Q-Con 2010

Now that I've discussed being a geek, I want to discuss the motherload of geekdom: Q-Con. As a friend described it, Dorkcentral.

For one weekend every year, Queen's Dragonslayers put on the UK's most highly attended gaming convention in Queen's Student Union. If you're wondering what a games convention is. Sadly it's not a showcase of the biggest and best new games. It's sort of more of a meet up for people to play all sorts of computer games, roleplaying games, card games and board games. Where traders come to sell their wares and for the best in the country to come and battle it out in Street Fighter IV or Call of Duty tournaments. Whilst I've been playing computer games since I got my master system at the age of five, I opted not to get involved. The reasons are two fold: firstly I'm a terrible loser. Ask any of my friends and they will tell you that I will scream and howl at the set or slam my controller into the ground if I lose. Playing games I've never played before against people that are just far too good is not something I want to get involved in, not in public anyway. Second of all I could not be bothered joining queues for any length of time.

Despite these queues there are scores of people that will show up for a crack at being king of Super Smash Brothers. This event has got so big that in order to go you need to pre-book your tickets several months in advance otherwise you can't even get in. Whilst I wasn't keen enough on going to fork out £20 ahead of time, I was lucky enough to be playing Magic on a Thursday night in my favourite gaming store on a night that two free passes were available to whoever was taking part in a minor event.

Having to work Friday night meant that I landed at the event on Saturday afternoon. The turn out was pretty impressive if not worrying. As I make the point in my last post, I'm a dice rolling, card drawing geek. I've wikipedia-ed my way through obscure comic book character's backgrounds multiple times and go on forums to discuss whether or not Thor could beat Superman. However my level of geekiness pales in comparison to many of those that attend Q-Con.

Like most major conventions of this kind there's a huge number of people who come dressed in all sorts of ridiculous costumes. Ever wanted to get dressed up as Solid Snake? Go to Q-Con. Have a thing for fourteen year olds dressed as Sailor Moon, well then you're in paedophile paradise.

That is one of the major problems with any convention. There are generally three types of people that should not wear provocative clothing. The first group are those who have a ridiculously high BMI. Morbidly obese people wearing skimpy clothing is not a good thing. The second group and it's for a very similar reason is the chronically androgynous. If it's completely impossible to tell your gender then it's probably not a good look. The third group are thirteen year old girls. Even if they are well developed for I should not be given an eyeful of a barely pubescent girl's rack. Police sirens are blaring in my head as soon as I so much as catch a glimpse. Don't get me wrong, if I was fourteen again I'd probably have absolutely loved it. I would have been turning my baseball cap backwards all over the place, quite happy to play the Ash Ketchum to some girl's Misty but there was just a tad too much Elf queen business going on. I'm all for cracking grass on the pitch and old enough to bleed puns but jail is a place middle class white boys like me do not survive.

Perhaps also I've become too much of a norm to be seen in costume for anything that doesn't involve alcohol or narcotics. I'm telling you though, I reckon going to some event where it involves dressing like an orc, camping in a forest and drinking buckfast for two days sounds brilliant. What could be more fun than wearing armour and throwing rocks yelling lightning bolt whenever you're blootered.

Having arrived at 1 PM, my first port of call was playing Magic the Gathering. If you've never heard of it, Magic the Gathering is a collectable card game akin to a grown up pokemon. My magic playing friend Niall and I explained it to a group of friends not in the know in a few sentences:

Me: You have twenty life. I have twenty life. I've got to reduce you to zero before you reduce me to zero.

Niall: And how do you do this?

Me: With a sixty card deck.

If only I had caught on camera Niall's description of the game, I don't think anything will ever be as impressive as his declaration to a group of people who are either drunk or off their tree on acid that

"You.. are a planeswalker"

He then elaborated to those there that that meant casting spells, summoning creatures and doing battle in the multiverse. Kind of mind blowing whilst one is tripping balls.

Whilst most of us players don't really pay too much attention about the storyline or the fantasy theme, enjoying more the thrill of the chess meets poker mechanics which the game provides. Seeing as it engages both the mathematical parts of your brain, your ability to think startegically and read people, it's one of the hardest games in the world to get good at. A professional scene does exist, with some players having earned several million dollars playing. Whilst there's a lot more money playing poker (and indeed many of the top magic players are poker geniuses), I find magic a heck of a lot more fun. I like going head to head with another player in a battle of wits exercise. One of the game's tag lines is:

In here there is no twitch, no reflex that can save you from the power of my mind.

Whilst there is a huge luck element of the game, with experince you get better and better at learning how to play around bad luck and utilizing your good luck.

No surprises then that I say that the first thing I did at 1 PM on Saturday was sit down to play in a Magic the Gathering tournament. The prize: a shit ton of cards and three byes (automatic match wins) in a big tournament in Goteborg (Sweden) where there's a real chance of making money or making it on to the pro circuit where the money is obscene.

Whilst I'm certainly not fantastic at the game I'd say I'm a little bit above average and there was a relatively low turn out for the event. This was in part due to a lot of magic players neglecting Q-Con or through pig ignorance. Those that turned up tended to be a little bit rusty in their understanding of the game - they hadn't played in a while or not quite as much as me. This gave me a fairly distinct advantage since I've been playing online like crazy recently, spending far too much money on imaginary cards. This meant that over the course of four and a half hours I managed to take the three byes and should hopefully be heading to Sweden.

At this point I'm going to tell you how I did it but there's absolutely no point for anyone to read after this point. Back in the old days, I called this the "Fuck off non-magic players section" or FONMP. This isn't out of rudeness in fact it's out of respect for those that don't play. I just don't want to be wasting your time with gobledeegook.

*** FONMP SECTION BEGINS ***

Okay so the format was ROE sealed. In the six boosters popped, I got very few bombs. It was quite tempting to play black because of Nirkhama Revenant as was it tempting to play blue for Sphynx of Magosi and Corralheim commander. Unfortunately out of the playble blue and black, I was still seven cards short of a sealed deck. That meant I was running off a base of green and white commons and uncommons with a splash of black for double vendetta.

Deck list

8 Forest
7 Plains
2 Swamp

Joraga Treespeaker
Bramblesnap
Lone Missionary
Beastbreaker of Bala Ged
Aura Gnarlid
Daggerback Basilisk
Dawnglare Invoker
Wildheart Invoker
Ondu Giant
Stomper Cub
Totem Guide Hartebeest
Artisan of Kozilek

Guard Duty
2x Vendetta
Smite
Puncturing Light
2x Growth Spasm
Repel the Darkness
Survival Cache
Boar Umbra
Mammoth Umbra

Yeap, classic G/W stompy.

Matchups
Decky - G/B
For some reason Decky isn't too big a fan of this format, despite the fact he won a pre-release. We have a fairly good match, blowing up each other's creatures and getting big digs in with Beastbreaker of Bala Ged. Ultimately it comes down to Dawnglare Invoker and an umbra on it.

Brock
Actually called Gavin Carville, he's had the nickname Brock since he was about 14 for having a Brock Lesnar stature to him (or at least for his age)since then.
I can't really remember what Brock's deck consisted of but I go 2-0 against him in pretty much the same fashion as Decky - Dawnglare Invoker + umbra = win. Brock and I played a casual game three that went backwards and forwards for sometime. Having to deal with his early level up creatures meant I was seeing all his big eldrazi dudes come out to play. We both called it a day as the third round was about to begin.

Cubby
Ian Walker has been playing the game off and on since the dawn of time. When he does well he does great but his being in London for the last year has meant he hasn't had the same amount of time to devote to the game and probably wasn't at his best. In the first game he makes the unfortunate misplay of attacking into my bramblesnap with his unlevelled zulaport enforcer, failing to realize I can tap the bramblesnap to pump itself. He tries to take it back but being the dick I am, I don't let it netting me some card advantage and avoiding a possibly heinous threat mid game. The second game saw Magic's luck element was playing out big time in the second game. For the first five or six turns I generally ramped with growth spasm and played stomper cubs using them for creature trades. I got out artisan of kozilek early and was able to swing for the win. If Cubby had drawn his second forest he'd have played Haze Frog, dropped a vengevine on his turn and ended the game in devastating fashion for me.

During that break, Cubby and I went to get some food so I chomped on a nice fat chicken salad roll. Dems some good eatins.

Matt Leebody
Again Matt Leebody is great whenever he plays a lot but he hasn't had that much time for the game as of recent. His G/B deck was packing some nice punches - Consume the Meek had been taking games off a number of people whilst Mull Daya Channellers was a fairly constant annoyance. Double Boar Umbra was also a constant threat with his black levellers to which I had little answer to except creature trade, tap down with repel the darkness and guard duty so I could stall out to the good old Dawnglare Invoker + Umbra finish. Vendetta was pretty cute in this match up for the 2 for 1s it was providing with his green creatures whilst the umbras were on the stack. He takes a game off me as I fail to deal with zulaport enforcer swinging as a 5/5 with fear. At this point we could have ID-d into the top 4 but we were both playing for high standings on the swiss.

Top 4
Alan J Warnock
Alan regularly impresses me with his ability in pretty much any card game. At 15 he shows promise way beyond his years, I often find him a tough match up, despite the fact I play way more magic than he does. Whilst I don't play Yu-gi-oh myself (I'm not -that- sad!), I hear he cleans up all the time. I believed his deck to be absolutely bonkers, as he popped Gideon Jura, Sarkhan the Mad and Consuming Vapors and he offers me the bye for this match if I give him four of my boosters. This is as much as I want to say I've won a GPT than to get the byes but we play it out anyway. The first game his deck graps out on him and I'm generally winning with a card he doesn't see as a win condition - Beastbreaker of Bala Ged. After taking some hefty swings he's forced to dump some removal at it leaving nothing around to deal with Dawnglare Invoker. The second game he acts like a jackass, deliberaltely making misplays in order to wind me up - sticking lust for war on aura gnlarid and sacking eldrazi spawn during my upkeep for no reason. Whether or not his hand was crap or he was playing bad from the start I'm not so sure but he sarcastically ran about declaring me the champion for the rest of the day. All in good humour I think but a degree of sportsmanship could be learned.

Matt Leebody (again)
I face up against Matt again. He's not too worried about getting the Byes and I'm not about to be blackmailed into parting with the remaining three boosters I got for being top of the swiss. I'm quite happy to keep them for draft. He's not too worried about either the byes or the boosters at this point he's playing for pride and fun which he gets out of this match in spades. After a fairly resounding win for me in the first game, I think I'm about to take the second. Turn 9 he swings with his ulamog crusher into my boar umbra'd and mammoth umbra'd up bramblesnap. I tap two creatures to make it a 9/9 thinking he'd made a mistake in casting it in the first place. On the block he momentous falls to sac his big guy then induce dispairs revealing some high cost eldrazi to make sure the bramblesnap goes down like a sack of shit, netting himself a 3 for one in the process. My loss of tempo, his life gain and card draw means I don't stand a chance of finishing him. The third game I take a nice 8 life off him from beastbreaker of bala ged but the game slows as I have to deal with boar umbra'd creatures. They almost kill me around turn five, turn six but I play lone missionary and survival cache which ends up netting me two cards over its resolution and the rebound. With him having fatties on the table and me having a multitude of chump blockers out means that we're both biding our time until we have a good opportunity in some more fat or a removal piece. I eventually draw repel the darkness and swing with enough creatures to seal his fate big time. We both agreed we'd played some great games and that was the stuff feature matches were made of.


*** FONMP SECTION OVER ***


Having taken the GPT I take a break, have drink a couple of pints of Guiness and head to work for an 8 o'clock start. The next day I'm back on the scene for a bit of multiplayer madness, a nice big lunch at Springsteens with some of the magic players and after that caught a bit of the England match.

Speaking of which GO ON THE KRAUTS!

During our meal at Springsteens we were being informed by a friendly waiter what the scores were for the match and about the disallowed goal which we felt would be something that England would whine about for years to come if it was the goal that mattered. Thankfully it didn't.

We returned just in time for the second half, got ourselves a couple of pints and admire the slaughter put on by the White shirts. With Q-Con winding down, I went home to a nice big fillet steak and stayed in to watch some TV. All in all a good weekend even if I had to work whenever everybody else was partying.

On being a geek

There's a debate thats existed for sometime about the differences between a nerd and a geek. To be honest, I'm not quite sure which is which. From what I gather, the nerd is supposed to the super intelligent, estudious type that has pseudo (or in some cases full blown) aspergers syndrome like symptoms. This is your scientist type that gets hired by NASA to design a new satellite or your computer programmer genius. Geeks on the other hand are the Star Trek/Star Wars loving roleplayer that spends too many hours on Halo. Of course the two often mix and match, hence the characters we see in shows like the Big Bang theory end up being both.

Recently, it kind of became cool to be a geek. With Superhero films, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter taking off in the 00s, women got as sucked into a pop culture that was usually aimed at men. Whilst perhaps the majority of women would have boy band members, sport stars or actors as pin ups, all traditionally "buff" and well put together, another proportion of women have began to take interest in the geek. Stars like Adam Brody of The O.C. fame and Tobey Maguire are now seen as attractive and a lot of niche hobbies such as playing computer games, reading comics, watching Star Trek and roleplaying (okay maybe not just yet) have become more acceptable. Indeed a lot of it can be tied with the growth of indie music and the amount of time the Average Joe spends on the internet these days.

As a geek I appreciate this big time. I've been a card carrying geek since I was a kid. From the ages of 10-13 I was playing Warhammer and reading comics. Between 12 and fifteen I was regularly roleplaying and I (in true geek fashion)elected myself president of a magic the gathering club at school. Whether my lack of athleticism as a teenager encouraged this behaviour the behaviour encouraged the lack of athleticism I do not know but back then I had no interest in doing anything physical that wasn't sword fighting with latex swords or backyard wrestling. Whilst this geekiness caused some scorn to be dished out by peers throught those pubescent years, I furthered the level of this scorn in my immaturity by adopting the belief I was the victim and almost promoted that idea by saying and doing things that would have me ridiculed. When I initially started this blog when I was 17 and letting people know about it, I knew full well I was going to be laughed at by about half the school, a self sabotaging part of myself almost wanting this to happen whilst the better part of me grew angry about this outcast status I had brought upon myself, trying to act as if I didn't spend my Saturday afternoons tapping forests for green mana in the back of a dusty old comic shop.

Nowadays I don't have to do that. I can freely admit that whilst I write this I'm watching Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (though I don't have a clue what's going on) and not worry that I'm going to end up a social reject. Perhaps this is due to wisdom and confidence coming over time and age but I find it funny though how the fears of the past leave their mark upon the human psyche and also how as a member of the white middle class I've never had to be too concerned about my survival but can spend hours fretting about my social acceptance.

If I could go back in time to when I was worrying about how I could be seen as "cool" or whinging about the fact I wasn't, I'd tell myself that the truly cool are those that don't give a shit about how they are viewed. Even if this geek chic culture dies I'll not ashamed of my "uncool" hobbies. I've learned that these hobbies can be a source of intrigue about your character. Although these days my geekiness lies mainly with playing Magic the Gathering, spending too much time on the internet/playing computer games and hanging about with the crowds that do these best, I've learned I can make these seem interesting to other people with colourful explanation, confidence and passion. Some of the most successful, social and interesting people I know are geeks who aren't afraid to play a grown up version of pokemon cards whilst supping a pint. And whilst I've never played geeky games to enhance my pulling potential, I'll never fear that I won't be getting laid for being a geek.

Apart from being superheroes what have Silver Surfer, Iron Man, Batman and Ghost Rider got in common? I've pulled girls wearing t-shirts of them. Shame I couldn't do that when I was 16..


Next time: Q-Con 2010 review