Adepticon - Thursday

A few up front caveats regarding these Adepticon recaps.  Firstly, they were drafted during/after as I was there and finally re-edited now that I am back home and have the convenience of a computer to pull them together with pictures.  That being said, for the English majors out there, I will probably have severe issues in these post with mixed tenses.  Also, I tended to only take pictures of events/things I was involved in - there are plenty of great pictures of many of the events and the Crystal Brush entries.  While I do have a very nice standalone camera to potentially do this, I'm not hauling it around - so you get camera phone pictures, I'm sorry!

The day started off very early with my alarm going of at 3:30am so that I could catch a flight from Huntsville, to the totally not on the way destination of Houston!  I arrived in Houston as my plane to Chicago was boarding, so I had a nice little jog from the commuter terminal to the "real" terminals and was about the last person to board the plane.  What a great way to start but at least I made the flight.  Things improved a bit once in Chicago as I was picked up by a driver from Windy City Limo's to take me to the hotel.  A very nice woman with an awesome Russian/eastern block accent.

A little bit of a shout out to Windy City Limo:  I totally f'd up my reservation and it was pretty much transparent to me that I had (ie, they handled it on the fly and barely even brought it up).  Also, if you are by yourself, at least, it looks like the rates are almost comparable to getting a taxi but a much better experience IMO.  Part of the trick is to be willing to sign up for shuttle service as they will often still send a car for you.

Anyway, check in, smooth as usual once at the convention (hotel and con).  Immediately I dumped my bags, check the preregistration swag bag and caught my breath for a few mins:

Not bad for non-VIG swag

Afterwards, I headed for the vendors to scope any potential limited supply items.   Steamforged Games had several new season 2 figs for Guild Ball.  Props to those guys and gals for busting up a starter to give me a game ball that I didn't get in my starter set.  As an aside, they (Steamforge/Guild Ball) seemed to dominate the vendor hall the entire convention.  I think we are going to be seeing a lot of new Guild Ball players!

Hammer Time!

A quick swing by the Osprey booth was disappointing as they had lots of Frostgrave books and minis, but they had none of the highly sought after spell decks.

Next on the agenda was my first seminar of the convention, Vallejo Painting Demos taught by Angel Giraldez (the studio painter for Infinity if you didn't know).  Not much can really describe seeing Angel (sorry for lack of proper accents, btw) work.  Simply amazing and effortless.  I picked up a few new things to try out.  Angel is also very friendly, gracious and approachable even remembering me from the class later on and saying hi.  I hope he returns in the future, as this was the only one of his classes I took. Volume 2 of his painting book will be coming later this year too!

Running back through the vendor hall afterwards I ran into Derek from Throne of Angels and chatted for a bit.  I had never met Derek face to face, so it was great to meet and chat with him, beyond the usual google hangout I participate in.

After a short rest and food, I headed for my first game of the con:  Legends of the Old West - Showdown at Tandywine Gulch.  I suspected and was correct, that this was a game run by a guy/group out of Kansas that I have had tons of fun with in previous years.  The setup was 8 players each controlling a separate faction having arrived in Tandywine just prior to the Hanging Judge's arrival.  Each faction had a hidden objective to accomplish.  The GM controlled events and NPCs in the town that would sometimes (even violently, helpfully or not-helpfully interact with "characters).  I ended up with the Outlaws, just by change of grabbing the seat that I did:

The Outlaws (and my camera phone acting up - sorry)

As typical with this GM, a beautiful table totally ruined by my phone not liking this room one bit:

Tandywine Gulch

My objective was to free "Taco" from the jail before the Hanging Judge arrived.  And this is where things started to go down hill, in game and out.  We (seriously, pretty much all of us) had a bit of an issue with one of the players, which pretty much put me at my wits end.  This factored into me loosing my shit a little bit with another player.  Kind of embarrassing, I should have been in better control of my own enjoyment.  I think the extreme early start of the day, all the running around and this being a late game contributed a little bit to a low tolerance level.  Still out of respect for the GM, I stuck it out and managed to free "Taco" and not harm (in real life) any players.  Two other players also managed to achieve their objectives.  A nice player favor from the GM:

GM's giving out favors now?  Wow.

A few funny things that happened in the game:  The O'Malley brothers knocked one of my gang out.  They had been drinking and fighting with each other all day and I stumbled a bit to close to their brawl.  The owner opium den and the snake oil salesman tied up some other people for several turns, as well as the Mayor who gave a talking to the Indians.  Oh, at the undertaker - business had been very slow and he took it upon himself to try to change that.

Well that is the day one recap. Tomorrow, maybe, I will recap my second day at Adepticon.

--Edit/Clarification--
Just to be clear and honest, I was out of line in "loosing my shit" during the Showdown at Tandywine Gulch.  Ok.  And the GM did a really outstanding job of trying to handle the problem player short of just kicking him out of the game.