GenCon ’11: Rob’s Thursday and Friday

Rob got himself to Gen Con this year, find out how it’s gone so far after the jump.

Thursday

Thursday was a rather long day for me, having to get up around 5:30 am to be at the airport in time for check in and then my ride not arriving to Indianapolis until 2+ hours after I did was kind of frustrating, also my camera was stolen thus the vast lack of photos, sorry. Anyhow, Thursday was going to be vastly a Magic: the Gathering day for me anyhow as it was my last chance to qualify for Nationals and get out of doing “work” for the sight. Obviously that didn’t happen, but we’ll get to it.

Once my friends finally made it to the site (I didn’t want to try and do anything too serious while having to tote around my luggage as well as all my cards) I signed up for a Sealed Grinder. Grinders, for those that don’t know, are 32 man single elimination tournaments in which the winner gets to enter Nationals. I chose sealed so as even if I lost I would still receive some product, unfortunately I was in a small list of people who saw it that way and after two and a half hours of waiting our pool was finally full. I didn’t get anything impressive and was out after the first round, oh well, only problem was that was the only one I got to participate in as grinders stopped at eight pm.

Having the M:tG Nationals at GenCon, bad plan. Both events pull too much away from each other. In previous years, GenCon would have at least one PTQ (that’s Pro-Tour Qualifier) a day and tons of other Magic events, Nationals would basically do the same and you wouldn’t have to pay $50-90 up front just to be able to watch (you cannot get to the area where Nationals is being held without a badge). While other companies can do there big championship events here, Wizards should really consider otherwise as even signing up was a hassle with the only form of payment being the event tickets and those lines not being even remotely short or organized. While I may sound a bit gripey and down do to the loss (probably because I am) it still seems like the two events are better off as separate entities. I don’t want to go to GenCon just for Magic, and I am seriously disappointed that I am missing out on large chunks of the awesomeness that is Nationals because of all the awesome that is GenCon.

Friday

While my first day was mildly disappointing, day two was absolutely fantastic. We (myself and my companions Shane and Landry) spent most of the day (after a long night’s sleep) wandering the exhibition/vender hall. We got to play a couple of demos, one for Monsterpocalypse by Privateer Press (the miniatures group that does Warmachine and Hordes) and one for Bump in the Night by Twilight Creations Inc (the guys behind Zombies!!! and Deadlands). D&D Brian is a big fan of Monsterpocalypse and that’s one of the things he sent money with me to pick up, so getting a promo for that was pretty cool but I already knew how to play, of course the other two did and this got them excited and interested, yay newbies.

Bump in the Night, on the other hand, I had never seen before. I was intrigued when the dealer told me you get to scare children to death (yes, I realize I am a terrible person). You play as a group of monsters in a haunted house and have to scare children to win. The game is rather simple, in a good way, and I will likely pick a copy up before the weekend is out and do a review for you all some time later in the week, which probably says that I enjoyed it. While I was playing the demo (the other two were off smoking) we also got to meet the actual game designer, Colin Dimock, who is willing to sign any copies purchased.

After that we basically wandered the hall and watched other demos the rest of the afternoon. I still don’t think I saw it all but we did purchase some stuff and met a few people to actually play some games with, more Monsterpocalypse, which was cool. Later in the day I also got to run into an old friend, Logan Bonner, a name some of you may recognize from either D&D books or the Critical Hit podcast.

The evening saw a different type of event, The Hentai Cafe: Adult Anime Game Shows, hosted by Cosplay Deviants. This wasn’t entirely what we expected as someone (Landry) led us to believe it would be a bit more adult than what we got. The event was still entertaining as we played through a Family Feud, a Jeopordy, and a dating type match game. While none of my group got to be contestants, the models did do a meet and greet/photo op at the end of the show. This is when we realized Landry still had a reasonable camera in his phone, that first one is him and the other one me with the girls of course.

Now, it’s 4:30am and I have to wake up early to clean my shirt so I can still represent the total Major Spoilers Experience tomorrow, so more news and words after awhile, sleepy time.