FnordCon day 1

Three weeks ago I attended FnordCon, the first-ever convention put on by Steve Jackson Games. That morning I ran a game of Triplanetary on one of the open play tables, attracting three other players and even luring Steve Jackson himself over to ask about the scenario.

We were playing Nova, where the Eastern and Western blocs try to stop aliens from orbiting the sun to detonate a nova bomb. Although the alien players were at first worried about the distance they had to cover, we all quickly learned that Newtonian mechanics made it hard to catch the invaders.

I was playing the Russians (red counters), and I even managed to destroy one of the four ships. However, in the end, two ships slipped past the Americans to blow up the sun.

We also got to check out Ogre--including this huge cardboard Ogre cutout (with the game-sized version for scale).

It was the basic Mark III attacking scenario--but on a new orange map. We got to playtest the game and give our feedback to the Ogre line editor. My opponent was my gaming buddy HoldFast, who attended Saturday with me.

My command post was toast, and when we switched sides to play again, I killed my opponent's CP. It was fun playing on the new map and providing our opinions.

I talked Holdfast into buying Melee and Wizard, and we got in a game of Melee before the end of the day.

It was a quick battle, but notable in that both our fighters ended up dropping their weapons on poor rolls, and after a halfhearted grappling attempt, grabbed the ones their opponent had left on the ground.

All in all, a fun day of gaming.