Gen Con 2011 - Day 1 recap

Thursday. Opening day. It was a great day!

Started out early this morning as I had some ninja shopping to do for a couple of my twitter buds over in the UK. However, despite prior knowledge of the changes, I did not take into account the fact that the dealer floor is laid out completely different this year. In previous years, the little booths might change a bit, but the big boys like Fantasy Flight & Privateer Press were relativtely in the same spot. Not so this year. The dealer hall is much larger and therefore required a new layout. I chose the wrong door unfortunately and ended up in a 45 minute line at Privateer Press because of it. But, I did manage to score the minis I had promised to get.

Then I worked my way back to The War Store's booth because I knew they had some Dystopian wars stuff I really wanted. Picked up two of the new Magenta Class French battleships, as well as both the naval and land battle groups for the new Antacrticans plus their carrier. I'm really excited about them and can't wait to get started cleaning them up when I get back home.

Stopped by the CoolMiniOrNot booth and played a demo of Relic Knights (watch for another post for that one) and looked at the impressive figures from the upcoming Super Dungeon Explore game.

That's a lot of minis!

Of course I had to run by Fantasy Flight Games to check out the new X-Wing miniature combat game. It looks very cool, and appears to pull some inspiration from their successful Wings of War game. The minis are pretty impressive for the scale (I'd say about 1/250th). As quality goes, using a scale of 0-10, with 0 being WotC's crappy warped plastic prepaints, and 10 being the 1/144 scale models from F-Toys that I have, I'd give these about an 8. Still, FFG clearly wants my money on this one and I will be hard-pressed to resist.

Oooooh..shiny!

Spent most of the rest of the afternoon finishing up the dealer room and then went to play a very fun game of Descent. This was an official Fantasy Flight run event, so no repeat of last year's weirdness thankfully, but the custom-made scenario kicked our collective Hero butts. The Overlord took the day pretty easily, but it was fun regardless.

Death comes in red plastic these days. 

Lastly, I met back up with Dan, and our other friends Craig, & Buff (short for buffalo) to play Fortune & Glory from Flying Frog Productions. Again, as with their other games, this one's a winner. A very Indiana Jonesish pulp adventure sort of game. Even though I was incredibly tired, I still liked the concept and I'd be interested in giving it a try when I'm fully conscious.

I'll leave you with a picture of my purchases today. More coming tomorrow. Stay tuned for more Gen Con info!

Dystopian Wars & Dice.

Until then,
-Jack