Spent Friday and Saturday this past weekend at Genghis Con 2014, a local gaming convention put on by the good folks at the Denver Gamers Association. The con was here in Denver (actually Aurora, a suburb), at the Red Lion Hotel.
This was the first con I've been to where you pay to register, and then buy a ticket for each gaming event in which you want to play. Pre-registration was $24, I think, and each event was $3-$4. Kinda strange to me--I'm used to paying the registration fee and then signing up for games. But, it was no big deal.
As far as the games offered, this con is very heavy on RPGs. Never really got into those myself, but at least half the games offered were RPGs. After that, it was board games, and then miniatures games.
I signed up for Space Hulk, an X-Wing tournament, a 20mm land-based Cold War armor engagement, and a home-brewed 25mm naval game. The armor game ended up getting canceled at the last minute, so I took my refund and registered for a 1/600 scale American Civil War naval scenario.
This was my first time playing Space Hulk, and I really enjoyed it!
I'm not much into the gaming aspect of Warhammer 40k. I like the fluff (especially the Gaunt's Ghosts stories) and the models, but not the game itself. However, I've always wanted to try Space Hulk, and I wasn't disappointed! I played a 5-man squad of terminators--we were racing a squad of Chaos marines who entered on the other side of the ship. We were both trying to get a relic in the middle of the ship and then get out. And, of course, we had to deal with the genestealers. They actually won, after disembowling all the terminators on both sides. It was funny--every marine whose gun jammed while shooting at a genestealer running down the hall towards him got killed. Just like a horror movie.
It was all great fun, until I found out that Space Hulk is now out of print. &$@#% Games Workshop.
This game was going on right next to us:
It was war elephants, rockets, and artillery. Lots of explosions and trampled infantry. Looked like a lot of fun.
The X-Wing tournament, well...let's just say that I seriously considered throwing my dice in Cherry Creek Reservoir on the way home. That's all I'll say about it.
The ACW naval game was another new experience for me, and was quite enjoyable. We were playing the historical scenario of Trent's Reach: Confederate ironclads were trying to move down the James River to City Point to shell the Union garrison.
When the game started, two of the ironclads--the
Virginia II and the
Richmond--were stuck in the mud under the guns of a Union shore battery (on the far right of the pic above)--I had command of the ironclad
Fredericksburg and her small flotilla.
Our objective was to make a run past the Union ships--including their ironclads and torpedo boats--and get off the other end of the table.
I lead the charge with the
Fredericksburg, as mine was the only ironclad not stuck in the mud. Things were going fine until I was rammed by a Union ironclad with a torpedo ram!
In the end, we ran out of time, so we don't know who would have won. But it was good fun nonetheless, and has prompted me to do a little reading about the battle at Trent's Reach, so all in all a good gaming experience. And the minis were great as well.
My last game of the con was a 25mm privateers and merchants scenario with (I think) home-brewed rules.
This game was OK. I took command of the ship in the lower right corner of the above picture, which was a combat ship protecting the merchant vessels from commerce raiders (the ships in the upper part of the picture). The rules of this game ended up being a little too complicated, and the game play was very slow. It turned out to be one of those game that looked great in the catalog of events, but just didn't end up being too much fun. But, since I'd already committed to it, I didn't want to leave the other players in a lurch.
A few other pics from around the con:
And here is The Game I Wish I Had Registered For:
This was a fantasy game with home-brewed rules, set in the late 1800s--sort of a pulp-fiction, land of the lost scenario. There were four groups of explorers from different nations, all with their own objectives. The British team, for example, was searching for the lost crown of Alexander the First. And, of course, they had to avoid getting eaten by the dinosaurs. Easily the best-looking game at the con.
I also observed and played a little of this board game:
This was a lot of fun, and very involved. I may have to pick this one up--the Cold War is one of my favorite historical periods, and this game was a great representation of that period.
All in all, not a bad little con. Certainly not on the scale of Historicon--there was no flea market, and the dealer's room was about a fifth the size of the Historicon flea market, but still not too shabby. The Denver Gamers Association also runs Tacticon at the same location at the end of August--I'm thinking about running a Dystopian Wars scenario for that one. And I'll definitely be on the lookout for the next elephants and rockets game--the GM for that one (who commanded one of the Confederate ironclads with me on Saturday morning) said he'll be running the game again at Tacticon, but with more elephants and more rockets.
Thanks for reading!
