A Wargamers journey to Mecca.

[Danguinius]

This will probably evolve (or devolve) into a long diary type of thing regarding my epic journey to the Mecca for all wargamers - Gen Con. I`ll post updates as I get things to report.

Why write about it? Well, like many of the people who post on this board, I`ve been in Japan a long time (more or less since the summer of 1996) and it looks like I`ll be here for a long time yet. I turned 40 a few months ago and, while I try to experience some new things each year (like getting my scuba diving license last year...and I may try sky diving this summer), it gets harder and harder to get away from my job. And, it gets harder and harder to leave the country. This means there are some of those things that I always wanted to try, but they are slowly becoming impossible to do, such as: attending a massive wargaming con. I was lucky enough (between jobs) to be able to attend Adepticon in 2004, right when it started to blow up into the huge con it is now. I participated in the team tourney and it was a blast! This lead me to suggest (to Prim) having a team tourney at Nagoyahammer several years ago.

I often think back to that weekend at Adepticon, and I`d love to go again. But, it`s held in mid-April which is one of the busiest times of the year where I work and I could never get time off then. I was slowly coming to accept that I wouldn`t be able to attend a major con again. I only go back to the U.S. once every three years - this is a deal I worked out with my employer so that I could take a longer vacation in August, but only once every three years. I haven`t been back since 2010, so this year is my summer to go. Coincidentally, a fellow wargamer (Gannon) also said this was his summer to head back and that he was going to try to attend Gen Con. Gen Con? Gen Con! Wow, Gen Con is in August?!? The wheels in my head began turning...

I guess I should add a little background here. First. I was an RPGer in high school. In my early days of university, I had my first encounter with wargames - Blood Bowl. Then I tried ManOWar. Then, my roommate tried to get me into Epic, but I decided on Warhammer Fantasy. Even at this time, I knew about Gen Con - the Mecca for wargamers and RPGers and CCGers. I did that for a few years until I discovered MTG. I moved to Japan not long after graduating form university and figured there were no wargamers in Japan. But I continued MTG in Japan and became a semi-well-known tournament player here. I liked MTG a lot, but I was a wargamer at heart, I guess. I coincidentally worked with another member of this forum (The Other Dave) back in 2001 or 2002 and he told me there WAS a wargaming group in Fukuoka. I sold all of my MTG the next weekend and used that money to buy my first 40K army. I played 40K and WFB and Bloodbowl A LOT during the next 10 years in Fukuoka, a little bit in Chicago and then here in Hiroshima. About 2-3 years ago, I started playing WarmaHordes (and then Monsterpocalypse) and enjoyed those more than the games I was playing...so I`ve kind of switched over to them.

Anyway, fast-forward a bit to this past January and I started to calculate whether I could actually go to Gen Con. I decided to go for it. I registered and purchased my badge. I reserved a hotel and started working out the logistics of transporting my armies. I made plans to meet Gannon in Indianapolis and wargame with him in the Iron Arena. I have also been trying to gather up my old RPG buddies to see if they want to attend: I think 2-3 of them will ride down to Indianpolis with me (roughly a 5-6 hour drive from my hometown). The next step is event registration - this Sunday/Monday. My next post will deal with that and all the events I plan to take part in at Gen Con.

Danguinius

[me_in_japan]

Coolio I'm sure you'll have a blast. I've never been to a really proper big con (weeeell, I did go to claymore last summer, which was fun, fo sho, but GenCon it weren't. Oh, and games day '96, but I wasn't really paying attention back then.) Anyway - have a swingin' time, and let us all know how the odyssey goes

[The Other Dave]

I shoulda gone when I was in the States between '05 and '08, but I was either being a grad student or a severely underpaid English teacher, so a weekend in Indianapolis represented a big chunk of change. Have fun!

[ashmie]

I can totally relate. I'm going to the UK games Expo next week, it's now or never for me and it will be my first Con.
Have a great time mate.

[Danguinius]

Hotel registration for Gen Con was a few months ago. It opened at noon Eastern (American) time, which as 1:00 in the morning here in Japan. As I usually wake up at 5:30 for work, I wasn`t about to stay up that late just to register for a hotel. That proved to be a big mistake. In fact, thousands of wargamers tried to reserve hotels instantly and all of the good hotels (the 5-6 located within walking distance of the Gen Con convention center) immediately filled up. When I woke up the next morning and learned the bad news, I immediately reserved a room at the Ramada (like 3 miles from the convention center, so not terrible...airport hotels are 15 miles away!) then called the "Housing Bureau" that handles these things to get on the waiting list for one of the "close" hotels. The woman informed me I was number 371 on the waiting list...a mere 8 hours after registration opened!

Last night was event registration at - you guessed it - 1:00 in the morning. I made my wish list before I went to bed and set my alarm for 12:55 a.m. I woke up and stumbled over to the computer, by the time I turned everything on and went to the Gen Con site, the countdown clock for registration read 30 seconds. I stared at the SUBMIT WISHLIST icon. 0.36 seconds after that icon went from ghostly to substantial, I clicked it. Everything kind of froze up for about 10 minutes, when it was finally updated, it said I was #3322 to have my wishlist reviewed. WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was so bent I almost punched the computer. It appeared the hotel fiasco wuld b repeated. I only had two things on my wishlist. One was the WarmaHordes Hardcore tourney (I just wanted to test my skills against the best in the world...and get crushed, probably), it had only 64 or 128 spaces available, so I assumed I was screwed.The other was a Monpoc battle royal that only had 4 spots available - not good odds with 3,322 people in front of me.

But, I noticed he numbers were counting down - now only 3,189 people in front of me. I calculated my number would be reached in about 40 minutes. It also said event tickets would be held in our virtual baskets/carts for 2 hours. So, I sent my alarm for 3:00 in the morning and went back to bed, grumbling about what bull$hit the registration process was. My alarm ripped me out of my dream and I literally stumbled half-awake over to the computer again. I got everything turned on again only to find both a Hardcore ticket and a Monsterpocalypse ticket in my cart! Sweeeeeetttt!!!! I did a fist pump, bought them ($10 and $4 respectively) and set my alarm for the third time. I drifted back into sleep with a smile on my face!

Mission #2: Registration - complete! I want to sign up for some lectures and workshops too, but I have to wait for my travel buddies to get their $hit together so we can coordinate which ones look the most interesting and sign up for those together. Those I can add later (they have a lot of spaces left). I also plan on doing lots of things that don`t require registration, like checking out new game demos, playing some Dropzone Commander with their reps (and learn the game), checking out the costume contest, and playing WarmaHordes in the Iron Arena (a 24-hour-a-day wargaming areawhere you can get pick up games on PP`s awesome boards...maybe like the Khador `jack factory).

I guess that`s it for this installment of my Gen Con"blog".

Danguinius

P.S. I know what you mean T.O.D., I think you are/were roughly the same distance s I from Gen Con. It`s just one of those things you always mean to get around to checking out...but never seem to. I`m sure they have some truly epic Epic events as well.

[me_in_japan]

Glad to hear you got your tickets. You go fly the flag for the J-posse, y'hear?

Incidentally, I have no idea what te situation will be like at GenCon, but would there be any possibility of your picking up one of those PP con-exclusive minis for me, pretty please with sugar on top? I've had my eye on that bombshell lass in the Khador suit for a while now...

[Danguinius]

I`ll see what I can do. I haven`t anything about PP is bringing to Gen Con...probably because they are getting ready for Lock`N`LOad. After that, we`ll probably here more about special releases or re-releases and prereleases. I`m hoping we can by the Night Troll there.

Danguinius

[me_in_japan]

Thanks a lot, Dan. If there's like mega nasty queues and stuff don't worry about it, but I'd very much appreciate it if it was just a case of popping over to the PP booth

I'd never even heard of a night troll till now. Are there any pictures of it anywhere? The concept seems sound, but aesthetics must come first, of course

[Danguinius]

So far, we just have the artwork in Gargantuans; it`s a light warbeast. It has black hide (and Stealth - our first Stealth model!!!), a long tongue and big eyes for hypnotizing victims (long enogh to gobble them up). The uses of it`s animus have been debated a million times over, but the bottom line is: it`s a 4-point warbeast with two P+S 12 claws with paralysis - perfect for catching a high DEF target (like a warcaster). There were photos of really basic greens of the model like 4-5 months ago...so it might be the kind of thing we could pick up early at Gen Con. Who knows.

Related to my last post: Gannon has also signed up for WarmaHordes Hardcore.We`ll try to represent Japan well, but I`m expecting some of the best players in the world to be there, so we`ll probably take some beatings. It`s a six round tourney and my goal is to win two games (definitely a possibiity if I get matched up against Gannon in one of those rounds - just kidding). WarmaHordes tourneys are much different than WFB/40K. When you look at the results of major WFB/40K tourneys, you rarely see the same names...just the same armies. I`ve always interpretted that as anybody can with with a suitaby cheezy net-list; not so much skill involved in the actual game play. But, with PP tourneys, you usually see the same names at the top of those tournament results (with different lists) time and time again; those guys just play the game at a different level. I expect two other events (Iron Gauntlet and Masters) to attract most of the top-level players. But those events are on Thursday, with the finals being on Saturday. Hardcore is beginning-to-end on Friday, so I expect some/a lot of those top players to participate in Hardcore as well. We`ll see. It`ll be a great experience either way. So, there is no possibility of simply buying the models for a cheezy Necron+Grey Knight list (something like 11 out of the final 16 armies at Adepticon contained one or both of these armies); there s no short-cut to winning. I just have to take a list and practice as much a s possible between now and Gen Con. As I said, I and Gannon will try to represent Japan well!

Danguinius

[Danguinius]

Well, my "training" for the Gen Con Hardcore tourney started last week. I used the same list with only a few minor tweaks five times and went 2-3. Not a great start, but good to get me back in the habit of using Cygnar. Hardcore is one list only, so you need to bring "tool" to deal with a wide variety of problems. The list is 50 points, so there is room for a lot of tools. The base time of 100 minutes (+/- deviation) plus the need to get into the center of the boad to avoid giving up domination damage or taking killbox damage means the game rarely, if ever, go to dice down. But the 7 minute turns go by sooooooo fast. You gotta know what you`re doing or you won`t be able to activate everything in the allotted time. I may switch to an eCaine list (if I continue to lose), but so far I`m planning on using this list (or a tweaked variant):

pHaley (-5)
Strormwall(19)
Centurion (9)
Thorn (8)
Squire (2)
ATGMs (6) & Officer (2)
(marshalled) Hunter (6)
Arlan Strangeways (2)]
Stormcaller (1)

I`ll get some more practice with this list on June 9th and either get much better with it...or switch to eCaine. We`ll see how it goes.

Danguinius