With a lot of the drudgery of travel out of the way, I was able to get my badge and event tickets in record time. Even though the line was about 300 people deep, the extra support staff hired for the event this year got us through the will-call line in about 20 minutes.
Category: Conventions Page 6 of 8
Gen Con prep this year was a bit time consuming but I was able to get through it before we left on Tuesday. This was the first time we left early but the flight prices were so much cheaper even with an extra hotel night that we decided to come out early.
After a 3 hour flight delay and some hotel hijinks, we got in bed at 3am. Luckily, we had a ton of drink tickets so a double scotch helped move things along.
After a break, our team concluded our 2-game mini-cup with a 2-lap session of Nürburg. We all took a moment to re-tool our cars and I decided to create a lop-sided car with an 80 acceleration and a 40 deceleration. To help compensate for all the late braking I might need to do, I dropped my skill in favor of more wear tokens.
After the bidding, I did slightly better than last time and came in 4th position.
As I recapped earlier, we were able to run a small 2-race CFR championship at our game gathering, CabinCon. Since we had some new players, we ran a quick demo of the track through the first turn. I showed the rest of players how to crash out in spectacular fashion by pushing my car 60 mph over the top cornering speed and rolling boxcars (12).
With a couple of turns under their belt, everyone was ready to build their cars and start up the actual race.
In prepping for our CabinCon weekend, I pushed through and painted up a few more minis in case we decided to play a bigger 200 point game.
Our yearly game gathering, Cabin Con, has come and gone. It was a great time this year and I think we’ve hit our stride as we’ve done this enough times to relax a bit on the planning and still have it work very well. Six of us were there this year and we hit a ton of game over the four and a half days. Below is a quick recap:
With CabinCon (our yearly friend meet-up where we catch up and play games up in the mountains) starting Wednesday, there are few things I want to get done before I leave so today was a major prep day.
One thing I want to host this year is a Championship Formula Racing mini cup, a “CabinCon Cup,” if you will. This will be two or three races with point scoring to determine the overall winner. I picked up a set of 1957 F1 cars on Shapeways to serve as each player’s cars and as is our custom for CabinCon, these will be given away to each player along with whatever placement prize they achieve during the CabinCon Cup.
This past weekend kicked off the start of my usual convention season prep with the annual Gen Con event registration. This will be my eleventh Gen Con and one would think I’d be used to the stress and frustration of their event registration process but no such luck.
I can’t complain though. This is the 50th anniversary of Gen Con so there is a lot of demand for hot events and so getting into those requires some blind luck. I was happy to make it into one of the sold out event slots for CMON’s upcoming Song of Ice and Fire miniatures game and I’m excited to go see They Might Be Giants. I’ve wanted to see that band live for years now so having an exclusive event sounds like a great way to hear them.
Part 1 of my FateCon trip can be found here. Here is the conclusion of my trip out to Fate, Texas and the gaming that lies therein.
Day 2
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shadows of the Past was the first game to hit the table on day 2. This game kickstarted about the same time as Mantic’s The Walking Dead: All Out War. I was briefly in both Kickstarter campaigns but decided to pare it down and if you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll know which direction I went (and have no regrets).
Earlier this year, I had the fortune to set up a flight to Dallas over this past holiday weekend to hang out with another gaming friend. He lives in Fate, Texas, a small burb outside of Dallas and so we decided to call this little game fest “FateCon.”
It just so happen that another event was happening nearby called the Dallas Games Marathon (DGM). This game-centric event happens every month and for $20, you can get a pass to play games at their facility and use their library of over 1,500 games. We only decided to go for one day but found that even going one day is worth the $20 weekend admission.