ACD Games Day is an annual tradeshow put on by hobby games distributor ACD Distribution LLC that connects retailers with the top publishers. This year’s show was bigger than last year and offered exhibitors and attendees to explore a brand new location in Downtown Madison.

Industry veteran Boyan Radakovich, who is ACD’s new Marketing Manager, had this to say about his first ACD Games Day.

“I wanted to make sure that ACD Games Day had the feeling of a marquee tradeshow. We moved to the beautiful Monona Terrace Convention Center and Hilton Madison for our event programming. We also increased the number of seminars to sixteen total, including key manufacturer seminars like the Wizards of the Coast track, the Mayfair Demo-2-Demo program, and many others.”

Having attended a show the previous year, I could definitely tell the difference between this year’s and last year’s show. This venue was bigger and well laid out. There were demo tables set up with games throughout the hall and there was a lot of attention to detail — included projected exhibitor and sponsor logos above the exhibition hall.

This year, there were a ton of horror-related games and publications that were demoed on the floor. From Steve Jackson Games, I was able to get my first look at Munchkin Zombies, both the green and purple version of the Cthulhu dice bag, Munchkin: Santa’s Revenge, the anniversary edition box set of Give Me The Brain, as well as the Cthulhu and Zombie Dice games, too. Steve Jackson wasn’t the only exhibitor that had horror-themed games on hand. Wizards of the Coast was displaying its brand new Castle Ravenloft board game which I was able to demo at GenCon. (More on Castle Ravenloft in an upcoming post!) Mayfair Games is giving players the chance to open portals in its new Lovecraft-inspired game called Witch of Salem, which was inspired by a German horror author’s book.

Other items of note for horror fans are: an upcoming deck building game from Bandai based on Resident Evil, several horror-themed T-Shirts from OffWorld Designs, and the Nightmare Before Christmas-themed editions of Monopoly, Jenga, Yahztee and Trivial Pursuit.

In addition to these titles, I also had a lot of fun expanding my gaming horizons by sitting down with the folks from Sandstorm Publishing to play Poo (which could be horrifying, depending upon how you look at it) and had a blast.

In my opinion, I thought the show was very well organized and gave everyone an opportunity to try out new games and make connections. For more about ACD Games Day, check out these links:

• ACD Games Bigger at ICV2.com ^[1]
• ACD Distribution Games Day at Model Retailer Magazine ^[2]