Gen Con 2022 — Better late than never …

 

We (myself, my brother, and my wife) made it to Gen Con  again this year, after being on hiatus since 2019.  I did participate in the 2020 virtual convention, and I would have gone last year, except for the pandemic-related rescheduling that moved it to a weekend when I could not travel due to work commitments.

After the usual participation in the planning phases starting in January with the room lottery, it was finally time to pack things up and get on the road on the 2nd of August.  My brother had signed us up to run two miniatures games, a Burrows and Badgers skirmish, and a Chaos Wars mass battle.  I was to provide one of three B&B battlefields, and three of six B&B war bands.  That didn’t take up much space, so I was able to strap it all together in a stack of Really Useful Boxes, a 12-liter, a 4-liter, and a 2.5 liter (the latter my usual GM paraphenalia box).

While we chose to drive this year, that would have fit into the overhead compartment of a passenger aircraft, so I was pleased to be able to keep things compact.

Irene and I got in late on Tuesday, the 3rd of August, after having struggled with accidents and construction along the way.  The map software estimate a 10.5 hour trip, but we nneded about 13 hours, with the disruptions. Our plan had been to check in, get our wristbands from the vaccination check station, and have dinner with my brother, but that did not end up happening. The vaccination check station was already closing when we checked into the hotel.

We ended up with a room at the Conrad downtown, way up in the air.  The Conrad is more or less at the northeast corner of the collection of hotels attached to the convention center by an enclosed skywalk.  Judging from my walking times, it was about three quarters of a mile over to the far end of the convention center, where we would be running miniatures.

As usual, Indianapolis was more or less ready for the influx of nerds.

We got our wristbands bright and early on Wedneday, with no waiting.  On top of that, Will Call (where I had a few paper tickets from late-added events to collect) opened early, so we got through that with no wait either.  There was a wait for purchasing Gen Con merchandise, and attendees were pressed into service as gonfaloniers (there’s a word you don’t need every day …) to allow folks to rally appropriately on the end of the line.

We all had lunch at the District Tap (which did have the Sun King Gen Con beer on tap), and then my brother came back to our room for a quick round of Burrows and Badgers for practice.  

Wednesday events are free, though ticketed.  There seemed to be fewer of them this year. Nevertheless, we were all signed up that evening for our first scheduled event, a demo of a card game called Usurp the King.  It was, uh, interesting.  There were six rounds of card laying followed by a resolution phase ordered by card type.  After that was all over, the table situation was compared to a hierarchical chart of victory conditions.  While there was technically no randomness and only a little bit of hidden information, there was also very little ability to predict whether a play would be useful or not, so I didn’t feel like I had any control over winning or losing. Ultimately, not recommended …

Irene and I had a seminar on ballroom history (with a section on how to use this in your LARP) to start Thursday, after which my brother and I ran the official B&B game.  We got 5 of 6 registered players, which I thought was pretty good.  There have been conventions where the pre-registrant appearance rate was under 50%.  B&B is optimized for two-player play, so we got a six-player game by running three simultaneous two-player games. We used the same scenario on all three tables, a “Capture the Paychest” thing where finding and dragging off a treasure chest was the objecctive, regardless of the terrain. My brother had to fill in to even up the number of players.  I have to say, despite being a somewhat detailed set of rules, all of our public B&B games have gone very well. Kudos to Michael and Jo Lovejoy for the rules and the charming miniatures!

After the game, I ended up having enough time to drop the miniatures off at the hotel room (the Conrad being about a 12 minute walk each way from the ICC) and get back in time for the one speed painting round I had signed up for. These involve painting a pre-primed miniature with a limited palette of 12 colors using two brushes of dubious quality in 45 minutes. The figure we got was a Reaper Miniatures “Persephone”.  I was fortunate enough to be first in my round, and so maintain my streak of qualifying for a final every year I’ve tried this, despite the dubious brushes. I had to decline the actual final this year, though, as I already had another event scheduled.

After the speed painting, I did a quick recon of the Exhibit Hall.  I ended up having dinner from the food trucks (reasonably familiar Mexican street tacos) before heading on to my one scheduled RPG event of the weekend.  This was a Monster of the Week game (a Powered by the Apocalypse implementation) run by the folks from the Crit Show live play podcast.  As with the one I played at Gen Con Online 2020, we quickly built characters, formed a team, and tackled a mystery, improv’ed to the extent that the team wasn’t predictable in advance.  I played a time-traveled magician from Arrthurian times, and the mystery involved finding and destroying the “anchor” keeping a malevolent ghost in a haunted house.  I’d play with them again.

On Friday, Irene and I had two sessions of dance with the ladies of Counts to Nine.  We have danced with them before, and they were thrilled to see Irene (and me) back.  The second of these was an intro to Celtic dance, which is very energetic.  They had been hoping for a couple of years to be in a position to offer an intermediate class and go a little deeper, and we were signed up for that on Saturday. 

I followed up the dancing with some 6mm SYW action, Prussians versus Austrians.  This got off to a slow start due to a decision to have the sides choose their set ups sequentially from scratch.  This is not a decision I would make for my own games unless the number of elements each player was deploying was, say, five or fewer.  The rules, from The Games of War by John Bobek, were ok; my side lost, but it was nice to see some historicals there.

On Saturday morning, my brother and I had five players for the Chaos Wars game; unfortunately we had one player elect not to continue before the end, so I jumped in to take over the abandoned position for the last hour.  The scenario was an elf/human punitive expedition into the territory of the orc/undead/lizardman alliance.  In retrospect, there might have been a few too many monsters on the table for a satisfying game.

After Chaos Wars, Irene and I had enough “leg” left to get through the Intermediate Celtic Dance class, but Michael Flatley doesn’t need to fear for his job on my account.  Irene and I had a quiet (early) dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory after a brief foray into the Exhibit Hall. By Saturday night we were both hitting the wall, but I did hobble over to the JW Marriot to look at open gaming set up in one of the ballrooms.

While “open”, there was some organization to assist you, and various flags and cones were available from a headquarters desk, to assist you in recruiting the appropriate people for your table.

I’m not sure the wide angle lens is providing the proper impression of the scale of the open gaming area, so you might want to tap on that picture and take a closer look.  Most of the tables were playing various board games, both new and classic, but I saw a few roleplaying games going on, and a table of Gaslands miniartures as well.

We finished up with ticketed events on Sunday morning with one more dance, after which I finished shopping.  I didn’t really intend to do a lot of shopping this year, but I came home with a few t-shirts, the annual pin, a few odd little indie rpgs, and a few other bits and bobs.

We took a commemorative picture, had a farewell meal with my brother at the restaurant attached to the Downtown Marriott, and then headed home, with a planned overnight stop in Columbus.

By the way, after it was too late to do anything about it at the convention, I learned that the Pin Bazaar event event this year included a pin memorializing the rather distinctive carpet pattern from the Indianapolis Convention Center, as seen in the picture above.  Happily, I was able to acquire one after the convention.

Overall, it was a good con, and I was glad to be back among my tribe for a while.  It looks like the vaccination requirement, the masking, the handwashing, and perhaps an element of good luck, were sufficient for us to avoid the plague.

Now it’s time to start planning our events for next year …

 

Since Gencon Online ... catching up

It has been a bad month and a half for blogging, and a rather middling one for hobbies.  Hence, I have decided to go ahead and catch up on what has been happening lately.  

Inspired by Gencon, my brother was kind enough to run a Chaos Wars game on the 8th of August, with Ral Partha elves vs. orcs.  Run remotely from his house, I took the elves, and for the first time in a number of remote games, the home player (i.e. NOT me) won the game.  Chaos Wars makes a reasonable remote game; it doesn’t involve a lot of units (usually) and it’s not too fussy about geometry.

(Screen capture from my iPad near the start of the 8 August Chaos Wars game)

It was my turn to host a game the following weekend, and Ross Macfarlane and Norman, my older son, took command of my collection of 40mm home cast Renaissance figures for an “imagi-nations” Civylle Stryfe in Ardenn game.  We used Scenario 22 from C.S Grant and Stuart Asquith’s Scenarios for All Ages.  Without actually looking it up, it’s called something like “Best of a bad lot”, and involves a tired column running into an army in camp, so that neither side would have chosen to fight under the circumstances.  

Ross ended up with the column, as Duke Frederick (the usurper; see As You Like It, by the historian Shakespeare), and Norman ended up with the camp (the loyalists, commanded by Italian soldier of fortune Mercutio). We were trying out a new variation of the Rough Wooing home rules designed for 40mm home cast figures using 1 stand = 1 company of ~100 men.  This turned out to be fussier than expected, and perhaps need a few more tweaks. On top of that, it was not a scenario we’d tried with these troops, so my attempt to implement the scenario conditions and impose a mechanical penalty for the tired attackers was perhaps too much.  So, a reasonable game, but it could have been better.  As the central gamemaster in a remote game, I ended up too busy following both sides’ orders to take as many pictures as I would have liked.

The camp’s defenses (to the right) have formed up to meet the Usurper’s tired troops

Screen capture from the central game server...

Theat wasn’t a bad weekend for games; I also finally set up and played a Dragon Rampant scenario generated by my solo campaign, which had been awaiting resolution for several months.  The nice thing about a solo campaign is that the opponent doesn’t get bored while waiting for the next move to be resolved.

I used some orcs borrowed from Norman and some of my general purpose fantasy/medieval 1/72 scale figures to resolve an encounter out on the eastern borders of the human kingdom of Darmis. I ran the “Into the Valley of Certain Death” scenario from the rule book, in which both sides have stumbled into some inhospitable territory.  In this case, I considered it to be an area of traps left by the elves, who are happy to wear down either or both parties.

The board is supposed to have 50% of the area covered in scenery, and any unit entering a terrain feature for any reason takes hits.  The units were, for the most part, able to maintain control and stay out of danger, so I was glad to be playing solo. I don’t think that it would have been too much fun as a regular two (or more) player game.

Captain of the Darmish forces (upper right) faces off against two companies of orcs

Nevertheless, it wasn’t a bad way to while away a pandemic era afternoon, and the path was clear to resolve the next month in the campaign.

Norman provided the fourth (and final) game of the month on the 30th.  He has been working on various Bronze Age DBA armies, so we tried out his Sea Peoples (a new army to us) against the Egyptians. We played two sessions, because my Egyptians were quickly smashed by the Sea peoples in the first session, and I wanted to see it it was bad luck, or whether my plan was flawed, so we just did a partial reset back to the starting positions.  In DBA terms both armies are “Littoral”,  which gives them the option of an amphibious landing on their first turn.  We both reserved troops for this; switchin up the actual landing locations for the two games.  I lost the second game as well, though by a somewhat smaller margin, but I am nevertheless forced to conclude that my plan was probably fatally flawed. 😕 

There hasn’t been a game yet this month, so that’s it for recent games.

I’ve gotten a little bit of painting done.  Inspired by Gencon, I painted two more relatively random figures for my proposed Urban Fantasy game:

Leon is a Reaper Bones Chronoscope figure, rebased, and Lucia is a Hero Forge custom figure.  She’s a fae character of some sort, with faun legs and big ears, though dressed in imported human styles.  That’s hoof polish, by the way, not pink slippers.

The next time I sat down with a brush, I ended finishing up a stand of Hordes of the Things “beasts” for the Portable Fantasy Campaign, consisting of a Caesar Miniatures elf sorceress...

... and two Reaper Bones “saprolings” as tree creatures of some sort.  This is the second (of two) of these stands.  The first was finished back in March.  

For my most recent micro-project, I stayed with the 1/72 scale fantasy theme with some baggage and a camp follower/NPC.  While cleaning up recently, I found a group of figures I had washed prior to priming some months ago.  Included in the group was a small flock of sheep, which I had started when I did a campaign battle last October, for which I had needed three baggage train items for an escort mission.  I had two, and filled in the third with a mounted Maid Marian from the Airfix Robin Hood set.  The sheep are from the Pegasus farm animals set. I decided after I had started them that I wanted a shepherd of some sort, so another Robin Hood set figure was drafted for the purpose.  For figures the Plastic Soldier Review lists as having been released in 1964, they hold up very well considered alongside some of the modern manufacturers.  The pregnant woman came from the Linear-B/Strelets Roman transport set.  The review notes that her costume isn’t particularly accurate for Roman times, but she fits right in to the generic fantasy themed collection.

I’ve got several things on the painting desk this weekend, so I shall hope to finish something tomorrow.  I have been using the desk as my work at home space, and I will need to be cleared off again by 7:30AM on Monday.

 

Recent painting — Mid-March

The last four things I finished (and in things go in my log as finished when they have been based and receive the final varnish coat) were from four different projects.

The first up was a stand of 4 Caesar 1/72 Sea Peoples, a single (blade) stand of which is available to a late Bronze Age Libyan DBA army.  It might be a while before my son Norman and I face off in a DBA Bronze Age game, so I’d like to have at least one new army ready. The Libyans are still going to need a command chariot.  I have the pieces set aside for one, but haven’t assembled them yet.

Caesar Sea Peoples stand for the Bronze Age Libyans

As part of my continuing effort to assemble forces of Minifigs Mythical Earth figures as a nostalgia project, I set aside the next unit of orcs and finished up a unit of their opponents, the “official” men of Gondor.  There being relatively little in Tolkien about Gondorian iconography, I decided to borrow some inspiration from the Spartans, and decorated the shields of this unit with the usual Elvish character for “G”.  They are somewhat oddly posed, looking off to one side a bit, and I tried them both shield forward (as finished) and faces forward before gluing them down.  I should check the Gondorian spearmen and consider that question in advance.

Minfig ME44 Gondorian Swordsmen

While Huzzah has not yet been cancelled, I have strong doubts that it will actually happen this year.  Nevertheless, I’m trying to make some progress on painting figures for the 40mm French Revolution project.  This sample Frenchman was built by adding a bicorne head from a Meisterzinn multiple piece mold to a body from a single piece running musketeer, with the neck drilled out to accept the plug in the head casting.  He’ll be part of a unit of troops in relatively fresh regulation uniforms, one of four visually distinct Garde Nationale units I’m hoping to create.

Meisterzinn figure with a head swap as a French Garde Nationale

The latest figure to be entered into the log is a current Iron Wind Metals production copy of a Ral Partha thief, sculpted by Tom Meier sometime in the early 1980s.   Playing Chaos Wars at Cincycon last week has me inspired to work on my Ral Partha collection.  Starting with an individual is not, perhaps, the best way to get the next unit painted, but it was what the Muse offered, and I don’t like to throw inspiration back in the Muse’s face if I can at all avoid it, lest she not come by again....

Ral Partha 01-114 Thief, sculpted by Tom Meier

At least the desk is relatively clear for when I next sit down to paint.

Convention Reports

So, like many people, I have been transitioned to telework for an indefinite time.  Getting ready to ride this out at home has taken some time, and so far I have not been able to find a dedicated block of time for hobby activities.  Perhaps this week I will have the time management worked out better.  For the moment, that’s all I’m going to say about the pandemic.  Stay safe; stay sane.

Before this, I had been to two conventions in two weekends.  Scrum Con was put on in Silver Spring, Maryland, by the Second Saturday Scrum Club.  This was only its second year, and I missed last year.  It was a one-day event featuring both roleplaying games and miniature games, and I was one of several HAWKs who were hosting games.  Scrum Con was set up this year on a time-block system, in which the majority of the games started at the same time, with two time blocks, morning and afternoon.  Due to a late cancellation by another GM, I was afforded the opportunity to run my game in both time blocks, so I got to the facility comfortably early.  The venue was the Silver Spring Civic Center, which was clean and well lit, though lacking so much as a vending machine for onsite refreshment. Free parking was available in the municipal parking structure immediately across the street, which was pretty good.  Carts for GMs were recommended, and I have one, so that was not a problem.  I should have rehearsed how I was going to stack my boxes and bungee them in place, though, as I was running a 54mm game with some large boxes a little precariously arranged on my cart, and my bungee cords turned out to be shorter than I had thought.  That wasn’t the convention’s fault, of course. Scrum Con was spread out over three function rooms, which had been set up with round tables for RPG events, and rectangular tables for the miniatures events.  Two rooms were downstairs adjacent to each other, and the room I was in was upstairs.  An elevator was available to get my cart to my table.  

I was mildly disappointed, though not surprised, to find that I didn’t end up with players for the morning game.  At least my table was already set up and ready to go.  I jumped into Duncan Adams’ Space Station Accipiter game, a perennial favorite HAWKs offering showcasing the large club collection of Buck Rogers semiflat figures from vintage 1930s home casting molds.  This was the first outing for a vintage Princess Ardala figure my son William found and painted for me a couple of years ago.  

Princess Ardala and her Tigermen of Mars minions skulking around Accipiter

 For my own game, I chose to run a 54mm skirmish game with Medieval Mayhem, the home rules that Ross Macfarlane and I put together as part of the HAWKs Battles for Beginners contest/project back in 2003.  I had just dusted off in September, after a rest of a couple of years, for Barrage 2019, about the same time that Scrum Con was soliciting for games, so I had been reminded that it was just the sort of easier to approach game that would be appropriate for a mixed genre convention.

Defenders of the village take position

Attendance may have been suppressed by the growing concern over the corona virus, but, in any case, a couple of my pre-registered players were among the folks who did not pick up their badges.  The scenario I was using is easiest with an even number of players, so, with five who showed up to play, I took a role in the action myself.  The original purpose of these rules (and this project) was to provide a game which any player would be able to pick up in a few turns, and I was pleased that was the case at Scrum Con.  By the third or fourth turn I scarcely had to adjudicate anything, and everyone seemed to be engaged, with some side discussion about the possibility of using the rules at home.  So, from my point of view, a success.

Once I had the game packed back up, I figured out where the nearest Starbucks was, dropped my boxes back off at the car, and wandered over to recaffeinate.  Generally, it was a good day, and I look forward to attending/GMing again next year.  I would recommend it to anyone within driving range.

The following weekend found me in the Cincinnati area for Cincycon.  My brother and I had talked about going.  It’s somewhat local to him (two hours) and is the designated gathering for the Chaos Wars Demo Team.  I had about decided not to go, when my partner urged me to go and spend time with my brother. It’s a very good local convention, with a reasonable selection of dealers, and a program of all three main tabletop genres—miniatures, RPGs, and board games.  I flew in to Indianapolis on Friday morning, where my brother picked me up on his way.  We were on site by the middle of the afternoon.  He set up his Chaos Wars demonstration scenario, and we played through it a couple of times while waiting for the crowd to build up.  Unfortunately for Cincycon, the coronavirus concerns were rapidly growing, and it looked to me as though attendance was down considerably from the other two years I’d gone.  

Chaos Wars demo armies in action

It’s always nice to see a bunch of classic Ral Partha miniatures in action. 

My brother, commanding intently

Paint and take table with classic Ral Partha

As it seems like Cincycon may be my last gaming convention for a while, and, as two weeks have elapsed since then with symptoms, I am glad that I went.  I came home with a bunch of notes about how to display miniatures gaming for a broader audience, and an urge to paint some miniatures, so we’ll call it a success.

I had intended to go to Cold Wars the following weekend.  While it occurred, the fact that the state governments were already calling for cancellation of large gatherings before it was time for me to go reinforced my decision to pass.  Huzzah, out in mid-May, is starting to look like it is going to be within the timelines for social distancing.  More to follow, I suppose ... I’ve gotten some painting done the since the previous post, but I’ll save that for next time.

Gencon 2019 AAR

It has taken me longer than I like to get this report written, but here we are at last.

After the usual months of planning, Team Dean started arriving in Indianapolis for Gencon this year on Tuesday, 30 July.  I wondered whether the airport would have welcome mats out by then, since they didn't last year, but they did, on the individual jetways instead of a big one at the bottom of the escalator as they've had in some years.

My brother, a resident of nearby Bloomington, Indiana, picked Irene and me up from the airport, and we spent the night at his house.  He found himself up against the deadline with things still needing doing for his convention games, so he spent the evening painting.

The airport had the welcome mats out in the jetways this year

Wednesday remains the unofficial and trade day at Gencon.  Attendance is light, at least in the morning, but we were dealing with the consequences of a poor draw in the room lottery this year.  We had a hotel out by the airport and my brother wanted to park early, so that we could haul a handcart load of miniatures from the parking space to our assigned game table.  We arrived, therefore, around 9:00AM and had some breakfast.  We were signed up to run two Wednesday games, one being the Burrows and Badgers game at 3:00 requiring the hand cart, and the other being a warmup session of the Carcassonne board game.  We had none of the ticket holders for the Carcassonne game, but a wandering gamer from Sweden stopped by, so we recruited him and played a quick four-player round.  

The city was welcoming too

The Burrows and Badgers game was more successful.  We had five of the six pre-registered players show up, and could have filled the sixth seat as well, but the walk-in player also had a friend, and we couldn't take them both this time.  We dodged the question of how to play this game in a multi-player mode this year by setting up three one-on-one games, so six seats was a hard limit.  My brother ended up playing the sixth position.  For convention purposes, I went away with a few minor lessons learned specifically for this game, about information I could have included on each players' order of battle sheet, so a next effort will be better yet.  All of the players were actively engaged and required little referee intervention, both of which count as strong recommendations for this game.  I suppose I should post a full review one of these days...

   

Burrows and Badgers in progress

Two of my war bands clash in B&B

The B&B game took us up to supper time, so we deposited the packed up miniatures gear back at the car and headed out for a nice dinner.  William had arrived by car in time for dinner. We noted that the convention had basically come to life in the five hours we'd spent in the basement of Union Station.  After dinner we headed out to check in to the hotel and to await Norman's arrival by air.

We got an early start on Thursday.  My brother and I were running a Chaos Wars demo at 9:00, for people who didn't want to be part of the initial crush in the exhibition hall.  Four players showed up for this, and it was also a good game.  We had a brief break, enough to grab some lunch and plunge into the exhibition hall for a couple of booths' worth of time, and then it was time to run B&B again.  I got so busy running that I didn't take any pictures of the second session.

My brother sets up a Chaos Wars game

I wasn't signed up to run anything on Friday.  Irene and I did two dance classes by Counts to Nine.  These ladies do historical dance (English Country, Renaissance, etc.) for fun and professionally, and we had tried and enjoyed their classes last year.  This was a pleasantly physical interlude between all of the mentally challenging gaming, and I am looking forward to seeing what they have on offer again next year.  We also wandered out to Lucas Oil Stadium to see how the gaming was getting on there.  It's an interesting space.  This year they had the field lights turned on, so it was well lit, and the enormous volume dampens the sound, so it wasn't too noisy.  Apart from being a dedicated walk from the rest of the convention it's not a bad space.

Overview of the Lucas Oil Stadium floor converted for gaming

Since my second year at Gencon (and this year is the sixth consecutive), I have been signing up for speed painting (45 minutes, limited color selection).  You usually get a miniature and a brush for $2.00, so what's not to like.  This year, I managed to get two sessions into my schedule, back-to-back on Friday afternoon.  One was a Reaper Miniatures round, and the second was a Wyrd Miniatures round.  As painters go, I'm a decent wargame painter, and couldn't even begin to compete in the Gencon artistic painting event, but speed painting is pretty much what I do all the time, so I usually can hold my own.  In fact, I've been in a final round every year before this that I have entered, so I was hoping that I might be able to pull that off again.  For the Reaper event, we got a Chronoscope modern figure instead of a fantasy wizard, which was a pleasant surprise. I was first in my heat (of 16) for this, and once again had a seat in the finals on Sunday, and an extra miniature as a prize.

Reaper speed painting preliminary round figure

I don't play any of Wyrd Miniature's games, so I was curious to see what they might throw at us.

You have to love magnification

 Our figure ended up being this reasonably straightforward steampunk lady with a big axe(?).  I ended up second, which didn't have a prize but did come with a seat in the Wyrd finals on Sunday.

Wyrd Miniatures speed painting preliminary round figure

With that out of the way, we could go out to the stadium for a meet-up for cooperative games with the host of Nelly's Nerdy Adventures.  If you're curious, we show up at time 18:00 in the linked video.  From there, we picked up the kids and had the traditional all hands dinner, and then called it a night.  The kids and I played a little Keyforge back at the hotel, before I crashed for the night.

There was more dancing on Saturday, and my brother and I ran the fifth (and last) of our games on offer, another round of Chaos Wars at 6:00PM.  The timing of this, perhaps, was not good, since we only had two players.

Chaos Wars second game

On Sunday we finished up shopping, and I sat down for my two speed paint finals at 11:30 and 2:00.  The Wyrd event was first.  We got this inexplicable figure of an old man perched on top of a demonic clock.  At least we had 60 minutes instead of the 45 of the first round.  I ended up third, so I got a prize in addition to the miniature.  The Reaper round was less successful.  We had a mechanical wizard of some sort, and my use of the metallic colors didn't quite work.  I'll get around to touching him up sometime soon.

The Wyrd Miniaturees speed painting final round figure

 Between rounds, the kids had to head out, so we gathered for a final group shot in front of the speed paint tables.

Team Dean on Sunday

Following the painting, the convention closing was rapidly approaching, so we decided that we were done and headed out for one final dinner.

Irene and I had extended out stay through Sunday night, so we were able to pick up a hotel shuttle back to the airport on Monday morning.  I was pleased to see that the gaming space was set up again this year, and the departing Gencon crowd was making good use of it.  Our plane was probably more than half Gencon returnees, so we were in good company on the trip home.  We finally walked in the door around 3:00PM on Monday; another Gencon for the books.

The airport's dedicated gaming space

Everyone has a different Gencon experience.  This year, I ended up not actually playing any games except the co-op game with Nelly, and my shopping was quite limited.  (I came home with one indy roleplaying game, Companions' Tale, and a solo dungeon crawl game, Four Against Darkness, from Ganesha), plus a shirt and a new dice bag.) While not unsatisfactory, it was quite different from previous years.  We shall see how next year's planning evolves, but I am considering whether there would be an audience for some sort of historical miniatures game, and perhaps a seminar on how to get into that branch of the greater hobby realm.