Heresy at GenCon 2014

Hello all! This is Trooper and welcome to a special editorial piece for the Rites of Battle. As many of you Indy/Midwest folks are aware, GenCon 2014 was last week and, of course, I had to check it out and spend both a huge amount of time and money there. So without further delay, let's get into the sights, sounds, and impressions that this Guardsman saw during his trip to Hive Indianapolis.

Thursday

Thursday started off early. I left my place and went downtime, accompanied by two friends. I was dropped off for a 9am game that I had to run. In my spare time, when I'm not working or playing 40k, I'm really involved in a few tabletop games, primarily through the World of Darkness RPG system. Because of this and some connections, I was running some small one shot games in the system for the company "City of Broken Glass", which got its start this year at GenCon. Thursday was a Changeling: The Lost game and it went pretty damn well, all things considered (Plus I got to have "Gamemaster" on my badge, how cool is that?!)
Four hours later, I was walking out to a phone call from Corvus, wanting to know if I wanted to hit up the Exhibit Hall with him. 

So of course we went to the Games Workshop booth. Forgeworld got way too much of my money, netting me Imperial Armour 3 and 4 (For my Elysians), Tyberos the Red Wake, Carcharadons transfer sheets, and the Navigator model. Also picked up some bits from the Bits Guy (Seriously, this guy is awesome), where I found two cyclops models for my Elysians. Neat!

Corvus got himself some excellent X-Wing stuff and we perused the Fantasy Flight booth. I picked up Dark Heresy 2.0 and it is easily one of the most beautiful looking books. See, I have a tradition of picking up Fantasy Flight's 40k systems every year and, as it turns out, this year was no exception.

That night I went to an Old World of Darkness LARP, where I played a Technocrat (The big bads of Old World Mage the Ascension) with a buddy playing my partner. The first night included bombing a guys house and my partner and I manipulating all the other supernaturals into fighting each other. So it was pretty fucking good. Set in the city of Vancouver, we made ourselves out to be businessmen (I pretended to be completely human).

Friday

Another early day, another game. I pitted a group of randomly assigned players against my version of a Skinwalker. The group nutjob used a grenade I gave him and killed a bear and nearly himself. The big bad won and kept everything hidden. Honestly some of the best roleplaying I have ever seen in a game. Really impressed.

Ended up seeing Corvus and a friend for some drinks before Kevin and myself ran off and got lunch. Godfrey called me up and together we roamed the hall (of course ending up back at the GW booth, where I got him a Mechanicus shirt from Forgeworld), but didn't get much else.

The LARP that night consisted of me getting shut out by some of the other super powered folks in the city. So I started threatening to destroy their livelihoods. Then I got heard and, through some information manipulation, nearly brought every faction in the city to killing each other. Unfortunately, people are patsies and are afraid of PVP. Go figure, right?

Saturday

Slept in a bit and wandered the hall with Corvus and Godfrey. They pointed out a small army that had been sold to the Bits Guy. Really well done and supremely well modeled in Heresy Era armor, the armour was perfect for my Carcharadon project. I immediately set out to get some cash for them while Corvus and Godfrey demoed some games. I managed to get some models I was trying to sell (including my Templar) and told the seller I would be back, neglecting to put a down payment on them. When I returned, we agreed to a lump sum trade for my army in exchange for the army I wanted on the shelf. I went to get the army and....it was gone. Sold less than 20 minutes before I got back.

I was beyond distraught. The army was seriously perfectly modeled for my needs and I just missed it. Gone. I ended up trying to sell the army I had but had no luck, so I did a straight trade for three drop pods and two tactical squads. The trade was fucking horrible, but with no other options I felt I didn't have much of a choice. So I met up with a buddy from the east coast, went with another friend to BW3's for booze and wings, and then went to the LARP.

At the LARP, my partner and I once again nearly brought the city's factions to their knees and watched the entire thing on a big screen plasma from our penthouse. We also coerced the entirety of the city's mages to our cause (and we are mortal enemies) and secured our hold on the city to a horrifying degree. Afterwards I went out with the people playing the Fae, watched my buddy get hit on, and laughed as I got very drunk and drowned away my sorrows.

Sunday

Walked the hall, bought some brushes, and a friend bought me the MKII power weapon pack from Forgeworld. Then I went home and put together drop pods...something I have never had to do before.

Conclusion

It was an awesome time, but I couldn't help but feel super down about missing the army. To be honest, I am still pretty down about it, but like all things I will get over and adapt it. But the goods I got plus the experience running my games and playing in the LARP made things a lot better, masking for some of the downs of the con. Probably the best thing to take away from this was meeting a metric shit ton of new friends who are local and willing to work on stuff for next years LARP, as well as shoot the shit and just hang out.

And Onyx Path announced World of Darkness 2.0, which is AWESOME.

All in all, it was a pretty good time. Here's to next year!