I just got back home from my first convention as a Shadow Era Design Team member, and it was very very fun. Here is a short illustrated story about my adventures in Virginialand.
The drive from Ohio to Virginia was beautiful. There had been a heavy snowfall a few days before, so while the roads were clear the landscape was frosted in white and the mountains shone. The only thing more glorious was my breakfast at Shoney's, I am reasonably sure somebody sold his soul to Elementalisto get the biscuit recipe they use. A gas station tried to trick me into buying the wrong octane shortly after breakfast, but the coffee did it's job and I bought the right stuff. I snapped this incriminating photograph of their shenanigans:
The rest of the drive up to the con was uneventful, fast forward to the opening of the vendor hall!
I set up a Shadow Era booth with plenty of product for sale, free demos to anyone who wanted one, and one very special challenge. Anybody who owned their own cards could make a deck and play against me and my Hat-Deck for fabulous prizes including foil epics and rares, exclusive foil cards, Corrupted Angels, packs of cards, or even a set of Status Symbols dice. You could win a chance to pull a random prize from the Bat-Bag just for playing against the Hat-Deck, but if you beat me you got a whopping 3 pulls instead!
One of the nice things about this convention was that the stage was in the Vendor Hall, so I got to enjoy some fun shows while doing my job. There was a live birds-of-prey show with falcons and eagles (Some of the con proceeds sponsor a charity that protects Virginia wildlife). There was some great live music, and plenty of great panels. My favorite panel was Voice Actor Jon St. John. he spent 15 minutes talking about his job, 15 minutes taking questions, and 60 minutes letting anybody who wanted to plug their phone into the loudspeaker so he could crank call their friends as Duke Nukem. I won't tell you what he said to my friend Kyle, but it involved doing unpleasant things to his head and down his neck.
There were a number of players who took my demos and enjoyed the game enough to buy some cards, so at their request I set up a tournament on Sunday. It was really fun to see the way the environment played out when nobody had every card they wanted, so things went in a pleasantly unpredictable way. The final match was Chris' Serena
And that's my story of Madicon 2013. I didn't see anything else awesome at all. Not even a girl dragon. Well, maybe one girl dragon.
All said and done I had a great time, and the local players (and stores) loved the game. I drove home without event, and I cannot wait until the next convention[/URL].
By the way, the Bat-Bag challenge was taken a total of 7 times, and the Hat-Deck prevailed 7 times. Fabulous prizes were won anyways. Even I don't know what will be in the bat-bag next time, but if you bring your deck and challenge me you could find out the fun way!
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