Con Report: NameThatCon St. Louis

Hello all,

NameThatCon 11: In-Con-Ceivable was held the weekend of April 18 in St.
Louis, MO, USA.  I "carried the flag" as the only Ground Zero Games
representative.  It was a pretty small gaming/sc-fi convention.  The
gaming
was pretty badly run (don't even get me started about what I had to go
through, but the dork running the gaming registration tried to make me
pay
the $25 con entrance fee to run my own game!  Luckily, I found the
gaming
chairman who pointed out the error of his ways).

I ran a scenario that was posted to this list by Peter Caron nearly two
years ago.  It was called "Circle of Death."  Basically, each player
drew
another player's ship name and that ship was their target until it was
destroyed.  When a ship was destroyed, that player passed his target on
until only two ships were fighting.  THANKS to PETER CARON if you are
still
out there for sharing this scenario for us.

This scenario made a great convention scenario as it gave clear 1st,
2nd,
and 3rd place winners.	A BIG THANKS to GEO-HEX for not only providing
enough miniatures for 1st through 3rd but also for providing enough
minis
to give EVERY PARTICIPANT a miniature prize IN ADDITION TO a coupon off
of
a direct order from Geo-Hex.  I was totally floored when I received the
package containing the prizes.	Obviously I would urge anyone running a
convention game to get in contact with Geo-Hex as they are obviously
enormously supportive of our hobby.

By the way, there was a Starfleet Battles tournament going on at the
same
time we were playing.  We played through the Circle scenario plus two
other
"pick-up" games in the time it took for them to play through their first
round.	And we looked like we were having more fun (i.e. - we had no
fist
fights over rules interpretations).  And did I mention that of the seven
players only one had ever even seen the game before?

To brag on myself a little bit (just a little - I'm normally quite
modest)
I must say that the amount of preparation I did helped make this
successful.  Obviously getting in touch with Geo-Hex a month before so I
had time to get the prizes helped.  

I also prepared two sheets ahead of time: one) the ship record sheet for
the single cruiser that each player had in the Circle scenario.  This
included a movement record as well as the beam battery effectiveness
chart
(see below), damage chart, and threshold check chart.  Two) a second
sheet
detailed 8 examples of orders and movement.  This allowed players to
simply
pick a maneuver from the sheet and try out the movement rules for the
first
few turns.  After that they really weren't needed, but I was glad I had
them for the beginning.

The beam battery effectiveness chart was made to reference the Beam
Battery
Measuring Stick (TM).  I took two dowels of three feet length, marked
them
at the 12" marks, and then painted each section a different color (red,
then orange, then yellow).  I then keyed my chart to show the number of
dice that each battery fired at each color range.  So at "Yellow" you
were
pretty safe, but if you were in the "Red" zone you were in trouble.

Finally, well-painted miniatures and a black sheet speckled with stars
(ala
the sheet Geo-Hex sells, but mine is 8 feet by 3 feet and homemade)
certainly helped.  You see, this Con was so badly run that a majority of
the games had ZERO players at their times to start.  If you wanted
players,
you had to compete for them.  If I hadn't had a starfield and minis I
would
never have gotten any players, but within ten minutes of setting up I
had
three people ready to go.  The other four players I picked up as the
night
went on, and I think the most I had at any one time was five.

I think that's it.  No pictures I'm afraid.  I do have the sheets
available
in Microsoft Publisher format if anyone is interested in seeing what I
did.
 And is there anyone interested in a repost of the "Circle of Death"?

Nick Caldwell, who just missed getting Andreas Katsulas' autograph this
weekend
clcaldwell@primary.net