|
Ok, lets see.... Saturday about a month ago I went to
Consortium in Houston.
We left around 10 or 11 and it was slightly raining, on and off.
We get to the hotel, and I wander over to registration and get a
one-day pass. With that out of the way, I make a B-line for the
dealers room. Like usual the place is stocked full of grade A,
neato stuff. You know, books, swords, games, comics, art,
jewelry, more books, more games, and stuff that I cant even
classify. I wander around for a bit, and then run into my friends
Frank and Bryan, who had come down the night before. They
whisk me off to their hotel room upstairs (I would like to note
here that Frank thinks the hotel would make an awesome
paintball field. Frank thinks EVERY PLACE would make an
awesome paintball field though.). Upstairs, they showed me all
the junk that theyd already blown money on. Bryan had bought
40 something boxes of old assorted Magic Cards for $100 (a
later appraisal estimates the value at around $1000-$3000, so
not too bad, assuming he manages to sell them all off.) Frank
had bought some books, by Stackpole and Weber, which he
had had autographed, and he also bought the expansions for the
Game Settlers of Catan. It is a truly great game, and I
recommend that you buy it or play it if you get the chance. The
basic game runs for about $30. After ooh-ing and ahh-ing over
their purchases, we headed back down to the dealers room,
where upon I checked out the art show. After taking out a loan
from Bryan (my bank account was mysteriously short of funds...
it seems to do that a lot.), I went and bought the basic game of
Settlers, and a katana set with a rack (the katana set was $75,
and so was quite a good deal). After looking around a bit, I
found one guy selling Magic Antiquities boosters (if you dont
know, dont worry about it; its a collectible card game). The
price said $15. We asked about it, and the guy was saying hed
sell them ALL to me for $15. We told him that it was probably
supposed to be $15 apiece, but he said hed sell them all for just
$15 (there were 13 of them). Anyway, I quickly dished out
$15. As of today I would like to report that after giving one
away, and opening one for myself, I sold the rest of the packs
on Ebay for $200, nicely financing my con trip (whOO-hOO!).
Later we came back and more packs were out, and clearly
marked $15 EACH. Oh well, I warned him. So after blowing
some of my own money, we went and checked out the game
room. There was a decent selection, and we settled down to
play a game called Frag! by Steve Jackson games. Frag! is a
board game version of a 1st person shootem up. You get to design your own
character off a limited number of points (7),and split those points between life, speed, and
accuracy. If you die, you respawn in the level. You can pick up weapons and gadgets, and
when you kill someone, you get a game hack (like a cheat code for a computer game) that lets
you do really cool stuff, like walk through walls, have magic bullets, etc. In the first round, I
picked up a tactical nuke and had a field day. In the second round, I didnt do so well, and in
the third round, I *almost* won. If I had rolled one number higher on my movement die roll, I
would have had it. Drat! SO anyway, the GM respawned in the room that I couldnt quite
make it out of to kill the person on the other side of the door, and he killed me and won the
round and the game, for most number of kills. I won a set of Hero Stands. yay. There was
another game that looked really cool that I didnt play. Two of them actually. The first was a
tactical space combat game, with a Star Wars starfighter adaptation from a magazine. I was
going to get it until I found out it wasnt a fully legitimate type game. (Im a huge Star Wars
fan). The other game I heard about, but didnt play, although Frank and Bryan did. The game
is called Tenjo. Its similar to Risk, except it takes place in Japan, and you dont know what
enemy strengths are, and it has a large political factor in it, and you also have a bit of magic, and
forts, etc. I wont go into details, but it sounded so neat, that I ordered it, and its not exactly a
cheap game. My friends are paranoid about playing Tenjo with me, because I can be a devious
back-stabbing little worm (all legal and allowed by the rules of course) when it suits me.
Mwhahaha. Anyway, by this time it was getting late, so we left. Came back for a bit the next
day. I window-shopped in the dealers room, got a piece of art (Thanks Sheryl!), and went to a
panel on gender roles in modern sci-fi. Played another game of Frag! but two little kids (one
like 4, the other maybe 6) were playing (if you can call it that) so it wasnt much fun, and we
committed suicide to end the game. Also watched parts of the auction. There were a few
interesting bids, and the like, but I wasnt that enthralled by it all. Shortly afterwards we left
the con, and thats all folks. You can check out Tenjo at www.tenjo.com You can check out
Frag! at www.sjgames.com You can check out Settlers of Catan at www.catan.com (the page is in
German as it is a German game originally, but any game you get in the states will be in
English. You can also check out http://www.virtual-cafe.com/~tdewey/diesiedler.html for info on the
game in English. Overall it was a good con. Well, so long until next time.
|
