Persons of Interest in Gen Con Card Theft Are Card Game Designers

At Gen Con earlier this month, a pallet of Magic: The Gathering cards worth $300,000 was stolen from the convention center; the product belonged to Pastimes, a gaming shop and MTG vendor. In an update from Indianapolis news station WTHR 13, police have identified two people of interest in the case: Thomas J. Dunbar and Andrew Pearson Giaume.

Dunbar and Pearson Giaume were attending Gen Con 2023, and might have been present to support their own card game, Castle Assault. In the photos taken from security footage, such as the one that appears above, a man that the police department has identified as a person of interest (assumed to be Dunbar) can be seen wearing a dark tee shirt with what looks like Castle Assault artwork and logotype on the back.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department has released a series of photos to the public in an attempt to gather more information about the persons of interest. The photo above was taken by a security camera on Tuesday, August 1, two days before the convention opened on August 3, which means that the two men pictured might have been there early to work alongside vendors at the convention.

Castle Assault is a 1-2 person card game that was published in 2015, and according to the Castle Assault Facebook page, the game had a presence at Gen Con in 2017, 2016, and 2015. Castle Assault was successfully Kickstarted in 2015, and seems to have enjoyed a small amount of popularity.

The game was published by MomentumVolsk, although Castle Assault appears to be the only game this publisher has produced and is not currently available for sale on their site. According to Board Game Geek, Dunbar and Giaume have not worked on any games since.

Below, in another picture provided courtesy of the IMPD, Giuame and Dunbar are shown in front of the playmat for Castle Assault. The crossed swords logo in the background is also from the game. This photo is not dated.

If Dunbar and Giaume are responsible for stealing the Magic: The Gathering cards from Gen Con and Pastimes, it’s a career-ending move for the two designers. If they had ever hoped to publish a second game or even an expansion, there will be very few people left willing to work with them. So much of the board game industry relies on networking and connections—and conventions are usually places where people pitch games and make nice with production companies. Regardless of who stole the cards, if they make board games, they’ll very likely never work in the industry again.

This is a developing story, and we will be updating this article as more information becomes available.

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