from the editor - Mega Miniatures

FRIDAY
Attendance picked up, but just a bit. I guess a lot of
the locals were not very interested in taking a day off
from work. I managed to keep from locking my keys
in the car today so that was a very good start. We
checked out of the hotel in Seal Beach and headed to
our new accommodations in Anaheim, just a block
away from the convention center. Ok, a bit about
hotels here. Do not ever, ever, unless you have
absolutely no choice whatsoever, stay in the
convention hotel for the convention price. Even with
the convention discount the adjacent (basically
adjacent, it was a negligible walk) hotel was still 2-3
times the price of what I paid after searching on the
Internet. I used Hotels.com (not an ad for them, use
whatever discounter you like) and paid around $50 a
night for a very nice hotel and only had to walk across
two parking lots (about a block) to get to the convenion
center. And if you’re saying to yourself, “Just double or triple the number
of people in the room and then it will cost next to nothing.” I did that once or
twice way back when I was in High School and vowed to never do it again.
Two people, three max if you’re getting a large suite, and you’ll be a lot better
off for it.
Maybe a slight increase in foot traffic today, but not by much. I took a look at
the Bandai booth in the dealer’s room and was very intrigued by their chesslike
collectible miniature game that will be coming out soon. Out of all the
collectible miniature games that are out right now this one kills them all in
terms of figure look and feel and painting. Only one figure in each persons
“army” is painted though. All but one are a dark gray (highlighted I think)
and your “king” for lack of a better term is painted as you’d expect but not as
you’d expect form a collectible miniature game as it is done to a higher
standard than I’ ve seen to date with any other game of its type. I’ll be on the
lookout for it. I met Chris Pramas from Green Ronin. A very nice guy who
took a few minutes to actually talk about what they have coming out soon.
The WOTC booth was both huge and very well done. It covered all of their
games and was pretty full for the entire convention. Preview minis from the
Dragoneye (more of that on Saturday) release for D&D Miniatures were on
display and got many players drooling.
Today was Chronopia day for me. I was worried about attendance for this
tournament for two reasons. 1) I was the only one pre-registered for it and 2)
Excelsior would not be coming down from Pennsylvania for the convention. I
can understand them not coming from a cost perspective but I think them
being there would have been a natural draw for more players, both new and
old. To be honest, I was worried about the tournament being cancelled and I
had already made plans for my day if that occurred. Thankfully, it did not.
There ended up being just two players and the referee showing up for
Chronopia, but we did have a fairly decent number of people walk up and
look at our minis and the great terrain that we played on and ask what we were
playing. Our referee, being someone that could juggle both very effectively,
was able to keep our scenario games on track (all of our games were scenario
driven rather than simple kill ‘em all) and talk to walk-ups that were interested
in the game. My Blackblood army went 2-0-1 for the day and I won the
tournament! Woo Hoo! I fought the Sons of Kronos (Barbarians if you have
not yet been indoctrinated into the ways of Chronopia) and only one game
was a blowout. The other two were very close and our tie was an exact
match on victory points. All told, it was a very good day. Bradley was into
his second day of Magic. Oh, and if you’re wondering why I’m not staying
up until the break of dawn playing whatever game, those days are pretty much
behind me. Yeah, just like the overstuffed hotel rooms. It would take
something special (miniatures or rpg) to get me to stick with it until the wee
hours of the morning. Not that I wouldn’t, but it would have to be something
very cool.
SATURDAY
Oh yeah! Dragoneye pre-release tournament day. I was highly looking
forward to this because I expected lots of players, I was going to add to my
D&D Miniatures collection and lots of those additions were going to be new
stuff that I’d never seen before. There were over 90 participants at the start of
the tournament. It was huge. Things started off late but the WOTC crew got
things under control well and moved things along once everyone was situated.
Everyone got their sealed Harbinger starter and two Dragoneye boosters and
set off building their warband. We had 30 minutes to do this and some people
got in just under the wire. Too much time spent taking in the new miniatures
and not enough time spent building their army. Also, whenever anyone pulled
a dragon everyone around them went, “ Damn” because they figured it would
be used against them. As it turns out the dragons didn’t fare too well in these
small-ish 100 point games. Sure, they could be devastating but they could
also be brought down. One of my early games, maybe even my first, was
against a gentleman that brought a Black Dragon (young) and an assortment
of other creatures. It even got off its breath weapon early in the game, but I
was able to finish it off and take the game. The Dragonbane ability is a real
kick to the crotch for any dragon out there and I had someone with it. Get in
there and do your thing! The start of this tournament
did go well for me but then went straight into the toilet
(more on those later). I think that I went 2-7 (or
maybe 2-5, either way I got slapped around mightily)
and just got hammered in the later games. As you can
expect, some people registered just to get their hands
on Dragoneye figures and left after just a round or
two. In one of the later rounds they gave away
another Dragoneye booster to everyone that completed
the round. Of course, I just got my ass handed to me
in that round, but opening the booster I was greeted
with a Red Dragon (young) and my day of getting
whipped got a little brighter. I ended the tournament
with a loss (I know, you’re not too surprised) but still
had a great time and got to play with a lot of fun
people. Kudos to the WOTC team that was running
the event. They had a lot of people to deal with, quite
a few that had played D&D before but had never seen
the miniature rules before the tournament, and pulled
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