Viewpoint Tour of the South... we don't mean Mexico

The 93 Made Games team visited Wollongong and Canberra for its Viewpoint tournament tour, which coincided with the company's second anniversary. Find out why the team can't wait to do it again and why you’ll want to be involved in Viewpoint tournaments leading up to the Viewpoint Championships in December 2010.

The tour commenced when we rolled into Wollongong late on the night of Friday 16 April. Because we aren't locals to the area we made a beeline to the nearest Good Games store to talk with the manager Pat. We'd been invited by Good Games management to host Viewpoint tournaments in several of their stores and jumped at the chance to do so. We were also really keen to get down to Wollongong as we'd already met many nice people from the local area who are keen Viewpoint fans.

We discussed the plan for the Sunday tournament with Pat and he then pointed us in the direction of the restaurant district so we could satisfy our ever-growing hunger. We wound up having dinner at a dinky Indian cafe and got back to the hotel just in time to watch the end of the Friday night football.

During the day on Saturday we managed to catch up on plenty of sleep lost over designing upcoming games. This also allowed us to gather our energy for a scrumptious double roast dinner with two of Viewpoint's best fans - Barry and Jason. After dinner and much conversation about old school games, sci-fi, music and the like, Jason managed to topple everyone in a game of Killer Bunnies. Beware the Cyber Bunny!

Sunday continued with excitement as Sean was able to play in a pre-release for the latest Magic: The Gathering set - Rise of the Eldrazi. He ended up going 2-1-1, which he thought wasn't too bad for someone who hadn't played in 12 months. After the pre-release, we rounded up Pat, Adam, Colin and some of the other local Magic gamers into the Viewpoint tournament. Adam's prowess with organised card play shone through as he trampled his way to straight wins to receive a Viewpoint t-shirt, Good Games gift voucher and free entry into the Viewpoint Championships in December 2010, where the prize pool includes a minimum $1000 first prize, trophies and lots of other goodies.

The fun continued when we visited the University of Wollongong Guild Gaming Society, which is the local gaming haunt of Barry and Jason. After two rounds of cursing and finger pointing, Theo reigned victorious by knocking out father-and-son combination David and Ryan and the close-but-no-cigar Jason. Then everyone joined in for a big 8-player, 2-deck game, which immediately degenerated into a pick-on-Barry party. We'd never seen anyone miss every single turn, be stripped of all of their cards and cast multiple voodoo hexes on his opponents before!

After leaving Wollongong with such good memories, we'll flash forward a week to the night of Sunday 25 April in Canberra. We shan't discuss what happened during the day at the Raiders vs. Rabbitohs match as it is still too painful for Sean too mention and Julia still hasn't stopped grinning about the result. So we rocked up at the local Good Games store where Dallas welcomed us in for more Viewpoint shenanigans. We rounded up more local Magic gamers - there seems to be a trend here - who blindsided each other through two knock-out rounds. After the dust settled, we saw Thomas, the youngest of the players, stand tall as the victor. Nice one! During the rounds, we were also treated to some old-fashioned magic tricks performed with Viewpoint cards, which shows just how versatile the game is. ;-)

93 Made Games birthday celebrations extended beyond the South with the League of Extraordinary Gamers (LXG) in Brisbane and Mega Games in Penrith both holding Viewpoint tournaments over the fortnight. The 93 Made Games Oztag team even joined in by winning their first ever game!

We plan to run many more events throughout 2010 leading up to the Viewpoint Championships in December, so feel free to drop us an email or browse around the website for details on how you can get involved in running or playing in Viewpoint tournaments, including the Championships and how you can share in the fun and prizes.

We'd like to thank everyone who joined in with us on our anniversary tour including our friends at Good Games, the UOW Guild Gaming Society, LXG and Mega Games. We look forward to seeing everyone at the Viewpoint Championships on Saturday, 4 December 2010. Be sure to sign up to the 93 Made Games mailing list for all of the latest information on Viewpoint and upcoming games.

Everybody say Viewpoint!

Viewpoint is a fun-packed and easy to learn card game for 2 or more players aged 7 and up. Be the first player to reach 100 points by looking into the future, spying on other players and blindsiding your buddies!