Daily Chronicle: GenCon 2018 8/5/2018

Late last week (Thursday) after seeing all the posts on Facebook and Twitter about GenCon 2018 in Indianapolis, IN I decided to take a look online to see how much single day badges were going to cost.  My son had to work later in the day Saturday and mid-day Sunday, so I was hoping to go on Saturday with him and be back in time for him to get to work.  Once I created an account was able to view the badge prices, it was $70 for Saturday, and only $15 for Sunday.  My plan was not to play in any events, but to go and roam the Vendor Hall.  $70 to go shopping was a bit much. but $15 was manageable for the experience.  The last time I had attended GenCon was back when it was still in Milwaukee, WI (so prior to 2002).  Since Sunday was out of the question for my son to attend, I decided to text my friend out in Kalamzoo (TJ) to see if he wanted to ride down with me for the day.  Indianapolis is only a 3 hour drive for me, so driving down and back up in one day is not an issue.  He texted back "yes" and the plan was in motion.  TJ has never attended GenCon before, so he was all OK with going down to check out the Vendor Hall.

Before we headed down on Sunday morning, the first thing I needed to do was work on a shopping list for the event.  There really was not much that I needed (hence my original hesitation on attending), but I still managed to put a list together.

We arrived down at the Convention Center around 10:25 AM (after parking) and headed towards the Will Call to pick up our single day badges.  The line did not look too bad until the Convention Staff told us the end of the line was down the hall..oh boy!  It was a very long line, but it actually did move pretty quickly, we were all checked in and ready to shop by 11:00 AM.  At that point we headed straight towards the Vendor Hall.

If I recall correctly, there were about 35 rows of vendors in the hall, and we started at the beginning and walked our way up and down every row.  Like I mentioned above, we were only there for the Vendor Hall so we had plenty of time to look around (5 hours, the Vendor Hall closes at 4:00 PM on Sunday).

Our first stop for purchases was at Privateer Press.  Believe it or not, I only had one small item on my list and it was for a bottle of paint in 'Eldritch Green'.  Sure enough, Privateer Press was sold out of that color.  Next to the paint racks were some novels, and I just recently heard good things about a book called "The Blood Kings" by Douglas Seacat and they had that copy sitting there.  While opening the cover looking for a price, it was also signed copy by the author, so I thought why not and went to purchase it.  At the register, I also decided to purchase a Cygnar mug for my son and add it to our collection (when I got home, I realized I was also missing Khador and should have purchase one of those too).  So my planned purchase of $4 at Privateer Press turned into $28.

Next I had to stop at a friends booth called Broken Egg Games who are based where I lived in Arizona.  There were two 4" AOE templates that I needed for my Khador Army.  While at Adam's booth, he asked "didn't you just put in a order", I said "yea, but it hadn't shipped yet".  He then told me to pull up my order and he gathered my items there for me.  Since I had already paid for shipping on those items, the two AOE's were just thrown in then.

While I was picking up my items at Broken Egg Games, my friend TJ was getting in a demo game of "Mutated", a card game that is currently on Kickstarter.  He enjoyed the game very much and will be backing it shortly.

At that point we were half through the Vendor Hall, we passed by Fantasy Flight Games (X-Wing) but did not go into their booth area.  They had a line wrapped around their area and there was nothing that I needed at the time.  I had already pre-ordered X-Wing 2.0 at my local game store.

Next stop for us was Arena Rex by Red Republic Games.  TJ wanted to get an additional model for his cohort along with a gaming mat.  Now here is also where I had spent most of my money too.  I will not go into detail on this post (more tomorrow), but it looks like I am also vested in this game now.

The time was now about 2:30 PM and we were getting towards the end of the Vendor Hall.  I knew I had to make a stop at Miniature Market still to see if they had the Batman GenCon Exclusive model.  Unfortunately they had sold out Saturday morning and I texted my son and he was a little disappointed.  I guess there is one benefit of getting to GenCon when it opens on Thursdays for purchases like this.  I also missed out on some expansions for an adult fun card game "$#!7 Happens" that my wife likes to play.

Just about done now with the Vendor Hall and then I came across a booth of terrain by 4Ground.  I looked for them on the map before we headed to GenCon and I did not see them listed, turns out they were listed under "Fabled Realms 4 Ground".  I have been looking at 4Ground recently for their pre-painted MDF terrain for Batman Miniatures Game.  They did not have much of the Gothic line available and I purchased what I could.  Like with Arena Rex, I will go into a bit more detail later this week.

Now we were headed out towards the door and there was one more vendor we walked by, Steamforged Games.  If this was last year, I would have stopped and made some purchases.  Currently at this time, I am on hold with Guild Ball.  They did have the new Falconer's Guild available for purchase, but I decided to wait on that, especially seeing how much I had already spent in the day.  Season 4 for Guild Ball will be releasing this October and I am waiting for that new rulebook and hoping it will re-spark my interest.

Stay tuned for a few more detailed posts this week on some of my purchases.