I’m going to intersperse these next few posts between the photo posts of my models for the next week or so. I also only have 3 photos from GottaCon, I forgot to take any until the last day. 🙂
GottaCon is a full bodied video/board/card/miniature gaming convention held in Victoria, BC. It’s been growing steadily for years, and this year I assume they had some talks with the mayor of Victoria and worked out some deals and ended up moving the convention into the heart of the city and having a ton of advertising for technology jobs in Victoria. I support this move entirely – the con benefits by having a better and bigger space, the city benefits by advertising itself and by having tons of hungry and thirsty gamers walking around, and the people benefit by being closer to food and drink and the larger con means MOAR GAMERS.
I only decided to go a few weeks ago, so had to get my ducks in line pretty quick. Patrick was leaving late on Friday because of work and was considering taking the float plane over. As soon as he said this, I glommed onto the idea – working a full day and getting to play in the Friday Malifaux? SIGN ME UP. The float plane habour is about a 5 minute walk from my work as well.
If you have a fear of planes, avoid the float plane. It has heavy bumps as it travels along its “run way” (the ocean…) and occasionally flies sideways in the wind because it’s such a small plane. If you have no such fear, it is a delightfully civilized manner of getting to Victoria. You leave from Downtown Vancouver (as opposed to Tsawwassen or Horseshoe Bay), travel for 30 minutes (as opposed to 2 hour ferry, plus 1+ hours driving to get to the ferry and back) and arrive in Downtown Victoria – we left the plane and could see the hotel. Highly recommended.
We dropped our stuff off at the hotel and walked up the street to a local pub, the Irish Times, where most of our gaming friends had been getting drunk for several hours. Like…many hours. It’s nice to show up at a place and get that many cheers and hugs. 🙂 I love my gaming group. <3 After a pulled pork sammich and a beer, I left to get back to the con.
A notice of importance – if you’re playing at 7, be sure to stand in line for your convention badge before 7. Gaah. I was a little late for the event because I forgot the damn badge. I was tired, as I tend to be on a Friday, and didn’t play my best. Still 3 solid games of Malifaux though! I didn’t write down the Schemes for all the games we played because I’m lame. Should do that next time. >.<
Game 1
I played Mr. Dan Miner, a local Malifaux Henchman and his Kirai crew. Dan claims to be bad or unlucky at games, but I think he has negativity bias. Or maybe I’m even worse! Because when we play, it’s usually a solid game and I usually lose. 😛 We were playing fixed Story Encounters, and this one was Escort. Dan had to get a model up the table, using only (1) Interact Actions. He didn’t entirely read the scenario, so ended up moving his entire crew forward and then having to run back in turn 2 to Interact with the Escort! This cost him quite a bit – we both think he’d have won if he hadn’t had this issue! I got lucky and managed to top deck the Red Joker to kill Izamu the armour. Unfortunately, neither of us got the Escort in a position of power and this game ended with a 3-3 tie.
Game 2
This game was hilarious, and frustrating and not because of my opponent. I played Niko from the Island and his Lynch crew in the Plant Evidence Strategy. I took Line in the Sand and Distract. At one point in the game the TO called “20 minutes”. We were at turn 2. So we busted our asses to get through the next turn, hunkered down in some places and pushed forward in others and did our best to get the best results in those 20 minutes. 20 minutes later, I think we had either a tie, or I was winning by 1, I forget and we didn’t get to count. Because it turns out that the call to “20 minutes” was actually more like “20 minutes until the half hour mark” – we had another 30 minutes to play our game! We bugged Tao about that for the rest of the weekend. At that point Niko crushed my models – he has a very offensive crew that was hard to deal with and turn 4 I had very little left. This was a loss for me, 2-4. Some people suggested ending the game when we thought it was going to end, but neither of us were into that – I want to play, damnit!
Game 3
I think this strategy was Treasure Chest or Hunt, I took Protect Territory and Cursed Object. A marker in the center you have to pick up and put on your stat card. Except I couldn’t, because my opponent was playing Perdita and had Nino, who has an ability (which I think is game breaking…) where you can’t Interact if you’re in line of sight of him and another Family model. Really, my best chance of success here would have been to charge forward and bust up Nino and damn the consequences of the other models I would lose. At least then I could have gotten 4VPs from it. As it was, this game ended up in a 3-3 tie. I failed entirely at Cursed Object, because I was trying to remove Fransisco and Perdita before he could remove my models. This was a slow game, and I noticed a fair amount of inconsistent measuring from my opponent. The weird thing was that he would measure an extra inch in some cases, and an inch less in others, and not always in his advantage! This sort of thing bugs me, but it was nearing midnight on a Friday so I let it all slide with a smile and a handshake. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t playing my quickest either, reading a card 3-4 times before I understood what it did, despite having played with it a lot. 😛
That night I was sharing a room with Jamie and Dan. I went back to the room and tried to sleep. Unfortunately, cons make me excited and I’d had a Monster around 10 and was wired as hell. Jamie came into the room around 1, and had a conversation with Dan…until 3am. I couldn’t get mad, because I wasn’t sleeping anyway, but it’s bothersome to think that I couldn’t even had really tried. I dozed for this time, occasionally joining in the conversation. The next morning Dan slapped Jamie on the ass at 6am joking that this was for keeping him up until 3am. I woke up at that sound, and then lie in bed awake for another hour before deciding to get up. Rounding down, 3 hours of sleep. I felt quite poorly on Saturday. Jamie and I have since discussed the problem, and agreed to not share a room in the future – he uses tournament time to paint until 3-4am, and I like to get at least 7 hours of sleep otherwise I have problems concentrating and can get a little cranky.
Day 1 to come in a couple more days. 🙂
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