I have been a dedicated gamer all my life and maybe longer. As a child, I was always the one who wanted to play another round or one more hand. My downward slide into war gaming started when my cousins and I discovered a copy of Avalon Hll’s Gettysburg on a shelf in my Uncle’s closet. This war game obsession intensified in High School when we always waited anxiously for every new Avalon Hill game, playing them to death.** After HS my gaming life withered until I discovered a group of soon-to-be lifelong friends who formed a small gaming club. Further addictive behavior appeared upon attending my first GenCon in Milwaukee in 1982. Then came Settlers of Catan in 1995, This lead to gaming, more gaming and even more gaming. I love every minute of it.
This project started when one of my gamer friends (KL) purchased a molded coin set on the internet. I admired it greatly, but when I tried to find one, they weren’t available except as some generic coins, heavy poker chip sets or costly brass or nickel coins. “Why doesn’t someone make a set like this?” I shouted to the heavens.”Why don’t you” an inner voice whispered back. Then a year’s worth of hard work began….
….plus often groaning “…but all I wanted was just one nice travel coin set”.
**How could so few games be available, you ask? Well, this was way back in the dark ages when only AH was releasing detailed war games and Milton Bradley was releasing some a few simpler ones. 3M was the only source of strategy games. Our other options were Clue, Monopoly or Sorry.
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Here is a list of good friends who helped and gave me valuable advice/feedback on this project. They gave me the ultimate help of not telling me what I wanted to hear. They are listed in alphabetical order:
Al (“There is no game that is too complicated”) Bargender*
Kathy (“You’ll never notice until I announce I’ve won”) Bargender*
Dan (“Just one more game of Dune”) Chinnery
Don (“Spellchecker – what is that?”) Chinnery
Doug (“Every game is war game”) Fritsch
Kurt (“Engineers are Gods”) Lorenz
Greg (“How can I monopolize a resource?”) May
Glenn Drover from Forbidden Games: great guy, great company, great games – an unbeatable combination!
Also, many thanks to David Chen (Shenzhen Doho Metals) and Felix Pan (Shanghai Beyond Cases). Don and Felix consistently guided me to making better quality products. I hope to meet them both some day.