GZG/Geo-Hex at GenCon: Another Review... (Long)

GZG at GenCon - A Review

This a little on the late side, but what can I say, I was on vacation!
Dean
did an excellent review. I thought I'd send my thoughts, as the
co-ordinator
of the GZG/Geo-Hex events. I can also let you in on some of the behind
the
scenes mess ups...

This is my second annual GenCon review with a slant towards GZG and
Geo-Hex
events in particular and miniatures events in general. Full disclosure:
I
organized the events for Geo-Hex this year...

THE CONVENTION IN GENERAL

I've been going to GenCon since 1995,and this was without a doubt the
WORST
run GenCon I've seen. The mess-up for me started months earlier. This
year
events could be submitted using their web site. I did this... and they
were
still wrong. It appears that they took the submitted forms, printed
them, and
had someone re-key them. We ended up with three events duplicated in the
same
time slot, one of which was actually in the wrong time slot. I tried
contacting Andon to explain the problem, but nothing was done. I even
e-mailed
them with the changes but they did not change the events in time for the
convention. When I got there, I found that they couldn't actually move
events.
What's more, the duplicated events were popular enough that both
sessions were
filled up. This wasn't the only thing messed up. The descriptions were
wrong,
they did NOT have all of the events listed under Geo-Hex, and they
didn't have
enough tables set aside for us. 

The pre-registration books were sent to Canada as 4th class bulk mail.
The
result: of the 14 people I knew who were going from Toronto, only 2 got
their
pre-reg books. Yes, the book was on the web, but you had to know to look
there, and when. By the time our group looked and downloaded the book,
almost
all of the slots were already filled up. In protest, three of us (me,
and my
friends Sherry Moore and Chris Smith) came up with buttons that said,
"My
GenCon Includes Canada", a parody of the "My Canada Includes Quebec"
slogan
during the last Quebec separation referendum. These were popular with
Canadians...

Not pre-reging wouldn't have been THAT big a deal, except that events
registration was an awful mess. Andon sold more ad space in the
registration
book. In order to make room, the shortened the number of pages used to
describe the events. They did this by eliminating the event
descriptions. That
was bad enough, but the descriptions included the event locations! In
order to
find out where an event was being held (it was on the tickets) you had
to go
to event registration and look it up in one book that they had. New
events
were listed in a supplementary book, but they ran out of these early and
had
to get more printed. Even if you found the area with the event, chances
are
you would run into trouble finding the actual table. In our area, we had
people with tickets told that our refs hadn't shown up yet, when we had
already signed in with the Miniatures HQ people. I've heard far worse
stories
of people basically being bounced from one room to another without
anyone
apparently knowing where the event was located.

Oh, and on Saturday the computer system crashed. It's a dBASE V
application
(DOS at that) and from what a friend heard, a memo field got corrupted
and
wrecked 3 database table indexes. The result was that you couldn't find
an
event if you only had a generic ticket, and couldn't buy any tickets
that were
handed in, and couldn't find out if an event was filled up. It was a
horrible
mess...

The choice of events was lacking, too. There were few historical events.
RAFM
was running Charlie Company (Vietnam War) events and Baker Company
(WWII)
events, and Battleground WWII was being run, but there were few others.
Even
the sci fi and fantasy events weren't as prevalent as in previous years.
I
watched Fantasy Rules! being played, but unfortunately I couldn't find
anyone
selling the rules in the dealer's room. There were a couple of beautiful
set
ups, though. There was a huge amphibious landing layout for a WH40K game
that
could easily be used for Normandy. There was another set up with a
crashed
spaceship (Jupiter 2 from the "Lost in Space" movie). There were the
usual
Battletech and Silent Death games, but in all there was a real dearth of
miniatures.

THE DEALERS ROOM

The dealer's room was as big as last year, although the WOTC castle was
bigger
than in previous years... did this "hide" some unsold booths? I don't
know.
The choice in the dealer's room was about the same as usual. Miniatures
availability was pretty good, but it was mostly of the sci fi/fantasy
type. I
found only 4 booths selling historical minis. Terrain was well
represented.
Geo-Hex released a large 25mm "star fort", an affordable fortification
that
could be used for historical minis, sci fi, or fantasy. Armourcast is
less of
a WH40K accessories company now as a generic terrain company. Their
feudal
Japan terrain (ostensibly for Clan War) is definitely welcome.
Battleground
WWII folk were there selling minis and vehicles. Curiously, they said
they
didn't bring any scenario packs due to a lack of space. I found their
booth to
be attractively laid out with military looking crates, but decidedly
poor on
space management. Since I don't intend to use their official figures,
but
wanted a couple of their scenario packs, I was decidedly disappointed
(and
think this may have been a tactical error on their part...).The lack of
historicals doesn't bode well for historical minis at future GenCons. It
does,
though, give us the opportunity to run a couple of "historical" Dirtside
II
and Stargrunt II scenarios next year.

THE GZG/GEO-HEX EVENTS

In general, our events were well attended. In fact, if you take into
account
the double booked events, we actually had too many people show up. Here
are
some comments and observations.

So called "media" sci fi was very popular. Dean Gundberg's sci fi
crossover
event was so popular that most of the players agreed to continue playing
past
the time limit. This game involved Babylon 5, Star Trek, Star Wars,
Space:
Above and Beyond and Battlestar Galactica games. Mark Siefert's Babylon
5
scenarios were full... in fact, we DID have enough people for a third,
double
booked session.

In a smiliar vein, Bryan Miller's Dirtside II games, involving Hammer's
Slammers, Falconberg's Legion, and (in another scenario) Warhammer and
Battletech were all filled. Talking to players there, these other
backgrounds
do pull in new players, most of which do eventually swing into the
"official"
miniatures at some point.

On the other hand, my friend Chris ran a basic FT game using "official"
miniatures, and got very positive comments. The players said that they
liked
the fact that they were shooting at things a turn into the game. A
couple
played in another game (not sure if it was ours, or one of the other
"independent" FT games) and found a lot of the pre-game  manoeuvring to
be
dull.

My SG2 games were well attended. So were most of Tom's, though his last
game
only had a couple of people. Tom stuck to a strictly "official" universe
series of games, using my NSL troopers and Geo-Hex's FSE Legionaires or
my
Japanese Corporate Mercenaries. My games were all one-offs. The least
effective, funny enough, was Ork Hill, the game using WH40K figures
which I
ran last year. The winning side loved the scenario, while the losing
Orks
found it unbalanced (funny enough, last year, the losing side were the
Marines...). Even though it was full up, I will probably retire the
scenario
and stick with "official" figures. My other games were far better
received.
Plasma Ambush, in 15mm, was seen as both sides as being tough but
balanced.
Errors were made on both sides, the defeated team being the ones to make
the
last mistake. Enemy Mine, in spite of being somewhat unbalanced, turned
out to
be a lot of fun for all involved. It used Geo-Hex's Cavernscape, proving
that
a relatively simple game can  be very effective. 

One thing for Jon and KR. The guys playing the 15mm scenario all agreed
that
15mm is THE way to play SG2 when vehicles are in abundance. That is, in
a full
platoon scenario with support vehicles 15mm is the way to go. They find
the
25mm resin vehicles (particularly the tanks) used with SG2 to be too
large for
the ground scale. I told them that GZG does sell 15mm figures. Someone
else in
the dealer's room was also selling old Denizen(?) 15mm sci-fi. The
market for
15mm figures may be small, but it's there. How small, I'm not sure, but
for
those favouring 15mm Stargrunt 2 is definitely THE game to use with it.

Once again, the FT tournament was well attended. This year we used the
Fleet
Book designs and all the fleet book rules except for vector movement. We
did
have ONE problem with the fleet designs. One of the fleets was
discovered to
be unbalanced during the game and will be retired. We also think a noon
time
start for the tournament would be a good thing for next year. The
tournament
runs 8 hours, which is why we started it at 8 am, but we think we may
get more
attendees if we start it later.

This convention also saw the running of several vector movement games.
They
were simple affairs with three or four ships a side. The vector movement
did
add time to the game, but the smaller number of ships made the games run
about
the same as a typical FT introduction game. I don't know if people
preferred
vector games or if they were just curious to see how the rules worked.
My
personal feeling is that I will use vector rules when needed but
otherwise
will stick to cinematic movement.

So, what was it like to run the events? Once the con started, things
mostly
ran on autopilot. The only real piece of work that I had to do was make
sure
the terrain, figures and drop cloths were picked up at the end of the
night.
If I run the events next year, I would do a better job of deligating
this
responsibility as it got tiring showing up at 1 am every night. A number
of
people I've seen in past conventions came up to us and offered their
services
as referees. This was a welcome sign. A number of us suggested that we
need
one or two sets of Geo-Hex terrain for our SG2 and DS2 demos. We had a
couple
of small sets owned by players, but my own games, for instance, were run
using
very little Geo-Hex terrain. We feel that we'd like all of next year's
SG2 and
DS2 games run on Geo-Hex terrain. Optimally, the refs would bring dice,
rulers, figures, and vehicles and all the rest would be there for him at
the
convention. I'm not sure how practical this is... I did get a kick out
of
seeing my Valiant Federation ships, B5-like fighters, jump gate, NSL
stormtroopers and Japanese Corporate Mercenaries in action, even if it
was
mostly with other people using them! I will have pics on my web site
Real Soon
Now!

In spite of Andon and some awful convention organizing, a fun time was
had by
all. I was thinking of attending a different convention next year
(Origins or
Historicon) but since my wife might get a gig working for one of the
dealers,
we may be back in Milwaukee next year. I wouldn't mind that, as I have
made a
number of friends at GenCon and would like to meet them again next
year...
inspite of whatever mess Andon may make of the convention.

Allan Goodall		       agoodall@interlog.com
Goodall's Grotto: http://www.interlog.com/~agoodall/

"Surprisingly, when you throw two naked women with sex
toys into a living room full of drunken men, things 
always go bad." - Kyle Baker, "You Are Here"