Keycon 29 - successful gaming

I first came to Keycon to play Car Wars back at Keycon 3 and used to come year after year.  I had run a local game convention called Wincon and had even run the gaming room at Keycon for a few years but haven’t attended Keycon in about a decade (kids will do that to you).  We still popped by every year to check out the dealers’ room but didn’t attend the convention.

But when Tim asked me to help by running gaming, I couldn’t say no to him.  He had always been very helpful to us and had never really asked for anything in return.  He had a specific list of games that he wanted to see so I had to comply and was glad to do so.

Just prior to the convention, Tim had to drop out of being the con chair.  Which meant that I didn’t have to run everything Tim had wanted but I still felt compelled to follow through on my commitment to run gaming.

Overall, the gaming went well.  

We had Scott from the Manitoba Pathfinder Lodge running Pathfinder Society organized play scenarios all weekend. 

Jim from Jimcon was there with a bunch of his own games and a bunch of games from Game Knight that people could borrow and play.  Together we ran the Great Canadian Board Game Blitz on Saturday starting at noon.  We weren’t sure what kind of a turn out we would have but we got eighteen players signed up.  Twelve players played in at least 3 of the 5 rounds and five players played in all 5 rounds. 

I didn’t get to see much of the rest of the convention but I was able to run my Grid Games – Disc Battles and Lightcycles on Friday night.  I finished making the grid that day using black foamcore and pin striping. 

The Disc Battles went well.  The rules held up fine until we got down to just two players when it became more of a matter of waiting for the right run of cards. 

I didn’t manage to finish the 3D trails for the Lightcycles but was able to trim down some post-it notes to use instead.  The rules still need a bit more clarifications but the basic structure seemed to work fine.

I also ran Circus Imperium on the Saturday night.  We had a great turnout with nine players and were down to a single player by the third lap due to players in HTH both knocking each other out - twice.

I was able to try out a few games and check out some rules for others.  Between this and Tabletop, I’ve added Tsuro, Lascaux, and Get Bit! to my list of games to get and I’m close to finally moving Acquire on to the list as well.

Wincon 2009 - notably tiny

With Sherri moving we had lost our nice big space.
With the addition to the house up in the air, we don't really have any space. Plus the wife wasn't terribly keen on being involved.

I had toyed with the idea of just inviting over some friends and playing a few games. Instead, we took good advantage of the nice weather and the kids spent some last time in the pool and I worked away at making ships for Sky Galleons of Mars. We also made a good dent on our TV pile.

We did play some Elixer and some Guillotine - so probably our smallest Wincon yet. With luck, next year should be back to a (new) regular size. We will see.

Battletech

I never got into Battletech back in the day. I had played it at Gencon once - with the heat sinks but it never really grabbed me. I did get into the Mechwarrior Dark Age when it came out from Wizkids and even was a Warlord (judge) for a few of the sets.

I just got the classic rules from ebay yesterday. I'm going to check them over to see if they are viable for Wincon. I'm still very interested in the system from an upsizing view. From the book, I found out that the nice people at Armorcast used to make 28mm scale Battletech mechs. They look keen and inspring.

Blackmoor no more

I’m a bit delayed with this – so most of you might already be aware that Dave Arneson passed away on April 7, 2009. While not getting the same reaction in the gaming community as the passing of Gary Gygax, Dave’s passing was still noted.

He didn’t get the same name recognition as Gygax, but his Blackmoor campaign was the basis for Dungeons & Dragons with Gary’s Chainmail rules.

When we met him at Gencon he was very personable and friendly. We had tried to bring him up to Wincon for a few years. He cancelled twice due to his health and once because he was going to Prague to help with the Dungeons & Dragons movie. We joked that we had to stop inviting him in an effort to help keep him healthy. When we met him at Gencon after this, he was at the D&D movie booth and showing off the props.

Wincon 2008 overview

I always start with a new game to test out. This year we ran the Rules With No Name. We played two games of it as it seemed to play pretty quick. I think the rules went okay but next time I would give each player a gang of 3 – 5 citizens to start instead of just one. With just one figure, you can go several turns without getting to move. It’s still worth painting up some figures, making some scenery, and trying again.

The upsized 5th edition Car Wars went fine. As usual, there was a bit of confusion with collisions but it played pretty well. We had some new players trying it for the first time as well as some players from older versions. The cars and walls looked good and the turning keys worked fine (a bit tight with the 3-D wals though). We’ll definitely play this again – probably with the normal Hot Wheels scale.

So, we were able to finish all of the tiles for an upsized RoboRally but weren’t able to finish the robots in time. I did make counters with the upsized bases but we ended up just playing it on the normal board. The race was close, with Becky beating an uber-optioned Sean by 2 moves.

Most people were fading after supper. Instead of playing the Circus Imperium with just 4 people, we ended up playing some Apples to Apples and going home a bit earlier.

There were some attendance issues, but all-in-all I still count it as a success. We’ll see how next year works though, we may go smaller until we finish the addition.

Pre-game

The upsizing for the Car Wars has been ticking along fine.
- Have vehicles - check.
- Upsized Turning Key - check.
- Figures if needed - check.
- Familiar with rules - let's say check.
We still have to make some record sheets, the bunkers, and maybe another turning key. We're definately on track to being fine with this one.

Upsizing the Circus Imperium board has been delayed until I can devote more time to doing it properly.

Upsizing RoboRally however, is going a bit slower. I have finally cut the bases, but have still to upsize any of the robots yet. I finally started one last night.
I have also finally figured out how to upsize the board with minimal effort. I had been wondering if I would just have to tape it out, but this should work fine.
It could still be touch and go on this one. The robots probably won't be too detailed, but I should be able to bang out some playable versions tonight and tomorrow.

It'll probably be a long night tonight.

Wincon 2008 projects

So, I’ve set the games for Wincon 2008.
I’m probably being a bit ambitious at this point. I have about two solid weeks left and quite a fair amount of upsizing work left. We do have a few evenings being eaten up by life but I should be okay.
If I should run out of time, I can scale down some of the events, but I am looking to upsize Car Wars, RoboRally, and Rules With No Name. If, by some freak occurrence, everything goes well, I’ll see about upgrading the arena for Circus Imperium as well.

I’ll keep you posted.

They're magically delicious

Fairy Meat - by Kenzer



It’s a fun game http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/650 . There are no dice – they use a deck of cards instead. The books do give you figures that you can assemble and use but you can also use 25mm figures.
The idea is that you can play anywhere as the 25mm figs are 1:1 scale. We’ve played it at Wincon with the fae fighting around a picnic table.



With the Disney Fairys line though, the possibilities of upscaling increase. They came out with PVC figurines that are about 3-4 inches tall and come in a set of eight figures.


We picked up a set for G and then picked up a few extra sets for use with Fairy Meat.

nonprofit / not-for-profit / no profit

Some people tout the fact that they are a nonprofit organization. Some even bandy around the term casually. This was something that we had looked at seriously when setting up Wincon.

Nonprofit is an actual legally defined term. As an actual nonprofit organization, you have to file a special tax return and hold annual meetings. You are still allowed to absorb a shockingly large amount of the monies collected for charity and use them for operational costs. The key point of the nonprofit is that the regular members aren’t expected or even allowed to share profits.

Some people call themselves or their organizations not-for-profit in thinking that they are avoiding all this hassle. They really aren’t. Besides, as a business, no matter how touchy-feely it sounds to not strive to make a profit, I’d rather a business makes a profit to ensure it still being around. See notes for nonprofit above for the operating costs.

Wincon was always set up a regular business. We ended up giving a large amount of our proceeds to charity (I’ll explain the hassles of that soon) and we ultimately operated at a slight profit for the original investors. The organizers and committee never drew a salary. We were able to give out some prizes and gift certificates to our volunteers but not nearly what we considered enough considering how helpful many of them were.
In our dreams, we hoped the convention would make a ton of proceeds so that we could afford to bring in phenomenal guests and give away massive prizes of value and super-coolness. This would further increase the memberships to staggering numbers. With the convention growing to the size of a GenCon North, we could make it our sole work and rake in the dividends. That didn’t quite happen.

convention people counting

I've had someone mention that it's hard to count members in a space of a certain size. Counting crowds in a park or a beach, or an area where they can come and go freely and they don't have to pay or check in can be tricky. Counting people in a confined space, like a convention, is pretty simple, if you control the entrances or have competent registration people.

You should be getting everyone to fill out a small form to register – in counting these registrations, you have your numbers. This also gives you a database for contacting people for future events. This seems to take a bit of time at the tables when it’s busy, but a quick form can be processed quite simply with name and address. You can then count the forms and get your total of individual attendees. With Wincon, were had super-competent in charge of registration and were able to get super accurate numbers.

Failing that, you count the number of badges or wristbands used. This is less accurate as replacements and errors can skew the number slightly. There should be some way of tracking who is eligible to go into your convention and both of these have to be bought by the case anyways.

You can also count the number of people going in and out. This can be tricky as you are bound to miss a few in crowded periods. As well, it is a lot harder to avoid recounting the same people as they leave and re-enter.

This again comes down to the reasons why you are keeping track of your numbers. See my other rant on how conventions count memberships.

Projects 2008

We’re two months into this year and I haven’t set any projects yet. I’m still torn on what to start. Shan’s birthday is Keycon weekend so I’m not sure what we’re doing or if we’ll be able to go.

Without a Keycon deadline, costuming will be a bit delayed until the crunch in the fall. Right now, both of my kids want to go as zombies, so that should be fairly simple to achieve. With Jeremy Bulloch scheduled to come for the Comiccon, I’ll probably do some more work on D3’s Boba Fett. If I can get some of the guns, I’ll do a Jango Fett as well. I want to fix my Ghostbuster backpack and make some traps and meters. I’m still toying with making some space marine armor. Depending on who I can rope in to a new color project, there are always Arc Troopers / Rebel Commandos / Snowtroopers on the to-do list as well.

Upsizing-wise, I can still do more planes for Canvas Eagles. I can finish the ships for Man o’ War. I can upsize the RoboRally figures. I can do a Titan and tanks for 40K. I can start upsizing Star Wars Miniature Battles, or even make some Mechwarriors for Solaris VII. I also have a bunch of cars for Car Wars in 3” scale or even 1:32 or 1:25. I can also do 3D maps for Horrorclix or Crimson Skies. I still haven’t locked down what we’re planning for Wincon 2008.

I’m probably going to try to finish the Aliens egg I’ve had on my worktable since before we moved to clear up the space. I’ll also probably do a K-9 (shell anyways) and start a static R5-D4 or even a R2-D2. I might even try the Pulse rifle, Space 1999 communicator, Jack Sparrow compass, or Terminator memory chips – I have papercraft files for all of these and might try making them in styrene or wood.

For now, I’m working through reading some more books from the library and finishing getting caught up on the taped shows. We're almost there.

conventions - counting memberships

Many conventions like to post their membership numbers to show how big they are. This is also important when dealing with manufacturers and advertisers for prize support and ad rates. Most conventions also use very sketchy numbers about counting you.

If you attend a three-day convention on all three days, they often count you as three people towards their numbers. If you buy a weekend pass and only show up on two days, they would still count you as three people. Many conventions boasting 500+ memberships could really have less than 200 attendees using this method.

With Wincon, we always listed our attendance numbers as individual members. If you showed up all three days or only on Saturday, you were only counted as one. If you came on Saturday as a day pass and then came back on Sunday as a day pass, you still only counted as one person. This did make Wincon seem a bit smaller that some of the other conventions in the area but we didn’t feel that doing it any other way was giving an honest number. It also helped that we had highly competent people in charge of our registration process who were able to track people for day memberships.

So when you see conventions boast of their membership size, keep this in mind.

Wincon 2007 - post game

All in all, Wincon seemed to go okay this year. We didn’t get badges done, and ended up not running Fairy Meat, but everything else that had been scheduled ran. We did have people bring in extra, uninvited guests beyond the extra guests they had already brought. We had 18 people (including 3 extra guests I knew about) plus kids plus a further 3 tag-alongs that I didn’t know were coming. I had been trying to keep the numbers low due to the limited number of games scheduled. There was also a mix up with the pizza we ordered resulting in them getting the order wrong twice before we were able to clear it up.

The Canvas Eagles went over well. We had 6 people playing – no one had read the rules beforehand. They were a bit front end heavy but once we started it went pretty easily. The planes and the stands worked out very well. We’ll definitely be playing this one again and I’ll keep an eye out for planes while in the states. We didn’t start until a bit later so we ran a bit long. I took a few photos so we’ll see how they turn out.

We didn’t upsize RoboRally after all but had the regular version played.

The RaceDay was as brutal as it usually is. We ran the basic rules on the expanded map and one car won through attrition about a round before the lead car would have finished their fifth lap. The next time we’ll probably try the expanded rules.

We skipped the Fairy Meat during the supper period. I had gotten picked up three sets of the Disney Fairies and repainted two of them, one in alternate colors and one as Goths. I also picked up plastic grapes for the counters: green for live, red for meat, and yellow for twinkle. It looks quite nice – we’ll be playing this soon.

We finished the scheduled events with a Circus Imperium game. I had finally painted my decade-old “temporary” beasts that I had made out of hacked-up plastic goats. The cardboard chariots are still holding up okay considering the use they have gotten. I will need to rebase and paint the drivers at some point.

Unscheduled games, we also had Scrabble, Descent, and both Settlers of Catan and the two player Setters of Catan played, as well as some Apples to Apples that we played at the end of the night.

Wincon 2007 - pregame

I stayed up early this morning working away, getting ready for tomorrow. I didn’t have time to upsize the RoboRally after all – which is okay, as I don’t really have the space to keep it anyways.
I did finish making enough planes to use but didn’t get to paint them all. I still have a few fairies to paint as well. And after about 10 years, I am finally giving my temporary Circus Imperium beasties a coat of paint.

I’m not doing badges this year. I had 11 people actually let me know that they were coming and only 2 badge requests. I did have three of those people invite along another 6 extra people. So we may end up having more people than games. We’ll see how it ends up.

David

summer chores - done!

This weekend my brother came over and helped me change the front fascia on the roof. It was in a bit of rough shape. We’ve been putting off a few repairs as we hope to be able to expand the house in the next few years and this will necessitate getting a new roof.

Since I had to get paint anyways, for the fascia, I picked enough to paint the trim as well. That’s the last two summer chores I had left on my list. I still need to finish the trim and touch up the fence, but I’m backdating that until after Wincon.

I’m at that crux point for Wincon. Time-wise, I’m in a good spot for the games. I like to do something big and impressive each year. This year we have a lot of little improvements that are pretty impressive but no real accessible show-stopper. The Canvas Eagles will be pretty impressive but it’s a bit over the curve for some and the Fairy Meat will be impressive but not as visual as I would like. The live action Devil Bunny Needs a Ham would be a show-stopper, but we’ve already done it before years ago.
I had hoped to upsize RoboRally but may not be able to do so in the time left. I’m still borderline about attempting it. It would eat up more of my time and make a few more late nights, but it would certainly be worth it. To me anyways.

Old faces

Played the first round of the Coming of Galactus last night. I won my first game, lost my second, and closely lost my third. I haven't really played Heroclix since Ultimates when I used to Judge, and even back then I didn't play that much. It was a huge turn out - over 20 people - and the judge kept everything running pretty well. I don't hold out much hope for me winning a Galactus against this crowd, but you still get a herald for showing up - and that's worth the 2 boosters cost for me.



I saw a few faces I vaguely remember from back in the day. Not enough to put a name to, especially not their actual name. A few of the board names seemed familiar but I couldn't match the faces to my memory of the faces. I did run into Perry though. I didn't even see him until between the second and third round. He had been out of Heroclix for a while too but had been pulled back in by the Galactus event.



He asked about when we were doing another Wincon. We get asked that from time to time. It brings a smile to my face to know that it was warmly remembered by a few. Someday I'll go back over the tales - of it's inception, it's start, it's run, and it's return.

Until then, stay Cosmic.


David