Gencon Indy 2004 was a blast! I'm not one for taking photographs, but check here to find many a photograph link for interested parties.
I'll be recapping the past month in pieces, probably in a seemingly random stream of conscienceness format. Bear with me.
No gaming groups this weekend, so tonight I'm cathcing up on weeks of E-mails and this Weblog. I'll tackle message boards and other online journals when I feel caught up on the rest. As seen above, I'm rereading the Aeneid. I passed the point where I stopped in college. I would commonly read a book when I had the time until we were reading the next book. I had only a page to go in Book IV when I quit, as the school bookstore supplied bookmark still inside indicates. I'm using a Beyond Countless Doorways bookmark picked up from Gencon underneath this Vader. It has me wanting to run an RPG set in the Trojan War and aftermath. Not surprising, considering my subscription to Age of Bronze.
Last night I met Jay, Kim, BJ, and the soon to be Trevor at NYPD Pizza for dinner. Damien was our host, and he was as awesome as when he was a host at Pizza Hut. The only difference is that he's not the only thing keeping the store open, unlike the Pizza Hut which was a jumping joint when he worked there and closed within six months of his leaving.
Thursday I finally got my place cleaned up enough that I can live here again. Wednesday I had a TFLAS meeting at Wayne's place. We began the process of archiving four years of Pokemon Live Action. We got a lot of work done. I like this new Wayne who not only doesn't fight me on organization, but actually initializes it!
Tuesday I finally got a chance to unpack after work. I fell asleep after doing the basics. The place was still a mess even if it was unpacked. I did manage to gather together the swag I had for Wayne, Jay and Da, and Kitty, Rusty, and Mike in three separate piles. I started laundry which I finished Thursday.
Monday I slept in yet still was the first in the shower. I mailed my postcards, dangled my feet in the swimming pool while imagining myself in Paradise Towers, and set the electronic stationary bicycle to maximum difficulty and random mix so I wouldn't be completely out of shape when I went to work the next morning. The swimming pool room on the 19th floor was just like the one in Paradise Towers, except no one was in there with me except a maid whop came to change out towels. I wish I could have gone swimming, but I never found a partner and don't trust swimming alone due to drowning dangers. No matter how well one swims, accidents can happen.
Eventually I met up with the other sleepyheads as they were waking up and showering, said goodbye to Brian, and then went to Steak and Shake one last time for brunch. The waiter claimed that Gencon was stressful but good for them. They made two thousand on Saturday breakfast alone! I really wish we had Steak and Shakes out here, the food is awesome and somehow still reasonably priced! Then we went to the airport where we ran into Mike again. What were to odds of sharing both flights with him? He was apparently just elected to the board of GAMA. Gencon was all work and no play it sounded, but maybe he'll play True Dungeon at SoCal with my friends if things work out. We'll see.
Anyway, we sat on the tarmac for hours, people with connecting flights missed them, and we had a lot of turbulence along the way once we did take off. So by the time I got home it was past bedtime. I packed a frozen dinner for lunch the nexct day, dumped everything in my backpack onto the kitchen table and went to sleep. Not bad for the only inconvience of the whole trip!
Sunday I did a quick check of all my E-mail accounts except Yahoo! as the whole Yahoo! domain was down includingYahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Bookmarks, and My Yahoo! So then I posted here before my ten minutes ran out. Thanks to the Star Wars Shop for sponsoring the free Internet stations! Following that I went to the Shadowfist Final Brawl. That was fun, I did well with my Forbidden City deck: winning one, timing out on one, and losing one. Then I did my last tour of the exhibition hall until the convention closed. After that we went to dinner at Alcatraz Brewery (which had horrible service, lowsey decor, and overpriced school cafeteria quality food). Finally, we played games people had purchased at-con this weekend in our hotel room, eventually losing several of us to sleep before Munchkin was over.
Saturday I ran into the gang I had played 3D Settlers of Catan with while walking to the convention center. We walked together and chatted along the way, parting ways when we got there. That's what I liked about the con, the ability to make friends with people of shared interest from outside of my locale.
I stood in line for the opening of the exhibit hall, determined to get in a demo game of Star Wars minis. I succeeded! They gave me a Wookie soldier, too! It's a fun game, but suffers from the trading/collecting game aspect of investing in order to get the ones you want. That's not really something I can afford to add to my list of expenditures at the moment. It's bad enough that I read a comic book, collect and play Shadowfist, and play D&D. I don't need another periodic expense. I guess I'll wait and see if anyone I know gets into the game and go from there. No reason to get burned like I did on Heroclix. People promised to play and then we never did. Oh well, that's no one's fault really. But at least this time I can be wiser in my purchasing.
After more exploration, demos, and swag, I eventually made my way to X-Men: Apocalypse Now. Apparently, it used the system from the most recent tabletop RPG which I hadn't even heard of and is already canceled. It well enough. Maybe when I get a chance I'll recap. Then I went to mass at St John the Evangelist's Parish. Afterwards I built a small building for Cardhalla here from X-Files, Cyberpunk, and Spellfire cards. Can you see my small little structure? Watch it all fall here. But I wasn't there for that, I was instead getting schooled in a 100 Names Shadowfist tournament where I used my all factions Faceoff deck (well, all factions except 7 Masters). I was nowhere near close in two games, and had a buy for my third. After that, I went and played Pink Ball.
Friday I continued the Gencon scavenger hunt, went to the Whirlpool of Blood Shadowfist tournament, which used Daedalus starters, standard boosters, and all of the Z-Man boosters. I built an Architect, Ascended, and Lotus deck based around denial and character stealing. I faired OK with a timeout I so would have won in two to four more hours, a four turn loss to a deck which just had the perfect shuffle and draw, and a close game which I also lost. While the finals went on, I played some more Who Wants Some and was schooled in alternate deck construction by some of the others not in the tournament.
Finally, we entered True Dungeon. I can't reveal the story because the same module is run at SoCal, but I can say its worth the money to attend, even when you have the worst DM in the history of gaming there trying to make your game miserable. Did I mention I made it to second level in just that session? Woot! Troy and I hung out in the Tavern for a while afterwards. I hope they learn and make that a place which can be used longer than twelve minutes before entering the dungeon. New people are just beginning to understand what to do when they're rushed into the dungeon. Troy and Steve seemed to like their public thanks, which was cool.
Thursday I played Nautilus, 3D Settlers of Catan (way cool!), Gencon Scavenger Hunt, checked out the exhibitor's hall, signed up for the Who Wants Some Shadowfist tournament (using a Daedalus starter, Standard booster, and one each of the Z-Man boosters), more exhibitor's hall, more scavenger hunt, used by Dragon Dojo deck in the Both Guns Blazing Shadowfist tournament (winning two Hell Money bills which I turned in on Sunday for The Bazaar and Yung Chang), played some Who Wants Some, and ended the night with the Comrades in Arms Shadowfist tournament in which I used my Unaligned Magic Hoods deck. Julian called me crazy, but I won one and lost two, one was close but the other game my deck just didn't deliver squat. The finals were awesome to watch, because the reneigning world champion revealed his Monkey House while he had a Black Market Connections in play, not only toasting his deck, but providing fourty-four power for two of his opponents who each had a Darkness Priestess out. The fourth player managed to win anyway because the two with the huge amounts of power couldn't spend it. It was cool just to be able to say that I witnessed such a game.
I'm getting tired and losing my spelling and grammar capabilities. More recapping to come.
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