Gen Con 2006 Report: Saturday

Yeah, I know, it's been 2 weeks since Gen Con. At this point, what I'm about to write is probably only 50% true and 50% what my mind thinks is true after 2 weeks of memory loss. But, here goes:

Saturday:
Gen Con did not start early for John on Saturday. After the 7-hour Magic tournament on Friday night, I needed some serious sleep. So, I didn't get downtown until just before noon. I met up with RD, and we went to our 12pm event, to play a board game called "Cleopatra and the Society of Architects". Another fine game from those folks at Days of Wonder. In the game, you play architects who are competing to build Cleopatra's palace. You collect resources to build, but you also have to manage your corruption. Certain actions will cause you to accumulate corruption tokens, which are stored in your own little pyramid "corruption piggy bank". At the end of the game, the most corrupt player is fed to the crocodiles. If the game didn't require a minimum of 3 players, I would have bought it immediately. It's still on my list. I think RD liked it, too, even though he ended up being crocodile food.
After lunch at the RAM, we hit the dealer hall for more demo fun. We played Zombies!, Easter Island, Thurn & Taxis, and a few others. I ended up buying Zombies! and Thurn & Taxis, and RD bought T&T and Power Grid. I bought a couple of polyhedral dice sets from the Chessex booth, and a nice gray linendice bag. We soaked up the dealer hall until just before 6pm, when it was time to check out the Mythbusters seminar. I'm a big fan of the Mythbusters TV show on the Discovery Channel, so I was stoked when I found out that Tory Belleci, Grant Imahara, and Kari Byron were going to be at Gen Con. I had a chance to snap a few pictures of them at their autograph booths, but RD and I also had tickets to a special Q&A seminar that they were holding. The line was quite long to get in, so we were happy that we had confirmed tickets. We had to sit in the back, but it was a relatively small room. They started by showing us a bloopers video that included footage that they couldn't show on TV. Very funny stuff. Then they answered questions for a while, and then proceeded to do some recreations of some of the "vodka myths" that were done on the show. Watching Grant wash some gamer's foot in vodka was pretty hilarious.
After that, we decided to head back to the boardgame room and rent a game. This was a nice little setup - for a couple of generic tickets, you could rent a board game to play (from a rather generous collection). We chose a game called "Louis XIV", which I had heard good things about. It was pretty decent, athough it took a while to get the rules down. A little too dry for me to buy, but a fun way to spend 90 minutes while at Gen Con. After returning the game, we ran into Cody and Raeliste from our NASCRAG team, who were playing a card game with a couple of folks. Raeliste was dressed in full superhero regalia, a character of her own design called the "Deodorant Dame". The neon green wig was a nice touch.
Surpriingly, RD and I had a little trouble finding something to do after that. We walked around a bit, and finally ended up playing in a game of "Are You a Werewolf?" with about 10 other people in the hallway outside the North Club Lounge. But, for me, I could sense that my Gen Con experience was winding down for the year. I headed home and got some more much-needed sleep. I didn't return on Sunday, even though I had a 4-day badge. My money was all spent, and I had pretty much done everything that I had wanted to do (and then some). It was a truly wonderful experience, and I can't wait until next year!!

I posted my Gen Con pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thesc1ence. Enjoy!