GenCon 2017 - Part IV (Saturday)

My Beli'al (back right) on display with his brethren.

SATURDAY

Saturday was a simple day, but full.

Part 1 - Vendor floor.  We visited Beli'al at the FF booth and (egads) there were now FOUR evil demons submitted for the contest, as well as perhaps 15-20 other figures.  I got the final pictures of the contestants I was after, shook my head, and moved on.

Shadows of Brimstone Heroes - all excellently done.

The Sand Kraken looks simply done, but is excellent in execution.

We stopped back by Hawk games and the UPS man had finally delivered the last of their GenCon exclusives - the Battlefleet Boxes.  We bought a pair to round out the factions in the 2 player starter pack. These are the VERY FIRST, pre-production printings of these boxes.  There are only 10 of each faction in existence on the planet (40 total) and we now have two of them, or 5% of the world's current supply.  Dave said that he hadn't seen the final product in the final packaging before leaving the UK for Indy and he was nerding out about them almost as much as we were.

They were not cheap, but are supercool.

Dropfleet Battlefleet Boxes - the GenCon pre-release I was lurking for.

We stepped outside early for a near-zero line food truck lunch (some of the best, freshest, non-greasy burgers we've ever eaten), ate, and then came back inside to spend some time at the Wyrd Games (Malifaux) booth and wandered through some of the Artist zone.

Part 2 - Pathfinder.  This was over in the JW Marriot and was quite a hike.

<background>  I haven't done pen-and-paper RPGs since I was in the 8th grade.  During college, my roommate would GM a variety of game engines for groups back in his hometown on weekends, but our plans never meshed and I never ran a character with him - instead I'd peruse the rulebooks and create characters and help him jump start his understanding.  This is where my love of game systems and game rules tends to come from, I think. 

We've gone to GenCon for many years now, but have never played pen-and-paper.  So this year, after our initial Event tickets were sold out, I put a single session of Pathfinder on our roster just to say we did.  </background>

Without knowing it, we had signed up for an established multi-Con organized play group.  The small ballroom we were in at the JW was composed ENTIRELY of the same group, most of which seemed (and smelled like) they'd lived there since Wednesday and pretty much all knew each other.  We were of course welcomed and given a crash course and a pre-rolled character sheet in a class of our choosing.

Our group was a bunch of new players and a few no-shows.  The GM left for a few minutes and drafted another GM to play a character with us, meaning we had a veteran among the players.  One of the players was a bit of a spaz, but everyone else we interacted with were great.  The scenario was more of a brain teaser than a lot of combat, but we enjoyed it.

I don't know that we'd spend a significant amount of time at future GenCons in these sorts of events (as it consumed ~4hrs during a prime day, we missed the SoB painting results, SoB events, the cosplay parade, etc.), but it was cool to do once.  And I can say that I sort of understand what this Pathfinder thing is about.

It's possible that we could seek out more stable group at the FLGS (barring other time commitments, which are many).

Part 3 - Post Pathfinder.  We came back to the vendor hall, and I stopped to take more KDM pictures and re-browse the store since it was later in the day and the crowds were the thinnest I'd seen.  We also demo'd the third (and hardest) KDM scenario - Lantern Year 28, Level 3 Dung Beetle Knight - and got a taste for a more complex fight.  This particular scenario was intentionally overtuned, and is intended to kill everyone horribly.  Our party obliged, though for the first time I was the last one alive (the other two demos I died first).

After that, we vaguely retraced our steps from the morning, visited Ninja Division, and then went to SoB to get the painting results.  I didn't expect to place (and didn't) but once again the compliments were flowing and I feel good about my submission.

However, I found myself standing in a busy show floor with a rather fragile miniature, and we decided to jettison and get him out of harm's way.

So, at the end of Saturday we added:

• Pathfinder scenario play-through
• Demo:  KDM LY28, Level 3 DBK