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What a Weekend! (Toronto Trek 13 Convention Report)
by Chris Lobban Well, I just finished (read: survived) my first large Con experience. And what an experience it was. Well, the weekend really started on Thursday night, both because Thursday was my last day of school for the week, and because that's when we were s'posed to start demoing. So, Thursday afternoon right after school I headed into downtown Toronto. A bunch of us, were going to be meeting at a store downtown called "Magic: the Hand" to show all of those Magic players the true light of Decipher products. We'd scheduled to be there demoing from 4 to 6. And apparantly Sean (Smallman) was going to be there with us. Well..... we finally heard from him sometime around 6, I think. He'd had to wait for one of his shipments of stuff to arrive, then he'd gotten stopped at the border trying to come through customs with it. Typical, isn't it? Decipher stuff usually seems to get stopped at the border for a little while. I guess Decipher personnel are no different. ;-) Anywayz, I finally had to leave at 7 (well, technically I'd planned on having to leave by 6:30, but I hung around for a little while extra), but I'm told that Sean actually did manage to arrive sometime after that. And Thursday left, and Friday came, and that was the 1st day. :) Friday morning, I got to sleep in. Then, when I eventually got out of bed, I ran wildly around the house gathering stuff for the Con. And mid-afternoon, I left for it. 45 minute drive out to the airport (where the Con was being held) which became an hour, after I realized the exit I wanted didn't exist on the highway southbound, only north. Oops. So I had to circle around for a bit, working on getting back to the road that I was looking for. Eventually found it, and the hotel. Went in, called up to Sean's room to let him know I was there, but no answer. Found the Dealers room (where we were going to be setting up).... but couldn't find Sean again. Somebody said that he'd checked in, but then disappeared. So I called back up to his room and found him there, so I headed up to help him drag down all of our stuff. That's when (after all this talking on the phone and email trying to arrange things) I finally got to meet him. My first impression of him? Hmm.... probably "I wonder what he's hiding under that beret that he never takes off?" ;-) We made a couple trips up and down to get all of our stuff down to the dealers area, figured out where we were going to be, and started getting setup. Sometime in there (Chris) McKenna arrived, and helped finish setting up. We were ready right before the room opened to the public, and as soon as it did, the demos started. I'll skip past most of that, but to say that I think in those few hours (6-10) I probably ran at least 4 YJ demos and a ST demo, and saw McKenna running 2 or 3 ST demos, plus Sean swapped in with us at one point and ran a few more. Then, we cleaned up for the night and decided on the tourney schedule for the weekend (we'd already had a number of people asking), then I had to head home. Friday left, and Saturday came, and that was the 2nd day. Saturday morning, up bright and early to grab a couple extra things that I'd discovered Sean hadn't brought with him (and my brother Steve, who wanted to attend the Con). I headed back out to the hotel, to get set up for a new day. That day I lost track of how many YJ demos I gave, plus a few more ST demos, and only 1 or 2 SW. But the really fun part was when just after lunch, Patty arrived. Patty (Geezer Kes, online) is a good friend of mine from Alberta that decided to fly out for the weekend to attend the Con and visit with myself and my brothers (Gilthanass and Cptn Spot, online... Gilth being the one that came with me on Saturday). We ran into her just as we were walking back from lunch (this was after I'd realized that in the rush I hadn't eaten anything for 26 hours... oops), so she joined us at the booth then (after going and buying a con badge, of course). I taught her how to play YJ at one point, and then later on managed to find time for a real (read: non-demo) game of ST. Unfortunately, her "Exo-gamma-compa-Zon Deck"(™ Patricia Gillard) managed to beat my "Really Cool Rainbow Deck of Doom" (™ Chris Lobban). But they were both mostly just fun decks anywayz, so it was a great game. The day went on okay, with lots of demo's given. Then, that night we got to go have fun. After the dealers room closed (at 7:30 we speed-packed the stuff and ran to grab dinner (which ended up being tortilla chips and salsa, thanks to the lack of time and the lack of a fast food joint in the hotel), and then at 8:00 met in one of the gaming rooms for our first tournament, a Star Trek Sealed Deck. We managed to grab 12 players for it (at least 4 or 5 of which we'd taught that day, or the previous) and with McKenna running it, we had a great time. Plus, we went with the most completely unusual sealed deck format I've ever seen. Well, we had all these boxes of product from various sets onhand (to show off what was available) so we decided to crack some open. We only had 10 SDII's, but luckily that morning I'd grabbed a box of DS9 Starters before I left, so we were able to use those. But, no point in letting the SDII's go to waste, so we decided to randomly give half the people there SDIIs, and the other half DS9. Then we handed out boosters, with each person getting 1 AU, 1 QC, and 2 DS9. Finally, we decided on two universal rules. Every person was considered to have seeded both a Memory Wipe (first use, of course), and a Beware of Q (also first use, I think.... whichever allows Q-Dilemmas seeds as S/P). So we penned those two rules modifications up onto the whiteboard in each room we were using, and sat down to speed-build decks, then the tourney started. We also had decided to limit each round to 40 minutes instead of the usual hour, because we wanted to get 3 rounds in (for sanctioning), but only had 2 hours before Andy Robinson (Garak from DS9) was scheduled to read "Garak's Diaries" (which most people there wanted to attend). After the 3 rounds, Steve (Gilth) came out on top and undefeated. I gave him a Dukat T-shirt (to match the only other T-shirt he'd ever won, Dukat of Borg), and we all split up so most could go see Garak, after telling people to stop by the booth tomorrow for their prizes (we hadn't yet decided who got what). I headed home with Steve and Patty in tow, and we crashed for the night. Saturday left, and Sunday came, and that was the 3rd day. Sunday morning we didn't get up quite as early, instead taking the time to enjoy a pancake brunch. I'd already warned Sean the night before that I'd be a bit late, and would miss the setup. So after brunch, we packed up into the car, taking yet one more person with us this time (my other brother Craig (Cptn. Spot)) and headed off to the hotel. Another morning full of demos for Sean, McKenna and I, then around 11:00 we started sending people off in the direction of the gaming rooms again, this time for a YJ Sealed Deck tournament. We found our 8 people by about 11:30, and Sean stayed in the gaming room to run the tournament while McKenna and I covered the booth. The really cool thing about it was that I think between all 8 participants in the tourney, there were probably a grand total of about 2 hours playing time (not counting demos). Because almost all of them had just learned the game from us that weekend. At the end of it.... Steve had managed to win yet again. They all returned from the tournament to the booth area to tear open their prizes, and start trading between them as most of them built their first real YJ decks. Another afternoon of demos until right around the time they were getting ready to close the dealers room we found ourself completely out of demo decks. Perfect timing. So then we worked on dismantling things, and when we were done cleaning up (and the cleanup crew for the room kicked us out so they could put away our tables) we dragged all of the stuff back up to Sean's room, and decided to hang out there for a while relaxing and celebrating a successful weekend. So after sitting around for a while talking and laughing (especially at Sean, who was far too tired. Next time you see him, ask him about the little Ewoks that come in the box with the cute little handle, and see if he can still remember where all 15 of them are hiding) we realized that it was almost time for Patty's plane home, and I had to get myself and my brothers home since I had school early the next morning, and Steve had work not all that long after. So we left, I dropped Patty off at the airport and my brothers and I headed home. I was exhausted, to say the least, but still alive and extrememly happy with the way the weekend had gone. It'd even ended on a great note, with lots of fun hanging around up in Seans room. And now I'm back to school and anxiously awaiting GenCon, when I hope to repeat a lot of the experience, except with even more people. And fingers are crossed that Sean will be able to return to Toronto for the huge Sci-Fi Con at the end of August (Jeri Ryan AND John DeLancie will be there Sean, how can you say no?) for even more fun. Now, I just wish that I had a day of rest to finish the weekend..... |
