OwlCon Day 1 Recap

Had a good time today at OwlCon in Houston. Owlcon is not a large convention, but it is very well run and always offers a lot of gaming opportunities. I played a couple of games today and did a bit of painting. Not a bad way to spend the day at all.

A wise old mouse

Started off the morning at the Reaper Paint & Take booth where participants choose a free miniature from a selection of Reaper miniatures and use supplied paints to paint it up. You can get advice on how to paint, and it is in general good fun. I chose to paint up a small mouse, which looks like it would be perfect for the Mouse Guard RPG. I am thinking that it will also make an awesome figure for Song of Blades and Heroes. I chose what appears to be some sort of mouse mage or druid. He has an acorn staff and is smoking a pipe. I was able to add a few highlights to him, and I think he turned out well.

After painting, and bit of looking around in the vendor area, I sat down to have some lunch with Jeff from my game group (who also joined me at the painting area). Jeff published the 6 Arrows blog, and is responsible for recording all of our weekly game sessions. Lucky for us we ate while most people were still gaming, and we avoided the long lines.

Next up was a game or 3 of Crokinole. Playing Crokinole at OwlCon means playing against Tony Elam. Tony is Houston's resident Crokinole Master, and he offers a prize to any person who can beat him or score the most points against him. Typically, the winner has simply been able to score more points than anyone else. He is very good. Jeff sat down to play him first, and fared quite well. He lasted 4 rounds before being defeated. He gave up his seat after one game, and I was destroyed in a single round. Tony beat me 120 to 0 in that first game. Everyone has the option to play two games though and I did. I didn't win the second game either, but I was able to score 25 points on him. Turns out that 25 points was enough to be today's winner. I got to select from a set of games, mostly older RPG stuff, as a prize. I chose the board game Seismic, by Atlas Games. Looks to be a pretty simple little path building game.

My battleship is in position

When 3 o'clock rolled around it was time for my main event of the day, Uncharted Seas. This is a fantasy naval miniatures game published by Spartan Games. I have had the game for a long while, but never had the chance to play. When I arrived I was able to select from a number of fleets and choose to use the Iron Dwarves. I own an Iron Dwarves fleet, though they are unpainted, and I welcomed the chance to see how they played. You can check out some pictures of the game, and the awesome models we go to use, on Picasa. As for the game? I am very happy to report that except for some minor damage, I came through the event unscathed. I was the only player out of 8 to not loose any ships. I wiped out 3 frigate squads, part of two cruiser squads and sunk one of my opponents battleships. It was a good game for me. The game itself is so fun to play, and easy to learn that I cannot understand why I have not plyed sooner. The game is not expensive to get started with, about $45 online, and plays very quickly. I need to convince others to play.

OwlCon does not disappoint when it comes to providing a fun atmosphere for gaming. This year was no exception. The Uncharted Sea's game especially was well run. We had 8 players, and everything ran smooth as silk. There were not arguments, not disagreements, no hurt feelings, it just worked. Great experience that has me really excited about playing the game more. I am also very interested in the two other games from Spartan, Firestorm Armada and Dystopian Wars. All three games share the same basic mechanics, so learning one helps to learn the others.

Overall, it was a great first day. I am back again in the morning for a couple of more games.