The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, the Totally Awesome, and the Weird

Extracurricular activity was arranged: touring downtown Indianapolis via Pedal-Bar.

There are a few prerequisites, perhaps the most important of which is libations. It is, after all a bar. However, it is not permitted to take glass containers. The brewpub with which the pedal bar is affiliated helpfully sells “bullets” – tall plastic containers that they are only too happy to fill with micro-brew goodness for you.

That detail taken care of, the other thing needed is a playlist of cool tunes to crank out of the bar’s loudspeakers. Fundamentally, the whole exercise revolves around the joy of showing off and convincing everyone you pass by that you are having the time of your life, as you pedal a ginormous trolley down the street. The experience is actually pretty fun, so there’s not much embellishment required.

Personally, I was pretty much drenched in sweat halfway through our two-hour tour. It was something of a challenge to pedal hard enough to make the next light, while chugging a beer out of a bullet, while hoarsely singing along with an 80’s or 90’s party anthem, while trying not to wheeze. It was, to be clear, genuinely enjoyable. Also, there was a fair amount of cheering from spectators we passed. Some of them may be convinced, as we once were, to try this sometime. And so the great Wheel Of Life keeps turning.

***

I originally met the other Zulus when I was a late-stage teenager and they were Jr. High students, when a friend of mine and I ran a tournament at a local game convention in Colorado, where we all lived at the time. The game was B-17, which is a solo game in which you try to successfully pilot a B-17 bomber on a WWII bomber mission and return successfully. We set up an event in which multiple players flew the same mission at the same time, as if the whole group were an allied formation. We ran that tournament at local conventions for a number of years, and made some friendships that endure to this day.

So I was pretty jazzed when a couple of the gang said they wanted to run a group B-17 mission. The game was set up in our Private Gaming Paradise. A raft of storied names took their place on the flight line as the bombers queued for takeoff: the Blind Slug, Zulu Dawn, Loads O’ Pun, and the Endorphin Mama Jones were joined by thirteen others. We all thundered into the sky to rain havoc upon the foe. About half the bomber group made it back. As for myself, my plane caught a burst of FLAK and exploded shortly after I unloaded my bombs over the target.

Good times…

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Sunday at Con is always tinged with a sort of optimistic melancholy. Nobody wants to talk about it, but everyone feels the shadow of the conclusion of the convention approaching. Later in the evening, we will all congregate in one or two hotel rooms to fire up some last game sessions and generally hang out and relax together. During the day, there are some who still have some events scheduled. For most, however, this is also the day to crawl the dealer's area.

It’s hard to describe how huge the dealer area is at Gen Con. Suffice it to say that to properly crawl the dealer area takes roughly three hours – and that’s if you’ve already taken care of all the major purchases you had already planned on, and aren’t taking time out for demos. In the dealer area there are wonders and delights to be found, beside items of bewilderingly head-scratching improbability, and other things that are just plain wrong. Here is a survey of some of the things that this year’s crawl unearthed today.

Tablet cover, in leather

One of a number of extremely nice hand-carved wooden dice cases.
Rare earth magnets secure the lid in place

Not just Firefly Yahtzee, but Collector's Edition firefly yahtzee...

Corsets are all the rage, though generally on women. This guy asked to get
laced into one.

First time I've seen anyone as Pris.
Therefore, picture.

Nobody I showed this picture to thought this was a good idea

Impulse purchase. This is so totally going on my Miata.

Full Frontal Nerdity

Elmo’s is another Gen Con tradition, known for a killer shrimp cocktail, steak, and ginormous – and very good – cheesecake. It’s also a lot of fun because everything is a la carte, and you can feel like a baller. Many of us wear shirts with buttons on them when we go to Elmo’s.

 

Placing an order at Elmo's is not a complex undertaking

It is not larger than my head. Therefore, it is okay to eat.

***

The sushi adventure was awesome, but today it's time to get on with the gaming.  Starting with Sails Of Glory – Record Breaker. Sails of Glory is a game of ship-to-ship combat in the Age of Sail. With, you know, glory.

And some really cool miniatures, too

This event was an attempt to set a record for the number of people playing SoG at the same time. There were two hours available for the event, 45 minutes of which were consumed with getting everybody set up. Explaining the rules to new players took a little while – and we were using the simplest of rulesets for the event. When all was said and done, we got to play about eight turns worth before the event ended. But there were 76 players...

As one might imagine, the number of players made actual game play somewhat of a slog. However, that also gave everyone time to strike up conversations, replete with jolly banter, and an overall sense of Gamemütlichkeit. Not to mention that we all got a beautifully lettered certificate, suitable for framing.

As we were playing, we were also subjected to raucous chants of “Fight! Fight! Fight!!” from a group of players directly adjacent to us. I confess that I remain uncertain as to the exact nature of the game, though I can only surmise that it involved some kind of garden gnome combat. I can assure you that viewing the scene up close, in person, was absolutely surreal.

***

Yeah, so, here is a picture of some pizza. We’ve all had pizza, and I’m sure this doesn’t impress you. Big deal. Just the same, this is where we went, at about 2:30 in the afternoon, for breakfast. “Pearl’s” is another traditional Zulu hangout, and the platter of goo you see here is why. This is seriously good stuff. And though I respect that it takes more than a picture of pizza to impress anyone (which is as it should be), I present this, because pizza is happiness, and I want to share that with you.

Now, tell me your mouth isn't watering just a little bit...

***

This year, the gang has tried something new, and it’s turning out to be a rousing success.

We’ve rented our own conference room in our hotel, to use as an open gaming area in between daytime events, between meals, and for any of those other times that we would otherwise have to fill with useless things like sleep.

One half of our conference room

By 8:00 PM the place was packed. Everyone brought the games they had snagged in the dealer’s area, and went from table to table playing whatever games look interesting. It’s always interesting to see what game emerges as the hit game that everybody has to get and take home with them. There is no clear winner as yet this year, although two or three people have purchased all of the Boss Monster after playing a couple of rounds in the hotel room. Splendor is also getting very good reviews, though it remains to be seen how many will be taking it home.

***

This is what we set up at the other end of our Personal Game Palace.

Sean brought his diorama materials and miniatures, and set up a session of Battletech using the Alpha Strike rules. The original Battletech was a traditional 80’s style miniatures game, complete with a set of rules that could easily melt your brain.

This man tried to learn too many rules all at once

Playing with the newer Alpha Strike rules was a lot of fun – about as ‘beer and pretzels’ as you can get for a miniatures game. Leaving plenty of time to do the important things, like ducking over to the table where the Oreos are, and bitching about die rolls.

Finding the range to a target that will not in fact suffer any damage

***

It is fun to attend Con as a grownup.

Gin Con

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One Minute Game Review: Splendor

Splendor is a resource management game, in which players draw available resource tokens, spend them on cards which yield permanent resource income, and pyramid those resources to purchase higher value cards and score combination goals, both of which yield victory points. The storyline wrapped around the core game mechanic - that of craftsman collecting the jewels necessary to please wealthy patrons – is in implementation remarkably thin and easily disregarded. However, that is just as well, as it is really unnecessary and the actual gameplay is pretty engrossing. The trick is to find a path through the shifting field of available cards, identifying scarce resources and securing your own supply while blocking others’ progress, all whilst keeping your own eyes firmly on your own game plan and objectives. It is sort of a cross between a deck building game such as Dominion, and a puzzle game powered by the randomness of the shuffled decks of resource cards and the vagaries of your human opponents’ behavior.

For 2 to 4 players. Roughly 20 minutes playing time. Game components are nice quality, in a box with it’s own organizer. $30 on Amazon. Team Zulu sez: everyone who has played it so far likes it

***

Costumes 2015

There are always a lot of fantastic costumes at Gen Con, and this year is no exception. There are always a lot of painstakingly crafted, finely detailed costumes, and there is no shortage of stunning young ladies dressed as delectable fantasy characters. Sad to say, too, that making that the object of a Costume Photo Safari is for me pretty redundant. There are only so many photos one can take of catsuits and giant swords.

This year, I am on the lookout for costumes that seem to me to capture the real joie de vivre of hanging out with a bunch of other gaming nerdwads. Here is a sample from today.