GenghisCon 2018 – The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth

by Elaine Walker

This past weekend (19th-21st January 2018) was the most recent GenghisCon, and as has been my wont for quite some time I went. Overall I had a fun weekend, once I got my room sorted out – not the ConCom’s fault, Trinity was doing some refurbishing and it turned out that some of us had been assigned a room that once the first few people went down and opened were without furniture of any type. By the time I arrived they had identified who was affected and they were getting us furnished rooms. My own lack of checking email meant I hadn’t answered the question about t-shirts so I was left with what hadn’t been specifically ordered by colour but I got a navy one. This year they had a ‘premium’ membership you could buy which meant you got guaranteed half a pizza, a t-shirt and a sausage inna bun after the AGM if you wanted one. I ended up not getting the Sausage in a bun but only because I joined some people for dinner that night. But lo, a room was procured and it was furnished. As well as the printed program booklets there was an electronic one as a web page (I think Continuum had used a similar thing a few years ago). So if you want to look at the schedule feel free.

Here is a lesson on the pizza front: if you are ordering more than about 6 pizzas you really really need to give them lots of advance warning. Lots. There was a certain amount of hangriness as we waited for the pizza. But knowing we got specifically half a pizza worth was good, and if you did have specific needs that could be organised in advance as well (for those that checked their emails).

Friday night for me was mostly gaming. After the opening ceremony (needed for safety briefing for insurance purposes) I played an abstract ‘board’ game called Climbers which is an abstract mountain climbing game which gets a little bit brutal. Then because it was Friday night and most of my RPG group was there, the rest turned up and we actually did our usual Traveller game for a few hours. Then back to some boardgaming. Saw an interesting game called Dropmix which is a card/music electronic game, but played something else called Flip Ships in the board game room – think space invaders meets twiddlywinks? We did save the planet.

Saturday I did various RPG related things. I did a D&D one shot, which was my first experience in playing 5th edition D&D, and in fact my first time playing actual D&D (as opposed to all the other role playing systems I’ve played over the years), but I had fun with my bard character, and enjoyed the chance to be creative with vicious mockery.

After that I went to a panel on putting together bug-out bags for the apocalypse (or shorter term catastrophes), had lunch (I’d brought my own but there were food trucks this year which seemed to be popular) and wandered around the trader’s room for a bit, before going to Grant’s Afternoon Tea (this is now a tradition and there were many scones). After that I ended up in the room with the wargamers and mini painters and ended up painting a bit of a mini. A bit space combat, but I was only going to paint it. I started off shaky, but ended up finding a good stance once I worked out taking my glasses off was important). After that was the AGM, and then I went out with a group of friends for a birthday dinner, and then after that more board games, another game of Climbers and one of Vinci.

Sunday was the last day and I largely did things with WABA who had come to show off some things. Captain Sonar is an up to eight player game with two teams running a submarine each. Think of it a bit like battleship, where you’re trying to mine or torpedo the other submarine, but both of them are almost continually moving. And every time you move the ship something breaks so that has to be continually monitored. It was fun.

After lunch we played Crazy Catan which is basically 12 people playing 4 boards of Settlers of Catan, but swapping boards (but not colours) fairly frequently. Dice being controlled centrally, playing with different people on each board (mostly) and having a list of things to accomplish by the end. I got 18 out of 20, but someone got all 20 on the last go. It was an interesting variant.

At this point the auction was still going, and going, and going. They’d brought in Magnus Danger Magnus to do the auctioneering and it started a bit late and kept going a bit late. So the closing ceremony was once that was done, the usual cleanup, and then I went to collapse for a bit (I’d forked out for the room for the final night so that I wouldn’t need to pack the car up and could rest before travelling home) then went out for dinner. I have eaten far too much over the weekend. But I had fun, and probably could have gone to a heap of other things on the schedule if I hadn’t gone to something else. So that’s my little sum up of this year’s GenghisCon. We had over 100 attendees and maybe I’ll see people at next year’s.

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