Sunday 5th June saw us at Wales Comic Con, Glydwr University in Wrexham, North Wales.
My alarm was set for 4.30am, although I was up just before 4.00am. Time for some toast and a couple of mugs of coffee then load the car and go and pick up my assistants for the day, my COGS club mates Martin and Jason. I had arranged to pick up Martin for 5.45am and then onto to Jason for 6.00am and all went as planned. I had used Google maps to plan the route a few weeks earlier and needed to allow just over two hours as I needed to drive up to Stockport and then onto the M60/M56/M53 and down again into North Wales.
All went very well, in fact the trip only took us 1 hour 50 minutes, the only fly in the ointment for the whole day was that I got caught on a speed camera just before Hazel Grove, I was doing 38 mph in what I thought was a 40mph zone, as there were no signs to indicate that I had in fact just left a 40mph zone and was now actually in a 30mph area, bummer. On the return home I double checked and I was correct there are no actual signs to show that you are coming out of a 40 zone to 30 zone and vice versa, apart from the one laying flat on the road that I had not seen as I had obviously been distracted by one of my passengers as I approached that section of road, ah well, in 39 years on the road, this will be the first time I have been caught, up until now I have not even had a parking ticket!
Anyway back to the subject at hand, we turned up at the venue at 8.00am just as the organisers were opening up, not bad timing, we got the car unloaded and took everything into the hall to find our table. A few traders had already set up the previous day and it was easy enough to spot the section allocated to the GCN. We had three 6 x 4 table for the games and a nice large area for the GCN stand, in fact half the space was not needed.
Dan and his crew from Bracknell turned up about 20 minutes after we had arrived, although they had a three hour plus trip so had to get up a fair bit earlier than we did. Or rather half of Dan's contingent turned up, the other car with the 40K game apparently got lost and then ran out of fuel and did not turn up for about another hour and a half, however all was good and they got there safely.
My Lord of the Rings game was duly set and I gave Martin and Jason a brief of how the scenario should work, by this time all the traders and some of the guest signings were in the venue. A lot of the guest signings were not as previously advertised, this is quite a normal occurrence as 'proper' workand/or real life has to take prioity over turning up to sign some 10x8 inch photographs.
We had time to have a wander around before the doors opened to the public, it was not a massive event so it did not take long to get round, there was quite a large crowd building up outside though. and as always I did find something non gaming wise to spend a bit of my cash on, ain't it always the case.
My hobbies are wide and varied and are more than just war gaming related and I found a nice cheap 12 inch Doctor Who figurine to fill the gap in my 12 inch Doctor Who collection. I also went to get 10 x 8 signed photo's of a couple of the guests. Norman Lovett, Holly from Red Dwarf and Chris Barrie, Arnold Rimmer from Red Dwarf, which boosted my 10 x 8 inch autograph collection nicely, I had already got the rest the Red Dwarf cast autograph's from Memorabilia show's several years ago.
At 10.00am the doors opened and the crowd poured in, I was pleasantly surprised by the numbers in attendance, I had not expected quite so many people. 20 minutes later we had our first victims of the day to play the LotR game and off we went.
The game went nicely and as planned, even as three of the people playing had never actually played then game before it went quite smoothly, the fist game saw the Good side get a minor victory. The game ran for just under two hours, so this was a good time to stop and have some lunch and another look around.
Halfway through one of my baguettes Dan brought over a young couple who wanted a very brief and basic run through the rules, so armed with a couple of dice, a tape measure and a few models each they were given the basics of the LotR system, then back to my lunch.
It went quiet for a while as the guest held their seminars and talks, however we had a couple more people interested in playing the game again, once more we had two complete novices to the system, but as with the first game it all went very well and we had finished once again in just under two hours. This time there was no winner as non of the objectives had been met, although it was a very close run game, the Evil side very nearly won a major victory, but ended up with a draw.
All the people who took part said that they had had fun playing and said that they had really enjoyed the experience which is always nice to hear. The 40K and WFB games had people playing them so the GCN being in attendance at the show seemed to go down very well and added a new dimension to the proceeding. Had we been aware that we had so much free space Dan had mentioned that we could have also put on a couple of demo games of Bloodbowl too.
4.15 saw the con coming to an end, which allowed us to have a leisurely packing away session, we were all packed up and away for 5.00pm. I dropped off my two helpers and was home for 7.15pm, and everything packed away at this end and able to put my feet up by 8.00pm.
All in all a good day out, the event did seem a strange one to have the GCN attending at first glance, being a comic con with associated memorabilia, but we were well received and it all went very well, and one of the dealers had a small selection of GW boxed games, not sure if they sold any of them but it was the first them the organisers had made this type of move, maybe next year they may invite a more dedicated model soldier trader.
I have to say thanks to Dan for supplying me with all the coffee I had all day, well he actually brought one each for the three of us but Martin and Jason only drink tea, so I ended up with the packets for the drinks machine, which was good as it kept me awake all day.
Not too sure about Dan's comment in his blog about the rest of them seeing if I would stay awake or not, which I did mange to do BTW.
There are pictures of the event on Facebook and on the web site shortly if you want to check it out.
http://www.walescomiccon.com/
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1468058785377.2065290.1350785682
Read more »
