Well I was saddened by the reports I have been getting of the crazy amount of theft that occurred during the Fire ALarm on Saturday.

I feel confident that no one in our community took anything. I mean in all the time of going to Gencon I have never heard of anything being stolen.

But man you let 2000 magic players walk by and I have like 4 stories of people getting their stuff stolen. just sucks really.

I know my son Nate lost his league stuff and our long time finding the dark side adept promo..... gone

Phillip lost his Chris West map and tiles..... gone


Man that just makes me mad to hear it.......

Of course some magic players were caught trying to steal the prize support for the champs too!!!

Sorry Dean, I would have gone back in for more tables if i could have.

wow, that sucks.

Luckily, i'd just finished my last match so i had all my stuff with me.

Do you think the fire and the thefts are more than a coincidence Dean?

yeah I think we had theft because in these years in the main minis hall we have never had 2000 magic players wlak by our tables. A total cause and effect.

That's lame.

But unrelated to the alarm, jonnyb got his squad box lifted after walking away from it for a couple minutes. Sucks. I did not have extras of any of the pieces he lost unfortunately.

On the positive side, even after having his stuff ripped Nate was willing to give me the Plagueus he pulled in the Sunday sealed when I asked him if he'd trade it since it was the last piece my brother needed to complete JA. So the SWM community itself is still just the complete best.

Everyone else should die.

Yeah that was a lousy deal all around. I saw a lot of people leaving their stuff behind as they tried to exit the building, and I thought, "Damn, they're basically abandoning their stuff."

I mean even if there had been a REAL fire, that stuff would have been lost since they didn't carry it out. I'm sad to say that I am not at all surprised that there were thieves ready to take advantage of the situation.

Such is the reputation and demeanor of the Magic community.

kind of couries if a game was still going on when the fire alarm went off and you picked up everything then came back would you be disqualified or what would of happened??

And the guy lied to me about it after I watched him hand the map to his buddy! That was the most audacious part of it all, him lying to me while I'm looking at the thing in his pal's (accomplice's?) bag.

Sucks to hear about all the stuff that did walk away, hopefully some of it is located in other people's collections and returned, but I wouldn't count on that much. There's a couple distinct reasons I stopped playing MtG, and that is certainly one of them


Time had been called by then and I think there were 3 or 4 games still going, or maybe they had just finished... but still no time to pick everything up neatly

Dark side adept from ROTS with the blue jump suit? I think I have an extra and can send it along if you need/want to replace the lost one.

OMG, really? I hadn't heard about that. Please get me his address if you can; I'll send him a free replacement.

That should say something abiout our (the Star Wars Minis) community. We help out our own and others, yet, IMHO, we as SWM players still seem to get the shaft when it come to WotC and support they readily give to the the other games under the WotC banner.

The group I was with was just on our way to the Gen Con dance at Union Station after dinner at The RAM. Could someone give me some more details on what the heck happened, where the first responders focused their attention, etc. Thanks.

With all the bad news of theft, I'm here to report some good news. On Thursday morning, I was going through my squad box to build a 150pt squad for the first leg of the Jedi Challenge. I didn't realize that I had left my plastic container with all my dice and tokens for damage on the table. After my 1hr and 20minute wait for generic tickets, I went over to the league table to get my 2 boosters. I had already missed entry into the tournament and I told The Godfather that I would play league instead. When I sat down for my first league game I noticed I was missing my dice and tokens. After my game I went over all the places where I was up to that point. I talked to a couple of SWM folks that I recognized sitting with during that time and they did not remember it being there. I happened to walk by the first row of tables where the 150pt tournament was ending their first round. What do I find? My container was sitting at the edge of the table with everything inside. It looks like the entire community of players that sat at the first row of tables looked out for my stuff. I don't know who to thank, so I'll thank everyone that participated in the 150pt tournament. There was many opportunities for someone to swipe it, and it was left in plain sight for me to find. Thanks again to you all for being the best community of players I have ever met.
Jason Bell

Well, we have always said that nothing stinks like a magic player...now they have a new level of stink. Isnt there somewhere else we can send them? Mogadishu perhaps?

Thats awesome Jason. Great story.

BTW, you ran the team event really smoothly adn it was a lot of fun. Sorry we dropped but i was committed to the TileWars tourney.

Hopefully i can see it through next year.

I believe (if memory serves) - it was the sixth round. Aaron Shockley (Shinja) and I had just had a tough match where he was ahead by a few points. Time had already been called and we were finishing our round. We were analyzing if there was anyway for me to gain enough points. The fire alarm went off, and we basically ignored it for 1 minute. I determined that the only way for me to win was double crit on his speeder. He agreed, and I rolled 2 dice. I beleive both hit, but no crits. So I quickly signed the form and packed up. Aaron went onto a 2nd place finish in the swiss rounds, and I dropped to the heart-breaker slot (9th place). I believe we were the LAST game to finish that round. In a way - the fire alarm couldn't have been timed better.

On my way out - I considered my things. I had ALOT of stuff. (I always over-pack - I was a boyscout and "Be Prepared" stuck a little too well. I had a map bag, my reinforcements box, my trade fodder tackle box, and a small rolling suitcase with other miscellaneous stuff. It was all hanging out by the door we exited from (Next to were results were posted), where it was all weekend. Since I was near the end of the crowd, I set down my reiforcement box (I had that with me at the table) with the rest of my stuff, and walked through the door. But I did turn and make sure that last stragglers didn't mess with it. There was a guy I didn't recognize eye what I had just set down and pick it up. He turned to see me looking at him, and says, "Hey - did you want to take this with you?" I don't think we would have said that if I hadn't "caught" him. I said, "Yeah - I guess I better had." I went to gather my far too much stuff, and at this time only judges were left. Chuck came up and told me I could leave my stuff and it would be fine. I told him the story - but he said with a determined look on his face that he would watch it. Thanks Chuck! All my stuff was fine when I got back. Anything scooped up must have been before Chuck was on guard. Sorry to hear people lost stuff.

At the german nationals we put up a barrier to signal people "don't cross this line". This way it was very unlikely an outsider could have stolen anything. Anyone ignoring the barrier was escorted out off the area by me. So people could still watch the games (in the first rows) being played, but couldn't steal anything.

If that fire alarm was a test of the Gen Con officials, it was totally wrong to do so:

1. Some people (obviously) take advantage of the chaos and steal stuff.

2. If a real fire happens afterwards, visitors are more likely to say "it is a test anyway" and that puts them to mortal danger. It is silly to think that 1 fire alarm really is enough to ensure people move out of the building swift enough to avoid being burnt. Where there are many people, there is always a jam at the doors. Even more so, if everyone runs in the same direction.

But this theft affair is the reason why I never take more than a rucksack full of stuff to any tournaments. And even if I had to take an autoloss, I wouldn't leave my minis at a place where there are thousands of strangers and me not watching over them, if some official didn't tell me that he will be watching over them ALL THE TIME. To lose a match this way is annoying, but to lose your stuff is just frustrating and leads to some people never attending an open tournament again.

Tim, there's no reason to thank me. See, I've got this thing about me that's kind of weird... I rarely get angry, I rarely get pissed off, and I'm generally quick to shrug things off that typically make a person mad... but stealing makes me absolutely livid. It's one of the very few things that can easily incite me to violence (and I don't say that lightly). There were just far too many things left between those doors by our community for me to trust in the goodness of others and leave it all unprotected. And when you told me what happened with your stuff there was no way in hell I was going to leave until the place was empty of everyone but Dean and Jim.

I only wish I'd have gotten to the hall sooner so that maybe some of the other theft could have been avoided (I'd just finished judging, ran out for a quick break, and was on my way back in when the alarm sounded). I've been robbed before and it's a terrible feeling. I'm really sorry for anyone who had something of theirs stolen and if anything in my meager collection can replace what you've lost I'll be happy to do what I can.

Using a fire alarm as an opportunity to steal from fellow gamers, how sad and low can some people get.

Having been the victim of crime I can only sympathise and hope the culprits get their comeuppance in a very nasty way - I have no mercy for thieves.

Well, since we were allowed to return to the building so quickly afterwards, I can only assume that the alarm was either a prank, or an attempt at Theft. Either of which is really frustrating. For the SWMs players, we really did get extremely lucky that we had just finished a round and many of us were standing around waiting for the last couple people to finish playing.

If we had been mid-game, the best course of action would've been to whip out the camera/phone real quick and snap a photo, so you could know where to put the pieces back, then grab up everything and run out.

There was no fire/smoke anywhere near that I could see. So there was no way in hell I was going to walk out of there without my stuff. Luckily, I had most of it packed up already anyways.

I think it was something real, but obviously not a full blown fire from the bits of info on the opposite side of the building where we exited. People were talking about a burning smell. I'd guess something of the nature of an empty coffee pot on a hot burner or similar situation.