20ft Radius: GenCon 2012: D&D Championship, Fourthcore Team Deathmatch, and so much other coolness! (Part 2)

What constitutes the ultimate gaming high known to humankind? I'll give you a hint: it has 93 hours, 2 tournaments, umpteen seminars, and a lot of cool people. It's called GenCon, and this is the first year I have attended it and I can tell you it was the absolute best days of gaming I have ever had in my life. My schedule was busy from start to finish and I came home absolutely exhausted. I will go over some of the things that I did over the course of the weekend and show some of the stuff I managed to pick up.

D&D Championship

First of two events that I was going down to GenCon to do. D&D Championship is a fast-paced, grueling 4 hour, 5 encounters...if you make it that far. This year the Championship was an Epic level tourney; 22nd level to be exact. We played 5 encounters of 45 minutes each. This was a timed event and if you failed any of the encounters, your chances of being eliminated from the tourney was very likely.

Out of the forty or so teams that entered this competition, we made it down to the last 6, to eventually win 3rd place overall in the tourney due to two rookie mistakes we made at the table. Great time was had by all. I can't wait to see what they throw at us next year. Our team came out of there with some pretty good swag. Worth missing 4 seminars for it.

You can get more detail on this year's D&D Championship here. Good times were had by all.

Fourthcore Team Deathmatch

The ultimate event and if I only had to do one event at GenCon, it would be this one. Derek, Dan and I planned and primped and went over strategies for this tournament. We even participated in a tourney before the tourney to get brushed up on the do's and don'ts of the fourthcore.

Fourthcore Team Deathmatch Tournament at Gencon this year was a two map play guarantee, most kills elimination for the first round. In the final two rounds it was just plain elimination. It was grueling, but with much skill and strategy we overcame the adversity and WON the tournament.

VICTORY TO TEAM MOOSE HOCKEY MAPLE SYRUP EH?

See the recap here

Fourthcore Team Deathmatch is:"...a contest of skill, wits, and luck. FTDM is about winning D&D." It was a great tourney and I recommend it to anyone.

Round one

Round 2

Semi-Finals

Finals - Surprise map (PAC-MAN)

Read more about the Deathmatch here. Good times were had by all...

Things That I Accomplished on This Trip

Remember in my previous post "Losing my Convention Virginity: GenCon, Here I Come!!" I laid out some of the goals I would like to accomplish at GenCon. Here is a recap of the goals I wished to accomplish at my first convention.

List of goals

Promote my Blog Site: I did none of that. I find that I have been lacking a clear direction with the site lately and want to wait a little bit to find the direction and maybe next year... But I did see a crapload of homemade business cards change hands.
Meet people from the blogsphere: With the help of Derek, I was able to meet quite a few people from the blogsphere. I ended up meeting ChattyDM, Sarah Darkmagic, Alphastream, Benoit, theIDdm, as well as a few authors, namely Erin Evans and Erik Scott de bie. I also met Mike from neuroglyph Games(he was sitting right behind me) I probably met so many others but did not get their names. What a thrill to meet these people face-to-face. Next year my goal is to post my schedule and my photos and hopefully meet others of the blogsphere.
Make new friends: With all the games I played, it was inevitable. From pre-gencon tourneys, to the final event of D&D Championship, I met a huge amount of people I will not soon forget and hopefully have a couple of drinks with them next year. I hope all the guys who helped us reach the finals for D&D Championship are back next year so we can win this thing.
Try new games and play with a variety of people: I did so. Many board games, events and tourneys have let me play with a variety of great people. It was fantastic.

Three out of four goals have been met. GenCon was a success.

Some stuff I got from the Con