GenCon 2017 - Part III (Friday)

Kingdom Death Flower Knight scenario

FRIDAY

I found that I took far fewer pictures as the weekend progressed, so this diary entry will be a lot more text.

Friday we rolled in later and got to the east corridor entrance about 20 minutes before the vendor hall doors opened.   Strategy for the day was to head back to Hawk Wargames to see if the UPS man had delivered the GenCon goods, and then turn in Belial at FF.

UPS failed to deliver the DropFleet goodies, so I talked to Dave some more and then grabbed the 2-player box and some of the terrain pieces and card sets.  Thanks to all my lurking and chatting, the guy checking me out gave me a few deals that brought the entire bag of loot down to Amazon prices.  (Maybe I shouldn't type that, I'm not sure if Dave knows... hah).

Beli'al turn-in went without incident and got lots of oohs and ahhs from the FF staff.  I was particularly happy with the response from the original sculptor of the model, who stared for several minutes and pointed out things that I'd one.  He said he always enjoyed seeing how people interpreted his models; he looks at them from the concept art and then we players go and do all sorts of crazy things.

I got out of the FF booth before my visa erupted in flames and forced me to buy more. I spotted Aaron Lovejoy (painter) so we stopped to talk to him, introduced ourselves as Miniature Monthly backers, and then pick his brain on a few problems I've been having.  He was fantastic; could have stayed all day and just soaked up information.

We marched over to the Ninja Division booth and demo'd Rail Raiders.  It's a fun game with some unique dice mechanics.  Will be good for a party/family game when Zombicide is too intense (and the figures are super cute).  Mrs. Zoxe got her Kickstarter shipping notice on Thursday while waiting for the doors to open, but the guy doing our demo hadn't seen his yet, leading to much bantering and whining. :)

Caught an early lunch to avoid food truck lines (Jamaican jerked chicken, yum).  Then we began at row 0 and worked back towards the middle to finish our total floor tour.

After that we caught an over-the-shoulder demo of Dropfleet.  They were running a simplified ruleset compared to what I know from youtube, and even then the demo took an hour.  Despite that, it makes me want to rip the shrink off of my box and start making pewpewpew sounds.

After a quick break, we went back to KDM for the 2nd scenario.  We lucked out and got the same demo guy (same guy, different table) who was excellent.  Of course, I died first again this time and our party failed its mission.

This year, GenCon added the football field where the Indianapolis Colts play to its floor space.

We finished the day by walking upstairs to see the Pathfinder ballroom and check out the speed painting contests.  We were both tired, so took a break, then headed to Lucas Oil stadium to tour that, and sat in the stands for awhile waiting for dinner with college friends at a restaurant downtown Indy - but yet mostly out of reach of the GenCon crowd.

By the end of the day we added:

• Aaron Lovejoy, FFG Painter, Miniature Monthly
• Dave, Hawk Wargames (again, this time with fanboy pictures)
• Demo: Kingdom Death Flower Knight
• Demo: Rail Raiders
• Over the Shoulder Demo:  DropFleet