Gen Con 2005

[Shadow Queen]

I'll start you off Renny (If i have spelt it wrong im sorry)


First of all the space we had was cramped, we had not evan 12 inches between the tables that cost Digger £65 for 8 of them, there wa little orginization on the day 'sept for Digger and Renny (was gonna call yas Remmy from the X-MEN)

Second There was VERRY Little in the way of ACTA minis well there was none as I was planning to expand my earth fleet with some of my pre birthday money

5 flights of Thunderbolts (2 for my warlock, 3 for the Victory)
4 flights of starfuries (3 fr the Victory, 1 for the warlock)
2 Delphis
and last but not least
1 Victory

but was fobbed off with some excuse

is it me but do the US games con people get to have ACTA Minis??

My thanks to Digger and the other guys for a good day I hope you all got home safley.

Thats my rant over

 

[Matt]

were is this games con and what happens ther ?

i woude love to come to some shorth off b5 get togther but it woude depend on time and money

 

[Shadow Queen]

Twas in Bogner in the uk £25 to get in

 

[Chernobyl]

Quite frankly I'm a little put off at the fact you have to pay for an event? when you've already paid for the con?
The Bay Area con's I've been to (KublaCon x2, ConQuest x1) charge for daily or a 4-day admission, but I don't think any of the events charge additional money.

That being said, I would go to GenCon SoCal (just a day's ride on the train away) but there are no ACTA events being held at all. And while I'm sure that I could find an opponnent (sp?) or 2 on the boards (the question was brought up earlier) if all there is is 'open gaming' I don't need to pay $50 (not to mention hotels and travel) to do that. (So call it a "qualified YES")

I think we could get some decent action at ConQuest Sacramento coming up in April if mongoose would support a tournament.

Chernobyl

 

[lastbesthope]

Well I might go depending on when and where it was.

As to why there were few minis there. mongoose had no retail presence there, they did well to scrape together an MI presence, I know I was originally supposed to be going as an MI but I had to bow out.

I know from some contacts in the iinduustry that the conditions were bad for retailers. they had to set up their stalls during a 2 hour window in the wee small hours of the am. not really very good.

But I enjoyed the day for the tourney, although the £25 day entry fee seems quite a lot, the fact that I recouped that in my free SFOS from the tourney and that I had no travel costs due to travelling down with Pauly_D and his dad were the only reasons it was worth it for me.

LBH

 

[Renny]

Thanks for starting this, SQ.

I voted yes but it may not be Gencon. I was disappointed with the lack of organisation on our arrival and thought the trade stands were a bit of a joke. On the plus side, I thoroughly enjoyed the tournament so might get dragged into organising another one, just not at Gencon.

Nice to meet you in person, by the way.

Regards

Remmy (sorry)

Renny

 

[Low Roller 1-1]

me and anton were discussing this on the four hour drive back,
it would seem to be a catch-22
Few mini gamers go - so fewer retailers go - the fewer retailers - the fewer mini gamers that go.

we all need to support the games and the conventions both reatliers and gamers!

all in all we had a great time and talked to many people who played many types of games.

BEER and GAMES rule :lol:

 

[nezeray]

I can't speak for Gencon UK or SoCal, but I was at Origins and GenconIndy.

We ran a tournament of B5:ACTA at each and had a decent turn out for each, at least 6 players. We also had some demos at Origins, with at least one player returning for the Tournament, I believe he won it.

At Gencon, we didn't run any demos of B5 because we were only allowed to run scheduled PAY events at our tables in the miniatures hall. If you'd like to see pictures of these events, you can go to my Yahoo Photos site:

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nezer...=&.done=http://photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos

Check out Gencon Friday and Origins. The pictures are mixed together.

If the link doesn't work, feel free to e-mail me at Nezeray@yahoo.com

If anyone's going to be in Lexington, KY on November 10th or 17th, I'm demoing all of the minis games at The Rusty Scabbard.

James / Nezeray

 

[Digger]

Hi There,

Firstly, congratulations to all those who turned up, it wouldn’t have worked without you!

Secondly, many thanks to Mongoose without whose support it wouldn’t have got off the ground and the great prizes supplied – Cheers guys, much appreciated.

Thirdly, special thanks to all the guys at CARPS whose help made it all work.

Okay, some of the gripes – With regards to tables and location, no one was more disappointed than me. To have paid £65 for the privilege sucked, but the alternative was a dark and dank place called ‘Overspill’. Ask Renny; he saw it!!

£25 Entry fee – When I first heard of this I was shocked, it was then that I decided to make the tourney free and the guys at Mongoose offered the books to all players, so hopefully it made up for this.

Will there be a CARPS ACTA tournament at Gencon next year?

Well part of me says ‘F*ck Em’ at Gencon, lets organise our own event. But then I met some great people, which made it all worthwhile. So watch this space, you never know!!

Finally, and this will make you laugh, according to ‘Ratty’ this was one of the better-organised Gencon’s!!

Kind Regards

Digger.

P.S. I am sure that ‘Ratty’ is Cockney rhyming slang for something, any suggestions?

 

[Dredd Times]

Hello everyone,
Firstly I would like to thank Digger for all his hard work and dedication over the weekends event, it is really appreciated! Sadly it seems that some of you didnt have as much fun as you could have and a few issues have been raised.

Firstly the fact that although you paid your registration for the show and then had to pay to enter the competition is not down to Mongoose Publishing, but the shows organisers Four Horsemen. I also agree that anyone who enters a show and pays so much to get in should have free access to whatever games are on display and not have to pay again.

The lack of retail presence throughout the show was down in part to the expense of traders taking staff and having to pay for tables, accomadation and registration, if you add wages on top of that then your looking at a large sum that put a lot of traders off from attending.

Overall I think that the tournament went really well, and it was great to see so many boarders there (even if LBH didnt place high AGAIN!!! ) and meet so many new faces.

My many congratulations go out to Lee for walking away with the first place and to Mark and Paul for taking second and third, well done to you all.

Oh and by the way if any of you where wondering why there wasnt to much support from the Mongoose Infantry guys during the event, well we where actually running a Starship Troopers tournament at the same time as the ACTA ran.

I do hope that you all do attend Gencon again as problems aside is a great four days and a lot of fun.

Marc

 

[philogara]

Had great fun taking part in the tourney - congrats yet again to Digger and the rest of the CARPS guys. I'd signed up before the free SFOS was offered, but I think I'd have been a bit disappointed at £25 for entry without.

The tournement was great, but the rest of the show sucked a bit. And, like Shadow Queen I was hoping to spend some money on minatures so disappointed at the lack of opportunity.

Anyway it was good to put faces to names - though screen names and real names were a bit confused by the end :? Glad I met you all.

Question now is, do they still have places for the end of the month compo?

 

[Ralancian]

The problem manly alludes to the fact Gencon UK is mainly a Roleplaying 4 day event (yes I know it was impossible to actually find out where roleplays were happening) if you had paid to got for 4 days (yes there would of been accomadation above this to pay for) it would only cost 75 quid to get in with twelve gaming tickets. It's still over priced but then I'm also willing to pay that, and also why out of our club which has at least 30 regular member only seven of us were there (three of us being the tournament itself). In the end if you going for one event only like most of you appear to have Gencon is a bad idea.

Horseman however do need a kick up thier arse for charging people to want to run events and then charging people for wanting to sell products and demo games. I do aggree that maybe a small charge should be made to the companies for wanting to sell things but making them pay for every person they wanted in the place I belive is madness.

That all said and done thanks for organising the tournament Digger I did enjoy myself and it was good to play some new people other than those at my club for a change.

 

[anton970]

First of all, cheers to Digger to sorting out the Torney I had great fun fielding my Da'kar's for the last time! (have you read SFOS? boo hiss )

even though I crashed and burned against a League fleet I learn't loads over the day.

Myself and Low-roller were there for the duration and this is how it generally went:

Thursday - Pants, nothing open outside , Drank Beer! :?

Frinday Day - Still nothing open outside, Played pirates Loved It, drank beer

friday Night - Found a warmachine player dragged our kit in and played till late, drank beer!!

Sat - Well Low-roller won the Torney, nice one, I wandered off into the warmachine torney that was so well hidden Low-roller had to ring me to find me!! Oh Drank beer

Sun - Had a general mooch talked to the traders for a few hours great fun. No beer

There were loads of this CCG stuff looked like snap to me! or bingo! but that was it really.

 

[Chernobyl]

I think I've discovered the difference between American Con's and UK Con's...it ryhmes with "here"

Chern :lol: :lol:

 

[Renny]

Chernobyl

Have you ever been to Bognor

Regards

Renny

 

[Howarth]

I think I discovered the reason why I keep losing its because im 'it rhymes with flap '

 

[Digger]

Dear All,

Just to clarify a point, the £25 entry was charged by Horseman events and not by CARPS or Mongoose. :x

Please note that there was no charge to enter the tournament and thanks to the guys at Mongoose the free copy of SFOS everyone got hopefully made up for the entry fee.

So if there is flak to fly about costs, please direct them to the con and not at the guys at Mongoose or CARPS. :evil:

Regards

Digger.

 

[Reaversbane]

Hi folks, I dont post here often (habitual lurker), but I did the four days at Gencon so though I would stick my oar in :wink:

In some ways the ticket system aint perfect, I'll agree, but part of the problem is its not really set up for wargaming (which Im not keen on as someone who mainly wargames :roll: ), but if you do the four days you get 16 tickets (with your £75 to get in), and tickets are £3 each. And it should be noted that at least one company were letting you buy things at the end with any spare tickets you had.

Gencon is really best when you do bits of everything is the thing. I played in a couple of roleplays, and did a ccg tourney, talked to loads of people and got lots of freebies for trying new games. This is kinda what its about. If you are only after one specific tournament then it probably doesnt work out best really, not that Im happy about that. The cost of getting in should be covered by all the bits and pieces you can get for nothing (for instance, you got a free Hecatomb booster when you turned up, and then you got a starter set if you had a go on the Wizards stand, thats £12 alone). I strongly recommend trying as much as possible, and wandering about and nattering with people, and you should get a good return for your investment.

One thing I will say is I feel wargames ARE underrepresented at Gencon UK (from what I understand this is different in the US), and Mongoose did a very good job of dealing with that. I walked past your stand loads of times (never got a chance to talk to you guys...), and it looked really good. I especially liked the dead tanker bugs with their legs waving in the air

There is a problem with the traders, namely (as has been stated), the sheer cost to them of being there means they just cant do any deals on the figures, and people just dont bother and buy online where they do get deals, a vicious circle. I intend to be fairly vocal on the Horseman boards in the hope of drumming up ideas for dealing with this, although I aint hopeful

Ahem, hopefully I aint rambled too long, and Im sorry folks didnt enjoy the event as much as they wanted, but please dont rule it out for the future, we need more wargamers!

 

[Chernobyl]

I applaud CARPS and Mongoose for not passing on the cost othe tourney on to the players. But it doesn't seem from the websites that most other games do this, there seems to be a regular practice by the organizers of charging on a per-event-basis on top of admission fees. This is what I'm not happy with - not Mongoose! Sorry if it came out that way! :wink:
I know the tournament was free, its was stated earlier in the "support with prizes thread" - makes me wish I could have been there, but 'twas not to be
Chern

 

[Digger]

Yeah, but what ticked us off was that the guys who organised it and thus couldn't play, still got charged £25 for the privilege!!

Now that really pisses me off! :evil: