Went downstairs after saying bye to all of my Blood Bowl opponents and walked into the Fantasy tournament room. It was completely empty of people, except for a small gaggle of organizers playing a game of Guillotine. In stark contrast to the thriving, overflowing room that I’d seen for the few days beforehand. I must have seemed lost, because one of them asked if they could help me, and then directed me towards the main room where the awards ceremony was being held.
One giant event to cover all of the championships didn’t work out well with my group. When I walked in, there was some 40k award being given away and no one around me was paying attention. I couldn’t tell you any of the awards that were given away during the 40 minutes that I sat there because it was a bunch of events that we had no attachment to, we didn’t know the players nor the in-jokes that the MC made, nor any of the awesome things that they had done to win said award. If there was a Fantasy award in the mix somewhere, I couldn’t have told you.
One sweet thing – as I walked in someone pointed at my shirt and said CHOP! which I naturally turned around to. Turns out that I was being hailed by the hosts of the Deployment Zone, a west-coast podcast which I’ve never listened to. (I have ears only for Peter :P)
We hummed and hawed over food and who to eat with for a bit, before starvation and people forced us to go to McDonald’s…second time in 8 hours…
Back at the Westin, some folks were playing board games in a back room that once contained tournaments. I surveyed the game table and noted that there was only a single game on it that I had even heard of. Very, very strange. I play a lot of board games and to have Alien Frontiers be the only one I knew is shocking!
We pulled a random game out and I set about reading the rules when a fellow walked past and asked if he could play, and that he’d played once or twice. His name was Kevin, and he was a joy to speak with. I later described him as the sort of conversationalist that makes you feel good to talk with, and I’m very glad that even after our first game fell apart that he pulled out Pandemic and we found two more people and set about trying to save the world from biological disaster.
There was another table of board games to give away. Partway through the night someone from D6 Generation pulled a game out and gave the folks in the room a task – act out a Colonial Marine. I’ve attached Dale’s rendition for your enjoyment.
Hours go by before another game is given away, and he machine guns a whole slew of theatre-sports based competitions before deciding to raffle the rest. I won a game called Milestones in the raffle, and after having read the rules I think that it is a low-to-medium complexity game that might suit for my household. Looking forward to playing it!
Once again, sleep that night came very quickly after my head hit the pillow.
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