Saturday, January 17, 2009

ConQuest '09





Today I went off to the fourth ConQuest NW. I didn't go happily. I hadn't gotten much buzz about the convention. It's large, multi-genre and frankly those cons are pretty risky. I agreed to run Thunderboats!, but would there be anyone to play it? What would happen after that? I agreed to play in Chris Ewick's DBA open tournament, but I really didn't want to? Finally, and not least, I've been incredibly busy on the weekends the last six weeks or so, and honestly I just needed some down time. I slept about four and half hours, and left the house a seriously unhappy camper.

Fortunately, the best part about conventions is seeing folks I really enjoy, and today was no different. Thunderboats! is a great convention game. I ran five guys through a one heat race in the morning and then participated in a three heat race myself later in the day. It was fun. Randy O'Bannon and his friend Nate, Bill Vanderpool, Mike Snively and I wended our way through three heats. I blew my engine in both of the first two heats, but did manage to finish the final in Miss Spokane. It was fun. There were many nitrous bottles purchased, some of which lit their boats on fire like so many flaming torches.

Another pleasant surprise was a game that I took part in for the late afternoon. Andy Hooper ran a DBA extension game of the Boxer Rebellion. It took a bit of getting used to, avoiding the temptation to melee as a colonial commander. Once I was able to get used to playing a firepower game-as well as a catastrophic string of rolling the dreaded numero uno-it went pretty well. I liked the game, and may investigate what it would take to do something similar for ACW in 15mm or 25mm.

I did run into folks I knew, Gabe Vega, Ed Texeira, Mark Verdeck and others. By the time I left around 4:00 I was exhausted, but was glad I went. Came home and took a nap.

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