Tortuously Long Gen Con report

[hwango]

Wednesday: (Day 0)

For the first time I can remember, I actually slept okay the night before leaving for a trip on a plane. Probably this was due to exhaustion from all of the stuff going on before I left, but it was still nice to actually be well-rested while I was doing last-minute packing and such. Got the airport with no trouble. The guy behind the counter who took my suitcase commented on my shirt (Shardcrown Island Lighthouse). Also, I ran into someone I dimly recognized from either Rising Phoenix and/or SFS gaming weekend. He turned out to be on the same flight I was, obviously also going to Gen Con. We talked for a while at the gate while waiting for our flight, and we learned the terrible irony that he went to art school and does software QA, whereas I went to school for a tech-related degree and am now trying to do art for a living. It's a mad world. When talking about the SFS he mentioned he'd be wearing the t-shirt to the con on one day, and I told him that I did the art for it. = ) So there was going to be at least one person advertising my art besides me.

This year I brought a wider variety of snacks with me. I often have trouble finding food I can eat, but even if that weren't the case I don't want to have to pay crazy convenience store prices for snacks and such, so I bring a ton of stuff with me. This year I decided to bring along a loaf of bread so I'd have something sort of like real food for breakfast. I even brought some butter to put on it, though just in case that was considered a "gel," I put it in the plastic bag that the security screeners have you set aside from your luggage. My mom found it terribly amusing when I told her they let my butter through security.

On the plane, I took several dozen pictures of clouds out the window. Every year I've regretted not having a camera for some of the really cool cloud formations I saw out the window of the plane, so this year I decided to actually bring the camera. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with 293 pictures of clouds, but at least I have them. = )

I got to my hotel okay, dropped off my stuff, and headed over to the con to pick up my back of free loot and maybe register for stuff. I registered for the Limited Shadowmoor tournament that was going to be 4 rounds of swiss. There were going to be pickup tournaments all weekend, but those were single elimination. This one cost $4.00 extra, but at least you were guaranteed to be able to play the whole thing (barring getting a bye, I suppose). The prizes might have been different, too. I'm not sure. Anyway, I also got enough generic tickets to get into one of the pickup Draft tournaments for Shadowmoor. Then I began the quest for a restaurant that would sell me plain food. I had asked at the information booth in the con where they were handing out guides to local restaurants, but of couse "bland" isn't a normal request, and they weren't sure what to suggest. They did mention that The Ram was really good, but that it would be mobbed. I checked them out anyway and yes, they were mobbed. They're some sort of sponsor or have some kind of arrangement with the con, and are really catering to the Gen Con crowd - never before have I walked into the lobby of a restaurant and been greeted by an 8-foot tall poster for Warmachine. Heh. Anyway, I flipped through the menu and determined that they were a little more expensive than I wanted, but might work if I could find a time that they weren't stuffed full of people. Thankfully, I soon found another place that was less crowded, cheaper, and did takeout orders of plain old chicken fingers. They were pretty good, too, which meant I went there practically every day. Hey, every minute not wasted looking for somewhere else to eat was another minute I could be playing games or something. Don't mess with success.

I went to bed at a reasonable hour, hoping to get up early and lurk in wait outside the doors and be one of the first people in. The coupon book this year had one for Immortal Eyes/Winning Moves Games that if you were one of the first 5 people to their booth on a given day you got a free copy of their game Vineta. I figured I'd give it a shot.

Thursday: (Day 1)

Alas, I didn't get there as early as I might have, and many people were between me and the door. I went straight to Winning Moves Games anyway, but they had already done their 5 free copies of Vineta for the day. My next errand was to see if there were particular portfolio review times for some of the bigger companies. Last year I missed Fantasy Flight's review because by the time I got to that point in the exhibit hall the only remaining review time conflicted with a Call of Cthulhu tournament (irony!). First stop was WotC. While waiting for someone to track down the person doing portfolio reviews, I spotted someone wearing the t-shirt I did for OGC! What are the odds?! Once I found out where to go for the review I went over and told the guy with the t-shirt that seeing him wearing it had made my day. Turns out he's on the board for OGC, which certainly explains why he has one of the t-shirts.

There was an open appointment for portfolio reviews at WotC right then, so I figured I'd get it over with while there was an opening and it wouldn't require me to run back from something else. It was probably a bad way to start the con, but it just seemed more practical. As I expected, they shot me down. They were nice about it, and they liked some of my stuff, but they weren't buying. They did suggest that when I improved I sent along JPGs to the email for art drops, so at least they don't think I'm totally hopeless. After that, it was off to AEG, who weren't doing reviews at the con this year. I got the times for FFG's reviews (turns out there was a 1-hour window in the entire weekend that I could go that wouldn't conflict with Call of Cthulhu), and White Wolf told me they'd have the times on display as soon as their technology snafu fixed itself. Not off to a great start.

Before I started over at booth 1 asking if people needed art, I was distracted by a booth with a box of $.50 minis, some of which were huge-size Star Wars. I got myself a Basilisk War Droid which considerably brighted my gloomy mood, since I always thought they looked cool, but was unwilling to pay for one from eBay mostly because of how extravagant shipping is for minis. I picked up a few other things too, but didn't want to consume a lot of con time shopping quite so early in the con. In retrospect this was a little silly. People would be there the whole weekend to look at art, but bargains were going to disappear rapidly as more people showed up. That box was almost empty when I next saw it late on Friday. = P

I spent most of the rest of the day showing my portfolio, pausing only to buy a box of Unspeakable Tales Call of Cthulhu for $25. I had been kicking myself all year for not buying one last year when it was $30, so it was nice that they still had one, and that it had even gone down in price a bit. I'm glad I got it Thursday, though - they had 4 of them at the time, and on Sunday I went back to the same booth and they were sold out. I also bought a bunch of cheap card sleeves, since I keep running out.

Portfolio showing for the most part felt like it went worse than last year. A lot of people just didn't want to bother, and skipped right to asking if I had a business card...which of course I didn't. If I go again, I've got to get some printed up first. There were a few promising leads, though, including one guy who talked to me for almost an hour about his companies projects and plans. I can't imagine that he'd waste all that time if he didn't think I was good enough to contribute.

Before going to the con I had seen the website for Monsterpocalypse, and thought it looked pretty awesome. I was hoping it would be demo'd at Gen Con even though it doesn't come out until October. Indeed it was, and indeed it looked awesome, and they even had Sneak Preview starters and boosters available. The only problem was that the game is horrifyingly expensive. It wasn't worth getting any unless I got enough for two people to play, but I really didn't want to buy that much. Fortunately, I had shown the website to octophobic, and I called him to ask him if he wanted any. At least I'd be able to play it with one person if I got some for each of us. I got his voicemail, though, so I'd have to wait until I heard back from him to see if it was worth picking up any.

Thursday night at 9:00 was my Shadowmoor tournament. Truly, though, I did not think this through. Deck construction plus 4 rounds of swiss plus start time of 9:00 PM meant I didn't finish with this tournament until around 1:30 AM. Bleargh. So much for getting up early again to try for a free copy of Vineta. Still, I had a lot of fun at my tournament, and did well. I won the first 3 rounds with no losses (normally you play best 2 of 3, but we never needed the third game), then split the prizes with the other 3-0 guy rather than play out round 4. It's not that I lacked confidence in my deck, but more that it was already very late, I was getting tired, and if I won I'd get 24 packs but if I lost I'd get 6. We both decided we'd rather each have 15 than take a chance on it.

Friday: (Day 2)

Didn't even try to get there for doors opening. I was sorry to miss the time in the hall, but I needed to sleep and be functional for the day, particularly since I had a tournament that afternoon. I showed my portfolio to a bunch of people, many of whom were very cool, and I got some good leads. Then I went to the portfolio review at FFG, and they turned me down. That was really disappointing, since I really do think my art is superior to some of the stuff showing up in Call of Cthulhu these days. I had really been hoping they'd be interested this year, and that was a major downer.

I had gotten a message that I was clear to pick up some Monsterpocalypse, so I got in line at Privateer. You were only allowed to buy 1 starter (plus some boosters) per day, up to a maximum of 2, so I planned to get one Friday and one Saturday so we'd have enough to play. To my horror, I got the last starter on Friday. We were told there would be more tomorrow, but I didn't want to bet they'd still have any Sunday, so I thought I was very fortunate to get the last one.

That afternoon was the Call of Cthulhu booster draft tournament. I was fortunate to be the only person in my pod paying any serious attention to the Cthulhu faction, and managed to assemble an army of cheap guys and some handy support effects. I got a few decent Hastur cards too, plus a bunch of awful Hastur cards to use as resources to play them. Things went very well the first 3 rounds, and I won my games with little difficulty. My very first turn of round 4 I did something unbelievably stupid that got my Lord of the Silver Twilight killed and gave my opponent a free success token. I felt so stupid, and was really mad at myself that I might have thrown away the tournament with that move. Luckily, I managed to recover a bit, and later on a well-time Schizophrenia left me with the only sane guy on the board, 1 insane guy, and him with 4 or 5 insane guys. After that I managed to use a ritual every turn with The Skinless One to keep driving his guys insane, and clawed my way back to the top of the game and won the game and the touranment. I won 2 boxes of Eldritch Edition and a shiny new iPod shuffle that's twice the capacity and half the size of my current shuffle. I was wearing my "Cthulhu-Approved!" t-shirt, and when they took my picture I held my prizes in one hand and put up the same thumb that Cthulhu has up. Hopefully the picture turned out amusing - I haven't seen it yet. The tournament ran pretty long, and I didn't want to be up super late again, so I just headed home for an early night.

Saturday: (Day 3)

I got to the con a little later than I planned, and was once again behind a big crowd, so I didn't bother trying for a free copy of Vineta. Yet still even more portfolio-showing. Part of the reason it takes so long to do that part of things is that I'm also browsing the exhibitors and trying to collect punches for the Quests. You get 5 cards with about 7-9 exhibitors on them, and you're supposed to go to their booth and get a uniquely-shaped punch through their name. Then you turn in the card and get an entry in the drawing for the giant pile of prizes. Some booths just punch your card, but a lot of them make you sit through a demo, or listen to them talk about their product, or do something else strange, like chitter like a ferret or something. They guy selling metal coins you can use to add coolness to your fantasy game wanted me to let them trickle through my fingers while I cackled with diabolical laughter. I was totally behind this idea, but someone was actually browsing through them to buy some, so he just punched my card. = ( Oh, well. Troll and Toad gave me the option of telling a joke, singing a song, or drawing a picture. Guess which one I picked?

After walking around for a while I decided to go get my second starter of Monsterpocalypse, and was horrified to see signs saying that they were out for the rest of the con. Crap. I thought they'd have them until midafternoon like they did on Friday. I didn't expect them to run out in less than an hour. I bought boosters instead so we'd at least have enough figures to play even if we had to share the special dice, fake another life counter, and share the rulebook. I also went to the gaming room for Monsterpocalypse to find someone who'd trade me one the dinosaur monster Terra Khan or the Cthulhu monster for either the flying saucer or the giant robot ninja guy I opened. The other monster I'd opened was the shiny planet-eating monster Gorghadra, but I thought he was cool enough that I didn't try to trade him for anything else.

Saturday afternoon it was time for the Call of Cthulhu World Championships, which I went to play in even though I knew from last year that I didn't really have a chance in hell of winning. It was still fun last year, so I figured I'd give it a shot, and it's only $4.00. Alas, this year it was not actually fun. There was some controversy about whether or not players had stacked their decks and then shuffled insufficiently. I wasn't actually matched up against one of the combo decks that keeps you from doing anything the whole game, but I still did pretty awful in all of my games. Oh, well. I headed out to play in a pickup booster draft for Shadowmoor and that went considerably better. I don't think anyone else at the table drafted black. My deck was ridiculous. I lost one game to an unlikely-to-be-repeated 3-card combo, but otherwise had few problems. It's too bad that was a smaller tournament, so 1st prize was only 6 packs. Still, it was more than worth the entry fee, and I have a lot of fun, so it was certainly an improvement over the Cthulhu tournament.

That night I checked to see how I was doing filling the empty space in my luggage. Monsterpocalypse and the 3 boxes of Cthulhu I'd acquired took up a lot of space, but I thought I had enough to pick up some other cheap junk I wanted, so I planned to pick that up on Sunday.

Sunday (Day 4)

Woke up early and headed to the con. Lots of people don't bother going on Sunday, so the crowd outside the doors was much smaller. I chatted with some people and ended up showing them my Christmas Squid, and they gave me their business card so I could email them a link to where they could get in on Christmas cards. They were lurking by the door so they could try to get to WotC for the free Heroscape figure. An official came out and told us that there had been incidents of people running to WotC, and to prevent a repeat of that they were going to have an official WALK to the booth, and anyone who arrived there ahead of them would be pulled from the line. He didn't say anything about Winning Moves, though, so when the doors opened I hustled in, jogged a bit, and arrived at Winning Moves just as people were starting to crowd around them. Because the guy happened to be looking in my direction when he was taking coupons I managed to be person #5, and got the absolute last copy of Vineta at the whole con (they sold out of the game Saturday, but kept back 5 for the coupons on Sunday). I was very pleased. I'd demo'd the game a bit to get my Quest punch from them, and it seemed cool. Plus, free stuff is always good. I went over towards WotC to see how the people I'd talked to outside were doing, and met them partway. Turns out WotC was out of the much-sought figure, and was handing out something else instead. It seems crappy of them not to say that in the other announcement, but I guess the people I talked to weren't terribly disappointed. They were very happy for me that I got my copy of Vineta.

Then I went to buy some Hecatomb. I still think the game has potential and could be fun, and my collection of it is small enough that building a bunch of decks was tricky. For $25 I could get a starter and a booster box of the base set, All Hallow's Eve, and Blanket of Lies, which seemed like it ought to be enough to satisfy my Hecatomb needs for the foreseeable future. Alas, they were out of All Hallow's Eve boxes due to a packing mishap. They offered me a duplicate box of one of the others, but I didn't think I really needed 2 whole boxes of either, so I asked if they'd substitute something else, and suggested Rocketmen. They thought about it for a while, but maybe they sensed that I really wasn't interested in their proposal. If they said no I was just going to go to the other dealer and get a box of Blanket of Lies for $10. It's not like I really needed any Hecatomb at all, and that would be less money and less stuff to pack. In the end, though, they agreed. Unfortunately, I hadn't really considered how large and heavy a box of Rocketmen is. Once I loaded up my backpack with Hecatomb and realized I was going to have to carry the Rocketmen in a seperate bag I began to realize how serious a problem I might have when it came time to pack.

I poked around the exhibit hall a bit more, and acquired the last few punches on the last card for the Quest. Finally. This is the first year I've gotten all of the punches. I think if I ever make it back in the future I'll skip the Quest. Some of the games I had to demo and speeches I had to listen to I would never have bothered with otherwise, and it's just too much of a drain on my time. Maybe if I hadn't done the Quest I would have found out about the demo room for Rio Grande earlier in the con and gotten to try Metropolys, which is something I really wanted to do if I got the chance. At least I finished it once, anyway.

Quest completed, I then headed off for my final tournament - the Call of Cthulhu Highlander format. Last year there were only 3 of us for that one, and this year one of those people had to leave a day early. It looked like it might be just the two of us, and I wasn't sure if they'd even run it if that was the case. At the last minute, two of the guys that played in the Draft tournament showed up, though, so we actually had 4 people. Amusingly enough, 2 people played straight Yog-Sothoth, a 3rd played Shub-Niggurath, and I played both Yog and Shub. In spite of slow starts in both of my games I eventually managed to overwhelm my opponents and take the win. I got $100 of FFG money, and immediately went back to the exhibit hall to spend $60 of that on a playset of both of the new Asylum decks. I thought briefly about picking up the Dunwich expansion for Arkham Horror with the other $40, but realized that there was no way it would fit in my luggage. Besides, I should save it for the new base set for Cthulhu that's coming out in the Fall.

After that, I headed back to the Monsterpocalypse game room to actually play a game - so far I'd only watched the demo and traded figures. I learned that Gorghadra has an evil special ability, but that Terra Khan hits like a truck. Also, I learned that in theory you're allowed to play with up to 15 support units. Your starter comes with 4, and boosters of 4 more cost $13. Yeah, that's so not happening. I don't plan to play this competitively, so I'm just going to repurpose some D&D minis into extra support units. I'm not interested in spending hundreds of dollars on this game no matter how cool the monsters look. Anyway, for playing at least one game over there I got the limited edition Mega Zor-Raiden figure, which of course I can't use since I traded away the Zor-Raiden we opened for Terra Khan...but that's okay, because I have a Mega Terra Khan that I got for watching the demo, so at least I can use one of the promos I got. Also, I can always make my own fake Zor-Raiden just like I'm making fake support units.

Once I was done there I ran back over to the exhibit hall to make sure I wasn't missing any kind of last minute deals. Some stuff was marked down, but nothing I wanted. I realized I had never finished going through the art show, so I headed over there. I paused in front of Peter Morbacher's display to remark that the painting of Sahaqiel looked really familiar, and he said it was on deviantArt and conceptart.org. We got to chatting about conceptart, and agreed that we thought the point of concept art was supposed to be the design, not a pretty finished product. I complained to him about the painting that won Blood Splatter Carnage week that had no blood in it. He offered me a giant print of Sahaqiel that he couldn't sell because it was crumpled a bit at one end, which was very cool of him. I showed him my hermit crab and he thought it was nifty, so that was pretty cool too. At that point, they shut off some of the lights and started peeling up the carpet, so I figured I'd better get going. Still, I made one more stop on the way out, asking at Winning Moves about their volunteer demo program. I had to step aside for workers to peel up the piece of carpet I was standing on, but I got their contact info and whatnot. Then I actually left, with a sad look back into the room I might never see again, depending on how things go.

Walking around Indianapolis on Sunday afternoon I could already tell that most of the gamers were gone. Every other day, going back and forth between my hotel and the con I would see crowds of people wearing their badges and/or other gamer-indicating stuff. Heck, one day I walked back to my hotel behind a crowd of three people in full zombie makeup. All of a sudden on Sunday, though, there were all of these people in football jerseys and families wearing t-shirts with wrestlers on them. I could feel myself shrinking back into my cocoon. No more striking up conversations with total strangers, and back to looking at the sidewalks. A sad time indeed.

When I got back to the hotel I started the very challenging project of packing everything. In the end, I put all of the leftover snacks and the box of Rocketmen into a plastic bag to bring on the plane as my "personal item." I figured if they said it didn't qualify or was too big I could abandon the rest of the snacks. If they wouldn't let me take it at all, I was going to open the box of Rocketmen and start slipping boosters into my pockets and the pockets of my backpack. Fortunately, no one seemed to care at all that I had this giant plastic bag with me, and everything got to come home.

Conclusion

I had a really good time. I think I have some promising leads, and I can hardly complain about the gaming side of things after winning 4 of the 5 tournaments I played in. I won a bunch of cool stuff, got a free copy of Vineta, and got some other cool stuff I wanted cheap. I met a bunch of cool people, and even talked to some people that I knew from previous years (the lady from Blood and Cardstock didn't remember me at first, but there was instant recognition when I said I was the guy with the Christmas Squid). I'd love to be able to go next year, but I'm worried by how expensive it was this year, and the fact that it will probably be worse next year. At least this was a better trip than last year, and these will be better memories to have of my last trip if it indeed turns out to be my last trip.