I just want to thank everyone who managed to make it to a Star Wars Miniatures event this past weekend at Dragon*Don.
I'll be writing up a report of the event at some time today (as soon as I get some of my homework done), as well as giving Dean and Jim a verbal report over the phone. But the highlights of the weekend are thus:
Daniel Stephens (Echo) won the Dragon*Con Jedi Trials event (150 point constructed), walking away with a complete set of Jedi Academy and his own copy of Map Pack 2 from Jedicartographer. He chose slow cannon as his squad and Teth as his map.
As far as the overall turnout of the entire weekend... we went through 8 cases of miniatures for prize support and the sealed events that we ran and there was very little interest in any of the scheduled constructed events (valuable lesson learned for next years Dragon*Con!). We also went through an entire case of starter sets from the demonstrations that we put on, by midway through day two, having demonstrated the game to at least 36 individuals throughout the entire weekend. We absolutely gained some loyal converts as several of the players that were introduced to the game continued to show up to play throughout the weekend (one player even going so far as to spending the vast majority of his D-Con budget on Star Wars Miniatures boosters in the dealer hall... I think he bought somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 boosters and the Attack on Endor set).
Overall, I would call the weekend a
huge success and would like to acknowledge that none of it would have been possible without the support of Jim Frazer (moses), Sarah Richey (WotC_Sarah), Matt Francella (Jedicartographer),
Auggies (august), Nick Stearns (IronicAbomination, head Judge), and Jordan Windham (Judge). Nick and Jordan worked their rear ends off, putting in over 40 hours of volunteer work each, and they are both directly responsible for introducing the game to over 30 new people.
And, finally, a word about what I have in store for next year; This year I was surprised by a few things though, in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have been.
First of all, regarding running events at Dragon*Con is concerned, very few people are interested in playing constructed events. This is understandable, to a degree, as Dragon*Con is a Sci-Fi convention and not a gaming convention. Attendees were more interested in packing their costumes and figuring out how to lug inexpensive booze on their trip, which left little room for a collection of miniatures to even consider them. Sealed events garnered the most interest of all. Should I be able to get similar support next year, under the same set of circumstances, I imagine that the majority of the events that I schedule will be of the sealed variety.
Second of all, Sunday is the busiest day for gaming, not Saturday as I'd imagined. This also makes sense when you consider that there are lots of things, outside of gaming, that are going on on Saturday. Couple that with the fact that most atttendees only make it for the weekend itself and it's not really surprising that they'd rather spend their Saturday going to the parade, meeting their favorite actors and actresses, attending symposiums, and finding the coolest parties or concerts to attend. Come Sunday, once a good number of people have the previous days activities out of their systems, there is a greater interest in spending some time gaming and recovering from last nights libations. Next year I will adjust the schedule with that in mind. The "main event" (the Dragon*Con Jedi Trials) will likely be held on Sunday for the largest possible turnout.
Third, running 4 days of gaming is expensive! Though entry fees were collected and
some of that actually went into my pocket, at the end of the 4 days I didn't quite manage to cover my expenses. This was not a disappointment, though, as I hadn't even
considered the expenses that I would incur when I agreed to run these events and started planning them out several months ago. And, in hindsight, I would do it all over again regardless of the cost to me. The expenses that I had to cover, from where I sit, brought a lot of happiness to the people who participated in each event and brought several people into this game that I love so much. If someone offered me the chance to repeat that result for a cost of a hundred bucks or so I would consider it money well spent. Next year, however, I'm going to have to plan things more wisely from my side of the table. All of my thoughts and plans for this years convention were from the player side of the table because I wanted everyone to have as good an experience as possible. Planning ahead of time for things such as parking, transportation, equipment, and consumables is probably a good idea so that I, at least, can minimize any surprises.
And last, but not least, I want to thank everyone who participated in any of the events! It was wonderful to see Angie (Xffan_2000) again, who made the trip to Dragon*Con from Florida and played in a sealed event on Friday. I got to meet her husband and I took a couple of snapshots of her dressed up on Saturday. I'll post those later
. I also got to meet several people from all over the country and, surprisingly, we met nearly a dozen local people who weren't even aware that we had a play group assembled. Most all of them were excited to learn about us and where we played, and most all of them expressed an interest in getting together with us and playing on the weekends. Even though I rarely got to leave the gaming area and see much of the con at all I had an absolute
blast. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to everyone who had a hand in making this past weekend so much fun.
- Chuck
(who is slowly getting his voice back and is now set to tackling some homework)