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After 5 long, exhausting and yet exhilarating days of geekdom at GenCon, I am back at home. All in all, it was great. Granted, there were some mishaps and bad experiences, but overall, a great time was had.

For the uninitiated, GenCon is not exactly a cheap venture. Granted, compared to a Games Day Badge, it seems cheap ($40 for 8 hours of Games Day, $65 for 4 days of GenCon). However, by the time you figure in transportation, lodging, food, event tickets (i.e. games), it becomes quite a bit more expensive. Of course that doesn’t account for all the shopping. The Exhibitor Hall itself was bigger than the whole of Games Day Chicago. To counter the price point… a week in Hawaii or just about anywhere else would cost me about the same, especially if I have to fly to get there. And wherever I go instead of GenCon, I won’t get to play awesome games, check out new games, shop till I drop, meet a ton of cool geeky people, meet Sci-Fi celebs, etc. I’d probably be sitting on a beach or checking out a museum, which are not bad activities, but given the GenCon option, I’d rather spend my money there.

Travel/Lodging

The actual journey was very uneventful. Traffic was light, and what little construction there was didn’t make much of an impact. We made the 300 mile trip in about 4.5 hours. Hotel check-in was painless (automated kiosk), and we even got a room with a King-size bed. Unfortunately, it was a non-smoking room, but that’s to be expected in this day and age. I overheard that the Hyatt only had 5 smoking rooms in total, which were first-come, first-serve. Of course by the time we got there, there was no chance for a smoking room, but on the bright side, our room was on the 5th floor, which is the lowest floor with hotel rooms. The bottom 3 floors are used by conference rooms and ballrooms (i.e. gaming rooms),as well as a few shops and restaurants. Unfortunately, the Hyatt (like the entire Convention/Hotel complex) was doing some renovations, so the ground floor was a bit of a maze.

The room was nice and even had a fridge. No free wi-fi (annoying), but in retrospect, no big deal, since I barely spent any time in the room anyway. I was a little concerned about the proximity to the gaming floors, but since the builders skipped the 4th floor somehow (high ceilings in the ballrooms?) that was not really an issue. Hotel services were outstanding, but nothing you wouldn’t expect from a Hyatt-class hotel.

Pre-Con Activities

After settling in, we went across the street to the convention center. We picked up our swag bags (now repetition free due to badge marking), program books, as well as some GenCon souvenirs (GenCon hoodie, 40th Anniversary coffee table book, badge holders, etc.). After that, we got in the car and went to the Rathskeller, a German restaurant not too far away. The wait staff was a little lacking at first, but the food made up for that. Now full to the brim, we stopped by the Forum Stink (a pre-con gathering of GenCon Forum members). When I signed up for the Stink, I had many intentions of becoming a forum regular, but due to being incredibly busy, that didn’t really happen. Needless to say, with the nametags being rather small, and my limited connections on the forums, I didn’t really know or recognize anybody. Maybe next year. In any case, we didn’t stick around too long and returned to our rooms to prepare for the days to come.

It should also be noted that right before we left to go to the convention center and the restaurant, some idiot tripped a fire alarm, shutting down the 4 elevators. This left the entire hotel with 2 slow service elevators. It took them quite a while (I’d say about 3 hours) to get them working again, and people were not too happy to wait 15 minutes for an elevator. One small group had used the stairs to descend from the 17th floor to the 1st floor, only to find that due to the construction going on, they couldn’t exit the stairwell and had to go back up to the 5th floor to catch a service elevator (and still wait 15 minutes).

Since I had to smoke outside, I wandered the open gaming area a little on the way, scoping out the various gaming rooms. A lot of people were gaming in various ballrooms and public areas. Mostly D&D from the look of it, but also quite a few people playing Catan, Arkham Horror and assorted other board games. Since my wife was up at the room, and I didn’t really know anybody to make my way into a game, we retired fairly early.

Games

Before I recap the actual gaming experience, I want to elaborate on what in my opinion was the biggest problem with GenCon this year. Apparently something got screwed up when they printed the event tickets, so a lot of the event locations were wrong. While everybody received an email with updated event locations, they were still not quite right. And despite posters everywhere claiming that the program book had the correct information, those weren’t always right either. This lead to a lot of missing GM’s and players. Since the gaming events are the prime reason to go to GenCon, this is inexcusable. If you got your proper event location (either through email or the various HQ tables), there was a lot of running, since the RPG events were spread out across 3 hotels and the convention center itself. Most of my events took place in the Hyatt, but I had events 3 blocks away at Union Station. What really pissed me off is that they used a huge ballroom in the Hyatt to hold the GenCon Poker Tournament. While I don’t want to discriminate against poker players, it’s not really a GenCon kind of event (in my eyes at least). Wouldn’t it have been much more convenient to move the poker players, who are likely to play poker for the entire run to one of the outlying facilities and keep all the RPG’s at the Hyatt? While the poker players will stay in the poker room all day, us gamers had to run all over the place, often with little or no time at all. With RPG events usually running for 4 hours, getting from the Hyatt to the Omni or Union Station (both about 3 blocks away) to catch your next game is not a fun thing. And a lot of people made the arduous trek only to find out that the room their event was supposed to happen in was locked, with the event taking place in some unspecified location. On top of the event location issues, some tables were double-booked, so alternatives had to be found. To make matters worse, table numbers were only posted on a sign outside the room. The individual tables were not marked in any way, so especially in the bigger rooms, finding your right table was quite a problem (especially since the people making the signs were obviously insane or on drugs, as the number sequences were all over the place without any rhyme or reason). But, on to the actual games I did manage to play in:

Call of Cthulhu: Terror 101

My first event was with the MU Skulls. Having played with them before at Foundation Con as well as last year’s GenCon, I was really looking forward to that. As it turned out, this game was run by Mike, who I played with twice at Foundation. As always, Mike came through with an amazing game. Set in 1923, we were tasked with checking out a soon to be opened zoo/theme park which had ties to Miskatonic University. It was a good setup for the characters, who were supposed to look at various aspects of the park. Needless to say, we uncovered that a lot of people had met an untimely demise during the construction phase. Once we got there, things got even worse, and in true CoC fashion, things degenerated quickly into a mad scramble to get away from something unspeakable. I was one of the lucky three who managed to get out alive.

Dark Heresy (40k RPG): Innocence Proves Nothing

After some quick shopping (more on acquisitions later), I returned to the Hyatt for the first of two 40k RPG demo sessions. This was one of the events I had really been looking forward to, and I was rather impressed. While the scenario was typical for a convention demo game, I am eagerly awaiting the release of the book next February. I also found out the reason why the game has been delayed… the page count is a whopping 400 pages, almost twice as big as the WFRP core book. The game was a lot of fun, and the GM answered a lot of questions about the system.

Call of Cthulhu: Horror 102

The second game with the MU Skulls. This one was run by Frank, who I almost played with at Foundation. He was running a MU expedition to Skull Island (the island King Kong came from). Very interesting twist on things, and very enjoyable. I have to say, the Skulls really came through with providing a good reason for characters to be there (and that goes for all their games this year). If I had any complaint about the Skulls last year, it would have been that sometimes some of the characters were a little out of place. It wasn’t really an issue last year or detract from the games, it’s the only thing I could come up with pressed for a bad thing. As said, it all worked out last year, but this year, the characters were spot on.

Dark Heresy (40k RPG): Illumination

Having thoroughly enjoyed the first 40k RPG session, I was stoked to play in the second one. However, when I got to the room, the assigned table was already populated with people playing Star Wars. So, I double-checked location at the HQ and settled down at a nearby table, waiting for other players. Quite a few showed, but the GM never appeared. I later found out that the GM fell victim to the location shuffle. On top of that, the table was double-booked. I was somewhat disappointed, but things happen. In any case, it gave me more time for shopping.

Obsidian

Having picked up the entire product line at last year’s GenCon, I was eager to see the game and setting in action. I almost didn’t make it in time since I was getting an autograph from Mark Sheppard (Badger from Firefly) right before the game, and he was very friendly and chatty (more on that below). Monica, a freelance writer for a variety of companies, ran the game, and it was amazing. We had a great range of characters, and some amazing players. Only two of us had any familiarity with the system or the setting, but that didn’t detract from the great fun. It was so good, I actually ditched my game that was scheduled the next morning to go to the second running of the Obsidian scenario.

Call of Cthulhu: Madness 301

One of the MU Skulls’ infamous double-sessions. Last year, two groups were playing the same characters in different realities, which merged at the end. This year, we played a group of students, who ran into a mishap during a metaphysics demonstration. Half the group found themselves in a strange place, which turned out to be the 1960’s, with hippies everywhere. When the two groups finally got back together, it turned out that the others had been sent to the 1600’s. The crazy antics of people from the 20’s running around all confused, trying to get home, was hilarious. Words fail to express how amazing this game was. At the end, only 4 of us survived, only to find ourselves in yet another predicament.

After Serenity, Obsidian & Mallrats

While I was scheduled to play in both of these, the Serenity game was just too early and too far away. Madness 301 had run long, and after I showered and settled down, there was no way I could have gotten up before 7am to properly wake up and make the trek to Union Station. While we had toyed around with the idea of playing some Catan, my wife wasn’t feeling too well, so I decided to try and catch the second running of the Obsidian game. Since I didn’t have tickets, I was going to try for Generics. This game was also at Union Station, but at least it was a bit later. I got there, and nobody was looking for the Obsidian game but me. Since this was one of the games where even the program book was wrong, I went across the street to the Omni to see if they reverted to the printed location. In the lobby, I ran into Monica (the GM) and Matt, who hadn’t been informed about the location change (Nice going, GenCon). Since nobody was at Union Station, we checked the Omni room, which turned out to be locked. We hung out for a while and had a great conversation. Monica and Matt are the brains behind Colonial Gothic, which is a supernatural horror game set during the War of Independence. After quite a bit of talking, we headed over to the shopping area. Since the Obsidian game was canceled, I just aimlessly wandered for a while. During that, I noticed that there was a demo game for Shadow Nations (an Obsidian spin-off set in Europe). Since I really enjoyed the Obsidian game, I didn’t go to the Mallrats game I had a ticket for. The fact that I would have had to walk to the Omni again was another factor.

Shadow Nations Demo Game

Quite enjoyable, and like Obsidian, this is a great setting and system. It’s very diverse and character driven, and I hope to play or run this at some point in the near future. Unfortunately, half of the players had to leave halfway through the game, which bogged down the GM with NPC’s. It was still a lot of fun, even though my nose decided that it was time to spew forth an unending torrent of snot. I am still congested right now, but that was when the dam burst. I was a little out of it during the later stages of the game, but kudos to the Apophis Consortium guys for coming up with some great new material.

Call of Cthulhu: Insanity 103

This time, Marc from the MU Skulls was running the game, and it turned out to be a Delta Green scenario set in Afghanistan. I had a great time, and during the final confrontation, it turned out that 3 characters were actually Majestic-12 agents, while 2 characters were Delta Green. I was one of the three characters who were completely clueless about what was going on. It was very entertaining at the end, where instead of fighting the big bad, we were pointing guns at each other. For the longest time, we tried to talk our way out of a bloodbath. As these things go, before too long, my Special Forces Major pulled the trigger on one of the Delta Green guys (since they weren’t an actual government entity). Unfortunately, I ended up being killed by one of the Majestic-12 guys (to prevent an information leak) who in turn was killed himself. On a funny side note, Osama Bin-Laden made an appearance (possessed by a MiGo). The only character to survive the scenario was our Afghan translator (who, btw, was very well played). It was great to finally play a DG scenario, although I have to say that something like that is just about impossible to pull off with a small group at home. Not knowing whether other characters were working with DG or M12, or that those agencies actually existed, really added a lot of drama to the whole game, but it was crucial to have 8 players and dispensable characters.

Battlestar Galactica: Resistance

The last game at GenCon was a demo-game for the new BSG RPG. Being a huge fan of the show and having thoroughly enjoyed the Serenity demo by the same people the previous year, we went out with a bang. The game was great, despite general fatigue, and a minor incident where one of the players got a little weird. One of the players lightly brushed/tapped against the guys chest as he was acting out one of his characters actions. While I can understand that some people don’t like to be touched, the guy went about it the wrong way and even though the other guy immediately apologized, things got just a little weird for a few minutes. Aside from this minor thing, we had an absolute blast and ended on a very high note. Not knowing about the human-looking Cylon models, we actually “rescued” one of them. The final showdown took place on a bridge, under heavy Cylon fire. The whole finale was action-packed, and my drill-instructor character ended up going out in style, after lighting a cigar and opening up on the Cylons. Meanwhile the skinjob was with two of the other characters, first hampering their progress across the bridge and then taking them out with a grenade. While the players knew she was a Cylon, the characters played it well. Even though all but two of us died, it was a great game.

Our GM also mentioned that MW Productions made a deal with Universal, and there will be 3 more books for the Serenity RPG. Release dates are sketchy, probably within the next year. One book will focus on ships, the other on the ‘Verse, and the last will be the Big Damn Heroes Sourcebook, which will contain new character options, as well as tweaks to the Cortex System which were introduced with the BSG rules. Shiny!

Games - Random Thoughts

Last year, I had some games that just weren’t that great. This year, the gaming end of GenCon was absolutely outstanding. Despite the scheduling/location issues, all the games I picked were amazing. For next year, I have a new resolution… stick with GM’s you know. I will definitely load up on all the MU Skulls events, any demo games run by Margaret Weis Productions (Serenity, BSG, Supernatural, DemonHunter), as well as any official Obsidian games (or anything run by Monica, for that matter). In addition, I will stay away from 8am games (except maybe on Thursday, when my body is still somewhat fresh). Trying to get your ass out of bed around 7am to make it to an 8am game is just too much of a hassle. I should have known better after last year, but the excitement of picking games just got the better of me. Even with staying at a hotel much closer this time around, getting up early is a drag, especially if you had a late game the night before. I also plan on scheduling something for the night before, as things were a little boring the first evening (albeit relaxing).

Exhibitor Area

Even larger than last year, I entered the fray as soon as I got a chance. The first time around, I homed in on the things I really wanted to get before they ran out. Due to game cancellations and schedule rearranging, I actually ended up spending a lot more time in the shopping area than originally planned. With the game selection criteria for next year, I am probably going to have to schedule around that a little better.

A sizable portion of the dealer floor was dedicated to computer/video games. While this definitely has a place at GenCon, I didn’t see much that was worthwhile. Pre-painted miniatures (Hero-Clix et al) and card games got a little bigger still, and it appeared like the “odds&ends” merchants increased in number as well. While I am sure that a ton of people bought cheap-ass, crappy swords and battle axes, I was not very impressed by most of stuff those people sold. Amazingly, Chaosium didn’t have a booth this year, and instead just put some books in the Atlas game booth. I did see the Chaosium president running about at some point, but none of the Chaosium crew actually manned a booth. Similarly, Talsorian Games didn’t have a booth either. Black Library/Sabertooth only had a bare-bones array of products, which was somewhat disappointing. I was hoping to stock up on some of the non-GW novels, which always seem to be hard to get. Instead, all they had was a smattering of the latest 40k/WF novels, plus some WFRP and Warhammer Ancients books. I was hoping to pick up a copy of Talisman, but they limited sales to 50 copies a day, and with my schedule, by the time I got there each day, they were already out.

Despite that, I still managed to pick up a good selection of stuff. A few new shirts, Shadow Nations, Colonial Gothic, some WFRP books I didn’t have yet (not nearly all of the ones I needed though), the BSG RPG, some new dice, the Tannhauser board game, as well as the complete line of the Arkham Horror boardgame. In addition, some assorted gaming books (e.g. the wife managed to get most, if not all of the Stargate RPG line, some new Shadowrun books), plus I managed to get a copy of Walker in the Wastes, for CoC.

Swag-wise, not too much to report. The welcome baggie was not the greatest. As usual, the coupon book was worthless, and most of the booths who had put in flyers offering free stuff had run out half-way through the first day. At the booths, there was a little bit of swag here and there (neat shrunken heads at the Conan MMO booth), but nothing to write home about.

One cool thing was at the Shadowrun booth. One of the artists actually drew a character portrait on the inside cover for me while I waited. Very neat, and not too many people can boast of having one of the artists who worked on a book actually putting more art in. Anything I could get signed was signed (e.g. the BSG core book) by the creators. Which leads me to the next topic of conversation:

Celebrities

One interesting addition to the celeb lineup was Rupert from Survivor. Instead of doing the usual “Sign Pictures for Money”, all his autographs were based on a donation system, and anything donated was given to a charity. Additionally, he also participated in a pirates RPG, which makes him cool in my book.

Apart from Mira Furlan, all the celebs were there for the full run of GenCon, so it was easy to get in at a time when the lines were short. The longest wait was about 5 minutes, a far cry from the 45minute wait last year for the Mythbusters.

First up was Lani Tupu (Farscape). Very nice guy, pleasant to talk to. He mentioned that there are some webisodes of Farscape coming up in the near future. Nice to see the show continue, even though I am not caught up yet. After him, we moved on to Raelee Hill (Farscape). Didn’t talk to her too much, as a line was forming, but still very pleasant.

The following day, we went to meet Mark Sheppard (Firefly). Unfortunately, he was out for lunch when we got there, so we hung around a little while. As he came in, he just clapped me on the shoulder and shook my hand. But this was only the beginning. I only had 20 minutes before the Obsidian game started, plus I was still in the convention center, which is a good 5 minutes away from the Hyatt, where the game took place. Figuring the celebs would do their usual “smile, small-talk for 2.3 minutes, next” routine, I wasn’t worried. Mark however was different. We talked a bit about Firefly. Then we talked BSG. Then we talked Joss Whedon, Mark’s friends on various shows, what kind of shows he is into, what he is up to next, Browncoat Ball (and the fact that he didn’t get an invite, and after being informed about the date, that he couldn’t make it anyway because he was shooting 2 TV shows and doing another convention), the BSG RPG and whether he was in it, the sci-fi community, some more about Firefly and a bunch of other stuff. If you look at the length of the previous sentence, you can imagine that all this took quite some time. Here I am standing, nervously eyeing my watch and the line that is forming behind us, but on the other hand, Mark was so outgoing and easy to talk to, I really didn’t want to leave. Still, at 3:02, I finally felt that I couldn’t stay any longer and we bid him goodbye. By far, he was the best celebrity encounter I ever had.

Saturday, I actually talked to him again (briefly) while we were waiting in line for Mira Furlan. She was the complete opposite of Mark Sheppard, barely talking at all, and only giving a brief smile with a frazzled look on her face. Since we were one of the first people on her first day, she might have still been shell-shocked with the scale of GenCon, and possibly jet-lagged as well. She seemed more interested in her coffee. Still, I have a cool personalized picture of her from Lost (even though it’s a really odd size and doesn’t fit into the photo protectors we brought).

Assorted Stuff

Not much hoopla about the 40th Anniversary of GenCon. I expected there to be more of a big deal, but no such thing. Maybe they reserved that for the VIG’s (Very Important Gamers), but nothing much was made out of it. Then again, with everything spread out so much, I might have missed it because of that.

The big announcement of the year was 4th Edition D&D. I wasn’t at the actual announcement, but the overall reaction I got from random people I talked during my games or while out smoking was very negative. With the last couple class books for 3.5 D&D just having been released, a new edition by May next year seems too much like a money-grubbing move. I still have to check into the details, but there were rumors of a $10 monthly subscription to access exclusive extra content online or some-such thing. I am skeptical at best, and while I will get the core books, I doubt I’ll do any serious gaming with 4th Ed. D&D.

We missed the GenCon Dance completely. The wife wasn’t feeling well, and my game that night ran a little long, plus we had packing to do. Not much point in hoofing it all the way to where it was going on, plus I was in full-bore snot mode, with a bright red nose. I also had an invite to the Apophis After-Party, held at some nightclub. They had a neat-looking lineup of goth/industrial bands, but with everything else happening, there was just no way.

After I was done with my Saturday night game, we packed up the non-essentials, and I loaded that stuff into the car around 12:30am to avoid hauling stuff around when hordes of gamers are checking out. Sunday morning, we dropped off the last few bags with essentials at the bellhop, and after playing our last game, and a last walk around the dealer floor, we got ready to leave. Loading up the last 3 bags was a snap, and we headed for home. The drive was very uneventful, despite the fact that it started to rain about 20 miles outside of Indy. Aside from stopping for gas and some drinks in Indy, we didn’t make a single stop and made it home in about 4.5 hours.

That’s pretty much it for the GenCon 2007 recap, at least for now. I have to wade through hundreds of emails (mostly spam) and get some work done.

Things have been pretty busy at work, plus the countdown to GenCon is increasing its pace. Progress on the Titan has been made, but it doesn’t look like much yet. I am still working on the cockpit. Things are very fiddly in that area, and every time I think I have it ready, something else doesn’t line up the way I want it to. On the bright side, I managed to prep parts for the shoulder and the hip, plus I have the main hull partially assembled. Once the putty fully sets, I will fill some more gaps, wait some more, and then sand the hull to perfection. That will be a big milestone, as that’s a sub-assembly that will hold a lot of different parts together.

Despite having some free time over the weekend, I didn’t actually get all that much done. Part of the problem was the fact that I ran into a small issue with the cockpit design, the other was the fact that we went to go gaming with our friends, and didn’t come home until 4am. That left me lethargic for most of Sunday, plus I didn’t really have a lot of table space since my father-in-law spent most of the day in his chair. I managed to get a little bit of work done after he went to bed.

Since I used some CoD building parts to spruce up the cockpit, I had to do some redesigning on the cockpit. I re-cut most of the top shell. I also completed most of the window frames, so that part is just about done. I still have to recut two strips. I was hoping to use pre-cut strips, but I don’t have any that are wide enough. I hope to get the cockpit done tonight, which is fairly reasonable.

On a less cheerful note, the quick trip to Riders in Ypsi resulted in standing in front of a closed store. They close at 6pm, and we didn’t get there until almost 7pm, so no plasticard for me. I might have to make a trip to Old Guard, which is just about the only hobby store I can think of that’s still open. We also checked out two new gaming stores in Ann Arbor. One, We Got Game (or something like that) was  not too bad. Not much in the modeling department, and somewhat limited RPG stocks, but all in all a nice little store with potential. The second one, Labyrinth Games, was squared away in the basement of a downtown AA storefront. Pretty small, with very limited stocks. Since they just opened, somewhat understandable, but not worth going back to for a few months.

After sitting through the Product Seminar at Games Day and ogling all the super-heavy goodness, I did some thinking. Once Apocalypse comes out, Ican put a lot of vehicles on the table already: a mechanized Sisters force, a mechanized infantry company and a tank company. That’s around 30 transports and tanks right there. Add to that the Confessio-pattern Heavy Tank (formerly known as “Scratch-built Baneblade”), a Lucius-pattern Baneblade, plus I am certain to pick up one or two of the new plastic Baneblades coming out this fall.

Quick note: my scratch-built Baneblade will be VDR’ed to be a slightly smaller version of the Baneblade, minus the Lascannon sponsons and less armor/structure points. Since it’s physically smaller, and since FW has introduced Heavy Tanks, it makes sense and adds some fluff. Plus it doesn’t take away from the might of the actual Baneblades.  

So, that’s 30 or so regular tanks and transports, 1 heavy tank, and 3 super-heavy tanks. Add to that the horde of IG and SoB infantry which rides in those transports, a Valkyrie hauling around an Inquisitor and his retinue, plus, if I ever get it done, a Marauder Destroyer Superheavy Bomber which can go on strafing runs. That’s a lot of stuff… but something is missing. Everything on this list drives to places, or flies. Aside from 20 zealots, nobody is walking. Perusing the Warseer forums, I came across a thread that will change that.

Since come October, super-heavies will be something that can be played without having to ask for permission and then having to listen to a bunch of whining, I am adding a Warhound Titan to my Imperial force. No, not a Forgeworld Titan. A scratch-built titan. While the FW models are truly awe-inspiring, their price tag is just as jaw-dropping. While I have certainly spent a lot of money on this hobby, a FW Titan is not in the budget right now. But, the Warseer thread mentioned above had a nifty set of templates. They are very well done, and after picking up some supplies two days ago, I already have several items cut out, ready for initial assembly. Since work is somewhat hectic right now, I am taking my time, and only cutting/sanding a few pieces each night. I am also having a bit of a materials shortage, since my local supply of 0.06″ plasticard seems to have dried up. (The only store within reasonable driving distance was wiped out by me, and the one store that always had tons of that stuff in stock has closed a few months ago).

So far, the following items have been cut and sanded:

• Main Hull
• Head Assembly (Jaw)
• Cockpit
• Collar

I am fairly pleased so far. I realize that I didn’t pour all my energy into it, but even for minimal effort, it’s moving along nicely. Hopefully, I will be able to make it to Rider’s in Ypsi tomorrow, and hopefully pick up some more plasticard. I am fairly well set for 0.04″ card, but for the more structural areas, I would prefer to use 0.06″. I also need some channels, strips and right-angle pieces, which will help with assembly and cutting. I’d rather use premade thin strips than chopping around and trying to get clean cuts/breaks on a detail piece.

After main assembly is done, I’ll be hunting around for some trim/detail accessories. The CoD AdMech building should have some juicy bitz that will help with making the titan nice and shiny.

After a day of semi rest, I finally have the energy and motivation to recap this year’s Games Day experience. Please bear with me as there will be some ranting on various assorted minor tidbits.

As in the previous two years, I headed to GW Novi to wait for the bus. Unlike previous years, I actually wore very comfortable pants, and didn’t bring an army to use at the store. I didn’t bring any Golden Daemon entries either. The pants are self-explanatory (as sitting on a bus for several hours with a new tattoo by the waistline isn’t very comfortable in the first place, much less so with jeans). While I would never bring an army to Games Day anyway, passing the time before the bus leaves is generally not a bad idea, the fact that I’d have to leave it in my car for a whole day (with July temperatures) is not something I want to do (again). Last year, Dan told me I could leave it in the store back room, but since he wasn’t there the night before Games Day, my army ended up in my trunk. Similar reasoning on the Golden Daemon entries… while I certainly can’t win if I don’t enter, hauling my models around, being disappointed that I didn’t even make first cut (again), and then breaking pieces while transporting means more hassle than it’s worth.

In any case, the bus left a little later than I figured, but it was nice to just talk with some of the regulars, and some new faces. I also ran into my smoking buddy from 2 years ago, and we picked up right where we left off. One of the newcomers, Brian, showed us some of his Golden Daemon entries… he’s an amazing painter, and his stuff was top notch. On top of that, it was his first Games Day, so we were able to give him some pointers on how things worked.

Positive surprise as the bus was leaving was the fact that I actually got 2 seats to myself. Also, no movie for the first part of the trip, and later on, a very quiet showing of The Hobbit. Absolutely bearable, even though the seats were quite uncomfortable. Even though I had room, the seats were trying to imitate bucket seats, which meant there was a bulge in the middle, making lying down not really feasible. It should also be noted that despite directions, the bus driver couldn’t navigate his way to GW Ypsilanti, and we ended up driving back and forth quite a bit for that. This was only a portent of the things to come…

Breakfast stop at some service station near the Indiana border. We ran into the second GW bus there, and I got the chance to a) smoke, and b) meet some of the Warseer folks who were on the other bus. Once we got back on the bus, we noticed that the bus had gotten a lot warmer, and had acquired what can only be described as “gamer funk”. A gradual buildup of body odor that was not really noticeable before now hit us square in the face. Well, we thought, it is not too much farther to Chicago, so we’ll deal with it. Not so much. As we’re sitting in the funk, it becomes apparent that the air conditioning is not working. At all. With the sun rising, and the windows being sealed, both temperature and funk levels were increasing quickly. Then, the bus driver takes us to the wrong convention center (incidentally, where I was for the Chi autoshow earlier this year). Unfortunately, it’s on the other side of town. And the huge bus was a pain to manhandle through the residential neighborhood we tried to use to get back to the proper expressway. If it hadn’t been for the navigating skills of one of the parents on the bus, we’d still be driving through the same neighborhood right now. In any case, this added another hour to the trip, and with the temperature being up to at least 80 or 90 inside, it was not a fun hour. I had brought several t-shirts in order to not be funky. I had changed after the breakfast break, and by the time we got to Games Day, I was almost soaked with sweat.

But, we’re finally here. Registration had been open for about 15 minutes, but unlike the year before, no lines. After the painless registration, we settled in for the wait to get in. Had quite a few interesting conversations with my smoking buddy, mostly about history and gaming… plus the assorted tales from our personal lives. Promptly at 10am, the doors opened and we filed into the hall.

Most people made an immediate bee-line to the ForgeWorld booth. The line was insanely long throughout most of the day, but I really don’t understand all the people who line up and then decide what they want when they could pick and choose from the website, and simply reserve their stuff ahead of time. It’s easy, and it saves a lot of time. Instead, those folks stand in line forever, get a catalog, and then take a long time to pick out their stuff, thereby holding up the line even more. While everyone was getting in line for that, I went straight to the Black Library booth (which had virtually no line at all). After rummaging through t-shirts, novels, and WFRP gaming books (a lot of which were marked down), I got into the small line for checkout. While waiting, I spotted a little note that if you spend $50, you can buy a copy of Fulgrim, the next Horus Heresy book. Since it wasn’t out yet, I was elated. As luck would have it, by the time I actually got to pay for my stuff, they were all out already. I found out a day later that most copies (~250 of them) had been bought the day before by the GT folk, plus a bunch of staff reservations. Not a big deal, as the release date was only a few days away. After that, I went to see Dan Abnett, who was kind enough to not only sign my BL purchases, but also my wife’s copy of the Torchwood novel he wrote. We chatted a bit about his work, Doctor Who, and assorted convention stuff. I hooked back up with my smoking buddy, and we checked out the convention hall. The 40k scale Aeronautica Imperialis game was pretty impressive, but was overshadowed by the amazing studio booth which had all the shiny Apocalypse stuff. The new Baneblade kit due out in October is very impressive. Also present was Dave Taylor’s Genswick Rifles IG army, beefed up for Apocalypse with a couple superheavies. Very impressive to actually see it in person.

After a quick smoke, we headed to the first product seminar. Unlike the previous years, it was all about one thing: Apocalypse. They even made a point of stating that since Apocalypse is so huge, there wouldn’t be any WHFB or LotR announcements. The seminar was actually very entertaining, although they didn’t announce too many things I didn’t know already from reading Warseer rumor posts. It should be noted that the Apocalypse backpack actually contains the rulebook, the new templates (they are HUGE) and the dice. Effectively, you get the backpack for ~$2, if you plan on buying the other stuff anyway. Since you’ll need the templates and the book, it’s not a bad deal at all. Lots of hoopla over the formation boxed sets to be released, but I have the impression that they overstated the savings quite a bit. This is GW after all. Most of the in-store sets are focused on Space Marines, IG, Tau and Eldar. Nids will get a box with 120 Hormogaunts. Just about everybody else is limited to direct-only specials you can get on the website. It was mentioned that Dark Eldar will get a set of 3 ravagers, and a set of 3 raiders with warriors.

The Q&A session didn’t reveal too many new things either (Chaos in September, Orks sometime after that). Vague statements or flat-out “No Comments” on most questions. One interesting question was about the fact that with army books coming along very slowly, other games (like Warmachine) are starting to do a lot better on the retail front. Lots of hemming and hawing about that from the GW folks, but in the end, it came across as “We don’t care… we’ll release dex’s as always”. With the flood of questions about Apocalypse, and a few desperate attempts to get WHFB/LotR info from a few people, I didn’t actually get a chanve to ask about the Damnatus issue. But, since the seminar was held by one of the US guys, I doubt I would have gotten an answer anyway. He seemed knowledgeable about new products, but failed to comment on anything policy related. He also failed to give any actual price information whatsoever. On a funny note, their PowerPoint presentation had a few spelling errors, and a missing image, neither of which was fixed for the second product seminar.

After that, more smoking and walking about, checking out the various game tables. At that point, I decided not to play much that day, since with the addition of the WHFB Big Game, the noise level in the hall was almost unbearable. I stopped by the GW store. Aside from the GD shirts, which were actually in stock this year, there was not much point to it. From what I hear, they used to have great deals, and according to the rumor mill, you used to be able to buy bitz by the pound there. In the three years I’ve been going, no such thing. You can place a bitz order, which will be shipped to you, or you can buy the regular boxed sets and blisters that are available in the stores. The silly thing is that all that stuff is priced exactly the same as in the store (same for bitz), except the sales tax is higher. So, effectively, you pay more, and have to lug around your purchases all day. I certainly would have picked up some boxed sets, if I could have saved some money that way. But, as it was, there was no point in me buying anything there. The only things you couldn’t normally get in the stores were Specialist Games. But they only got a tiny table on the side, which I almost missed. I did pick up the BFG rulebooks since they had them, and I didn’t have to order them.

The highlight of the day was certainly the Black Library seminar. There are a bunch of interesting new releases coming up, plus Dan Abnett took the stage and spoke at length about Gaunt’s Ghosts, Horus Heresy, and his writing. It was very entertaining. We did get a chance to chat a little more with him in the hallway after the seminar. Dan actually used to play Call of Cthulhu (and other RPG’s), which made my day. Unfortunately, Dan only does one US convention a year, so he won’t be at GenCon.

The rest of the day, I spent checking out the Golden Daemons, wandering the hall, going to the second product seminar to see if there were any juicy tidbits during the Q&A, as well some very light shopping. It should be noted that reserving the few FW items allowed me to go at a time when the line was relatively short. Unlike last year, the Big Game did not just hand out their scenery and models at the end of the day. The Golden Daemon had a lot of nice models on display (even a Inquisition Thunderhawk… that thing is HUUUUGE). Remember Brian, mention above? Everything he entered made First Cut. And he entered in 40k Single Miniature, 40k Squad, Warhammer Single Miniature and Lord of the Rings Single Miniature, so that very impressive. However, I could not find his LotR miniature in the case, only the base he had mentioned. Turns out it was being photographed at the time, since it had won a Silver Golden Daemon. Congratulations Brian. I ran into Brian shortly after, and he was clearly in a state of shock. For his first Games Day, he certainly did really well in the Golden Daemons. It reaffirms once again that until I can improve my painting skills dramatically, there’s not much point in me ever entering anything again.

That about sums up the actual Games Day, but I would be remiss if I didn’t tell the tale of woe that follows. After all the bus mishaps detailed above, it was nice to see that they got the air conditioning working. It was nice and cool in the bus, which was great after waiting in the muggy heat for 30 minutes. We headed for home, and it became apparent that they didn’t actually fix the AC. While the initial wave of cool air felt good, the bus turned into an icebox fairly quickly. Most people had only brought a t-shirt and shorts (given the temperatures outside, that is very understandable). As the bus was approaching arctic temperatures, the bus driver said he couldn’t turn the AC off. I am thinking since people complained about the heat, they just forced the AC on at maximum level (probably at some inaccessible control panel).

The ride home was absolutely freezing, especially in the later stages. I tried to use my pillow as a blanket, but after 5+ hours of sitting, even that didn’t help much. And instead of stopping at a well-traveled service station, the driver took us to a Burger King in the middle of nowhere. Granted, there were other fast food places nearby, but the BK was woefully unprepared for a bus full of hungry gamers. I ended up first in line, and even I had to wait for 10 minutes for my fries. The whole thing took way longer than it should have, which could have been easily avoided. To make matters worse, after the dinner stop, they put “Red vs. Blue” in the DVD player. I had never heard of it, but essentially somebody put voice-overs on Halo game footage. Footage of people standing around, for the most part. And not even good voice-overs… incredibly stupid conversations between people whose helmets have faceplates. I actually felt my IQ drop, and I was only peripherally paying attention. Just like the first year at Games Day, when Invader Zim was flashing and blaring into my brain, “Red vs. Blue” took what little sanity I had left. We finally pulled back into the Novi parking lot around 1:30am, most of us frozen solid. I immediately put on the jacket I had in the car and cranked the heat up. Even after that, I was still cold by the time I got home.

After all this rambling… a rant.

Games Day is fun, but I don’t think I’ll be going again next year. The bus trip alone is such an ordeal. Either you are crammed next to somebody, and/or something incredibly stupid is blaring on the TV, and/or it’s too hot/cold, and/or people are screaming in the back all night, and/or the seats are uncomfortable, and/or the bus driver starts honking at people at 4:30am. The list of things that suck about the busride goes on and on. It’s all piddly small shit, but it’s just not worth it. Then there is Games Day itself. For me, the main attractions have been the FW and BL booths. But, for the most part, I can get all that stuff, pretty much for the same price, through their respective websites, or, in the case of BL, at their GenCon booth. Oddly enough, at GenCon, BL even has some of the non-GW materials (like Fiends of the Eastern Front, etc.) which they don’t bring to Games Day. As mentioned above, the GW Store is a joke, as the only thing worthwhile are the GD t-shirts, and I got last year’s from the GW website, not GD (since they didn’t have the shirts due to a shipping mishap). The gaming tables are neat, but it’s just too loud and crowded to get a decent game in. The seminars are neat as well, but I can learn just as much from the Warseer rumor forums. In some cases, I actually get more information there (like prices). While it is nice to ask questions, the majority of answers are vague or “Can’t comment on that”. Again, Warseer forums are more useful than the actual seminar. I can understand that GW won’t go into their product strategy until things are set in stone (to avoid people complaining that items were delayed or canceled). However, by the time things are set in stone, information will have leaked, either through word of mouth, independent retailers or distributors, or even publication in White Dwarf. While the product seminar confirmed a few rumors, it didn’t tell me anything substantially outrageous. I actually learned more about the contents of the Space Marine company box from Warseer than from the product seminar. The BL seminar, as great as it was, used a slideshow from the earlier Games Days (as evidenced by talking about May and June releases). At least BL was kind enough to talk about projects that are wayyyyyy down the line.

In summary…

• Anything available in the booths, I can buy online for the same price, with the exception of some good deals at BL. That includes the GD t-shirts.
• It’s not a gaming-friendly environment, and I’d rather play a game in the store. The incessant Waaaaaagh’s (from 2 Big Games instead of just one) are annoying and rather pointless. Even the people running actual demo games were annoyed.
• The information given in the seminars, while entertaining, can easily be found online as well.
• The Golden Daemon is almost unattainable with my painting skills. It’s hard to see good detail through the smudged and scratched plexiglass, not to mention the fact that it’s crowded throughout most of the day. You actually get to see the models better on the website and White Dwarf than in person.
• The bus ride, while convenient in the fact that I don’t have to arrange for transportation, directions, parking, driving, etc, is so uncomfortable that it leaves me exhausted and sore for days later.
• The price is rising every year. The year before I went, the bus ride was free. My first year, it was $25. Last year, it was $30. Now, it was $35. The GD ticket is $40. Contrast that to GenCon, where a 4-day pass runs $65, with a ton more stuff going on.

This was my third Games Day. The third time through, I am hard-pressed to say I experienced anything significantly impressive that I didn’t see in the previous two years. I am not saying I had a bad time, I just didn’t have a great time. I had a… time. Just that. Fun as it was, the fun was almost matched by the horrors of the bus trip, and I just don’t see anything worthwhile to do there next year that I haven’t already done or seen. I might go again some year, but that’s way down the line.

Funny side note: Sunday, I went to Borders with my wife, so she could attend a Harry Potter podcast event there. Since I had some time, I went looking for Rebel Winter and Fulgrim, both of which had sold out completely at Games Day. Rebel Winter was easy to find, but Fulgrim was not in the Warhammer section. Checking Border’s nifty computer system, it was listed as “Likely In Store”. I printed the info stub and proceeded to the info counter, where I was informed that while they have copies, they can’t sell them until Tuesday, which is the actual release date. I reserved a copy, and went back to perusing the shelves. Twenty minutes later, I chanced upon a copy of Fulgrim on one of the Sci-Fi shelves, nowhere near the other Warhammer books and nowhere near the M’s either. Somebody must have put it on the shelf by accident, so I immediately picked that up. It rang up just fine, so after the Borders trip, I am now all set for GW novels for a while. Incidentally, I had been talking to Vince, the BL rep, about Fiends of the Rising Sun (which they didn’t have at GD), to see if it was going to be available at GenCon. I found that at Borders too…

For those of you not in the loop, here’s the basic premise:

A few years ago, a handful of German 40k fans and film-makers decided to go ahead and make a Warhammer 40,000 fan film. When I first heard about it, I was somewhat skeptical. Could a low-budget (~$10k) movie capture the epic flair of the 40k setting? Would it just be silly with a bunch of dorks running around in shoddily constructed Space Marine power armor? A short while later, a trailer emerged. I was stunned. Even though it was still early in the production, it looked amazing. It was very well done, and was focused on an Inquisitor instead of Space Marines, a clear winner in my book*.

^{*Disclaimer: I have nothing against Space Marines in terms of fluff, but there are just too many Space Marine players out there to interest me in ever painting or playing them.} 

After checking out the entire site for the Damnatus project, I was hooked. With eager anticipation, I settled in for the long haul. After a few months, a new trailer emerged, even better than the last one. A few production mishaps later, nothing but silence. I had almost given up on ever seeing a 40k movie when the project leaders announced a picture lock. That meant everything was pretty much done. My heart skipped a beat… when could I see the movie I had been waiting for for so long? Well, a few more months of silence later, it was announced that the people who worked on it got to see it at a privately held premiere.

A few weeks after that, the (war)hammer dropped: Games Workshop denies the rights to release the movie. The reason cited was a clause of German copyright law, giving the creators rights to their creation. Somehow, GW just then realized that they have a problem with that clause (which only applies to Germany, mind you). That was 3 weeks ago. Of course the Damnatus team is trying to get their film out there (after all, a lot of time, money and sweat has been spent making the thing). Unfortunately, the legal machine is turning ever so slowly, denying me the pleasure of watching a 40k movie.

GW even went so far as changing their IP policy to ban all fan-made movies. Before too long, fan-fiction and fan-art might suffer the same fate. Many analogies have been drawn to Star Wars and Star Trek, whose creators/IP holders almost seem to encourage fan-created material of all kinds. Why can’t GW allow the same thing? It should be noted that it’s not like the Damnatus team didn’t check with GW. In the very early stages, they did seek permission to use the setting for the movie, and even got a mention in the German White Dwarf.

With Games Day only 2 days away, I am planning on asking about the change in IP policy and the fate of Damnatus during the GW seminar. I don’t expect any results, but it’ll add a voice in support of the movie. If you would like to make your own voice heard, there is an online petition to get the movie out to us fans.

Important Links:

• Petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/damnatus/petition.html
• Damnatus Official Site: http://www.damnatus.com

This summer is going to be fairly busy… Games Day, GenCon, Browncoat Ball… all kinds of stuff happening. Despite that, everything is planned out fairly well, and there’s not too much to worry about. Games Day is the easiest one: all I have to do is get on the bus, try and take a nap, enjoy Games Day, and then repeat the ride. GenCon is similarly planned out, minus the bus trip. Event tickets should be arriving in the mail any day now, so all that is left is to pack and then head over to Indianapolis for 4 days of fun. Browncoat Ball seemed daunting at first, but my outfit shipped yesterday, so aside from a few last minute preparations, things should be all set there as well. I still have to find the best option for the rental car (since we’re going with friends, we need a little more room than my Tiburon allows).

Last Tuesday, we went to see Transformers. I have mixed feeling after seeing it. A lot of people at work had a lot of great things to say about the movie, but I was bored most of the time. Things were moving along a little too slow for my taste, especially early on. Yeah, there were action scenes early on, but that was overshadowed by lengthy character development and constant product placement for General Motors. For most of the movie, I felt like I was watching a GM commercial. Having done some work on GM projects, that is more than I want to deal with in my spare time. I understand that GM probably put a lot of money on the table for having their products featured prominently in a major blockbuster, but come on… it was a little too blatant and obvious. In this day and age, traditional advertising is starting to fall short of its potential, so product placement is the way of the future. If you watch the first season of Heroes, for example, you will see some Nissan car prominently featured as Hiro and Ando tour the US. While they mentioned the brand and model name, it was not as IN YOUR FACE as Transformers.

To make matters worse, we had some teenagers sitting next to us in the theater. At first, things were fine, but about 20 minutes into the movie, they started texting. Not that it made noise, but a bright white light will draw your attention away from the movie screen. Later on, they actually started fielding phone calls. “Oh, we’re just watching a movie right now.” Just great. I always turn my phone off during a movie, since I paid good money to go see it. Not to mention the fact that it is bloody fucking rude to yabber on the phone, disrupting other people.

After the Transformers debacle (great effects, but I was bored), we left the auditorium to get our seats for the Harry Potter midnight showing. When we first got to the theater, it was a typical Tuesday crowd. Entering the same place an hour before HP started felt like we were on a different planet. The rather big lobby was packed full of people, quite a few of which in costume. After some confusion about the correct line to get into (there were several screenings that night), we got us some decent seats and started waiting. About 15 minutes before the start of the movie, I realized our drink was not going to last us through the movie, so I went to the lobby. Even at that time, the lines for the concession stand were huge. It took me half an hour to get a Sierra Mist. Of course I missed the first 15 minutes of the movie, but I was there mostly for my wife (who is a huge HP fan). The movie was pretty good, even for a non-HP fan such as myself. It felt a lot darker than the previous movies, and I thoroughly enjoyed the evil inquisitor lady with all the cutesy cat plates in her rather pink room. Those are my favorite kind of villain…

In any case, we returned home around 3am, and work was beckoning the next day. We’ll be seeing Harry Potter again this weekend with our friends, this time in IMAX. Supposedly, the last 20 minutes are going to be in 3D, so I’ll have to report to my boss on Monday.

Wow… a month has passed since my last post, and I feel like I am blogfading, but it’s been a frantic. Since my last post, I had a birthday (nice presents were received), and a few new additions to the geek collection were made.

Sitting next to the TV is a PS3, which has been a godsend already. Since firmware 1.82 was already out when I got it, I can use its wi-fi capabilities to get video straight off my desktop computer in the other room. Granted, I had to convert all those videos to a PS3 compatible format, but the conversions are quick. It’s so much easier to just turn on the PS3, use the remote to find the video I want to watch, and then have full control over everything. Contrast that to setting up the laptop, booting it up, praying the video driver doesn’t BSOD, waiting for the wireless to connect, starting WMC or WMP (varied due to some codec problems with Vista x64), contorting myself on the couch to try and use the IR remote for the laptop (the couch covers up the receiver), and then more praying that Windows doesn’t hiccup and crash during playback. Granted, PS3 video playback is not without pitfalls either. Occasionally, I get kicked back to the video selection, but simply hitting play again solves that problem, and it picks up where I left off.

Having Blu-Ray in addition to HD-DVD is nice as well, since I am now covered for either outcome of the format war. Regardless, I will definitely keep the HD-DVD player, since it appears to upscale regular DVD’s a little better than the PS3. Mind you, I only did a quick test on that, so only time will tell.

Of course the PS3 is a gaming platform, not just a media extender or Blu-Ray player. We got a few games… my absolute favorite being MotorStorm right now. It is somewhat reminiscent of Smuggler’s Run… except more race oriented.  Last Saturday, we had some friends over, and we spent most of the night crashing in myriad ways. We also played some Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, but rather quickly returned to MotorStorm. I also have The Darkness, but until I can get a mouse hooked up, I don’t think I’ll be playing much of that, since I am too used to mouse control for my FPS games. Graphics look good though, so it’ll be fun.

A bunch of great games are coming out this year, and I’ll probably be mentioning new acquisitions now and then. I am really looking forward to GTA IV… but lots of craziness between now and October 16th.

The main reason for not posting is, surprise, surprise… work. We’ve been insanely busy those past weeks, and after work, I just plop on the couch, enjoying the new gadgets. I did manage to set up a website for the wife’s World of Warcraft guild, only to take the site down a week later due to guild-squabbles. The site for the new guild is almost done, but until it’s presentable, I won’t post a link.

I also picked up a copy of the Warhammer Fantasy RPG. Since it is the basis for the upcoming 40k RPG, I thought it might be a neat addition to the RPG shelf. I read through the book, and I am liking what I am seeing. While the random career paths might not appeal to all gamers, I think it adds a lot of flavor to your characters, and I am really digging the spell system. Having to fear some consequences when you unleash primal forces adds so much to the game (at least in my eyes). I never cared for the D&D magic system (no chance of messing up a spell/limited spells a day), and the drain/damage you take in Shadowrun makes it too abstract. In WFRP, you could be on the receiving end of some pretty crazy things when you roll funky. I’ll definitely see if I can pick up some more sourcebooks at Games Day (provided they have any WFRP stuff at the Black Library booth).

Speaking of Games Day… only 2 more weeks. I am not entering into the Golden Daemon, but I am definitely going to try and get into all the seminars, as well as the Aeronautica Imperialis game. Dan Abnett is going to be there, so I’ll see if I can score some autographed copies of his latest books. I am holding off on getting them at Borders, since I’d hate to double-buy just for a personalized autograph.