Game_Artisans_of_CanadaLike the Utah Board Game Designer’s Guild, Game Artisans of Canada is a collection of board and card game designers and wannabees who exchange prototypes to get play-testing feedback.

According to a conversation I had with some of the members, it was started by Alan Biggs and Rob Bartel and now has around 20 members across Calgary, Vancouver, and other areas of BC and ON. Membership includes:

  • Dylan Kirk, designer of Genji
  • Rob Bartel, who has a game coming out from Valley Games (possibly Caribe?)
  • Graeme Jahns, designer of The Great Pyramid which just won a French game award (Concours International de Createurs de Jeux de Societe). (source) According to Graeme, TGP is “for 3 – 5 players and takes about 2 hours to play. It is mostly a worker placement game with area majority components. However, there are also resource management and blind bidding aspects to the game as well.” It is Egyptian themed (picture of the prototype, below).
  • Peter Grant, designer of Battlefields Of Olympus
  • Alan Biggs, co-designer of Check, the Chess card game from sggc Red3 Games
  • Gavan Brown, self-professed designer, though I don’t know if he has published anything yet

The_Great_Pyramid