Had a blast. Thanks to Ross, JohnBart, all the team captains and everyone else who helped organize. Found a couple of new-to-me games that I really ended up liking after not having played them before the tourney, like Crystal Castles and Black Widow. Also did a great beer trade with Ethan. Thanks mate!
We had a couple of locals play that had never played in a tourney before and their enthusiasm was really fun to see. "Hey! That's Donald Hayes!", yup and he's on your team, man. One of them qualified on our team as well which was cool. Reminded me of when I played my first tourney
and it kind of energized me as I hadn't really played anything since Yolympics, have sold most all my games and lost a bulk of interest in games generally. The enthusiasm of the new players was contagious though (as was the coughing everyone was doing I think).
It's just super fun to get everyone together and go take dinner breaks, get help/give advice on a game, drink more than a few beers, etc. Twitch and other mediums are great but playing together in person is really just the best. I was getting a bit of a lack of interest vibe at times when reaching out to folks but after seeing the results both at GGA (awesome job) and locally, once everyone got to the arcade there was certainly zero lack of interest and everyone had a great time.
Let's keep this thing going.