were played through the day, and I will encourage anyone who was there to comment/reply to this with what they played and if and how much fun they had, b/c I can only comment on MY fun of the day.
This year I brought my daughter Lauren right from the get go. Lauren is an 8 year old spark-plug and is the main inspiration for the event. She has been diagnosed with Turner Syndrome now for nearly 3 years and has been doing great since being able to start treatment with thyroid meds and daily HGH shots. (For some great info on TS please visit turnersyndrome.org) It was her big desire to play in the full 24 hours of the event this year. So we got started with some great new card games from Stronghold Games.
Lauren and Ruth playing Crazy Creatures of Dr. Gloom
Four of us played a full game of Crazy Creatures of Dr. Gloom and a full game of Lil’ Devils. She seemed to love Dr. Gloom more than Lil’ Devils, where as I enjoyed Lil’ Devils more myself. They are both quite fun little filler type card games but there just seems to be a bit more substance to Devils then Dr. Gloom.
Once that was over it was time for our annual Ascension tourney. This year we moved the tourney to 11am which I think hurt our turnout a slight bit for it. We ended up having to use a 3 table set up with one table being light a player. Adam Reeves ended up being victorious in the tourney, but again I think we all won seeing as we got to play my favorite game Ascension!
From there I was able to help out talking to various people who were new to the store and even some who were new to gaming but happened to hear about the event in one way or another. I showed them around the store and told them about various games going on at the time. There was some old standards and favorites including Agricola, Macao, Samurai Swords/Shogun, Endeavor, Stone Age and Galaxy Trucker… Some new favorites including Ahnk Morpork, Quarriors, Fleet, Vegas, and even a 5 hour plus game of Battlestar Galactica! We even had some daytime prototypes making an appearance with Darrell Louder’s Compounded getting a nice play (so jealous I missed this one).
Some enjoyable Viva Java! (Image curt. of Dice Hate Me Games)
Before long I was longing for some more games and trying to get a work buddy of mine and my uncle (both newer gamers) into the fray. I introduced them to the 30 year old gem Can’t Stop and I could tell their excitement was building! From there I took a shot at getting them a piece of some larger scale gaming in the form of an 8 player game of Viva Java. It was about as unique the table for VJ as I had ever seen. We had completely new gamers, some fairly new gamers, some veteran gamers and even the developer (Dice Hate Me Chris) himself in on the game. One thing that was not unique was that even in what Chris described as “hands down the strangest game of Viva Java ever played”, it was an absolute BLAST for all who played it. No matter where people finished in the game we ALL loved the experience and the game, and not a better complement can be made to such a good game.
From there it was already nearly 11pm and time for the wrapping up of the dollar and big ticket raffles. Games were won throughout the day between hourly drawings and the dollar and big ticket raffles, but just about EVERYONE who either wanted to win or tried to win. I think I ended up walking away with the Thunderstone Advance Expansion, A Nightfall Expansion, Sunrise City, and a copy of Off your rocker.
Now, it was closing time for the store for the lay person, but not for us marathoners, or the people who donated to get the “overnight pass” to game with us until 8am! It was the REAL time to have some serious gaming going on!
This was the time I was looking forward to. Finally time for me to relax and to do so I got us started in a 4 player game of the upcoming Clever Mojo release Princes of The Dragon Throne. I was really looking forward to teaching this one to Adam O and Mario C and I know Chris was looking forward to getting some revenge on me for the smackdown I
Princes of The Dragon Throne… Yep it is THAT much fun. Keep your eyes out for it coming soon from Clever Mojo Games
- Myself, the Mrs., Crystal and Scott from the Gamers Armory and my daughter Lauren
handed him at Gen Con this year. Well Adam O was the one laying the smack down and I took up the rear, but who cares we got to play this killer upcoming game. All four the players agreed that the game looks beautiful (ESPECIALLY for a prototype) and the game play is equally up to the task. We simply cannot wait until we can get them to take our money for this when the time comes!
Next up for me was a game of The Castles of Burgundy. Let me say that this game is one I truly LOVE. That’s usually a bad thing for me, b/c the more I love a complex game like this, the worse I am at it. Two rare things happened in this one… First I won, and somehow it was decently handily getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 270 or so points (and even somehow beating my gaming mentor/nemesis Adam O) but secondly I did so without ever getting out of the 3rd hole in turn order. No small feat, any one of those.
To wrap up the night, the current “in country” hosts of The Geek Allstars Podcast (myself, Adam O, and Red since Gyroplay is currently in Antarctica… and no that’s not a joke or metaphor for someplace else), along with our many time guest host Chris K, and finally Ruth B, sat down for a not so friendly game of Vannuatu. Dear lord is that game cut-throat. One thing is for sure when you play it, you need to make sure what happens in Vannuatu, stays in Vannuatu. It had us cursing at each other after 23 hours of gaming together and ready to throw wooden bits into each others eyes! Of course it was all in good hilarious fun, especially watching Red draw turtles completely screwing Chris over at the same time… ahh screw your neighbor gaming fun!
And Just like that the day was over. We had played and ran an amazing and successful 2nd annual 24 hour BG Marathon for Charity. The numbers are still being tabulated for exact amounts BUT we already know we managed to raise over $8,000 for Turner Syndrome Society of the US!! I know I was and am still tired from being up so long, but I simply cannot wait for next year!!!
Can we do it 25 hours next year??? Only time will tell! Stay tuned and thanks for all of your support!
–Dan
Thanks to Board Game Reviews by Josh for the feature on Gamers for Cures!
I wanted to take a moment to extend a great big THANK YOU to Josh from Board Game Reviews by Josh. Josh is doing a monthly feature on Board Gaming Charities, and featured our charity and the 24 Hour Board Game Marathon for TSS in his October installment.
Please check out his site. He does some amazing work and I love his plethora of reviews!
Also we have gotten some of our raffles to the printer and should have them this week.
This year’s BIG 5$ raffles will be for these prizes:
1st prize: iPad3
2nd Prize: Mage Wars Board Game
3rd Prize: Defenders of the Realm Board Game + Hero Expansion 2
4th Prize: Magic: The Gathering–From the Vault
5th Prize: Dice Hate Me Games’ VivaJava: The Coffee Game with Geekspansion & Carnival with Sideshow Expansion
As a reminder please contact me if you would like to donate or be a part of this great event! Nov 10th is quickly approaching!
Or if you would like to donate via the First Giving site click HERE! (Or follow the link at the side of this page).
–Dan
Donations still pouring in.. Going to be a great event!
Just a quick event update.
The donations have been coming very well from the board game world.
Here is a great pic of games we will have for give-aways and for raffle during the 24 hour board game marathon.
As always if you have any Q’s, want to donate or want to participate in the playing please contact me!
2nd Annual 24 Hour Board Game Marathon for TSS date set and FirstGiving site is now LIVE
That’s right! The date is official for this year’s 24 Hour Board Game Marathon to Benefit Turner Syndrome Society of the US. This year’s date will be Sat Nov 10th 2012. Just like last year we will hold it at the best local game store in the area The Gamers Armory in Cary NC.
Last year thanks to all the great donations from the community and Game Publishers we raised over $7000. This year we hope to raise over $10,000. And we can only do that with YOUR help!
So please head on over to the FirstGiving site and help us in any way you can. And for more information on how you can be one of the Marathon Gamers for the full 24 hours please click on Mail tab at the top of this page. Or like us on Facebook and post your interest there and I will contact you.
As always if you are a game publisher and would like to donate games,promos or gift cards please mail us or contact us via facebook.
Thanks for your time and see you in Nov!
Dan
2012 Race for the Cure was a huge success!
Thanks to all who donated and participated on Team Gamers For Cures/ Gamers Armory this year! We raised just under $2,000 and had 14 runners on our team.
We were able to find some of the team on race day. Some ran in the later race, some ran near the front of the competitive race, some missed due to illness (Get well soon!), and the main pack of us walked/ran along with my kids.
It was a great time and thanks to Raleigh, the Komen Society, and all of the volunteers and workers for making it once again one of the greatest charity events in the area.
Stay tuned as in the coming weeks we will be announcing this year’s date for the 24 hour Board Game Marathon to benefit Turner Syndrome Society of the US.
2012 Team Gamers For Cures/ Gamer’s Armory
First event for 2012— Susan G Komen Race for the Cure June 9th
Hey Everyone! Gamers for Cures and The Gamers Armory have a team to be a part of the 2012 Komen NC Triangle Race for the Cure on June 9. This event is supports the NC Triangle Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure in its efforts to end breast cancer forever.
Please help support in this important project by becoming a member of our team! We are looking for all of our friends, family AND GAMERS, to join us in supporting this very worthwhile cause. Becoming a team member is easy! All you need to do is click on the link below, click on “Join this Team” and register for the NC Triangle Race for the Cure.
If you cannot make it and want to help us reach our goal simply click donate to this team, and share any amount you can.
Click here to join us in the Race for the Cure, or to donate.
Remember, one person can make a difference in the fight against breast cancer. Susan G. Komen for the Cure was founded by one sister making a promise to another sister. You can be a part of this worthwhile effort! Our promise of a world without breast cancer does not just rest in the hands of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. It is up to you, our community of survivors and co-survivors, to stand united with us until the promise is fulfilled and the cures are found.
We look forward to seeing you on Race day!
Gamer for Cures
The event has come and gone and was a HUGE success!
Well after all the planning and after all the gaming, it’s over. I am real sad it’s over b/c I wanted the night to never end, but I am infinitely happy that it was such a success as well. So check out this all below for the whole story of the day. And please check us out periodically for both the next event (The Susan G Komen race for the cure in June) and the planning for next years Board Game Marathon!
So… story and recap below!
Ever since July I have been planning a charity event in honor of my daughter who has been diagnosed with Turner Syndrome for just under 2 years. I had always heard of these video gaming marathons people did for charity and decided that I would do the same, cept I would take my beloved hobby of board gaming and have my own marathon.
Thus I created a charity called Gamers for Cures and then the 24 Hour Board Game Marathon to benefit the Turner Syndrome Society of the US was born. I had approached my favorite friendly local game score, The Gamers Armory, and simple as pie we had a place to hold the event. The board gaming community as a whole was AWESOME with their support. Game publishers rallied around my requests and before long I had a bunch of games donated by publishers for use in raffles and giveaways for the event. I then got 14 people to volunteer to raise money and partake in the whole 24 hours of the event. I couldn’t believe how well it all was coming together. Add in some great publicity from great podcasts including The Dice Tower, Pulp Gamer’s Out of Character, What would Patton do, The Geek All-Stars and The State of Games and we were already starting to raise money on First Giving months before the event even took place.
Fast forward a bit to last weekend Nov 12th, the big day. After all the hard work Mrs. GeekJock, myself and Crystal and Scott from the Gamers Armory put in, it was finally here. We ended up with 50 items we had up for 1$ box raffles (you buy the tickets for 1$ each, as many as you want, and then put them in boxes corresponding to the specific item you want). Some great items were in this raffle including Eminent Domain, 1st edition ASL, A Few Acres of Snow, Discworld:Ankh-morpork -Collectors Edition, Alien Frontiers, Yomi -Complete 1st edition. We also had a 5$ big raffle we sold tickets for which included prizes such as an iPad2, MTG:From the Vault, Dominant Species,
- We had a TON of great games in our dollar box raffles.
Defenders of the Realm + Dragon Expansion. People also donated on the day of the event getting complementary T-Shirts and door prizes. We ended up raising an amazing amount of money surpassing our initial goal by a ton… but I will get to that amount in a little while. First a little re-cap of the event.
The day started off bright and early. I woke up early picked up the Redheaded Pharmacist and we picked up breakfast. Chik Fil-A of Apex donated breakfast for our marathon players and it was nothing less then amazing. They gave us a bunch of breakfast sandwiches, some coffee, some sweat tea and a fruit tray. A great way to start our 24 hours of board gaming goodness off. The gaming started shortly after gobbling down some chicken biscuits, as I taught a couple of the gamers Alien Frontiers and saw a nice 4 player game going, and on the other table they had Thunderstone going on. Right after that we got a nice 6 player game of 7 Wonders going which was great. I simply love the game, especially being it scales well no matter how many people you have playing and that it doesn’t increase the time to play at all. Once the doors opened for the store to the public at 10am I had some friends stop by and I broke out King of Tokyo. K-o-Tokyo is always a good hit among seasoned gamers and rookies alike and today was no exception. We had a decent crowd around it for close to 2 hours but alas it was almost tim for the Tri-athalon tournament to start. I still had to pick up lunch, which was graciously provided to the marathon players by Jersey Mike’s of Cary! So I grabbed the awesome subs wolfed one down and started to round up everyone who was going to play in the tournament. The idea behind the tourney was to have 3 tables going of 4 people and rotate each round and get some winners of the games that were played. We had a table for Settlers of Catan, one for Small World Underground, and one with 2 shorter games– Dominion (with base+Cornucopia) and Quarriors!. I had to abandon getting my butt kicked at King of Tokyo by the 7 year olds and take my place among the tourney players. I had a great time playing in the tourney and managed to come in 2nd place overall! A bit of luck and a bit of skill but a LOT of fun.
- Triathalon tourney winners
From noon until 10pm we had hourly door prizes for all those in attendance. Anyone who was in the store at the time of the door prizes received a ticket for the current drawing, and then they were able to take an item from the box of goodies. People really seemed to enjoy this a lot and I couldn’t believe how fast hours were melting away between each hourly drawing.
Next up,after some great pizza donated to the marathoners by Primo Pizza next door, was the Ascension tourney! Man oh man do I love me some Ascension. I got put at a rough table to start as all 4 of us were very good players. The good old Redheaded Rx beat up on the table and I had a rough game never getting much luck at all and round 1 was in the books and I was in last at the table. But, all was not lost as we had 2 more rounds to go. I finished tied for first in the next table with my other co-host of the Geek Allstars podcast Gyroplay (Todd) and then we were thrown together in the final table as well, which I also managed to get the best of him. This time though I had an amazing game just getting killer draw after killer draw and simply ran away with the table. Over on the other tables Mrs. Geekjock was doing well in her tables but she ran into the juggernaut that would be Red in her final table of the night who cleaned up again, en route to his berth in the final table. As for me and Todd, it seems our tieing for 1st on the 2nd table did us in, splitting those points and we were left out of the running for the finals, and that left Red as the only one of our 4 to make it to the final table. Red managed to finish in 2nd in the tourney, getting himself a copy of the Expansion (Reutrn of the Fallen), which he was real happy to get.
Once the Ascension tourney was over it was finally time for the ever anticipated raffles to occur! Crystal and Scott had been working on the game day $1 winners
- Gyroplay unsure if we will save the world or not in Elder Sign
during the final table of the tourney and then we all gathered around for the big ticket raffles. Red was on quite a roll this day as he managed to win one of the 1$ raffle prizes and also won the big ticket copy of Dominant Species. I am real happy for him about the DS win, but that is prolly only b/c now our little gaming group has a copy we get to play on a regular basis hehe. The iPad went to the Giordano’s who not only simply bought their ticket the day before the marathon, they only bought ONE TICKET! I guess it’s one of those things, if it’s meant to be, it’s truly meant to be!
After the raffles things started to settle down some more as people began to head home and we pretty much only had the marathoners and the extra players who donated to get the all night pass to stay in the store after hours to play with us, left in the store. At this time a few of the guys were still playing Fortress America, my daughter Lauren was getting a lesson from Joey C in Magic: The Gathering (my wallet is not happy she learned this), and I jumped into a game of Elder Sign with Todd and Ruth. I like Elder Sign quite a bit and we went on an amazing roll (pun intended!) and came away with the win vs the Great Old One! NExt up while more people played some King of Tokyo, others played even more Ascension, and the Fortress group finally finished after 5 hours and moved to Acquire, the co-hosts and I set up in the back room for the LIVE taping of The Geek Allstars Podcast! We checked in from the event and had a killer chat with Crystal and Scott, interviewing them about our event and the history of the Gamers Armory as well. I really enjoyed talking to them and I think the show came out great.
BUT, it was time to get back to gaming! Todd, Red Adam O, and I got a game of Belfort going next and I think I can speak for all 4 of us when I say we had a blast. It’s a great game which is amazingly fun, never the same twice and you also have no idea how fast the time goes. Behind us they had a game of Revolution! going which sounded like it was quite hotly contested too. Once Belfort was complete there wasn’t a whole lot of time left for the Marathon. Somehow the day was nearly over and all we had time for was a quicky game of 7 Wonders to bring us home after a full day/night of gaming.
When it was all said and done we had raised OVER $7,000 for the Turner Syndrome Society!!! I simply cannot believe how much we raised, how much fun we had, and how receptive everyone was to the event. Not only that, the best sign of the day was that, at
- GeekJock with daughter Lauren, and Crystal and Scott from the Gamers Armory
8am, no one was talking about how tired they were. EVERYONE was talking about how much fun they had and how they simply could not wait to get back to being in the event next year!
So there you have it. Sorry I have been a bit slack on the blog lately but it’s not without good cause. With any luck I will be able to get these 7 or so movie reviews I have to get to done soon, and my usual rants about this and that should continue again soon. But until then please check out some of the great sponsors of the event, check out the site for more of the info about the event (www.gamersforcures.com) and of course check out our gracious hosts The Gamers Armory.
–Geekjock
Special Thanks to Triangle Direct Media
A huge special THANK YOU to Triangle Direct Media for their Generous Donation to our Charity Event!
Please do us a huge favor and check out their site by clicking Triangle Direct Media or by clicking the link on the side of this page.
If you have media marketing needs, social media marketing needs, Search engine optimization needs etc they are a perfect fit for you!
We are constantly accepting donations for the 24 Hour Board Game Marathon for Turner Syndrome Society of the US, so if you would like to follow Triangle Direct Media’s amazing lead click HERE to do so, or the link on the side of our page.
–Dan