Con Report: NameThatCon St. Louis

Hello all,

NameThatCon 11: In-Con-Ceivable was held the weekend of April 18 in St.
Louis, MO, USA. I "carried the flag" as the only Ground Zero Games
representative.  It was a pretty small gaming/sc-fi convention.  The
gaming was pretty badly run (don't even get me started about what I had to go
through, but the dork running the gaming registration tried to make me pay the
$25 con entrance fee to run my own game! Luckily, I found the gaming chairman
who pointed out the error of his ways).

I ran a scenario that was posted to this list by Peter Caron nearly two years
ago. It was called "Circle of Death." Basically, each player drew another
player's ship name and that ship was their target until it was destroyed. When
a ship was destroyed, that player passed his target on until only two ships
were fighting. THANKS to PETER CARON if you are still out there for sharing
this scenario for us.

This scenario made a great convention scenario as it gave clear 1st, 2nd,
and 3rd place winners.  A BIG THANKS to GEO-HEX for not only providing
enough miniatures for 1st through 3rd but also for providing enough minis to
give EVERY PARTICIPANT a miniature prize IN ADDITION TO a coupon off of
a direct order from Geo-Hex.  I was totally floored when I received the
package containing the prizes. Obviously I would urge anyone running a
convention game to get in contact with Geo-Hex as they are obviously
enormously supportive of our hobby.

By the way, there was a Starfleet Battles tournament going on at the same time
we were playing. We played through the Circle scenario plus two other
"pick-up" games in the time it took for them to play through their first
round.  And we looked like we were having more fun (i.e. - we had no
fist fights over rules interpretations). And did I mention that of the seven
players only one had ever even seen the game before?

To brag on myself a little bit (just a little - I'm normally quite
modest) I must say that the amount of preparation I did helped make this
successful.  Obviously getting in touch with Geo-Hex a month before so I
had time to get the prizes helped.

I also prepared two sheets ahead of time: one) the ship record sheet for the
single cruiser that each player had in the Circle scenario. This included a
movement record as well as the beam battery effectiveness chart (see below),
damage chart, and threshold check chart. Two) a second sheet detailed 8
examples of orders and movement. This allowed players to simply pick a
maneuver from the sheet and try out the movement rules for the first few
turns. After that they really weren't needed, but I was glad I had them for
the beginning.

The beam battery effectiveness chart was made to reference the Beam Battery
Measuring Stick (TM). I took two dowels of three feet length, marked them at
the 12" marks, and then painted each section a different color (red, then
orange, then yellow). I then keyed my chart to show the number of dice that
each battery fired at each color range. So at "Yellow" you were pretty safe,
but if you were in the "Red" zone you were in trouble.

Finally, well-painted miniatures and a black sheet speckled with stars
(ala
the sheet Geo-Hex sells, but mine is 8 feet by 3 feet and homemade)
certainly helped. You see, this Con was so badly run that a majority of the
games had ZERO players at their times to start. If you wanted players, you had
to compete for them. If I hadn't had a starfield and minis I would never have
gotten any players, but within ten minutes of setting up I had three people
ready to go. The other four players I picked up as the night

> Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 18:27:48 -0500

Good job in a pressure situation. I know how small cons can be (I have been
hit up for the price for the full weekend to run a game as well!!) Preparation
and flexibility are the keys to running a successful demo.

Thanks for the kind words about our Con support, but a good deal of the credit
has to go to Tony Harrison our shipper. I PROMISE but Tony DELIVERS!! Tony has
done an excellent job of setting con support for us over the last year.

KR

> Hello all,

> KR writes:

> Good job in a pressure situation. I know how small cons can be (I

Marcon, in Ohio (this coming weekend!), wants GMs to run I think 12 or 16
hours worth of games in order to qualify for free membership to the con. One
or two games doesn't cut it (I manage 'cause I also do Hubble presentations
;-)

> Thanks for the kind words about our Con support, but a good deal of

I would like to second this, after the great support KR gave the GZG East
Coast Con earlier this year! (and Jon T, too, although the postal service
was...less than prompt with this  :-/ )

Mk

I'll have to jump in on the bandwagon and say how good Geo-hex is about
con support. Thanks to them i can actually brag to the other GM's about what
company is better!

so far i've only done two cons, but i must say support has always been above
and beyond what any other company provides. The first con i was
surprised at the sheer amount of stuff Geo-Hex sent me, but in the end i
actually gave all the minis away! (i started with four, and ended up with over
ten!).

About small cons, I can relate. My second game was at the largest con in this
area. Now, you have to understand that this con is actually a
sci-fi
con, with gaming on the side (never mind the fact that over 80% of the
attendees were gamers). Anyway, they ended putting me on at 9:00 am.
On top of that i had to compete with Heavy Gear, B-tech, Epic, 40k, plus
a few other games scheduled for early in the morning. Needless to say most did
not make, only full thrust and epic did, and i only had four players at that
(at least the newby won).

Cris M.

> Thanks for the kind words about our Con support, but a good deal of

> DELIVERS!! Tony has done an excellent job of setting con support for