Day Three

There it is, Wil reading my autograph.  No, I am not attempting to shake hands, the camera caught me mid-gesture.

I picked up some prints from Nigel Sade today, I now have all 8 available prints from his Modernday Atrocities collection (Moderday [sic]) Nigel is not only a brilliantly twisted artist, he is a bloody pirate and another super fucking cool guy.  Chatted with him for a while in the morning, and although I didn't get done what I had planned on getting done due to a late start and chatting up Nigel at his booth, radness was still achieved.

It isn't often you see a pirate and an asshole in the same picture, outside of genre porn. 

Speaking of genre, I picked up Bringer of War, by Daniel Birtolo.  A book about a secret war between shapeshifters.  Skimmed the first chapter just to get a feel for the book, seems like an enjoyable read.  

Played Easter Island a bit this weekend.  It is an extremely easy to learn game that is incredibly challenging.  Positioning Moai to redirect sunbeams and destroy the opposing statues is deliciously addictive.  Also, Trailer Park Wars. Yup, you compete to have the best (worst?) trailer park. The game uses actual photos of trailers from around the country.  The amount of redneckery and laughs in this game is immense.

Today was the costume contest, which is preceded by the costume parade.  I attempted to take photos and discovered I am a shitty photographer.  I was using a Galaxy SII, which has an 8 megapixel camera so I can't really blame the hardware. (Although, my N900 had a 5mp Carl Zeiss lens and took better pictures in my opinion.)  The best of what I took follows.

Wow what a clusterfuck, check the left side, Alex Mercer from prototype

Fairly certain those are elves.

Ladies in leather, I don't know what they are.

No clue. The box face cracks me up and the doll face creeps me out.

Wicked

My camera had a hard time not focusing on the orange pants.

The quality of the steam punk costumes is almost always top notch.  Ghostbusters up top, a hat, and a steam punk sniper.

Speaking of notch.

That is Cardhalla, an awesome way to raise money for charity.  People spend all weekend building intricate card houses and sculptures out of old trading and collectible card games.  At the end people wing coins at Cardhalla trying to knock it all down.  It is actually quite fun.

I heard he was thinking of getting robot legs.

The Orange Box

Yes, shitbirds I know that is Solid Snake.

SHITTY PHOTODUMP FOLLOWS:

Day Two

I apologize for the late post on Day Two of GenCon, but sometimes gaming sessions go late. Deel Widdit.

I had one goal for today: Get Wil Wheaton's autograph on my laptop.  I figured this wasn't a request he received on a regular basis, so I brought a white paint pen with me.

That is my autograph on the pen.  My gift to Wil, if you will.  (Sorry, I hate myself for that)

I chatted briefly to Wil while he graciously signed my laptop.  If any of you are wondering what Mr. Wheaton is like in real life he is a super chill dude and an all around excellent human being.  A little bit of chit chat, he commented on my Penny Arcade hoodie and then started to hand the pen back.  I explained that it was his to keep and I had autographed it for him.  He looked at it and said, "Of course you did."  We fist bumped and I departed.  Before any of you dickbags start griping about the fist bump let me explain something to you.  I am a big fan of the fist bump over the handshake.  It is more sanitary.  I assume Mr. Wheaton washes his hands after he touches his dick, but I have no proof of this.  So the fist bump is the perfect replacement for the handshake.

Here is the laptop.

I have no goddamn idea why blogspot is insisting this pic be vertical.  I attempted to upload a vertical copy assuming it would go landscape, since the landscape version went portrait, but no such luck.  Just tilt your head to the right.


I demoed quite a few games today.  I tried Travesty Games newest game "DeathFear".  I have KillBall and PsiDuel from travesty and those are two solid games.  PsiDuel is an excellent card game that plays very quickly, check it out if you can find a copy.  DeathFear was alright, nothing special.  To be perfectly honest the best part of it was the packaging.  It came in a distressed wooden box with arcane symbols on the top.  The board itself was cloth.  The rest of the pieces were serviceable, but nothing special.  Kind of like the game itself.  You play as crypt robbers collecting parts of a long dead demon, collect 6 parts and you become the demon.  The demon countdown then begins as the demon tries to kill the rest of the party within a time limit.  The combat is simple and done purely through cards.  If any of you readers are fans of Travesty Games it may be worth a spin, if you have never heard of Travesty Games, you should probably skip it.

They did have an interesting game concept at their booth called "Shindig Machine"  I didn't play this, but may pick up a deck (it is in alpha) just because the concept seemed interesting.  The cards are nothing but pictures and playing through the game tells a visual story. No idea if it is any good, but it was certainly intriguing.

The star of the day,(with the exception of Mr. Wheaton.) and the reason this post is so late is a game called Leviathans.

It is an alternate history hex grid based strategic naval battle game with a twist. (fuck you m. night) In this alternate history a Polish scientist discovers a goo that levitates objects when electrified.  Kind of steam punk warships that fly.  This is the first game that I purchased immediately after demoing.

The minis are quite detailed and rather large.

The base game is England vs. France with four ships per side.  A battleship, a cruiser and two destroyers each.  There are several different stat cards that add variety to the ships and require different play styles.  The two available expansions (one English, one French) double the ships for each side and add even more ship stat cards.  Planned expansions are Germany and Italy next, with Russia, America and an advanced Captain's rule book coming after that.  There is a preview of some of the advanced Captain's rules included in the base game.

A nice addition to the game is the lore, the box comes with two novellas, and plenty of flavor.

All the dice are 12 sided, but some function as d4, d6, d8 and d10 as well as d12.  The string is for line of sight and even though it is just a piece of string, it was a nice inclusion.

The quality and artwork are excellent, and the game itself is a blast to play.  Plenty of depth and strategy without becoming overly complicated.

On a completely unrelated note, the first season of Power Rangers has 60 damn episodes.

Quite a few more people today.

Gotta love a Dalek

Not enough Farscape cosplay going on.

Not sure about this, might be Halo, might be something else. Whatever it was the quality was excellent. If you know let me know.

The Dungeons & Dragons booth (WotC) is all Underdark themed this year.  Here is a little Drizzt.

Warmachine is kind of like 40k, but steam powered and far more affordable to play.  I haven't played it yet but the steam mech was wicked awesome.

I haven't seen a lot of quality costumes yet, but the costume contest is on Saturday so I expect to have plenty of cosplay pictures tomorrow.