We survived Gen Con

Here are my recaps:

WEDNESDAY: Got up at the ungodly 5:00 AM - only a half hour earlier than usual, but that half-hour is painful! Particularly when the night before I was anxious, packing everything for the trip and facing a rebellion among the typically well-behaved items in my home like the laundry room tub which decided to clog and overflow on Tuesday night. All of which conspired to keep me awake until practically midnight. So,fun...

Mr. Conte arrived at 5:15 and helped toss all of my stuff into his car. Three miniature cases, one backpack, one duffel bag of clothes, laptop, printer, cooler chest full of water....set to go.

And so by 5:45 we were on the road to Gen Con.

The trip there was very uneventful. The ride was 9 hours that passed pretty quickly; we didn't face any of the traffic snarls of previous years. We were amused that we stopped and had lunch at the same Arbys that we had hit either 2-3 years previous. There were several times that I said "This looks familiar" until we both realized it. We actually spent little time wasted - slam food, refill gas tank, hit the
bathrooms, back on the road. It was even sweeter to learn that we were way in the lead for Team Disorderlies on the road - Tim's car was about an hour behind, and Aaron and company, three hours.

We arrived at the hotel a bit after 3:00. The Embassy Suites were a strange place - very weird getting in and getting out, and that caused us (well, certainly me) some confusion. It WAS accessible through the Indy skywalk, but the trip was twice as long as just walking the damn streets. Going into the wrong door also meant a windy inside trip to the elevators. And biggest pain in the ass of all, despite being only
on the 7th floor - 3 up from the "ground" level - we could only go up by elevator. Which were damn slow all weekend. Plus they wouldn't let us take a cart of our stuff up ourselves; rather aggravating to be FORCED to use staff help.

The room itself was also a bit of a let-down because we expected a suite with two bedrooms and one common room - and got only a single bedroom and common room. And one bathroom. With 6 guys, it was a little cramped, moreso as each of us carried in more and more purchases...

After Brian and I checked in, we hit the hall, getting our swag bags, running into Tim and Samx, and generally scoping the place out. There were a lot of people in the ticket lines for events and generally the energy was pretty charged in excitement. We tried to get a locker but all the ones we could access were full, and the rest out of reach - most the convention center wasn't open to the public yet, so we decided we'd need to take care of it in the morning.

We went back to the hotel to digest the goodies in the swag bag (World of Warcraft CCG starter! Axis and Allies minis booster pack! WHAT, NO DICE???) and wait on Aaron. After they arrived, we went over to Buca di Beppo for a fine, fine Italian meal with 14 of us there - several of Aaron's air force friends, some of Steve Hilley's friends, etc. I knew maybe half the folks, but most of them by the end of the weekend I could actually remember their name. Or just their face. Still, it was fun,filling, and despite being at the Pope Table (complete with SPINNING POPE in the center) there were some pretty debauched stories being told, and more profanity than a Chris Rock concert.

Post-dinner we went down to the Ram to snag a table for gaming. In the back room of the Ram they have set aside tables specifically for playing games and drinking. So we did. Descent and Infernal Machine were both trundled out. I played Descent for a bit; I think there were several rounds of Infernal Machine played and finished. After about an hour of playing, I decided I was beat and begged off to head back to the room. I conked out shortly thereafter in prep for....

THURSDAY: Got an early rise to get in the shower and get prepped for the day ahead. Our hotel had a large breakfast buffet where nothing was all that tasty but it was at least quite filling. We all gobbled our food while eying the clock like conspirators. The big target was the 10:00 AM dealer hall opening, whereupon it was GO TIME to snag such coveted items as Rezolution: Outbreak, Hordes: Evolution, Tannhauser, the Starcraft board game, etc. We were all in for a bit of shock to learn that the hall opening was delayed until 11:00 instead of 10:00 due
to some sort of "opening ceremonies" silliness. We grumbled with the masses of people - none of us care about these "ceremonies!" We care about the dispensation of monies! OUR monies! Nevertheless we weathered the extra hour and eventually were granted access to The Hall.

The Dealer's Hall never ceases to amaze me. Even when I worked at Gen Cons and got early access - when people were still erecting their booths - it's still an overwhelming assault on the senses. Add in several thousand - maybe 10 thousand even - people into that, and it's roiling chaos that can't really be understood, only witnessed and endured. And endured we did. As soon as we were able to press through the swarm forcing their way inside, we split off on our various missions to
acquire our desired loots. Aaron to the Fantasy Flight booth in search of Starcraft and Tannhauser. Tim to the Privateer Press, as his Nationals ticket allowed him access to the express line. I went to the Aberrant Games booth to pick up six copies of Outbreak for various group members present and not. Product grabbed, credit cards swiped, smiles acquired - the process worked well except that Starcraft wouldn't be on sale until 2:00 PM. Blast! I got into a long, slow line at the Rackham booth for the LE AT-43 and Confrontation figures, as well as army books for UNA and Red Blok. Damned Conte pilled his books onto me when it turned out that the line was crawling because the hot Rackham chick who was taking money had to connect all the way to France for their credit card processing, and it was s-l-o-w. At least she was, in fact, very easy on the eyes.

Laden with booty, we wandered the halls until we could take no more. Then we wandered off to find Tim in Nationals- which turned out to be a cluster-fuck of disorganization - and various peoples to various games. Rob F, Alex, Aaron and Sean went to take part in a 4-way AT-43 game against...well, each other. The AT-43 and Confrontation events were pretty much fucked all weekend by several reports. Conte and I went to grab lunch and then prep for our Hordes games that night, which we had
heard might be rather delayed thanks to the fuck-up with Nationals. GREAT!

It turned out that our Hordes Games weren't terribly delayed, only partially. However things really weren't clicking. I played two rounds - both against Cygnar - and after two losses got a bye - my opponent apparently had left just before they announced pairings. So I had the option to either sit and wait for what could have been two hours or find something else to do. I ended up killing time for about a half hour before wandering off - first to see some Rezolution games, including
Marc schooling THE GAME'S DESIGNER - and then finally back to the room, where Aaron, Sean and I chatted for a while before I crashed.

FRIDAY - Woke up at 9:00. I was surprised to sleep so late. Half of the other occupants of the room had long gone - Conte and Aaron both had 8:00 AM painting classes. I think the only ones left were Sean, Alex and I - Alex had purportedly closed down a bar at 4:00 AM and Sean and I just slept like logs.

I had a shockingly painful revelation about how much I LOVE the convention center cement floors as my feet both screamed with every step. Advil swallowed, shower taken, and eventually Sean and I wandered over to Einstein Bagels for sweet sweet coffee (the brown nectar of life) and some breakfast - we'd overslept the hotel's buffet. Sean had some RPG games to run, and I was scheduled for a 12:00 500 point Dark Age tourney.

After some brief hall wandering, I settled into the hall for the Dark Age tourney - across from where Aaron was playing Infinity - and watched a few games while waiting for mine to start. There were 8 total players - and half of them were Forsaken, all Saint Mark. Fan-tas-tic.

My three games:

1. Against Dragyri - I very nearly won this game. My mission was to grab one of his models and race it back to my deployment zone whereupon it would be made into dinner for the starving Skarrd masses. Alas despite capturing several of them (illegally - re-reading the card I learned I couldn't have more than one captured at a time) he eventually beat my forces down to a pulp and won.

2. Against St. Mark - What's that? Almost all shooting against my force with only a single ranged attack? SA-WEET-TAH. I got my assed kicked and it hurt. I really don't know how I could have pulled this game out, there were only 6 pieces of terrain of value and a handful of smaller pieces.

3. Against St. Mark again - oh, the horror. Different player, same result.

I was 0-3 for the tourney. The judge, impressed with my ability to withstand oppression, gave me BEST SPORTSMAN and a $5 gift cert...which I never used. Oops.

After the tourney we wandered the halls a bit more then prepped for dinner. Dinner was courtesy Blue Devil Games at the Alcatraz Brewery. Aaron and Sean were playing in a special RPG game for Charity; Rob F, Conte, Steve Hiley, Alex and I were all there as...onlookers. There were five more onlookers as well. We were all wined and dined - well, sort of, I'll get to that in a moment - courtesy on of the owners of Blue Devil, reported to be a lawyer. Sadly the wining and dining were troubled by
the facts that:

1. We were in a private room upstairs (which was HOT!) far from the kitchen
2. The place was packed
3. The servers were overwhelmed by having us AND a wedding rehearsal dinner there, as well as a few other large groups

So there was some grumbling on that front. I had several glasses of water and a burger about 10:00 PM. I think we ordered at 8:30. Ah well.

I will have to note that watching an RPG: just about as boring as you would expect. I can't even sit and pay attention to a miniatures game for over an hour; this ended up being more than four hours. There were two sole redeeming factors: a very attractive young woman in a corset, and a particularly amusing system of charity funding - whenever the players or the onlookers wanted to impact the game - be in a die roll or random event or whatever - money would get tossed into a big bowl and
the GM notified of "the new way it's gonna be". This turned into a bidding war at times when people tossed in $20s and others followed with $20 more to nullify the first demand...etc etc. All told there was over $1000 in that pot raised for charity. I regret that I never tossed money in - I was really holding out for a nasty point near the climax, but the GM dropped the "to be continued...." line and closed out the session.

Oh well.

After that, more wandering the convention area to check out the pick-up games, then, off to bed.

SATURDAY: Woke up about 8:00. Hit Starbucks for the morning cuppa, and met Tim's wife Samx to get back my Zap-A-Gap glue which Conte was nice enough to leave in Tim's bag. (I needed to glue together a few Dark Age figures that hadn't taken well to Friday's abuse) Meandered over to the convention center, wandered the dealer hall for a bit - Master Chief from Halo was at the Wizkids booth taking pictures with anyone interested - and there was a long line of interested. I shook my head and wandered over to the Wizards of the Coast booth. It was in the back right corner - waaaaaay off from the entrances - and packed.

Apparently they had announced D&D 4th Edition on Thursday but I discovered it from an email from Paul. It's a sad day when there is so much information overload that a man ON SITE is getting his news from back home. Anyway, they were sharing tidbits with folks and given that D&D is the mother-of-all-RPGs (plus offspring like d20 and OGL and whatnot) people were very interested in hearing whatever they could.

As a result of the packed mass, I learned just about nothing. And didn't learn about the D&D Miniatures games massive changes at all until I got home. Go me.

So having learned pretty much nothing there, I retreated to the room to prep for the Dark Age tourney that started at noon. I watched a little bit of Aaron's Infinity games while I was there, and chatted with Tim (post-painting classes) and Conte (desperately trying to avoid stalking the dealer hall for opportunistic attacks) as I re-glued a few figures. Pr0fane - one of the Dark Age staff (actual name: Dean) snapped a couple of pictures of the Dark Age tables while I was gluing, and it
looks like I'm Billy No-Mates.

Go me.

Anyway, the Dark Age Tourney:

750 points. Xtreme Rules - basically, you have three missions, and you have to pick one per game - can't repeat them. I played my Skarrd again, like on Friday, but the extra 250 points really allowed me a lot more room for beatsticks in the form of Raze, two Harpies and a Chitin.

1st Game - Played against a St. Mark Forsaken Force. Don't you Forsaken players have ANYTHING but guns? It was actually a brutal battle - I prevented him from scoring his objective, I achieved mine but he gunned down the troops who did it (Buzzblades, which aren't hard to kill at all) and thus it was just about Last Man Standing. In the end he had only St Mark with a single wound left, and I had my Abomination
with 3 (of 5) wounds left. Tallied up the points and I won...by 4 points. My opponent and I were both speechless. But I'll take the W, my first of the weekend.

2nd Game - Played against a Skarrd force. Actually this was a pretty interesting match-up, as his force was nothing like mine. He had: A Hoodoo, Saber, 3 Bolas, Sister of Charity, 4 of Charity's Might,Grafter... a few other things. Basically a non-Toxin Cult list. I don't know if it was the list match-up or just different play styles, but I really, really, rocked his world. I had the majority of my army
intact and wiped him out.

So I was up 2 Wins and no losses....and only one other player in the tourney with the same record. Since the tourney was running long and about to smack into another scheduled event, they decided to make match three just the two of us for all the marbles.

It turned out to be the same player I'd played on Friday in my 2nd game.

3rd Game - St. Mark Forsaken Force, with ALL GUNS. That's right. ONE model in this force didn't have a gun, and it was the @#$%#@ Field Medic, who keeps me from scoring points by saving people that I get lucky enough to kill. On the table we were playing on, with only 6 pieces of terrain, this was an ugly, ugly fight, and I spent most of the game plucking models off the table. I managed to deal him a few
causalities, but no where near enough to complete my mission or win the game.

So, 2nd place finish in the 750 Dark Age tourney. And for my prize....absolutely nothing. Oh well.

After the tourney and discussing my new Tannhauser acquisition with one of the Dark Age guys (BJ, no idea his actual name) we left to go wander the dealer's hall further, and come up with some food plans. The Saturday night dinner plan had shifted around steadily - there was talk of going to Ruth Chris's, which I had bowed out of, then the Weber Grill, attached to our hotel, which turned out to be a 3ish hour wait, back to Ruth Chris, and finally: take-out from PF Changs. There was
some confusion as we didn't have a menu but poor Sean worked out with the person on the phone that we wanted the dish that was LIKE General Tso's Chicken but they called it something else.... Eventually we were tearing into our tasty victuals and making numerous jokes while hanging out in one of the miniature event halls. I think
there were ten of us dining on PF Changs and bottled water, and probably the envy of our peers; trapped as they were with the less-than-appetizing cuisine of the convention hall. Eat it, nerds!

After dinner Sean and I hiked back to the hotel to grab our Rezolution minis, because it was going to be Rez time at 8:00. When we got back, Bryan/Stratos and his crew were setting up tables while Aaron and the rest of the Disorderlies were playing Three Dragon Ante. I helped set up a few tables and then remarked how freakin TINY the table were - 3'x3'. Granted, Rezolution plays best on small tables,
but this might have been Too Much. It turned out that we didn't have that many players so that we could increase the tables back to a more playable size. Aaron should consider himself damned lucky.

1st Game, played Aaron. I got stuck at the Defender, which is really goofy for a hand-to-hand army like mine. Oh well. Thanks to SImon sitting with us, Aaron and I spent the first half of the playing time chatting with him - picking his brain, really - and not actually playing our game. After SImon departed we started the game in earnest, and the fur flew. Well, mostly, it was buckshot. His damn Enforcers splattered my Lektra Vassals left and right - but lucky for me they are cheap and
oh-so-expendable. By the time game was called he won the scenario by killing my Hacker. Oops. Beyond that my army was in pretty good shape - the fodder was dead, but that's their JOB. Like I said, Dravani as defender is weird.

2nd Game was against Bryan/Stratos's Ronin. It was a Capture the Flag game, but it wasn't really meant to be played on a large board. So largely the flags were forgotten and we dove into a giant central scrum. It was a big dogpile with my Dravani Human Form, Bride of Lillith, Shootist and company facing his Panthers, Fists, etc. The scrum grew larger every turn but there was no clear winner. When time
was called I won by...2 points.

I ain't proud. 2 points and a W is still a W.

After a short discussion, and some members of the tourney deciding they were worn out, we decided to switch over to a bit of a megabattle. 7 players, 300 points each - Tony of Aberrant with CSO, Aaron with APAC, Marc and Sean with Ronin, Billy with CSO, Bryan/Stratos with Vatacina and me with Dravani, on a large round table.
Carnage? Oh hell yes.

Basically before the first turn everyone told the people next to them they would not attack them, and on the first turn, pretty much everyone proved to be a liar. I attacked the Vatacina to my right and was attacked by the APAC to my left. (It was like a game of the CCG Jyhad/Vampire: The Eternal Struggle!) Marc, eternal opportunist, took the high ground with a Brick armed with a rocket launcher and fucked everyone's world. Well, everyone he could see - which didn't include me. (God Bless Soulless and their Smoke ability!) Stuff was dying all over the place, and the game moved damn quick for being seven players who were making jokes and generally laughing our asses off. Tony was fricking hilarious, apparently in part due to several bottles of vodka.

Bryan/Stratos and Billy seemed a little taken aback at first - they aren't used to the Disorderlies Brand of Gaming - but they eventually were dropping F-bombs left and right like the rest of us. One particular highlight: Marc was murdering Tony's CSO, just splattering him on good rolls, and the few times that Tony rolled 12's, Marc did too! Aaron, as a kindness, grabbed Marc's dice and tossed them across the hall. Tony chased after them to see if the damned things rolled sixes way the hell over there, too...(IIRC it was a 6 and a 2)

Finally we wrapped up at nearly three and trunched back to the hotel. There was discussion of loading the car and getting it over with, but as Conte was sleeping, and the location of his keys unknown, I just packed up my stuff in a corner and bunked out.....

SUNDAY: ....for about four hours. I awoke to the AIR RAID SIREN that was Alex snoring. I thought I was bad. I got up, showered - the last day of racing five other people into the shower, thankfully - and woke up Conte so that we could load the car and get on with our day. We wanted to be on the road around noon and still make one final pass the dealer hall. The whole group was slow to rouse and we finally made it
over to the dealer hall close to 11:00. I tried to pick up some figures for Paul but the company claimed they hadn't had the time to cast the production models yet - dumbasses! THIS IS GEN CON! I bought 5 CDs from Stratos's group and I dropped another $40 at the Aberrant booth - $200 total for the weekend, although $78 of that wasn't for me - and everyone else grabbed a few more things. We waited for the SAGA
miniatures drawing at the Aberrant booth, and when none of us won, we griped for a minute (in jest, of course - they announced there would be another drawing at 3:00, and we all tossed our tickets to Billy, who won the FIRST one too)

We got on the road about 12:15. The ride back was uneventful except for the part where I started to nod (around 3:00 PM) and decided that perhaps Conte really should be driving....

We got to my place at 9:45 and unloaded all of my stuff. Thus endeth the Gen Con 2007 experience. It was fun. Next year....maybe again.