Miniaturizing my weekend
*whew*
I just came off of a 3-day gaming binge.
Well, OK, it was the D&D Miniatures game and not tabletop, but it was hours of time with dice, spells, figures and "no-shit-there-I-was" tabletop war stories. Although, for once, it was mostly GMs, so there were a lot of "no-shit-there-my-players-were" stories.
But I digress. Early Friday morning (or more like Thursday night) found me at Dragon's Lair at the midnight release of the newest expansion for the game, War Drums. I managed to pull a Dragonne and a Wemic Barbarian (both of which tajnyj quickly claimed. One booster had both the Hill Giant Barbarian and the Hill Giant Chieftan. I was a little dismayed that the two figures I most wanted, a named Mind Flayer and the Large Bronze Dragon were not to be had. There's always tomorrow...
After finally getting night's sleep Friday night, I met up with three of the local players and we attended the official "local" Release Tournament in Waco. Two. Hours. Away. Guess what? We were the only people there. That's OK, we expected it. We'll get all the swag! Woohoo! Anyhoo, we played round-robin and I used my Ogre War Hulk and Fiendish Garillion to go 2-1. One other player also went 2-1 and was my one loss. As pretty much all the traditional DCI tiebreakers were dead even, based on the fact that he beat me, he should have been the winner, but the computer put me first. The prizes were 12 boosters split 6/4/2, so he and I pooled and re-split the 10 to make it 5/5/2 (the other guy had won *BIG* on the door prizes the night before so he was still pretty happy about that; although now that I think about it, they have split again, making it 5/5/1/1). In those boosters, I pulled both of each Hill Giant again, and, among other things, the Mind Flayer!!! I was so pleased by this, I actually didn't notice much of what else I picked up. Although I did pick up what's probably the last Giants of Legend booster in a 100-mile radius and got a Fire Giant King as my regular rare and, while uncommon, we pleased to get a Bulette as my Huge figure ("candygram!" -- players from one of my old games will get it).
We headed home with much loot and discussed roleplaying systems on they way home. The driver was very fond of Savage Worlds, something I seem to remember vaguely hearing about at some point...
Sunday was a local tournament at Dragon's Lair since they hadn't gotten the Release Tournament (although they're going to make a good case for it for the next set, War of the Dragon Queen). We had eight sign up, including a father-son team who recently moved to Austin from Long Island, a brand new player who had never played the game before showing up (note: that was my situation three weeks ago!), the whole group from the Waco trip, and a young boy who had originally came to just watch, but eventually got in. The tournament was sealed and I popped open my packs to find--a Raksasha! To be honest, I didn't even realize that one was in the set. I had an idea for a campaign once that would feature at least one Raksasha, so it was nice to get one (although I did note that his hands are incorrect on the fig, unless that's an Eberron thing.
I lost my first game to the father from L.I. I had his Aspect of Hextor (a big four-armed monstrosity) penned in with two Spectral Watchers (lawful good ghostly warriors) and had planned to circle the Raksasha around and take out his support. Unfortunately, I completely blanked on the third turn and rushed in, putting the Raksasha within range of four attacks at 12 every turn. He didn't last long. The rest went downhill from there.
The new guy had to drop early so I got a bye in the second round, then played the young boy who joined late in the third round. I was technically 1-1 at this point (byes count as full wins), but knew that I couldn't place in the top three (required for prizes) by beating a kid at 0-2. Well, those of you who know me know what happened next. I skillfully applied my overwhelming force and with my expert tactics and knowledge of the game dropped to 1-2 on the day...
Do any of you know how hard it is to lose when your opponent can't seem to roll above a 10 and you already have an overwhelming force? It's harder than winning, I'll tell you that. However, I think we've got another player hooked as he left with a much better experience than he did after his prior two opponents just slaughtered his warband.
I did a little trading afterward and picked up a Khumat, which is basically a large humanoid 'gator. Considering my affinity for all things reptilian, undead, and/or "alien" (in 3e parlance: aberrations), I'm sure I'll be able to find a use for the figure.
All in all a good weekend. I spent way too much money on figures, but I put them all out on shelves last night and I'm certain I could never have purchased, assembled, and painted that many (and varied) figures for even twice that price. I definitely couldn't have done it in even ten times the time. The painting would have taken forever (and I mean that: I'm ADHD so I never would have finished).
It wore me out and I was really tired Sunday evening, but I'm pleased that I was able to get back into the gaming scene and started making the contacts I'll need to start gaming again. Funny enough, I was planning on running Sci-Fi and now I have a couple of hundred new fantasy figures. Oh, woe is me. ;)