Our Saturday had some minor rough spots... barely anyone showed for Rhonda's Apples to Apples game, but she played anyway. And we all figured our big Lord of the Rings game was cancelled when we went to the event location and no one was there. Turns out things were moved, and the organizers did eventually make a convention-wide announcement 20 minutes later.

The first thing Reiner Knizia did was refund our event fee, because he personally doesn't feel people should have to pay to play games with him. Since he role in our game was to play Sauron and beat on our poor hobbits, that was probably his last gentlemanly act! I've been in awe of this board game since we bought it, so playing against the designer was very cool. Since time was limited, he requested that the game would end whenever any hobbit dies... so the pressure was on.

We burned through a couple key abilities rather early on, almost losing the Ring to the Black Rider in Moria (Sauron had a great shuffle and had all of his 4s and 5s right at the start.) We did get all the way to Shelob's Lair, with no sundial (bad) endings on any of the previous boards. What did the group in was that terrible event where each hobbit has to pay 3 shields, 1 wild, or die. Two of us couldn't do it. I had the Red Arrow, so I could have fetched Gollum to save one hobbit, but we had no means to save the other one.

So we can take some comfort in the fact that it was the game board itself that killed us, not a direct assault by Mr. Sauron. And he played hard too... making full use of the Nazgul at his disposal, something I usually forget to do when I play Sauron.

But board or no, that's a win for Sauron. There were prizes for the three least-corrupted hobbits anyway, whcih turned out to be entirely our group: me, Rhonda and Scott (who subbed in for a Scrabble-bound Mike), so all of us walked away with something. I was first place (least corrupted)... and given that my chosen hobbit was Fatty, that seemed book-appropriate.

More gaming back in the hotel room; Mike and Scott did some serious Doomtown deckbuilding while the rest of us hit the Gamecube or took power naps. Later that night, I jumped into the Spycraft rulebook, which made a hell of a lot more sense than the demo.

Sunday morning, we rushed to the vendor hall for the last hurrah... we had a spectacular demo of the new Marvel Vs. card game, and I can safely say that the game does not suck. In fact, I'm going to call it the best demo we've ever had. (Not the best game, although it was good, just had a great demo.) Lots of demo lackeys are just hired monkeys, especially at the larger companies where they simply need warm bodies to take care of everything. The Marvel demo was a standout. He knew the game, he knew the cards, he knew the abilities. I will buy more cards because of that demo.

Our last act was to hit the free prize game at the Wizards compound, where Rhonda won six packs of Neopets boosters and I won some RPG crap. Good thing we're married.

Final tallies:

Demoed: Neopets, Magic, Pokemon, Fish Eat Fish, Spycraft, Marvel Vs., Haunting House. (That's just Rhonda and/or myself, the rest of the teen gang did plenty others.)

Bought (again, just us):
Zombies 4, Battle of the Bands Encore Edition, Spycraft starter + 2 boosters, Early American Chrononauts, Looney Labs plush flower, six packs of Pirates of the Spanish Main, Deadlands Aces & Eights music CD, some random dice.

Free:
Lord of the Rings fancy backgammon set, box of LOTR Reflections boosters, two Spycraft starter decks, Spycraft t-shirt, two Pokemon Hidden Legends boosters, Marvel Vs t-shirt, DC Vs Bane promo, five Neopets promos, Neopets pin, six Neopets boosters, Chrononauts promos (Really Fast Time Machine and Carl Sagan's Joint), Wizards logo lanyard, Pokemon mousepad, Pokemon mini-binder, Pokemon AA batteries (!), Pirates promo ship, Cyberpunk booster, Mighty Beanz sample card pack, 30th anniversary Origins d6, Killer Bunnies promo, Magic fridge magnet, Magic pin, Dork Tower comics... and a ton of miscellanous promos, posters, pens, one-sheets and other marketing materials.

And the next you're at the Columbus Convention Center, make sure to hit the Krema Nut Company down by the indoor food court for a spicy PB&J. Holy frock.