Gen Con Report 99

Gen Con Report 99
By Clayton Capra

The links lead to game sites and some pictures.

This was my second time going to Gen Con and again it was a total blast. I went with my friends Dave and Chad. We went down to the con on Wednesday to pick up our badges and get settled in. We were talking about the Blair Witch Project and decided that we would try to catch it. We ended up at the 11pm showing and it was the scariest movie I have ever seen.

Thursday morning we got up and our first event was Silent Death at 12pm. I have always been a fan of this game because it’s so much fun to fly those ships around, roll dice and watch your opponent’s blow up. We got to play with their large resin ships. Dave ended up dominating by doing the most damage and was awarded a prize ship by the GM. Here is another picture of a ship being hunted down by torpedos

Our next event was not until 7pm so we had lots of time to check out the dealer’s room. Right were we walked in we saw Pinnacle's both. We are big Deadlands fans and a highlight for Chad was getting his book signed by Shane Hensley himself (Shane is the man behind all the deadlands stuff.). It was cool to meet Shane and ask him a quick question or two about Deadlands.

Then we headed for the Precedence booth. A highlight for me was going to see the Lora Croft model. We would have to wait until the next day to see her but I decided to try a Tomb Raider demo anyway where I got a ticket to have my picture taken with Lora. I thought the game was fun and that it would be a great solitaire game as well. Basically you lay down a starting location and a treasure card. Then each turn you can move from where you are to another location if there is an arrow. A new location card is drawn and put where you moved. At each location you have to get by a trap, creature or some other obstacle by rolling dice and beating a target number. It’s a race to see who can get to the treasure first and you can throw down cards to make it tougher for your opponent. I won the first game because I put a wolf card on my opponent that killed his Lora Croft. It’s not as easy as just laying cards in a straight line to the treasure because those arrows can block the way you are heading and make you go around. Also there are different Lora Cofts and some are better at fighting or thinking past obsticals than others.

The next demo we did was Wheel of Time. My friend Tim is a big fan of Robert Jordon (the card game is based on books written by Robert Jordon) so I had to try this demo out. This game has a lot of potential and the demo was way cool. We were lucky to get a demo from one of the lead designers of the game although I can’t remember his name you can see his picture here. There are two things I really liked about this game. One is that the game can only last so long. The Wheel of time is turning and during the game you try to do things to turn fate to your side. Players can do things to make the wheel turn faster but each turn the wheel turns at least one notch. When the wheel makes one full turn a climactic battle between the forces of good and evil begins. Players who have turned fate to their side will have the advantage in this ending battle. The winner of this final battle wins the game. (Is that cool or what!) I also like the fact that you roll dice to produce resources that can be used to bring out cards and other abilities. I can’t help it I like rolling dice. Again, this game has a lot of potential to be awesome.

We heard that terrible announcement that the dealer’s room was closing in 15 minutes. Time can really fly when you are having fun. We grabbed a bite to eat and then headed to our next event the 7th Sea role-playing introduction. Ok, I have a gripe here. We sat through a long description of each nation's background in the game. I guess it was an introduction but it got long and boring. Then we spent at least an hour making characters for the game. They should have had some pre-made characters for us to choose from. With eight people this took forever. We had to tinker with what skills people had and look things up in the book etc. After almost two hours from when we sat down we finally started role-playing. I like the game a lot, you can read my review of it here, but this event could have been run better with pre-made characters so we could get to swashbuckling action right away.

After the event we went out to the block party for some dancing to the 70’s tunes. My friend Dave is a dancing freak. We grooved to tunes like Abba and Staying Alive. Altogether we had a blast here and after about 4 songs we strolled over to Major Goolsby's for pitchers of beer and some food.

Friday morning we got up and went back to the Con. We ran into a big disappointment. The Grim Crusade (Deadlands Miniatures game) event we signed up for had been canceled. It was going to be a six-hour event so we had not signed up for any other events the whole day. We were left with nothing to do so we headed back to the dealer’s room. We ended up playing in the 7^th Sea card game demo. This turned out to be the game we played the most at the Con. AEG was running a lot of people through the demos and giving a ton of free demo decks away. (Way cool AEG!) The object of the game is to sink your opponent’s captain to the depths. You can shoot cannons or board your opponents ship for some swashbuckling. I have always liked Pirate stuff so I am already hooked on this game and the 7^th Sea role-playing game. We learned the game enough to move from learning the game to trying to defeat each other. If you like pirates and sailing this is your game.

After the dealer’s room closed we really wanted to get into some miniatures game, after having our event for the day canceled we wanted to find something. We happened to walk by a table with some cool terrain and the guy there told us a game was starting in 10 minutes if we would like to try it out. What the heck we were looking for some mini’s game anyway so we ended up playing. The game was called Death in the Dark, what a sinister name but it was fun. It was the dwarves against some spiders and elves. The dwarves had guns and the sorceress elf could cast spells. We all had a good time and decided what we liked best about it was the fact that you didn’t have to measure when you moved like most of the other mini’s games we play. After Death in the Dark we went to the card playing room to play a few pick up games of 7^th Sea before leaving the con for the night.

Saturday we got up and went to the Con for the Deadlands "Don’t Drink the Water" role-playing event. We had the most fun of any event we had signed up for here. The GM was great although I can’t remember his name. My friend Chad did a soul blast to finish off the big bad dude at the end.

After the Deadlands event we were back in the dealers room again. One of the highlights this time was the Nox model. They had a model all dressed up like queen Hecubah. She looked wild and created a lot of attention. Of course we had to get our picture taken with her. You can see of picture of Dave with her and then another one of just her. Nox is a computer game by Westwood Studios. After that we had to get Dave into a Doomtown demo after all we had a coupon for a free Shoot Out at High Noon deck if you played in a demo. Here is a picture of Dave and Chad during the demo. Then I had to go see the Lora Croft model. I got a picture of just her and then another one with me. Did I mention that there were a lot of hot models at the Con this year. We went crazy, here are two more pictures, one of me with a pirate and Chad with an angel.

Before the dealer’s room closed I ended up at the Universal Games booth and was looking at the Quest for Piptwinn’s Scroll. Something about this game intrigues me. It’s a miniatures game were you pick a team of four to race up a hill, grab a scroll and race back down. There are all sorts of challenges along the way that your team may face and big part of the game is deciding what characters to use and what potions and spells you want to start with. It all looks really cool so I ended up purchasing the game. It looks like the perfect game you could play with kids and your significant other that is not a gaming nut like yourself.

After the dealer’s room closed we went to Major Goolsby's for some food. We have gotten to know one of waitresses at Goolsby's and we left an outrageous tip. We headed back to card room for some more pick up games of 7^th Sea and then at about 1:40 am we went back to Goolsby's to close it down. Our waitress brought us a pitcher of beer and said this one is on me. It pays to tip well. We couldn’t get enough and went back to the Con after Goolsby's closed mainly to see what was going on. We didn’t get to bed until 3:30am

On Sunday we hit the dealers room one last time before hitting the road back to Minnesota. Dave got his picture taken with Claudia Christian from Babylon 5. We walked around a bit more and then we headed out. Altogether we had total blast!