Teaching Inis

There’s a particular board game I love. It’s been at the number one spot on my favourite’s list for a number of years now. Designed by a French designer, published by a French publisher, it is entirely themed on Irish mythology. 

Inis is about trying to control key gameplay states on the board to be crowned king of The Island. It has an awesome table presence, from it’s uniquely shaped modular board pieces, to the lovely little minis each player moves around the board, to the stunning artwork on the cards, all licensed from a world famous Irish artist that specializes in Irish mythology art. When the game is laid out on a table, it just screams at anyone walking by “Hey you! Come look at me! I’m beautiful!” 

SHUX is a convention run by a popular board game review site based in the UK. The twist is, because they love me and wanted to spend time with me, they chose Vancouver to host their convention! I got a ticket to the very first one, sight unseen, day one of sales, some 10 months before the actual event. 

I played Inis four times over those two days. Worse, I taught Inis NINE times over the two days. By early on the Sunday, people were hunting me down because other attendees had been tweeting about me. I had The Teach down to a fine art, a swift 25 minutes, filled with gags to keep players engaged. 

On Sunday morning I borrowed a second copy from the actual owner of the company that publishes Inis and ran two games side by side. It was an amazing sight that made my heart sing with joy. 

But even so, I was burned out by Sunday afternoon. Staying up gaming in the convention hall until 1am Saturday night/Sunday morning probably didn’t help. So, as I was expalining the game for the nineth time, I decided that this was the last one. 

Halfway through The Teach, someone walked by the table, stopped and said “Ooohh! Inis! I’ve wanted to play this all weekend but never got the chance.”

Inside my head, my brain silently screamed “NOOOOOOOOOOO!! Don’t you-“ but my mouth involuntarily responded “I can teach you once I’m done here.”

I heard a door slam and my brain stomped off angrily into the foggy ether of my subconsciousness. 

Thankfully, he thanked me, but said he was heading to the airport soon and would have to take me up on the offer next year. 

My brain shouted “You’re on your own!” as it drove out of sight in an imaginary red Ferrari, and I really don’t recall much of anything from the rest of that Sunday. 

The moral of the story is: Don’t stay up until 1am at conventions when you have a whole other day to come, even if it is to school a table of friends in your first game of Nations: The Dice Game by winning with at least a twenty point gap to second place. 

Unpub Mini Vancouver

I love playing boardgames. I hope by now that's obvious. I love finding new ones or rekindling my love for old ones. But discovering new classics before they're even on the market is a rare and wonderful privilage, and last weekend I had the joyous opportunity to disscover not one, but several of them on the same day!

Unpub Mini Vancouver was a one day event organised to allow local game designers show off their prototype games, and a chance to have them playtested by a whole lot of new people outside their usual circle of friends. One of my regular gaming buddies, Chase, brought along his game, Berlin Noir which I've played several times and seen go through various iterations over the last few months. Another of the prototypes there was from one of the organisers, Marcel, who brought For Greed or Glory, a game I played at Terminal City Tabletop Convention earlier this year. With so many others on offer, I didn't play either of those, but luckily I'm friends with both, so technically I can pester them to bring their games over and play any time I want.

I arrived at the venue, Magic Stronghold around 11:30am, and there were already a few people playing various games. I was trying to be there by 10:30, but got utterly lost on the way. Apparently, they moved recently, so, while Google Maps dropped the pin on the current location, when I asked it to route me to the store, it took me to the old location. I just didn't double-check, blindly climbing aboard the indicated bus! Anyway, I got there eventually, and with more than enough time to game!

The first prototype I played was Town Builder, by Eric Raué, who happened to be the other organiser of the event! This is a drafting card game, where players collect and construct buildings in a town, competing over projects and materials for the top score.

One of my favourite touches was in the layout. This game was visually beauitful, with wonderful, colourful card art, and fantastic, clear card layout. Each card serves a dual purpose of both building and material. If you want a card as a building, you take it and lay it sideways to represent that it's under construction. But every card can also by materials to construct your projects, repersented by the material icons at the base of the card. If you want a card to be contruction materials, you take it and place it upside down under a project you're currently building. The materials icon is upside down in relation to the rest of the card, but rightside up when it's used as a resource! Genius! The only game I've ever seen have a similar design feature is the original Cheapass Games The Big Idea. I loved it there, and I love it here.

The art on Town Builder, by Fillipe Martin, is gorgeous. Eric claims there's still a lot to be done, but apart from one greyscale card, I loved how the rest looked on the day. The difference between "complete" and "nearly complete" seemed to be in object definition, with completed cards having buildings and elements outlined in sharp, clean lines. "Nearly complete" had this soft, almost impressionistic feel to them, a slight haze that made the scenes depicted into a dreamy, summer day. I really liked that style, but I can also see what Eric is looking for.

Play is clear and fast, with almost no downtime between your turns, even in a 4-player game. The whole game took a little over 30 minutes to play, even with having to explain the rules to two new players. Players draw two cards from the central face-up cards per turn, so you can decide to start a new project, or work toward completing a current one. It's worth noting at this point that it's a whole lot of fun to steal a building another player wants, just to throw it away as a resource for one of your own buildings!

But what's Town Builder like as a game? Honestly, it's great! I mean, Eric says it needs more polishing, and I'm sure he knows best, but I loved playing it as is. We all ended very close to each other in the final scoring, even though I was playing a 4-player game against the designer and another designer who had played a few times before. I got an awesome combo right at the end, triggering, if I recall correctly, four cards and completing two buildings! It plays fast, borrowing a gameplay mechanic from Bohnanza. The game ends when the discard deck is resuffled twice. The first play through the deck is the longest. When the deck is shuffled once, players already have a lot of cards out of it in play, either as buildings or resources. The second shuffle is a bit smaller again, and everyone knows the end is coming fast, so completing buildings becomes a top priority.

With a 30 minute playtime, Town Builder is a fast, fun drafting game that is easy to learn and beautiful to look at. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on Kickstarter next spring for this one, and I'll be letting you all know about it when it comes up!

The second game of my day was the even faster real-time co-operative monster masher, World Defence Force, by Adrian R. Walker. Players work together to trade and swap coloured cards in order to build up a stock of single colours to buy attack cards from central, shared piles in three minute rounds. At the end of each three minutes, whatever monster is showing on the Monster Deck takes its frustrations out of the Population Deck, eating a bunch of them and diminishing the players options. With only 100 cards in the Population Deck at the start, it's pretty devestating to watch 20 of them get munched on, then another 20 three minutes later and then another 15!

World Defence Force is frantic, but less stressful than something like Escape The Curse of the Temple, which can feel overpowering at times as players talk over each other and all continue to act simultaneously. In World Defence Force, players take actions individually, going clockwise around the table in standard turn order. Every turn is "Draw a card, discard a card, swap a colour set with an Attack card, if possible, and draw back up to five cards", all of which can be done fairly quickly, and planned, roughly, during other players turns. If one player takes 20 seconds to make a decision, that affects the time for everyone, but most players turns are over in less than 5 seconds.

The card design in World Defence Force is super clean and clear, something I really love. Each Population card is just a big block of colour in a thin boarder, and Attack cards are similar colour blocks with number printed big and bold on them. Each colour has its own unique pattern as well, which is just visual flavor, but really appealed to me during play. I wonder if Adrian has tested the patterns for colour-blind players, or if it's just a neat feature? Ensuring the patterns are visually distinct without the colours would certainly broaden the reach of this game.

World Defence Force was a blast to play. We had six players, including the designer and three others who had played a version of it before. Only myself and one other were totally new to the game. I certainly had a good laugh playing it as it stands, though there was a lot of discussion after about adding additional mechanics. I kinda like it for how clean it is, though additional, optional, mechanics might be nice once you've started to master the basic version. Another winner in my book, but there seems to be a while to go before we'll see it pop up on Kickstarter. There was a lot of blank monster cards, and Adrian is looking into options for the round timer. Maybe an app?

After breaking briefly for some lunch, The Shrine, by Shad Millar and Jay Cormier was the third game I played at Unpub Mini Vancouver. This is a strategy game where players place cubes on a 4x4x4 play space. Each cube is one of four colours, and has either two or three symbols out of an available four, with the same symbol on opposite facing surfaces. So some cubes might have two dots, two squiggles and two X's, while others might have four X's all around, and two squares on opposing faces.

Players chose one cube to play from four revealed cubes out of a big bag of possibilities, placing the cube in the playspace. Cubes placed on top of or next to other cubes must have matching touching faces. When a player places a cube they gain resources of the colour they placed and any touching cubes. Those are used to buy cards that count toward victory.

Once all the cubes are placed, the number of each symbol facing upwards on the final tower is counted, defining that symbols value. Only those sides facing up count toward victory, not the ones exposed to the sides. Then that value is multiplied by the number of those symbols on the cards you have, giving you the score for the symbol.

The Shrine is interesting, because when we played it, both myself and the other player in our two-player game thought we had broken it very early on. My opponent had a lot of dots on his cards, so for him, dots had a high value. With three dots facing up early on, he simply built three towers of four cubes straight up, guaranteeing him that high score right off the bat. I couldn't place cubes fast enough to block him by creating voids. Voids are created where two blocks facing each other with a single space between have different symbols on their facing sides. Because all cubes have the same symbols on opposing sides, this is an impossible to fill space, so a void cube is placed in that space, blocking the symbol on the cube beneath from scoring.

However, by the end of the game, we realised that the benefits of that strategy were somewhat deceptive. While my opponent built straight up, he left me to fill out the base layer, stacking it with symbols that were of benefit to me. While I lost in the end, his dots netted him significantly less than my squiggles, because hight doesn't count for anything during the scoring. I had seven squiggles facing up. With my six squiggles on my cards, I scored 42 points in one go. Had I played a bit better, I could have won, while allowing him to waste his time building his towers.

I really enjoyed The Shrine, and would love to play it again a few more times. I'm not sure if there's any problems with the mechanics, because I got so distracted by what seemed to be a huge issue while we were playing, but turned out to be seemingly balanced on the whole. It's certainly a fun game, and a level of strategy I can get my head around. It's in no way basic, or simple, but it is clear and easy to learn the core mechanics of, while the strategy emerges through play.

Finally, I wrapped up my long day of gaming playing a game I wanted to try since before I walked through the door. I first saw Sloops!, by Sébastian Bernier-Wong and Peter Gorniak back in March of this year at the first annual Terminal City Tabletop Convention. Back then I simply didn't have the time to play it, as I was playing so many other games over the one day I had. So when I heard it would be at Unpub Mini Vancouver, I put it at the top of my list of games to play. So it was with just a smidge of irony that Sloops! became the last game I played of the day.

Sloops! is a game of naval combat with a worker placement element for drafting an action deck and gaining resource tokens. The turns are divided into two phases, an Island Phase and then the Sea Phase.

The worker placement mechanic is during the Island Phase, when you place crew around the island. All players take turns to play theier three crew one at a time, and then purchase cards that go into your deck. Unlike a lot of deck building games, purchased cards are first placed into your hand, rather than your discard pile, so that you can immediately use them in the next phase.

The Sea Phase is all about moving your ship and dealing damage, awarding victory points. Cards are played from hand to maneuver your ship or fire cannons. Damage is dealt with cannon blasts or ramming other ships, or rocks if your hand of cards really sucks. Ramming damages both ships, but only awards a victory point to the aggressor. Each time a ship takes damage, the player gains a Damage Card into their deck, which has no ability and just clogs up your later hands. The game ends when all the Damage Cards have been distributed.

As we started our 4-player game so late in the day, I didn't get to experience a full game. We cut it short, playing out three or four full rounds. Still, that was enough to know that Sloops! is a hilariously fun game. The theme is really well implimented, and feels like a core part of how the game plays, rather than a skin wrapped over some mechanics.

The worker placement element is great, with lots of choices and decisions to make. Do I want to claim a card I can't afford first, hoping I can claim the required resources with the next two crew members, leaving me open to being blocked by the other players? Do I spend a turn pooling resources for the next turn? Did I forget to grab some Cannon resources, meaning I now hold a Fire Cannons card I can't use? Yeah... yeah... I totally did. Dammit.

The Sea Phase is the action part of the game. Players play cards to move their ship around the ocean and islands, hoping to draw near other ships and wreck havok. We had great fun pulling along side each other, unleashing a hail of cannon shot, and then parting ways in a most gentlemanly fashion! There was a lot of ramming ships as well, with some player turns ending up as a series of ramming and being rammed.

Everyone had a lot of fun playing this one, and laughter at the table was an ongoing and regular feature. Turns are very clear and straight-forward, aided by the division of elements into the two seperate phases. Despite the two phase turn, Sloops! plays very fast. Players only have three crew to place on the island, and the Sea Phase is just a matter of going around the table as players play cards from their hand and move or fire their ships. I look forward to getting to play a full game of this in the future, and watching how it grows and develops, mostly in terms of components, which are mostly stand-ins for now.

Given that there was a wide selection of games on offer at Unpub Mini Vancouver, I'm delighted to be able to report that I really enjoyed the four that I played on the day. It probably helps that most of those games are well into their development cycles, and, though still evolving, they each have a solid grasp on where they want to be.

Whatever my experience was, it's clear that Vancouver is home to some incredible board game developers, and I look forward to adding many of the games on display at Novembers Unpub Mini Vancouver to my shelf in the future!

Related Reading: Check out Loaded Dice's review of the event and what they thought of the games they played in their Recap post.

PAX Prime 2013

This was the third trip to PAX for Claire and myself, first in 2008 on our Epic Holiday[TM], and again in 2011 after arriving in Vancouver and getting settled in. But this year was special, as two friends and my brother joined us in Seattle for the first four-day PAX ever, and it was fantastic

Mike had arrived in Vancouver a few days early, and we all travelled south to Seattle by train on Thursday evening, meeting up with friends I had made on the last visit to PAX at the station in Vancouver. It certainly helped pass the time on the five hour trip to have friends to chat to.

In Seattle we met up with JP and my brother Stephen. They had been in Seattle for a day already, and had gotten a jump on us by attending a Microsoft event and playing the Xbox One! Thursday night was pretty much a crash, as we wanted to be up super early Friday morning to get into the hall for a full day of PAX.

The whole weekend was amazing! I got so much free swag, mostly in the form of t-shirts, and spent a not inconsiderable amount of cash on merchandise, again, mostly in the form of t-shirts. We all had a blast trying out and seeing upcoming games, and managed to spend time doing our own thing without getting separated for too long, or at least being able to meet up later without difficulty. It helped a lot that the convention centre wifi stayed working under the strain of thousands of nerds on mobile devices for the majority of the time. We could email and tweet at each other with plans from where ever we were at.

Once again, I didn't do much by way of panels. Stephen and JP came in early some mornings to get into interesting presentations without having to queue for too long, which was the best way to do it, in my opinion. I don't see much point in queuing for five hours to play a 15 minute demo of a game I'm already sold on buying when it's released a month down the line. We did go to the Gearbox Software panel together in the Paramount Theatre, which was hilarious and awesome, and then we got to meet the team after at their signing! Very cool!

But my big lesson from this year at PAX was that I'm becoming less and less interested in the triple-A titles on display and more and more involved with the indy games. I found myself in the indy games section at least once every day, trying out games I've never heard of, from companies that might not even have existed in 2011. My favourite games at PAX this year were all from the indy's, from the colourful and frantic four-player chaos of Speed Runners to the beautiful and hilarious Monster Loves You, both of which I got after the convention on Steam. The only triple-A title I spent any time queuing for was Nintendo's HD remake of Wind Waker, and only then for the free t-shirt. I've already played the game one my GameCube.

Two companies of particular note that I got to speak to this year are Vancouver's own Klei Entertainment, creators of Mark of the Ninja, Don't Starve and the currently on Early Access release Incognita, and the team behind my game of 2013, Gunpoint. I fanboyed out bigtime meeting Tom, John and Ryan at their PAX 10 booth. They were a pleasure to meet, and I'm delighted to have been supporting them since launch, buying my copy of Gunpoint before I even had my own Steam account, and before it became the massive success it is. I've been following Gunpoint since November 2011, and I'll be following this team onto their next big project too, whatever that may be.

And it wasn't just the indy companies that caught my attention. JP, Mike, Stephen and myself spend an hour in the DigiPen section, an area showcasing the best games from the DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Washington. The games were creative, clever, beautiful and masterfully crafted with love and care, and we spent longer there as a group than at any of the big name booths.

It was interesting to note that more of the Indy games we saw were supporting couch co-op or couch competition. I have many happy memories of playing Mario Kart or Bomberman on the SNES with my cousins, or GoldenEye on the N64 with the garda recruits that stayed with us, each sharing one TV, and having those immediate and intimate reactions only possible when sharing a couch with your opponents. Even from the Xbox 360 era, two of my favourite memories are playing split-screen with a friend. I'd love to see a resurgence in that social gaming with friends in the coming years, and I think indy games might be at the forefront of that.

I hope that the organizers of PAX 2013 noted the heavy foot traffic in the indy section this year and give them a greater space next year. I realize they can't cough up the same amount as the big studios, but they deserve the support and recognition.

PAX was a fun time with fun friends, and I've enjoyed it every year we've been, but Mike "Gabe" Krahulik's recent comments on transgenders and the whole recurring Dickwolves fiasco has definitely soured our interest in ever going again. At the start of September I said we'd probably never return to PAX, but that's a bit premature. I'm not willing to accept Gabe's apologies, as at this point it's clear he either doesn't really mean it, or he isn't learning from his previous mistakes. But I would like to come back to a safer, more accepting, open PAX with my future children and share with them the joy of being a gamer geek.

So never is a long time. But not next year.

 

Fan Expo Vancouver: Stuart Immonen

As mentioned in my previous post, last weekend my wonderful wife and I attended the first day of the inaugural Fan Expo Vancouver. We met many wonderful people, and I talked about a broad selection of them before. Now I'd like to focus on one of two that were particularly special for me.

Stuart Immonen has long been a favourite artist of mine. I think I learned his name during his work on Nextwave with Warren Ellis, but I've been enjoying his work long before that. Superman: Secret Identity, written by Kurt Busiek is particularly memorable and beautiful, deserving of more acclaim than it has ever gotten. Of course, Stuart also had the unenviable task of taking over Ultimate Spider-Man after Mark Bagley's record shattering run of 111 continuous issues. But while Stuart has long been an incredible artist, he has been an incredible person for much, much longer. And I have a story to prove it.

In 2007 Mike Wieringo passed away. I wrote about it at the time, and it's something that came up when I was in San Diego Comic Con a year later, and over and over again in the last few years. The entire industry seemed to have been shaken by his loss and mention of his very name is still enough to bring a hushed reverence over any crowd of comic fans.

In June of 2008 Marvel released the What If... comic Mike was working on at the time of his passing, a comic that was completed by a whole host of triple-A names in the comics industry in his honor, and all proceeds went to charity. At HeroesCon in Charlotte, North Carolina, that year, a bunch of those people involved got together to sign copies of the comic for fans. I wasn't able to attend, but desperately wanted a copy, so, in a move that was incredibly forward and bold of me, I emailed one of the people that would be there to ask if he'd pick me up a copy. The worst he could say was "no".

Instead, Stuart assured me that, if he had the time, he'd be delighted to do so. A few days after the convention, Stuart emailed me again to tell me that it was a crazy busy time, and he unfortunately could not get me a copy. I thanked him and thought nothing more of it until a week or two later when I got another email from Stuart telling me that he had received a copy as a memento of the event and, I quote, "I certainly don't need a signed book, and in fact INSIST on forwarding it to you." He insisted! How could I turn that down? By way of a "thank you", I donated $100 to the Hero Initiative, a charity for people in the comics industry that need assistance. Stuart had even kindly added "To Denis" in one corner, much to my eternal joy*.

I never believed I would ever get to meet Stuart to thank him in person for such an awesome gesture, but thanks to the first ever Fan Expo Vancouver, I got to stand in front of him, hold back a rising flood of tears and recount my amazing tale. His wonderful and hilarious wife Kathryn was by his side and told me that she remembered the correspondence, and was delighted to meet me.

I live in an amazing world where amazing things happen every day. I'd grateful that I get to be a part of a surprising number of them on an annual basis**.

*- I would love to include a photo of the comic in question, but one of the disadvantages of moving to Vancouver was that I left a lot of prized possessions at home in the care of my mother, and I don't seem to have a photo posted on my Flickr account or elsewhere. Oh well.
**- This was so amazing I forgot to ask if I could get a photo with Stuart. To say that I was a little star-struck is an understatement.

Related Posts
Mike Wieringo
A Story From Two Years Ago

Fan Expo Vancouver: Year One

Last weekend my wonderful wife and I attended the first day of the inaugural Fan Expo Vancouver in sunny Downtown Vancouver! Every word in that sentence is true, even the "sunny" bit. It was a beautiful day, not too hot for those of us in costume, but more importantly, not raining.

For a "Year One" event, the organizers did a fantastic job lining up some incredible guests. Claire was thrilled to be able to say "hello" to Marina Sirtis, the actress that played Deanna Troi in Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as voicing Matriarch Benezia in the first Mass Effect game. I got to chat to one of Star Trek's supreme beings, Q, in his form of actor John de Lancie, possibly my favourite Star Trek... erm... antagonist? Enemy or villain sounds too strong. Mostly he ended up just being hilarious and annoying. I also said "Hi" to Aaron Douglas, who, had I known in advance that I'd get to meet him, I would have asked to sign my BattleStar Galactica: The Board Game piece*! I missed out getting to meet David Hayter and Jennifer Hale (I even had my steel case copy of Mass Effect 3 in my bag) due to a hungry, hungry tummy, and I regret not saying "hello" to Michael Dorn (who you can currently catch in the latest season of Castle, folks!**) when I had the chance.

Most of the guests I was interested in meeting had a table covered in glossy, high quality images on sale that they would sign for you. This usually ranged from $20 to $30. Unfortunately, what with the whole "between work permits" thing that we're on right now, we couldn't afford to buy any, so we didn't really get any autographs. We felt a little embarrassed talking to some of the celebrities, knowing that we wouldn't be buying their merchandise, but we made sure not to take up much of their time. There's always next year.

The Fan Expo once again also gave me the opportunity to show off the amazing gift my amazing wife and amazing friends bestowed upon me, and dress up in costume as The Rocketeer! This is the second time I've had the joy of appearing as my number one all-time favourite movie hero, the first being back in August of last year at PAX Prime. I never did get around to uploading photos of that event, so I'll see about rectifying that soon.

I was delighted at how many people of all ages recognised the costume, and spent all day getting stopped for photos. Once Claire and I had decided to head out for food, it took us over 30 minutes to cross the main floor, as I couldn't move ten feet without getting stopped. Of course, I loved it, and delighted in letting people hold and even try on the helmet. It's great to be able to make someone's dream come true, and there were a lot of Rocketeer fans at the Fan Expo, but only one Rocketeer. Actually, there were two, but I'll get to that in another post.

The first Fan Expo Vancouver was, as far as this convention attendee is concerned, a roaring success. I have no doubt it will be back, bigger and better, next year, and I'll be there.

Post Script: But that's not all, dear Reader! There are two very special guests I haven't mentioned here and want to talk about, but each deserves their own post, and so they shall get it. In both cases, it was a chance to meet someone I never thought I would ever have the chance to meet. In one of those cases it was the chance to fulfill a lifelong dream, in the other, the chance to say "Thank you". Coming soon!

*- Admittedly I'd have needed to know far in advance, as it's still back in Ireland with friends. 
**- "Who", or "Whom"?!? Usually I know, but this instance has me stumped.


Some more photos from the convention floor:

Some photos were more enjoyable to pose for than others...

It's Matt Wagner's Mage! It's like he stepped off the comic page into real life!

Two of the greatest pulp heroes, together at last! This guy was hilarious and great to meet.

I got some amazing and treasured photos with incredible people, but this is probably my favourite photo of the convention. I didn't know he was doing this, as my vision is severely restricted in that helmet. Hilarious!

I asked to get a photo with these guys, as Joe Johnson directed both The Rocketeer and the recent Captain America movie. Very cool.

This was an entirely homemade costume! It was beautiful! Fantastic job. He had the mask, but it was getting too stuffy to wear, which I could sympathize with.

Mr Ryan Goes To PAX 2011

Last weekend my wonderful wife and I took a bus south across the border to the city of Seattle for the best gaming convention in he world, Penny Arcade eXpo, or PAX. We headed down on Thursday and met up with some friends, one of whom lives in Seattle now and the other two traveled up from New Mexico for the convention as well! Our charming company was a welcome bonus!

This was our second time at PAX, the first being in 2008 at the end of our Epic Holiday[TM]. I never did get around to a write-up of that stop, but you can safely assume that it was incredible, and we couldn't wait to get back. This year I decided to step things up a bit by going in costume. Thanks to my amazing mum, I was able to get my Rocketeer helmet brought over from Ireland, and I already had the jacket with me. And so, for most of Friday and Saturday at PAX 2011, I could be seen wandering the many areas, slowly sweating to death in a heavy leather jacket, carrying a heavy, metal helmet[1].

A lot of the guests and exhibitors fist bump rather than shaking hands in order to avoid picking up nasty infections. This year I even saw the more extreme version, elbow bump, used by many. It certainly worked for me. I have not come down with any PAX crud as of yet, apart from being utterly exhausted for a few days after!

The whole event was awesome. We met so many incredibly nice people, and I got to talk to people I never expected, about interests I never expected to share with them. I got to meet AJ LoCascio, the voice of Marty McFly in the TellTale Games episodic Back to the Future video game! Not only was he probably the most down-to-earth, nice, honest-to-goodness coolest guy I met at PAX, but he's also a huge Rocketeer fan[2]! He was able to recognize that I was holding a Disney Master Replicas version of the helmet from across the booth, and he recognized the Wested jacket as well! If you can imagine how blown away I was by that much, I almost collapsed when he told me that he made his own Rocketeer helmet from fiberglass. We spent about ten minutes geeking out about the movie, the props and the awesomeness of the Replica Prop Forum.

The weekend was just chock full of amazing stories, though rather like Empire Strikes Back, I feel I opened on the best of them. My costume was a huge success, and I got stopped everywhere I went by other attendees, exhibitors and even a VIP or two as they gushed over the character and took photos. It was heart warming to see so many fans of Dave Stevens creation in attendance. For me, one of the things I enjoyed most was watching peoples eyes widen as I let them hold the helmet and even try it on. Unlike the more accurate fiberglass versions available, the metal Master Replica I have is far from fragile. It was nice to be a part of fullfilling a small number of peoples dreams to hold or wear such an iconic piece from a much loved classic.

Even queuing was a fun experience. Apart from playing games on iPads, Enforcers (the PAX volunteer force that help make everything run smoothly) were handing out bits and pieces to help us pass the time. While queuing for the Saturday night concert, we all got given brightly coloured pipe cleaners and instructions to "Be creative". This resulted in hats, flowers, Portal-themed wrist bracelets, stick figures fighting, a sniper with gun, and even a helicopter with rotating blades! From pipe cleaners, people!

But of course, PAX is ultimately all about the games. And we got to try loads of them!

Welcome to Serra.
Gears of War 3 is due for release on September 20th, and it had a large presence in the Xbox area. I expected longer lines, but compared to others games on display, the Gears line was tiny. I got to try out the updated Horde 2.0 on Friday and the brand new to the franchise Beast Mode on Saturday.

Horde: My biggest worry about Horde 2.0 was that they had gone and messed with a good thing. Horde is still the best of the endless-wave styles of game modes because it is so clean and simple. It threw out customization in favour of accessibility. Horde 2.0 adds to the basics by bringing in a cash-for-kills system for that can be used to buy stuff during a small window between waves, from ammo to laser defenses and beyond. And it works fantastically! It's fast, fun and doesn't stop the games flow. We got to play waves 8 to 10 allowing us a peek at what surprises the tenth waves hold. I'm not going to spoil it, but after the terrifying horror of seeing your first bloodmount in Gears 2, they've really outdone themselves for Gears 3. It's awesome!

Beast: This is a whole other kettle of fish. Trying Horde, I knew the basics. Waves of alien monsters that I need to kill before they kill me. Beast is a set number of COGs per level and you have a very tight time limit. You start with one minute on the clock and get more for every kill. You can play as a variety of Locust, starting as low as tickers or wretches, and going up from there. I'm not going to tell you what I saw or played as, but you can assume it was fun! The gameplay is very different, and I sucked during my quick trial. This is not Reverse Horde, it requires a totally new set of skills.

The Boardgame: Not on display at the Xbox booth, this was instead being demoed on a different floor, but I've included it here for completions sake. This looked very nice. Fantasy Flight Games were running demos all weekend long and the whole thing looked impressive. I didn't play myself, but I heard lots of good things from people that were trying it out. As expected from an FFG game, the production quality was through the roof. Cards, tokens and figure pieces were beautiful. The figure pieces were especially impressive, and looked like they should be a lot of fun to paint up.

But Gears was only a tiny area in a huge, multilevel convention. I got to see and play games that are coming out as soon as this month and as late as next year.

The Gunstringer is the first retail game from Twisted Pixel, the company behind Comic Jumper and 'Splosion Man. It's a Kinect game that makes clevel use of the technology and, more importantly, it's a load of fun to play. I don't own a Kinect. Yet. There was no reason to before I went to PAX. Now I'm tempted. I might even get one for this alone.

I got up on stage with three others and had a four-player dance-off in front of a large crowd playing Dance Central 2, also for Kinect. I found that it had very good motion tracking, more impressive for being able to track four uncoordinated male players gyrating wildly. I came first, despite never playing any of the dance games before, though that probably says more about how bad the others were than how good I was.

From the ridiculous length of the line all weekend long, it was clear that there was a lot of interest in the latest game in the Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim, but I could not have cared less. Not that I have anything against it, I'm just not interested in fantasy games. One of our friends stood in line for 3.5 hours to play the 15 minute demo and got a fuzzy hat for her troubles[3]. At one point while I was talking to her in the line, I looked up at a clip of a dragon in the trailer and jokingly said "Oh. Nice graphics. What's this game?" and 40 angry nerd heads swiveled in my direction.

Last, but by no means least, one of the booths that immediately caught my attention was the TellTale Games Jurassic Park area. Not only did they have a nice small-scale replica of the entrance gates into the park, and fencing with little flashing lights on top, but they had a fan-made reproduction of one of the park jeeps! I was a child all over again standing beside it. Instead of just reading my thoughts on this however, take a break from the text and look at a video blog TellTale Games staff did during the convention. Check out the eejit at the 1:25 mark, and again at the 2:30 mark. Yeesh. Fanboys. They were everywhere at PAX.




PAX wouldn't be PAX without free stuff. We came home with tonnes and tonnes of swag. I think I got 8 t-shirts, of which I only paid for one. Baseball hats, avatar items, lanyards, pins, even a very high quality hoodie! The whole weekend paid for itself in free stuff. Claire and our friends even got themselves free OnLive consoles! FREE. CONSOLES!!![4] Insane.

If we're still here next year we'll be going again, so I'll let people know in case anyone is interested in joining us for a crazy weekend of video games, boardgames, demos, t-shirts, freebies, music, costumes, celebrities and more in 2012! I honestly cannot recommend it enough. It's the best, friendliest, most community orientated convention I've ever been to.

Hopefully you can join us and share in the love that is PAX 2012.

[1]- On Saturday morning I woke up complains of an unusual pain in my right arm. I put it down to sleeping badly in the hotel bed, as I had no recollection of having injured it the day before. It wasn't until later that same day that I realised that the weight of the helmet was causing strain on my arm muscles! I didn't feel it while I was enjoying the convention. It was only once I relaxed that it all hit me!
[2]- The earlier part of this sentence should probably be noted as biased based on the latter part. But even then, AJ was very, very cool.
[3]- She did also get to meet and have her photo taken with Todd Howard while in the queue, which she excitedly told me later in the day. She was much distraught when I shrugged and told her I had no idea who that was. Still, that first 3.5 hours at PAX in a queue was pretty much the high point of her convention, I'm led to believe. 
[4]- The catch of course is that OnLive is a subscription based service, so they're happy to give you the console for free to let you try out the service and hopefully sign up.

Convention Scenario Writing

In my last post I mentioned the two adventure scenarios I had worked out on the journey home from Dublin. It seems that post caught the attention of a few people, and I've been requested, much to my surprise and joy, to write a Spirit of the Century scenario for LepreCon XXX. How could I say no?

I haven't really come up with a plot yet, but discovering that the coming LepreCon is their 30th anniversary, I was suddenly hit with a lot of inspiration. Thus, so far, while I know little about the guts of the scenario as yet, I now know that it will feature the XXX Investigations (Triple-X Investigations) private detective agency, Trinity College, possibly the Library, most likely hidden demonology within the Book of Kells (have a close look at the above image) and all sorts of wacky shenanigans in 1927 Dublin.

I think it's coming along nicely, don't you...?

As well as that, I've spent a little time on the other two scenarios, and have come up with the final blurb for each of them.

Murder On The Cambrian Coast Express
Welcome aboard the 10:00 train from Aberystwyth, stopping at Borth, Dovey Junction, Machynlleth, Welshpool, Wolverhampton Low Level using the Shrewsbury Abbey Foregate curve, then on to Birmingham Snow Hill, and finally Leamington Spa, arriving at Paddington at 15:50. Sit back, relax, enjoy the company of the other passengers and prepare for a peaceful trip through pleasant English country-side, stress-free and without any incidences of ritual murder... Oh, who are we kidding. The title is a dead give-away!

The Mechanauts
The battle cruiser Space Defence Force Omega is the last line of defence against a possible attack against the planet Earth. As crew members of the S.D.F. Ω, you are invaluable to its continued smooth operation. Unfortunately, not many people understand the importance of your work as a D.O.O.S.E.R. (Daily Ordinary Operational Service Equipment Repair). Thankfully, you have Hyper TONK Simulator eX 2, the latest installment in the TONK Simulator game series for ViaSofts home console, the Z-1080G to pass the boring hours between boring shifts, blasting enemy clans with your Friends List in Clan Mechanauts. And tonight, you have a grudge match scheduled. Bring it on!

Now all I have to do is create characters, add NPCs, draw up maps where appropriate, read up on key subjects, plot a bullet point, step-by-step list of the scenarios for ease of reference by willing GMs, and put everything about the actual plots that is in my head onto an easy-to-read PDF!

Simple.

Renewed Enthusiasm

Last year I mentioned how my trip to GaelCon XIX had greatly renewed my interest in gaming in general, but particularly in RPGs. Having just returned from GaelCon XX this evening, I find myself in a similar situation.

Since this time last year, I have ran a very successful campaign that lasted an astonishing 14 sessions, I've bought a lot more card games and board games, and I continue to look for ways to increase my time spent at this hobby, enjoying Monday Night Gaming, and trying to play board games with friends more often.

Now, I find myself contemplating the idea of maybe, possibly giving LARPing a chance, and stranger still, giving Vampire LARPing a chance!! That is not something I would have written, spoken or even thought three days ago, but GaelCon changes me, in ways that frighten and disgust me some times...

However, not everything is bad. On the drive home from Dublin to Cork, I wrote not one, but one-and-a-half once-off, convention-friendly RPG scenarios! How did I manage to write one-and-a-half? Simple. While the first one I came up with was entirely new, the second was a development on one of the sessions from my own Spirit of the Century campaign, so I already had that one worked out. I just spent some time tweaking it. Both are potentially for WarpCon 19, in January 2009. And both will be written using FATE 3.0, the Spirit of the Century system. Here are the blurbs, in reverse order, so the second one is my brand-new idea (subject to change):

Murder On The Orient Express
Welcome aboard the luxury trans-Europe train, the Orient Express. Sit back, relax, enjoy the company of the other passengers and prepare for a peaceful trip across Europe, stress-free and without any incidences of ritual murder... Oh, who are we kidding. The title is a dead give-away!

The Robo-Techs
✔ The Space Defence Force Omega is the last line of defence against a possible attack by the evil alien forces of the (Insert name here) on the planet Earth.
✔ As crew members of the S.D.F. Ω, you are invaluable to the continued defence of Earth.
✘ After all, without you, who would fix the 32 coffee machines in the canteen, or ensure hot showers for the 3,200 ship's company.
✘ Who would unblock any of the 237 toilets on board, or crawl through miles of air vents to find a loose wire?
✔ Yes, as S.D.F. Ω engineers, you're pretty important crew...
✔ Luckily, you and your friends have clocked up over 1,000 hours of combat apiece in TONKs, the 12 meter tall elite combat mechs of the S.D.F.
✘ But only through Hyper TONK Simulator eX 2, the latest installment in the TONK Simulator game series for ViaSofts home console, the Z-1080G.
✔ But your clan, The Robo-Techs, is one of the top 10 in the game. And you have a game scheduled against your biggest rivals, Xentraidee, tonight.
Five ✔'s against three ✘'s. Life isn't all bad, right?

The first blurb is a proper, convention brochure style blurb. The second is far too long, but I just started having too much fun writing it. Sorry. And I know it's full of terrible, terrible gags, but I'll probably change all of them before the final draft. Probably.

Gaming, Friends & Madness

I'm just back in Cork after a long and mostly enjoyable weekend in Dublin, at the 20th anniversary of GaelCon. Like last year, Claire and I decided to stay in Clontarf Castle for the weekend, saving us from nightly travel, and adding greatly to the sense of relaxation and time we could spend with friends. Also, we got to enjoy kick-ass all-you-can-eat breakfasts with everyone else that was staying.

As with last year, we played lots of card games and board games, but far less RPGs. I don't think any caught my attention, even enough to read beyond the title. Even Claire, who played in something for every slot last year, spent most of the Con just hanging out with friends, playing table-top, non-RPG games. That said, it was a heck of a lot of fun! Not only did we get to play games we know and love, but also lots that were new to us!

Both nights had us up late into the morning hours, chatting to the others that were staying in the castle. And there were a lot. About ten others from Cork alone, and then a bunch of gamers from all over that would be very good friends. Sunday night in particular found around 20 of us in the lobby until 3:30am, howling with laughter over some incredible stories and general shenanigans!

All in all, it was a good convention. Not as good as last year, possibly, but then, that was an extraordinarily good year! I'd say that while last year was my favourite convention so far, this year was my second favourite. We had to make our own fun a lot more this year, and that's a sentiment I've heard echoed quite a bit over the last hour before we left this afternoon. Everyone seemed to have fun, but only because they made their own.

There was one huge disappointment, though. Last year, I missed the table-quiz, which seemed like a blast, and this year, I was determined to stay for it and join in. Except this year, the GealCon Charity Table-Quiz was an unbelievable disgrace, with clear bias towards the Dublin crowd, an utterly unfair and non-sensical "bonus round" system, ridiculous rounds, an annoyingly ambivalent "odd-one-out round", and just a general lack of entertainment, apart from two, possibly three rounds.

But, you know what? We had fun. We bought some new stuff, played some new games, made some new friends, played some old games, hung out with some old friends and enjoyed every bit of that. We're definitely going next year, and definitely staying at the castle again. Far too much fun to miss!

Seattle: Race For Home

We arrived late last night into the city of Seattle. Getting here was a bit of an adventure. Originally we planned on booking the train, but that turned out to be rather expensive, at $360 for the both of us. Plus, the trip was going to be 22 hours long! Not something either of us really wanted to look forward to. So we tried some alternatives. Renting a car in San Francisco and dropping it back in Seattle was going to be $360 as well, plus the cost of gas on top of that. And it would mean driving for 12 hours for Claire, again, not an ideal situation. The bus was a 20 hour journey, was cheaper, but we'd be stuck in our seat for the whole time.

And then Claire, being the genius that she is, checked out the obvious alternative.

Thanks to the simply wonderful Alaska Airlines, we flew San Francisco to Seattle in under three hours, had comfy seating, loads of leg room, free beverages and snacks, excellent staff, spectacular views and an all-round pleasant and relaxing trip north.

Leaving San Francisco was tough. Leaving San Diego was tough, but we were heading to Vegas in a Corvette, so that lessened the impact some-what! Leaving Vegas wasn't too bad. It had been fun, but we had another long drive in the Corvette to look forward to, and far more importantly, we were on our way to Karen's! But leaving San Francisco... leaving Karen and her friends that we met. Leaving a great city, packed with places we had yet to see. That was tough.

But now we're with Cian in Seattle! We have time to explore yet another new city, and have PAX to look forward to! We have a good length of time left in our Epic Holiday(TM). But we are also in the closing stretch, heading for home.

And even with six weeks here, home has come too early.

SDCC- Video Games Live

One of the big events we booked months in advance was Video Games Live, a full symphony orchestra and choir playing video game music. Because we booked and paid for the tickets well in advance, I splashed out and got the best tickets available, which turned out to be pretty damned good!! Front row, dead centre! We got dinner served, and free drinks! Amazing.

But nothing on the music itself. This trip has been incredible already for Claire and I, and it seems that there is some greater force ensuring things just... work out in our favour. We spend all Thursday meeting the nicest people, getting amazing sketches, spending real time talking to people I only ever dreamed of meeting before, and then, Thursday evening, VGL seemed to choose it's pieces and guests only for Claire and I.

Here's how te night went:

• Opening Medley
• Metal Gear Solid- Incredible! An amazing piece to kick the show off with! And everyone loved the guard and box wandering around on-stage. The box stayed on=stage for the whole piece, and the following one, before revealing VGL creator Tommy Tallarico, who joked that he was the only one short enough to fit inside!
• Metroid Medley- They covered the entire series, but got the biggest reaction to the Super Metroid piece.
• Civilisation IV- Beautiful and powerful.
• Tron- Got a huge reaction! Great piece.
• Legend of Zelda Medley- as with Metroid, they covered the entire series, but as soon as Ocarina of Time appeared onscreen, the crowd went wild! This was introduced via recorded video by the original composer of the Mario and Zelda themes, Koji Kondo.
• Kingdom Hearts- I was blown away! Disney kindly allowed the video playing to use the cartoon footage instead of game footage. It was spectacular.
• World of WarCraft- Seriously. Playing just for us! Claire nearly died. And they had the original composers on-stage... who we knew we could meet later, as we had back-stage passes! You can only image how Claire felt about this.
• StarCraft II- The perfect follow-up to the WarCraft stuff. They played a new piece, introduced by it's composer, as well as playing the piece used in the trailer, while the trailer played! Nice. I loved this one.
• Super Mario Brothers Medley- This started with Martin Leung playing the Mario Brothers theme on piano, blindfolded!! Awe-inspiring stuff.
• Guitar Hero Competition- Before the show there had been a Guitar Hero competition, and the winner was brought up on stage to play Sweet Emotion on the game, with the symphony backing him, and Tommy Tallarico on guitar assisting. It was incredible. The guy was amazing, and when we met him back-stage later, he told us that he doesn't own Guitar Hero, and had never played Sweet Emotion before! Regardless, he managed to play it on Expert, and score over 200,000 points, winning a tonne of stuff!
• Halo- The crowd went ballistic! Everyone loved this. A girl in Cortana costume came on-stage to do some of the voice bits, and they played my favourite Halo piece, the teaser for Halo 3. As the piece ended and Cortana said "This is the way the world ends", Master Chief arrived on-stage!
• Final Fantasy VII: Sephiroths Theme- Halo was the final piece, with this standing as the encore. Once again, the choir blew everyone away with the power and beauty.
• Castlevania- I don't know if they always do a two song encore, but they did for us, wrapping up the night with this. What a way to end!

But it wasn't the end for Claire and I. We got to then head back to the VIP Area and meet Jason Hayes, composer of World of WarCraft, Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall themselves, Martin Leung, and some of the special guests, including the girl dressed as Cortana! We also talked to the guy that played Guitar Hero, who was visibly shaking still, some 30 minutes after his performance! Nice guy. And, we got to meet Dee Baker!! He had been up on-stage earlier and did a live voicing of the monster for Gears of War, the blind one that you have to orbital strike. He voiced it in-game, and recreated and matched the scenes as the game played! But more importantly for us, he voiced Appa and Momo in Avatar: The Last Airbender, and it was a real honor and pleasure to meet and talk to him. While wandering the VIP area, we even got a copy of the just released Video Games Live CD!! Woo!!

After all that, we grabbed a taxi and headed home. This was our first day at SCDD, and we thought it couldn't get any better. We were wrong. So very, very wrong.

SDCC- The Good Times Don't End

Let me update you guys on some of the stuff we've done or seen so far!

• The sketch-book I brought over for the entire trip, including all the amazing people I'm sure I'll meet at PAX, is, with a day still to go in Comic Con, full. Completely! And I can't find a suitable replacement for tomorrow.
• We have already met and held conversations with, among others, Seth Green, Breckin Meyer, Jackson Publick, Ben TenNapel, Gabe and Tyco, Peter David, Orson Scott Card, Raymond E. Feist, Larry Hama, Wil Wheaton, Rob Liefeld, Greg Pak and countless more I'll try to mention once I'm not using a tiny keyboard and touch pad instead of a mouse. We've met and got autographs or more from Hideo Kojima, Gerard Way, James Stewart & Gabriel Ba, as well as many more.
• I've bought way to many books already!
• I'm very proud of how few action figures I've bought!
• We have, so far, attended a total of one panel, and even then, it was because we met the guys it was all about outside and spent ages talking to them... also, it was the Marvel/Hasbro Action Figure Panel... so, you know. Some interest there...
• We have met and exchanged email address' with the most incredible people, making friends with folks from all over the world!
• So many photos. So, so many photos.
• San Diego is beautiful and friendly.
• My feet hurt.
• Good (or even passable) tea does not seem to exist here.
• Everyone wants to visit Ireland, particularly the writers and artists.
• Dear Joss Whedon: You are awesome. You are a funny guy, and seem very natural and honest. But I am not willing to queue for six hours just to sit in a room with 6,000 others and listen to you talk. Sorry. There are far to many things to do at SDCC than to make that worth considering.
• Claire got a drawing of herself by Yoshitaka Amano! It is as incredible as you think it could be, and more. She nearly cried. He drew it without prompt. Apparently he liked the hat she was wearing.
  
• By 1pm, sitting down for ten minutes becomes more important that seeing the next line of writers or artists.
• Skype is a wonderful invention.
• People recognised and complimented me on my t-shirt (which is meaningless to most readers until I post pictures!!)

More updates soon, but nothing detailed until I have a real keyboard with a mouse. Also, photos may take a little while, but I have lots!! And no Picasa to run them through.

AT-ST

While playing in an awesome GURPS Traveller RPG scenario at GaelCon, one of the kids at the table I was at pulled out his Chicken Walker model from the Star Wars Miniatures game and left it on the table. I started to sketch the cab between actions while the rest of the players squabbled among themselves.

Not a bad attempt for something drawn in just a few minutes, and in between trying to rescue civilians from a crashed cruise ship.

I found that, even after I was finished, I was constantly adding lines, shading, roughing up parts. So I signed the corner and that stopped me doing anything more to the image.

Denis 2, Boredom 0

It's been a busy few weeks for me, so much so that I've had little time to enjoy photographing toys, blog, or do very much online at all! In particular, the last two weekends have been jammed with excitement and fun!

On Saturday the 20th of October, I was home in Tipperary at a wedding. Not my own! No, this was for a friend of the family that we've known for years. Although she's from Coventry in England, her parents are Irish and her fathers family is from the area. She wanted to get married in the small parish church of Killea, the village I'm from. It was a great day, and both the Bride and Groom looked amazing. I spent most of it babysitting their daughter, who was simply adorable. She's only 15 months old, but so well behaved throughout. I was surprised when she took to me so fast, and spent most of the day in my arms. I guess it helped that I brought her brightly coloured toys she can safely chew on.

The meal was great and after a break to watch some big rugby match, we went back in for the dancing. Woo! I'll tell you, I could have danced through until the sun came up the next morning! It was a blast. I just had loads of fun. And I got to dance with a bridesmaid! I took loads of photos up until the music started and then I was far to busy jumping around looking like an idiot to stop to take any more.

Which was exactly what happened this weekend as well! I was having so much fun, I have no photos at all as visual aides to relate my awesome weekend through! For the October Bank Holiday weekend Claire and I travelled to Dublin for GaelCon... and to escape the Cork Jazz Weekend.

This year, Claire and I decided to do something different. Normally, we go to GaelCon, meet friends, go into the city, shop, go to the con, hang out for a bit, sit around bored, get the bus back into the city, go to the hostel we're staying in, go to sleep, travel back to the con and so on and on. This year, Claire and I booked ourselves into Clontarf Castle, where the con itself was on! This made some huge differences to how the weekend unfolded right away. No travelling once we reached the hotel on the Saturday morning. No having to leave early to get the last bus to the hostel. No pressure to go anywhere. In fact, for the first time I can remember we didn't leave the castle for the entire day on Sunday! And we got awesome all-you-can eat breakfasts in the hotel. How can you possibly top that?

And we played games! Claire tried to get into an RPG in every slot, I tried out a few, though not every slot, and while we weren't playing organised games, we were playing games like No Thanks, Guillotine and Tsuro in the main hall with anyone that walked past. All in all, it was a busy, eventful, fun weekend. Add to that getting to meet Lynn and Graham for the first time in ten months, hanging out until 2am with Mulcahy, Killian, Fiki, Sarah, Farrell and Lorna in the lobby telling stories and gasping for breath between fits of laughter and getting to meet a tonne of new people and you could say I had the best damned convention of my life!

Right now I'm exhausted! I hadn't even recovered from the wedding weekend when we left for GaelCon! Next weekend, Claire is heading back up to Dublin for another wedding, and I'm here in Cork. I plan to keep up the great run of weekends with a gaming night in my house on Saturday, and possibly even Friday and Sunday evening! Well, at least Saturday. Maybe Friday will be drinks in the Well. If you're reading this and around for the weekend, just let me know! I'm sure we can fit you in.