I'm finally getting back to the normal routine after GenCon. My home PC
printer and modem died just before the con as I was scrambling to get things
ready so that started the interesting week.
Schoon had to pull out of the con so I agreed to take over running the 3 FT
demos and the FT Tourney in addition to 2 sessions of my Sci-Fi
Crossover game. I then had to get sheets ready for the demos and the Tourney
with no preparation.
Thursday - FT Demo, 7PM
Only a 2 hour demo was scheduled for 12 players. I had whipped up small fleets
of a CH and a couple DDs for the NAC, NSL and ESU for the demo. 12 people
showed up and they learned the rules and got some good pounding on each other
by the end of the 2 hours. One thing to note on this demo, Marvin Lamb, the
current owner and publisher of Starfire's latest version 'Galactic Starfire'
was one of the players and seemed to have a good time. In talking with him
afterwards, he wasn't that thrilled with how ships can't fire at all if they
loose all their FireCons, and suggested that they can still fire but at an
increased effective range. My response was that I had not seen this as a
problem and the small fleets we were using did skew the results a bit
Friday - Sci-Fi Crossover 12 noon
No one showed up. Not being in the Pre-reg guide really hurts. Lots of
people stopped by to look at the minis and several of them did later show up
to play the 5pm game.
Sci-Fi Crossover: Asteroid Chase 5pm
Filled out the game with 12 players. Lots of fighters which did dominate
the game too much. Too many sci-fi series and movies are fighter based
so next time I'll find a way to reduce the number of fighters, maybe a
straight Trek Federation vs the Star Wars Empire battle with fighters only on
one side....... Anyway, the 'Centennial Osprey' did pop out of an asteroid and
all the fighters on the board jumped into one huge furball, but the 'Alliance'
had more fighters available so they won the day. Not enough ship to ship
damage though. The Beast took a bunch of damage with his Federation
Dreadnought and dished out a bunch too. Other highlights were when a Victory
class Star Destroyer hit an asteroid and vaporized, and when Tim Pricer (a
lurker her on the list) made a great vector move with his White Star and ended
up directly behind an Imperial Star Destroyer with a great
up-the-kilt shot, but then was jumped by a couple groups of TIE bombers,
which took him to a threshold that knocked out the Capacitor for his Heavy
Minbari Beam. A full After Action Report and pictures will be up on my webpage
someday soon.
FT Demo - 7pm
6 players, Kevin Walker ran this one and it seemed to go well.
Saturday - FT Tourney 20 Noon
Schoon had set this up as 5 rounds in 6 hours but I only had the 1500 point
fleets from last year so I went 2 rounds of round robin competition and the
4 players with the highest point totals moving to the semi-finals and
then finals. 12 players did show up, just enough to fill the tables I got (the
miniatures area wasn't run that well and tables were hard to get if you
weren't there right away on Thursday morning to reserve a block of tables for
the whole con). Lew Stoneking got the fleet sheets copied saving me the
effort. the KV and Phalon fleets were available for use this year while the SV
were excluded. It was tough to get the game done in 1 hour and 15 minutes but
it was done. The top 4 were selected after 2 random rounds and the were, Mike
Cottone (one of the KV fleets), Rick Rutherford (FSE carrier fleet I think),
Carl Scheu (a KV fleet), and Steve Rapatti (custom NSL fleet using missile
DDs).
Mike switched to a Phalon fleet and took on Steve, but he hit his own Class 5
plasma ball and lost the game. Carl battled Rick and Carl came out on top. The
finals were Carl and Steve, in which Steve separated his forces and Carl took
them all out. Carl was Tourney Grand Admiral a couple of years ago and runner
up the year before that. He seemed to like the $75 gift certificate for GeoHex
that KR donated, thanks KR. The KV were the most popular fleets, taken about
half the time and as a result, 2 of the 4
semi-finalists used KV fleets. I'll try and get a better listing of
what was used when I can go over some notes but I don't have listings of who
used what fleet in each battle
FT Demo - 7PM
Mike Miserendino was going to run this but he was in the middle of a Delta V
demo, trying to get his mind around the realistic vector movement so I ran
this one. 12 players and it seemed to go well, enough destruction to keep most
happy.
Other FT bits, Dave Barclay ran a couple FT events on Thursday that seemed to
go well, there were some other FT events run around the Bloody Clans
background in the Battletech universe using FT 2nd edition rules.
KR and the GeoHex booth always seemed busy. All of the Galactic Knights range
(old Superior Starfleet Wars minis) were available and the Modular
Space Station got lots of good comments. Too bad I didn't have time to
inventory what I had so I knew what I needed.
That is enough for now, more news and pictures will show up on my webpage
eventually. In response to a few other comments:
> The_Beast wrote:
Thanks, this GenCon was a bit more work and more stress than normal but it all
worked out in the end. It was also great to sit down and talk to you for a
while.
> Rick Rutherford wrote:
> Whoops! Sorry Dean... :)
No problems Rick, I only feel slightly dead after the Con, dragging all the
minis back and forth every day and then driving home to the sweltering
100+
degree (F) heat index.
> Greg Kettler wrote:
Greg, after all the names and faces that passed in front of me, I'm sorry that
I can't remember you specifically but I'm glad you had a good time. Which game
did you play?
***
Friday - Sci-Fi Crossover 12 noon
No one showed up. Not being in the Pre-reg guide really hurts. Lots of
people stopped by to look at the minis and several of them did later show up
to play the 5pm game.
***
Wasn't this the one that Andrew showed, but I didn't? Wouldn't have been good
with just two folks, mind you, but I had to apologize to both you AND him,
given he was one of my most ardent players in my failed campaign here in
Lincoln, for my bad.
I was pretty out of it the first couple of days after driving to Missou to
pick up my daughter, back to NE, and then the long van ride to Milwaukee.
***
The Beast took a bunch of damage with his Federation Dreadnought and dished
out a bunch too.
***
NOBODY was noticing that thing would have gone *poof* with a couple of good
strikes. ;->= The cruiser was almost unscratched, though.
The game WAS a high point of the weekend for me, though.
***
Greg, after all the names and faces that passed in front of me, I'm sorry that
I can't remember you specifically but I'm glad you had a good time. Which game
did you play?
***
Wasn't the 'no-name' badges sheer genius?!?!?
> On Wed, 8 Aug 2001, Dean Gundberg wrote:
I was in the Thursday 7 pm game, sitting on the far left and using what I
believe you called an ORC fleet. I was tempted to return for that crossover
game, but my Friday schedule was already pretty well packed.
On Wed, 8 Aug 2001 13:35:57 -0500, "Dean Gundberg"
> <Dean.Gundberg@noridian.com> wrote:
> Schoon had to pull out of the con so I agreed to take over running the
Hi, Dean! Sounds like you did a great job under tough circumstances. I'm sorry
that personal stuff prevented me from attending this year. Yeah, I know I said
last year that I probably wouldn't have attended, but I probably would have
shown up anyway.
It is pretty stressful running things, isn't it? I was pretty stressed out 2
years ago. That was the year I made sure to grab all the terrain and figures
each night. Last year I did the easier route and made the individual judges
more responsible. It's the only sane way to do it.
How was the con run in general? Of the 12 people I knew (most of which I
cajoled into going) who went 2 years ago, none went this year. Last year's
problem with getting into events finally did it in for them. I know last year
they had a 25% increase in attendees, but I've also been hearing that they
were slowly losing judges. This is a nasty trend, if it kept up.
Last year I talked to the main guy at the Miniatures HQ on the Thursday and
gave him a head's up of what we needed and when. I shouldn't have to do that,
but it worked best that way. Things went smoothly after that, though they had
a tendency to say that we hadn't shown up to run an event if we didn't check
in with the HQ (instead of just pointing folks to the table area). Sounds like
things were worse this year. What room was used for the mini events? The same
as last year?
How was the dealer's room, with respect to miniatures? I noticed that in the 6
years I had attended miniatures were slowly slipping away. I had a ball at
"Fall In" last year, in spite of it being a much smaller convention, just
because of the concentration of miniature stuff. I like the wide range of
things available at GenCon, but it's unfortunate that miniatures have taken
such a back seat.
And, sorry to miss seeing you, Rick, Da Beast, Lew, Mike, and the usual GenCon
regulars. I hope to make it to next year, as it will be the last year in
Milwaukee, but I can't make any guarantees. The next year is going to be
rather unsettled...
All,
I was at Origins in OH this year and they were actively supporting miniatures
gaming. They moved them to a main area of the center and really seemed to be
reaching out.
Bob Makowsky
[quoted original message omitted]
Hiya,
The miniatures were in the same place as last year -- the big room on
the 3rd floor right next to the exhibit hall, and there were also a bunch of
tables in the hallway outside that room for miniatures games.
There weren't a lot of really good deals at the convention, so I didn't buy a
lot of stuff this year.
Mage Knight was incredibly popular -- the WizKids booth was packed with
people playing demo games from open til close.
I bought the Munchkins card game from Steve Jackson Games, and we had a blast
playing that on Friday and Saturday nights. I also picked up a couple
of Ogre Mk.V figures on Thursday morning -- they were selling
REALLY fast.
Crystal Caste didn't have any cool dice this year, so I didn't get anything
from them.
I got some more silkscreened terrain from GeoHex -- I love that stuff!
There was a guy in the exhibit hall who was selling boxes of old Star
Frontiers figures for $10 apiece, and picked up a couple of them.
New Wave was there, with racks full of Confrontation and Excalibur miniatures.
They didn't have any Wolfen, but they had a lot of barbarians, dwarves and
goblins. I picked up a few of the barbarians, but DAMN they're expensive!
The most interesting new figures I found were made by crocodile games, Chris
Fitzpatrick's company for the "War Gods of Aegyptus" 25mm scale fantasy
miniatures game. I bought some of the figures they call "To-Tanem,"
which look like little humanoids made of stone or mud.
I played a demo game of the new Chainmail game from WOTC, and I thought it was
a pretty good miniatures game. Definitely worth looking into when it comes out
(October 2001, I think).
This was the year for roleplaying with the d20 system. It seemed like at least
half of the game companies in the exhibit hall have published
roleplaying supplement(s) and/or module(s) compatible with d20.
Saturday I entered the Full Thrust tournament, and I ended up in a tie for 3rd
place. Woohoo!
The miniature painting contest was kinda lame -- they had a glass-front
bookcase with fluourescent lights in the top to showcase the entries, but some
of the lights were going dim, and the bookcase was off in a corner of the
miniatures games room. Just for fun, and to "show the 15mm flag," I entered
some of my 15mm GZG Stargrunt figures in the contest (no, I didn't win
anything). I thought that the lighting changed the tones of the colors on the
figures, and not always for the best.
I spent Friday afternoon at the miniatures painting table with a couple of
friends, and ended up sitting next to Patrick Chambers, the guy who paints the
figures on the "Chambers of Miniatures" web site
(http://www.sky.net/~pvccdc). I spent most of the afternoon just sitting
and watching him paint the details on the faces of a couple of figures that he
was working on. It was really amazing how he blends the colors on the figure!
I'm going to try to steal his technique, but I think it'll probably be at
least a year before I get the hang of it.