Heading to GenCon (Biggs Edit: Surprise! It's our 400th post!)

While Biggs (and the rest of the cool kids) were at FFG HQ for Worlds, I was at home signing up for events for this year at GenCon.  Aside from playing in a couple of tournaments and checking out some new board games I am hoping to use my press credentials from this blog to get a few interviews.

Here's what I'll be up to:



Wednesday - FFG has moved their In-Flight Report from its traditional Friday afternoon slot to Wednesday evening.  This is where they typically announce their new board, miniature, and role-playing games releases.  I have been able to attend once, but found that the time would often conflict with other events that I wanted to attend.  There would also always be a bunch of empty slots in the display cases at FFG's booth until after the report when they would get filled, causing a huge rush of folks there to check them out.

The new Wednesday evening slot is great as it fixes both of those issues.  I have my passes ready to go and assuming my flight isn't delayed I will be able to report on the latest FFG news as the con gets going.

Thursday - Thursday I usually reserve for just wandering around the exhibit hall.  And a lot of shopping.  I will be grabbing the X-Wing 2.0 core set and upgrades along with whatever else FFG has to offer, likely a new Legion release or two.  Hopefully I can track down an FFG rep or two for an interview.  Then it will be time to hit a few of my favorite booths to see what's new.

Once my shopping is done I am going to sit in on a session of Dawn of the Rebellion and play some Terra-forming Mars with a friend.

Friday - I signed up to play in one of the SW: Legion Maximum Firepower tournaments.  Rather than a North American Championships like they run for their other games, FFG is running three, 32 player Legion events.  I will be interested to see what the prizes look like, but mostly I am going to play this out of curiosity.  How will a semi-major Legion tournament even look or run?  This will be the place to find out.  It will also be a great place for rules clarifications.  I recall playing in the first Armada tournament at GenCon (back in the 300 point days).  The number of rules clarifications that I got from the judges/designers were really helpful.


The other question that I will have to figure out is "what does a tournament level Legion army even look like?"  Other than the general sense that I need 2 commanders I don't really know.

Saturday - This is where I get my 3rd chance to play in the North American Armada Championships.  I am pretty excited even though the field will be much smaller this year.  There is only one day of qualifications this time with the Top 4 players on Saturday coming back to play again Sunday morning.

Anyone want to meetup for dinner and drinks afterwards on Saturday?

Sunday - While I hope to be playing Armada there is no guarantee I would make the cut.  But I will still be there to check out the games while I will also be playing in the Lord of the Rings LCG event.

Sunday is also a great day for shopping as many vendors start to heavily discount things so that they don't have to take them home.

GenCon is just 85 days away and I can't wait.


Biggs Edit:  Damn it Shmitty, this is supposed to be a big post on how it's our 400th article and you wasted it on prize support for an event 85 days away you're going to blow by bringing some sub-par commander and Hammerheads because all the cool kids are bringing hammerheads or something.