Intergalactic Convention Report

 It's called intergalactic but it's held here on earth, just like the Ms. Universe contest.

Working for the Weekend

The Intergalactic convention recently took place; this is a small local convention in Sacramento Ca.  I like to throw my support (whether they want it or not) at these local conventions because I like having conventions that I don't have to travel far to get to or stay in a hotel.  

So I signed myself up to run 4 games over the weekend, basically in each of the major time blocks; one on Friday night, 2 on Saturday, and one Sunday morning.  It's kinda like community service except that I don't have to wear an orange vest.  While the con had a Sci-fy theme, any game genre was welcome.

Friday is Lord of the Rings

Friday night I brought my Lord of the Rings set up for a skirmish set in Osgiliath.  

Pics of the set up.
Needs more rubble piles.

The rules were Fistful of Lead: Might and Melee.  Which is basically a dark ages / medieval skirmish game so the only thing that makes this fanatasy is the setting; crazy stone buildings and one side being orcs.  

I explained the scenario as "Sauron turned his burning eye to his orcs and said something like "Hey my dudes.  I think I dropped like a necklace or something back in Osgiliath like a thousand years ago.  Kinda been on my mind lately, kinda want it back.  Go there and look for it will ya?  Great.  Super, you're the best. But go NOW."  

There are 3 ruined buildings that cross the center line of the board.  Each has to be searched for the missing trinket.  To count as searched the Orcs have to pass two normal task rolls within them.  Orcs cannot search if there is a unegaged enemy in the same ruins.   When a building is searched nothing is found.  The orcs win if they can search all 3 buildings, as they can report back that the search was complete.  The Good side only had to stop this.  To balance things out a little, the orcs had more orcs than men had men.  

To aid in game play, I once again made sure that every character had it's own Pokémon card.

Boromir's Pokémon, I mean CHARACTER card.
Everything the player needs to know in one spot.

I brought enough warbands for 6 players, had 3 sitting around when the game began, so played myself to make it even.  I love it when that happens.

if you look closely, you might spot where one the ruins got damaged on the ride over,
and I forgot to bring any glue.

Random game pic
I also labelled each of the miniatures for easy recognition.

Another random game pic

In the beginning, the orc players were really invested in ling up shots with the archers, while I kept saying that archery wasn't that reliable in this game.  First two orcs shots resulted in 2 dead men.  They never believed a word I said after.

Players seemed to have fun, I was having fun.  Game started at 5 and wrapped up at 9 PM.

Let's take a look at the other miniatures games going on Friday night:

don't see any?
That's because mine was the only one.

Saturday is Kidding Around

As mentioned previously on this blog; The Intergalactic Convention mentioned having a 'Young gamers' program and since I have young gamers I volunteered to run two games for the program on Saturday.  Later on it turns out I was the entirety of the 'kid friendly' games available.  In the morning there was the Wooden Wars game and in the afternoon I was hosting some kid friendly board games.

Let's take a look at ALL the children that came.

Just one, and I brought him.
My Son#2 (age 6).

Just proves the adage that wargamers are grumpy old men who can't be bothered with kids.  

And one day, I will be one of them.

Daughter#1 (age 10) was supposed to come, but she was invited to a birthday party that same day that was gonna have go kart racing.  She had enough good manners to at least sound conflicted when she said she'd rather go to that.  

Wooden wars set up

Portion of the French line

I have mixed emotions about this.  One the one hand I was fairly disappointed to have put all this effort into Wooden Wars and have no one show up.  I felt bad for my son too, as he didn't really get a great 'convention experience of playing with a bunch of people some cool games' but more just 'playing games with his dad' which he does at home.  On the other hand, I'm fully aware that this game is a nitch, buried in another nitch, covered by a nitch coating so wouldn't be a big draw, especially for an already small convention.  So on one foot I would NOT go through all this effort to put on such a game again, but on the other foot; I already have it, so it would be easy to do again.  

I'm sure that if I brought this to a bigger convention that probably already had a bunch of kids going, it would of been more successful.  

I will say though that everyone was nice to Son#2, and he did get a kick out of walking around and seeing the game tables.  And people let him touch stuff.  

In the vender hall, I told him that he could pick out 'one small thing' thinking there wouldn't really that much to tempt him.  The folks working at the GEG space knew they're business.  "hey" she said, "check out these dice, they're made from the same material as bouncy balls, so they bounce really well."  

Sure enough they did. It was a set of D&D dice (d20, D3, D10, etc..)

He played with those things for the rest of the day. just trying to get certain numbers to happen. 

hey lookit,
I DID finish that English cavalry.

He was able to play Wooden Wars for close to two hours.  After that we drove to a nearby McDonalds for needed junk food.  Ate it next to the Bolt Action tournament.  

In the afternoon we played some boardgames.  He got through one game of Forbidden Island before basically getting over the whole experience (got mentally tired, but not sleepy).  I did have two grandparents show up for 'boardgames with kids', looking for suggestions on what they could play with they're grand kids.  So I got to sound like an expert as I made recommendations.  

We left for home around 4 PM.

At the end Son#2 said it was "a good time" and "could we do it again next weekend?" Which I took as encouragement for my Father of the Year award.  Though later on when I told him he couldn't play Legos or whatever he wanted to play because we all had to take his mom to urgent care because she felt really sick he yelled "So I WASTED MY WHOLE DAY?!!!"  

Me:  "........"

Anyway, let's take a look at the other miniature games going on Saturday:

Don't see any?

just kidding, that's my fault.  Actually, there was a decent number of miniature games going on, but I failed to take any pictures.  I had a hyper active 6 year old high on cookies with me. 

Nice guy Mr. GM ran a really great looking Rank and File game that I was envious of not being able to pay in.  And Mr GM shared some snacks with Son#2.  There were some nice space ship games and etc..

There was a Bolt Action tournament with some really nice tables that I was also envious of not playing in.  There were 6 players and enough prize support for 10.  

Overall for Miniature games I would say there were scarce options, and I saw quite a number of cancellations as well.  The games I saw were good; just not a lot of them on offer or a lot of miniature players in attendance.  The good side of that is that none were overcrowded, and you could play in any game you wanted.  

The con was kinda spread out over the convention center, with activities in different rooms.  Which I like because it cuts down on noise and bumping butts, and I don't want to be mistaken for a roleplayer.  

Though when I did wander into the role playing and board game areas; those places were hopping busy.

There was a smile on everyone's face, except that one guy who just rolled a 1.

Sunday in Space

I returned on Sunday without the boy for some serious grown-up gaming.  Time for real Grown-up fun with little dolls.  I mean miniatures.  

My friend Mr. CG ran a game of Battle Tech Alpha Strike.

Stompy Robots do the stompy dance

My other friend Mr. DR ran a game of AT-43:

While I ran a game featuring the franchise BELOVED by millions, Star Trek.  

Using rules Starmada unity.

Serious Grown up wargaming.

All in all, it was a fun, laid back weekend.  The location was clean and nice, only about 40 mins from me.  I would definitely attend again and run some more games. 

Thanks for reading,

Double thanks for writing a comment.

Till next time.