Gen Con 2006 Report: Friday

I have to get this down in writing, or I'll forget it completely....

Friday:
RD dropped me off at the ICC a little before 8am, giving me an hour to kill before my first game at 9am. I decided to head over to the McDonalds at the Hyatt for some breakfast. Let's just say, I'm glad that I had an hour to spare! The ol' Mickey D's was not quite prepared for the onslaught of gamers at 8am on a Friday. But, the food was pleasantly predictable, and I ended up striking up a conversation with a fellow gamer about the Song of Fire and Ice book seried by George Martin.
The first game of the day was called "Be a Hero: Intro to the Hero System". It was my intention this year at Gen Con to try out a couple of different RPGs, and I had heard good things about this system. The GM was a very knowledgeable, very friendly guy who gave us some handouts and set us to work on creating a character. The Hero System (previously called "Champions") allows you to create superheroes and other comic-book style characters. I created a character named (naturally) The Science, who was a metamorph who could change into things like elephants and tigers. Creating the characters was quite fun, and very detailed. We then used our characters to participate in a battle versus a villainos bank robber named "Slamburger" and his evil sidekicks. The concept is great, and I think the roleplaying would be fun, but I just couldn't get into the battle system. It's d6-based, and was a little over-complicated for me. But, I'm glad I got exposed to the system, and I wouldn't be opposedto trying it again.
The rest of my day was scheduled relatively lightly, partially because I was planning on spending the afternoon with my friend Mike O'Brien and his son, David. We met up around lunchtime, and Mika and I headed over to the RAM for some yummy food. We even were able to get a "skip in line" card from IndyDave, which would allow us to jump to the front of the line at the "Wizards of the Coast" booth to roll the gian d20. We walked back to the ICC just in time to watch David playing in a "Halo 2" tournament. He advanced past the 1st round, but kind of got smushed in the 2nd round. Mike and I spent the rest of the afternoon playing demos in the dealer hall. We tried the EVE card game, which didn't impress us too much. One highlight was a demo of the Fantasy Flight game Runebound, which I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy. By that time, RD showed up from work, and we did a few more quick demos before the dealer hall closed. After another mall food court dinner, RD and I met back up with Mike and David in the board game room. We rented some sort of pirate board game, but we didn't have time to play much before it was time for RD and I to go to our Magic tournament. We said farewell to the O'Briens and headed to the TCG hall.
And thus began the 7 most painful hours of the entire Con, entitled "Magic: the Gathering Ravnica Block Limited Tournament". It's pointless to dwell on the details, except to say that 1) I sucked and 2) I don't think I'm cut out for the Magic tournament scene. I lost every game I played, and only scored points when another guy dropped out and I had a bye for one round. Brutal. I really like playing Magic, but perhaps in a less structured, less competitive environment. Anyway, the roughest part was the fact that the tournament didn't end until 3am. So, I hit my pillow at ~4:15am, with visions of foil dual lands dancing in my head. Ugh.