GenCon 2017 AAR - Thursday

Hey all.  Had a blast at GenCon 50, and wanted to share/document my experiences for posterity, and for those who weren't able to make it.  Hope this serves as a good advertisement for future GenCons.

Bottoms up!

Arrived at around 9AM Thursday to pick up my event tickets.  Will call line was wayyyy better than last year - they really had it moving, it was never longer than a 5 minute wait.

Decided to start off with an Hour of Devastation draft.  Ended up with a disgusting U/R deck, featuring 4 Unquenchable Thirst, that of course lost round 1 due in part to mana screw, but my opponent from Toronto was great to banter with, and the games were really close. I probably could have won if I had waited an extra turn to trade off my Firebrand Archer.  I lost the game with the opponent at 1 life! C'est la vie.




Did some walking/scouting and grabbed some food before my noon event, which was a 4-man, 40-point, 1-ship X-Wing "Last Man Standing" event.  I brought a Countess Ryad in  TIE Defender (list here.)  This combination of upgrades/abilities allowed me high straight-line stress-free mobility, good defense with a focus and evade token every turn, and solid offense with Juke. We played 3 30-minute rounds, killing blows were worth 2 points, deaths were -1, and you could respawn after being destroyed if you were willing to take a point penalty.  Hilariously the guy who won had the exact build that I did, except he had Relentless instead of Juke, which gave him several kill steals on 1-hull-remaining ships!  Win or lose, everyone was there to enjoy the event, and we had a blast.

Ryad, Poe, and a TIE Bomber flying too close to the sun.

Firing into a named TIE/sf, Quick Draw, whose pilot ability triggered, causing the TIE/sf to fire into and damage the JumpMaster.  Now that's a two-for-one!

I decided to check out the CGE (Czech Games Entertainment) demo room.  Played a game of Codenames: Duet, which is a 2-player co-op word association game.  A fun mental and social challenge with a deathclock mechanic, highly recommend it if you're looking for a quick game to play with your wife/girlfriend/talking dog.

Also in the CGE demo room, I watched a round of Galaxy Trucker, then got in on the fun myself.  Galaxy Trucker is a two-phase game where you are piloting the equivalent of a space 18-wheeler, trying to make a buck.   Rounds of GT contain two phases.  First, you build your ship from a pile of communal, hidden tiles.  Ship components include weaponized lasers, thrusters, living quarters, shields, energy sources, and of course, space for your precious cargo.  This building phase is timed, but the time is not static - players can declare themselves "done", and if so, the other players' time is reduced!  This ensures that you don't get that "one guy" who takes 20 minutes to build the perfect ship.  The second phase is the truckin' part.  Your ships form a convoy, and one-by-one you reveal encounters - these can be opportunities to pick up cargo, abandoned outposts or ships that you can take over, pirates, smugglers, meteor swarms, and so on.  Encounters where your ship comes under fire will test your ship construction prowess - if you didn't build enough weapons, pirates or smugglers will take advantage of you.  If you didn't build enough shields, or left vulnerable components exposed to space, meteor swarms will badly damage your ship.  Even worse, if your construction created "single points of failure" on your ship, if that single point is damaged, it can cause half your ship to fall off!  Which of course, is exactly what happened to the left side of my ship, damn meteors!  Lots of hilarious schadenfreude in this game, but it still greatly rewards skill and quick thinking.

Walked around the exhibit hall next.  Got pics of the new TI4 components.  From what I understand, they've made Imperial only grant 1 victory point, and only if you control Mecatol Rex.  If you don't control Mecatol Rex, Imperial gives you a secret objective instead.  Presumably the races have been re-balanced as well.  The Construction card now gives you a free PDS and Space Dock, and doesn't cost an activation, so that should make expansion easier and the game slightly quicker (it's still TI of course.)

Grabbed some dinner before my 6PM event, a 2v2 Rocket League tournament.  Was paired with a pretty cool guy who wasn't great but constantly apologized after making mistakes, I kept reassuring him that it was fine and we'd pull through.  We were paired against two brothers who clearly had experience teaming together. We lost in a 2 out of 3 set, 2-3, 4-0, 2-3.  The first and third games were absolute butt-clenchers, and we had a group of people around us watching. Hearing the "OHHHHH" reactions from the crowd when time expired just as we were about to tie up the third game was great.  Fun experience and it really shows the difference between in-person and online gaming.  (Of note, I still reflexively communicated kickoffs using the in-game chat menu despite sitting next to my partner.  I got it! Defending!)

Here's a (blurry) panorama and quick video of the gaming room, with League and OW on the big screens.  The crowd murmur you hear in this video was present all weekend - every room in the ICC was bustling with activity.

I decided to run back another Hour of Devastation draft and avenge my losses.  Ended up in an ok-ish G/W beatdown deck with cheap dorks and pump spells/removal.  Lost Game 3, mostly due to a huge blunder on my part where I pumped my attacking 3/2 with a Giant Growth into a 6/7 blocker.  In my defense, what kind of statline is 6/7?!? For some reason my brain shortcut it as a 6/6 and I 3 for 1'd myself.  Still would have enjoyed the draft had my opponent not been a joyless prick.  When he lost game two to me his expression was a clear "can't believe I lost to this scrub."  Any friendly chatter I tried to initiate with him was shut down (I got in some laughs with the guy to his left, too bad I wasn't paired with him instead.) The only people I encountered the entire weekend who didn't seem to be having fun were some of those doing the sanctioned cost-to-enter Magic events.  I'll remember that for next year.  If you're at GenCon and you're not having fun, just stay home so a badge opens up for someone else.

G/W beats.  For when all the good archetypes are taken.

That put me at about 8:30, dead-tired, and with a 45-minute walk-and-drive time I decided to hit the road.  Got home, scheduled my parking for the next day, scheduled some events, and slept like a brick.

This is getting pretty long, so I'll break at this point.  Reports for Friday and Saturday still to come!