Gencon Day #1

Day 1 of the Adventure begins...And mostly consists of lots of queuing up.

So I wake up pretty early; a side-effect of the previous days jetlag, and I end up heading out of the hotel at 8am. I grab a breakfast from a sandwich shop near the town center and then slowly make my way down to Gencon. I arrive at 9am but the exhibition halls are still closed so I queue up for some generic event tickets. Just a short explanation; most of the events have specific event tickets but in case the spaces aren't filled, you can use generic tickets to participate as well. Just that specific event tickets trump generics in terms of priority. 

For those thinking of going to Gencon, always go down the day before to get your tickets if you choose the will-call option. The crowd was huge for the will-call section on the actual day itself. 

So once the exhibition halls open at 10am, I'm there and queuing up. At first I want to queue up for Privateer Press stuff but the queue is huge and I also want to get some Cryptozoic stuff; such as the Naruto DBG and so on and since their queue is so much shorter, I do so. However, it still takes me close to an hour to get my stuff. 

Then I have another choice, do I queue for FFG; for which I want Conquest and maybe X-COM if they have it, or do I queue for Privateer Press? I end up queuing up for Privateer Press and the queue is LONG. It takes me two hours to get to the booth. The queue is so long it snakes around the convention hall and ends up outside the hall. However; sadly, by the time I reach the booths, almost all the convention exclusives are sold out; such as the blighted bather and Xerxis 2. 

Sigh, then I end up trying to queue for the FFG booth but it turns out Conquest has been sold out as well. Double-sigh. And X-COM isn't released yet. Welp, there are still plenty of other booths to visit and I do so. 

I eventually drop by the wizkids booth to see if they have any cool Dicemasters stuff on offer or for sale but turns out they don't. Instead, they're mostly concentrating on heroclix. I do manage to take some photos of the preview cards for the Uncanny Xmen expansion due out in September though. 

I even drop by the Infinity booth and manage to pick up a copy of Operation Icestorm as well a photo of the cosplay chick at the booth. There's a fair bit of cosplay at the convention. 

Then I round up the day with a demo game of Kings of War against my gf. She picks Nature elementals at the encouragement of the demo personnel and I pick Basileans since I have some basilean miniatures anyway. I've never played KoW but I have read the ruleset before so it isn't too hard for me to pick up. 

Things don't turn out well as by the end of turn 6, I have decimated the rest of her army and her only remaining units are wavering/failed their morale test and can't do anything during their next turn. 

Overall, it's a pretty fast and easy game and it was definitely pretty easy to pick up. My only issue was that the demo took place in a fairly noisy demo/tourney hall and since there were 5 tables, the pathfinder had a hard time making sure the people were able to hear his voice. 

Day 2 should be more interesting as I'll spend less time in queues and more time in demos. 

Just a quick look at the loot I got. I think one of the more interesting things that I got for free were the bags. The Privateer press bag was pretty awesome. It's something like an open-topped backpack, which made for easy carrying.