Well, it's time for Gencon again. I have only been living in the USA for a year, and I missed last year's show due to school commitments. This year, however, I made a point of going down with a few friends.

Weds 9th
The local card store runs a small tourney for all the people going to gencon who will miss Friday night Magic. I open a terrible Masks starter and even worse packs, and end up going 1-6 for the night. Still, the owner of the store and one of his employees is taking us down there, so I have to be nice and comment him on his good play in our game

I head home and finish sorting out the binders for the trip. I have three binders - one for magic, one for 7th Sea, one for Star Wars and one for Pokemon. My finacee' (who's comming with me) doesn't play card games but loves the show, so she helps me sort cards all night and we finally get to bed about 2am, only to get up at 5am to get ready to go.

Thurs 10th
Ohh... My.... Gaaaawwwddd! It should be illegal to get up this early. I crawl into the shower, crawl out again and then pack my final things and head downstairs with my loved one to wait for our friends to pick us up - who, of course, are half and hour late. Stuff everything into the trunk of the car and away we go. The 4+ hour trip is spent napping, talking ahout what we're going to do, ripping on each other and a brieft stop for breakfast.

We finally make it into Millwalkee about 10am, and having spent a very reluctant $10 on parking, we start queueing up to get in - the lines are huges and three of my friends decide to jump the line and just go in, leaving my honest fiancee' and I to wait in the 90+ heat and sweat (Sorry, women don't sweat - they "glow". My loved one was glowing like a pig, as was I lol). while we waited to get in. Finally, after two hours almost to the minute, we got our badges and headed straight for the main lobby to find our buds.

Errm. I think I should mention how many people were there on the first day - finding someone in that mass of people was damn near impossible. We gave up after about half an hour and headed ot the exhibit hall to check out the booths. Remembering that we had another 3 3/4 days of this, we only glanced at a few of them, picked up some promo cards and headed downstairs to the trading hall. One of my other friends who is a veteran of Gencon and normally makes between $2000 and $4000 selling L5R cards every year had told me about the room, but nothing prepared me for the size of the place. There must've been seating for at least 1500 people, with the most noisy corner belonging to the L5R crowd - they did look like they were having a great time though.

The first day was spent pretty much trading and gathering up free crap. My eye was caught by the new Scooby Doo game (I'm a sucker for Scooby), so I tried to get in on a demo, but no luck - maybe tomorrow. The worst part of the day was discovering that someone had stole two of my 7th sea decks and my foil captians and ships - I reported it to the judges and security, but there was nothing they could do

We head to the hotel (about 20 mins away by the airport) with a very glum expression on my face.

Friday 11th
The previous night saw us eat, get to our room and crash - after talking crap for about two hours. Got up at 6am, had breaky and then headed to the show for more trading. I got a little bold and decided to take the Level 1 Judge exam, having only played for about five months and knowing nothing at all about the rules. The Level 3 there was very nice as I was the first to want to take the exam, and seeing I'd only played for a little while, gave me the easier exam.

Easier? My God! It was tough - I was sweating throughout the entire 1 1/2 hours it took me to complete it. I waited for my result and killed time by watching one of the many tourneys going on in the hall - there were demos of many card games going on too, so I briefly watched a demo of the new Terminator CCG before heading back to get my results - BAH! 51% - 14% under passing, but he did compliment me on that score and my balls to take the exam considering my limited experience. I can take it again in three months. Oh well.

After aquick lunch with my friends at the huge mall over the street, we all headed to the art show. Having to check your bags is a pain because it means you have to go in, see who's there, go back out, get the cards that can be signed, then go back in. I was lucky enugh to have a Japanese Coffin Puppets and the artist for the alt art was there, and he was in the process of *****ing to another con-goer that he'd never seen the card as WoTc hadn't sent him a copy of it at *all*. I floped it down in front of him and he freaked out! He looked it over for a good ten minutes before signing it, giving me a free print of the artwork and shaking my hand. Nice guy all round.

I saw people getitng playmats signed all over the place and decided to do the same thing. Trying to find a vendor in the exhibit hall who sold them was another matter, though. I spent a good two hours looking for a playmat with no luck. Damnit.

Time for some more trading. Managed to get rid of some of my 7th Sea to a dealer for $60, and two of my star wars foils for $50 to the same guy - not bad. Headed downstairs and started trading for MBC stuff - everyone wanted Ports, Cores and such and was trading away good Prophecy cards like Jeweled Spirits for around .50c to $1 each - Yeah Baby! I even managed to pick up a foil Blinding Angel for time for $5. Nice.

Meanwhile my buds were trading their asses off - foil Magetas, foil Counterspells and Unglued land (for me) were some of the day's highlights. Around 9pm we called it a day, headed to the car with another friend who needed a place to stay as his ride had left without him, found something to eat and then toyed with the idea of playing the PTQ the next day. I didn't have a deck so we tried to come up with the lamest rouge deck we could think of. After much debate, we came up with U/G Keldon Battelwagon/Saproling Burst combo with Ribbon Snakes,Blastoderms anbd counters. The sideboard was 15 random cards, and I had to play it! lol!

Saturday 12th
Arrive at the hall for the PTQ at 8am, only to be toild that it probably won't start until at least 10:30am. Spend the time finding two playmats (one for me and one for a friend), and giving one to my Fiancee' (who looked amazing that day with one of those backless shirts on and shiny black pants) to go around the art show and get signed for me - looking the way she did I was sure she'd get some cool stuff, but her nerves got the better of her and she only managed a few sketches - oh well. She still looked great - I can't wait to marry her next year (Everyone, all together - "AAAHHH!" lol - sorry).

Back to the PTQ. First round was against White control - to cut it short, I didn't stand a chance. The look on the guy's face when I layed Keldon was priceless though, and worth the game alone. Aftewards he asked what the deck was, and laughed hard when I told him, but wished me luck, saying I should win a box for having the most b**ls of the field

Second round was interesting. A nice, older lady (round 35 I'd say) who was playing RoShamBo without the DPO's. First game I go first, lay a Battlewagon fourth turn (she has to pick it up to read it) and then a Sap burts next - you know the drill here (if you don't, you remove a counter from sap to make a 6/6, tap it to battle wagon, remove to make a 5/5, tap to wagon ect ect until you get a 21/3 trapler who must be sac'd at end of combat). I did it and she asked me to do it again to make sure. I complied, to which she could only stare at me and say "S**t! Game..." - one of my friends walked by and asked if it worked, and laughed all the way to the bathroom

Second game was a very long, drawn out affair. I took out the wagons for thieves and we traded creatures for a long time, until she finally managed to hit me with a wumpus for three and then use its abililty for the final one (I sided in rising waters). I started shuffling for the third game and mulliganged twice. Was about to lay my land for the final game when they called time and we drew - much to my relief.
0-1-1

In between rounds I was trading and chatting with players who were done with their matches. Most of the field was G/B Agro. I can't wait for the end of the MBC contstructed format and get into the sealed deck section.

Next Round was against pure Rebels. I think this must've been my quickest loosing match ever, with the entire round taking about three minutes. I packed up my stuff and went and got my playmat signed for a while. Came back to play the nbext round and won (I can't remember what else happened - sorry). To cut a long story short, I ended the day with a 3-4-1 record - not bad for a completely crap deck!

By this time is was late, and we had to eat and check out of the hotel in the morning, so I finshed getting my playmat signed, picked up some more Scooby Doo promos and demo decks, and headed to the hotel.

Sunday 13th
This was a very boring day - everything closed at 4pm so we had very little time. My Fiancee' and I spent most of the day collecting as much free stuff as we could. One thing I have forgotten to mention was the Ultra Pro stand. They had PROTOTYPES of three new colors of deck slevees (only one of which - the metallic blue - is sure to come out next month). The other two, the pink and the cream sleeves, are first-run prototypes are were been given out in very small numbers (two or three to every person). By a but of slight of hand, a little misdirection and some pleading, we managed to get enough of each color for one deck's worth each - I'm not using my cream ones - they're probably gonna be worth a lot of money.

__________________
"Second rule Omega: No matter how much a person sucks at something don't tell them that. Homer Simpson for example."
-Diamond,Psy Mage

We're considering getting a booth next year.

Did you get my email about help?

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Originally posted by banzi:

My loved one was glowing like a pig, as was I

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pigs don't sweat, they don't have sweat glands (like dogs) so to cool off when they are hot they go into mud or shade. thought i'd point that out