GenJenCon - Day 3

Jason lives! He arrived at 2:30 in the morning yelling "MEDWAY! LET ME IN!" The poor fella was stuck at Chicago airport for over 12 hours due to 3 reasons.

The first was bad weather. Fair enough, you don't want to fly out during a bad storm which could potentially throw your plane back down to the ground with a sickening thud.

The second was a fire. A british airways plane had to make an emergency landing in Chicago because one of it's landing gears were ablaze.

The third was because Obama flew in.

Right. So he eventually got a flight in before the next day, which is good considering he hadn't been able to sleep. Oh what's this? Is he travelling light?
"No no, my bag hasn't arrived yet. They'll be delivering it tomorrow sometime."
Oh dear. That's not cool.

Well with Aaron not tired and myself feeling really tired, Jason took over aarons bed and we drifted off to sleep until the next morning. Jason slept in and planned on staying until his gear got delivered, while Aaron, Scott and I toddled off down to the convention.

Now I thought some of this was pre-done for me. I thought aaron said he'd already picked up my badge for the event. Apparently not. So after going between about 3-4 lines, I ended up at the disgustingly long line of Badge Registration. We were lucky that the event wasn't due to open until about 10am, so I wasn't going to be late into the convention.

after I picked up my badge, I wandered off to find call Scotty and see where he was, and I looked up to find Aaron and Scotty were already walking past. So I walked up to them and followed their direction. They wanted breakfast, so we wandered over to the food court of the Mall across the road.

We tried something safe: Subway. the surprise was that they don't have the same cheese as Australia. Instead of Cheddar, old English, Swiss and Mozarella... well I can't really remember the name of their cheeses except for Monterey Jack which is the one I put on my Bacon and egg.

It wasn't a bad sandwich.

So we moved back to the convention hall and we split up. Scotty went back to grab some things from the hotel, and Aaron did the same a little while later, which left me to map out the Hall itself. I wandered up and down those pathways looking at all of the interesting stuff they have on sale.

I found a gift for Sam (From the Gold Coast): A pair of goggles. She's been having trouble finding goggles for MONTHS so I thought I'd send her a nice pair as a gift. I had trouble finding the Blind Ferret booth for Kelvin's book he wanted, but after looking at the Program I've found out where it is so I'll be moseying over to there today (it's day 4 atm).

And the Privateer Booth. Ah, it's interesting. Their Gencon exclusives are a bunch of new character jacks for the main factions of Warmachine. I picked a Khador one up along with a bunch of other stuff including Pigs and a new battlebox. In total, i think I've spent about $450 on myself, and a Gunbjornn for someone else.

After grabbing my stuff, I found the gaming hall. It's fucking massive, for starters. There were about 128 tables available for the PP games area (I could be exaggerating a little) and there were 96 players for the tournament they had! That's about 10 hours of play over 5 rounds! JEEZ.

I was sick of carrying my stuff at this point. So I asked Scott if he wanted me to take his stuff back and I sauntered off back to the hotel. It's about a 10 minute walk, including crosswalks.

Upon arrival, the cleaning lady was preparing beds while Jason sad in the chair reading his book shirtless. Turns out he had hand washed his shirt because his luggage still hadn't turned up. I offered him a shirt and to come out to lunch with me, and he gladly took up the offer and donned my Nike shirt. A simple blue shirt with Nike stitched across the chest.

We grabbed his ticket and we moved towards lunch. it was about noon, and jason hadn't had anything to eat yet. We got there and it was rather packed as we lined up for A&H. According to jason, he hasn't had a better fast food burger since A&H, and I wanted to try American Root Beer.

Jason was right, it wasn't bad at all. It didn't taste like reconstituted Rat tails which gets Big Bonus Points from me. And the Root beer wasn't quite what I was expecting. It had a slow taste, where you drink it and you don't get the full taste until after you swallow. It was a good taste, mind you.

And we wandered back to the convention and Jason told me about his love for making gaming terrain. He showed me some awesome terrain pieces that he likes, one of which he called a masterpiece was a guy who sells resin casts and the way they're designed is so that they can sit together nicely if you put them together the right way. It's a very cool setup.

We found Scotty again back at the Iron Arena, playing games with everyone. He's actually just gotten back (at 6am today) after playing 26 games over 20 hours. That's pretty crazy. But that's Scotty. You couldn't get more nuts than Peanut Butter, unless you're Scott.

Aaron we didn't find until we visited the Iron arena again later that night. I was a little worried that someone had gotten a rag and asked if it smelt like chloroform, and then left him in a bathtub of ice with stitches across his kidney. But no, he had probably been yammering away at people all day and eventually gotten back to play his Trollbloods at the Iron Arena with his new Warlock: Gunbjornn.

Jason and I took the nights opportunity however, to go out to the RAM. The Ram is a pub that has a lot of association with Gencon, especially since it's about a block away, and Privateer Press has a Large Influence on it. When we got there, their menu was almost completely themed to Warmachine and Hordes, and there were banners and swag to pick up as well. I grabbed a shirt for Humph, as I promised him one while I was there.

The dinner was pretty good. It was big though. It got a nice burger that involved peppers here and there, along with a side of Waffle Fries. They look like packeted ruffle chips with a grid of holes in them. It's different, but they tasted pretty good.

Their bourbon was a bit gross though. I first ordered a Bourbon and Ginger Ale, but that didn't work out right. Then I ordered a Bourbon and Lemonade, and that came out worse! I usually don't drink my bourbon with coke because it really bloats me and makes me feel ill after too long, but I guess I'll have to stick with that when I go there next.

But it's been a good night. After grabbing Jasons Luggage and models, we retired for the night and awaited the next morning.