So the big bad news is that the convention center may have locked up their wireless network. The iBook definitely saw a network, but it would not hold a connection for more than a second.
Even though we all got here Wednesday, Thursday was the first actual con time. Mike and Scott talked me into entering the Doomtown sealed deck tournament... and I have to say that whole sealed deck bit was more fun than the event itself. Sealed deck = everyone is assigned a random starter, then everybody gets 1 booster, of which you take one card and pass the rest to the next guy. Etc. I pulled the Stoker's Alliance outfit, and Mike suggested I start with the Exp 2 Black Jack. The plan did not work, and I was knocked out right away. It was a risk, but I had hoped I had built the rest to work around that, but nothing fell as expected.
For this year's tournaments, Rhonda and I made two new Doomtown cards... a Bounty Hunter token dude and a new home for the Lost Angels (with text designed by the guy who won this year's tourney at Gen Con SoCal.) The Bounty Hunter is kind of pointless, but without being able to duplicate the exact feel of a Doomtown card, we're left with producing card types that don't get shuffled: tokens and homes. The Lost Angels home is crazy ass powerful and I'll be surprised if it doesn't get altered by the next tournament. I'll have PDFs of both cards here at fourhman.com soon.
As the reigning Doomtown World Champ, Mike actually signed an autograph for some awestruck young player. On one of the Bounty Hunter cards.
The vendor hall was the usual splendor... we bought Early American Chrononauts and some Pirates of the Spanish Main. Demoed Neopets for some promo cards, picked up some great Pokemon swag. Demoed a new tile-based game called The Haunting House (which is made by the Zombies! folks), but we'll probably pass on it in favor of the new Zombies! expansion that adds in 100 zombie dogs.
Tomorrow is the big Doomtown World Championships, which will likely run so long that I'm already annoyed by it. It goes five Swiss rounds... which is probably overkill by this point, given that we'll have 30 players total if we're lucky. This year I'm setting aside my usual Whateley deck in favor of a very gimmicky Collegium deck. Very very gimmicky, but I really like playing it.
Would you believe that Dave & Buster's has no vegetarian options, aside from ths usual boring house salad? Not even the gestural garden burger like every other Ugly Prop Franchise Restaurant out there. Plus, we had more fun playing four-person Four Swords on the Gamecube in the hotel room than we ever would have playing $2.00 games of South Park pinball at D&B's. The boycott begins now.
