It’s time to summarize my Gen Con 2017 experience. It was the 50th Gen Con and for some reason I expected something special. Oh, there was some stuff different. They have a museum of gaming, which is cool. There was a concert this year. Honestly though, it seemed like a typical Gen Con, only bigger. There was a lot of walking this year because things have spread out across the city.

There was a lot of Gen Con 50 merchandise, that was for sure. I doubt any of it will be collectible – I mean there were well over 60k attendees.

My buddy Kevin picked up the Bob Ross – The Art of Chill game. Yes, that guy from PBS that painted trees is the subject of a game…a game about painting. It sounds crazy, but it totally worked.

StarFinder was the big “must buy” RPG of the convention. It’s Pathfinder in space. Paizo was good at forming a line for purchase, but lousy at processing them. Two guys that came with me were in line for almost 1.5 hours. I got in line (and got an autograph – which was nice) and then a guy from Paizo came buy saying if we were paying cash, he could take care of us. Granted, it could have been some dude with a Paizo shirt, but it got me out of line before the other guys by 45 minutes. Mental note – next year find out what Paizo is wearing (and Fantasy Flight Games) and run the same scam. I could have paid for the next three conventions collecting cash that way. I’ll review the game in an upcoming post. My initial thoughts were that it looked awesome.

FFG’s big hit was the Legend of the Five Rings game. Wizkids made an appearance but only brought a few products. No Star Trek Attack Wing. What the hell Wizkids? I came with money – and you managed to just make me get more frustrated deep down inside.

I was geeked about Modiphius’s Star Trek RPG release. I purchased the book a few weeks ago and I wanted the miniatures and dice. Dice were on hand – but nothing else. That left me a little frustrated as well. It was my hope to review them here – well that’s not happening – not yet. I will review the game system later. Suffice it to say I like parts of it, dislike other aspects.

Steamforged Games had a big presence. I had never really taken a look at them before. I watched a demo of Guild Ball and was actually impressed with the quality of the minutes and the fun of the game play. I am already regretting not picking it up. Argh!

Catalyst Game Labs released the other big hit – Dragonfire. This is a cooperative card game based on their Shadowrun Crossfire system. Pure D&D carnage with cards. I have a copy and will be reviewing this later. I have to admit, it looked great. They also had some aircraft aluminum dice (I scored some Smoke Jaguars) for BattleTech and they had previews of the new ‘Mechs for the BattleTech boardgame release.

I got to see the minis from Cool Minis or Not for the Game of Thrones miniatures game. I did the Kickstarter for it but it was very cool to play the demo. Those miniatures are awesome and the game play is pretty smooth. As Jamie Lannister I took out Rob Stark – ending the young wolf’s life.

There was a new game Wild West Exodus that had an impressive line of miniatures. It looks like cowboys, Confederates, steampunk, aliens and other weirdness. They had a lot of minis, but no rules or starter sets.

In terms of playing – we did the BattleTech pods (as always). These never get old. They had 14 this year and they had been upgraded! The graphics were crisper. Nothing says fun like an Alpha Strike to the rear of your enemy. Seyla!

We signed up for the Gorn game of the Star Trek RPG. That went okay…we ran out of time to complete it. What sucked was that we had geared up for the Gorn and got the Romulans instead. What the hell? At the end of the game I finally asked, “Where were the Gorn?” We got an excuse that the Gen Con folks had pressured them to do a tourney so they went with some material they already had. There were some funny moments despite this being a clear bait and switch. We beamed down and sent the ship away. Twenty-five minutes into the game we called them to come back, only to be told they were 12 hours away! The best was playing the Galaxy Quest theme music during game play. Well worth the download to my phone before the session.

We played the D&D tournament as well, at least I think we did. There was no combat and only one spell used. We ended up in some dinosaur race and could only use quarterstaffs and no combat spells. It was two hours of dino racing rather than D&D. I came away confused as all hell as to what we had just done. I wanted to swing a sword, go into a dungeon…you know, play D&D. This was lame.

As one of the BattleTech insiders, I got invited to a super secret BattleTech strategy session. We used to do these things at Gen Cons. It was great to be back at it. I cannot share the details of the meeting (for free at least. I am a complete mercenary otherwise.) I have included these photos simply to whet your appetites as to what is coming and how cool it is going to be…

After this I capped off Gen Con playing in the Master’s and Minion’s tournament. Colin Duffy got stuck with me as a player on his side (pity his soul). Colin paints a lot of the minis and did a great job. True story – I told them I wanted Clan Wolverine paint schemes. Somewhere along the way they told him “Wolverine.” Well, in past years I had Captain America, Deadpool, and Iron Man painted ‘Mechs, so he painted my Wolverines as Wolverine from the comic books. It was funny and oddly they fit my collection perfectly.

My favorite paints (other than mine) were the Suicide Squad (shown at the bottom)

The battle left Colin saddled with a crappy player who refused to follow plans and went after every shiny object that caught his attention (that’s me of course). I lost, two killer head shots. Honorably defeated it was a lot of fun…as always.

So there you have it – another Gen Con under my belt. I have a ton of booty to go through and material for game reviews for the next six months.