Xavier's First Renaissance Festival

Yesterday we took Xavier to his very first Renaissance Festival, specifically the Maryland Renaissance Festival.  It's the first time Liz & I have been able to get to a ren fest in the last four years, previously having it been a yearly occurrence for most of the 13 years we've been together.  We were also there 5 years + 1 day since we got married (wearing renaissance attire), so it was a big day all around.

I thought Xavier would have a great time.  I wasn't prepared for how much fun he would have!

Liz & Xavier waiting while I get gas before our 1.5 hour drive to the festival. We were lucky & there was no traffic. We got there just as they were opening.

Tickets acquired! He was already having fun before we were even inside!

My Lady and the little prince.

Loving the smiles! We got many compliments on his attire.

They had free pony rides for kids.  After a bit of convincing Xavier said he wanted to ride the pony. I'll be damned but he didn't chicken out like he normally does with that kind of thing. I even had to stop him from taking down the rope barrier and jumping on one of the ponies.  Problem was when we were in line I said "When this pony comes back around then its your turn."  That pony came back and it was HIS DAMNED TURN.  He didn't get upset or anything, he was just super jazzed.

Liz calls this picture "Proud Daddy."  Pretty much.

Waiting in line for a pony. That's totally not Angry Orchard hard cider in my cup.

Ride that pony!

He was having a blast!

Smiles!

Some of the Royal Court.

Bows.

Observing the Royal Court. That piece of paper was from a coin striking booth. Xavier held onto it for like an hour. He loves the designs on the pictures of the coins.

There was a reptile house at the festival! This dude is awesome.

Not surprisingly the reptile house (which was free admission) was one of Xavier's favorite parts. We went back later.

This is where things started to get weird.  They had a dunk tank, or as it was called in ye olde mediaval tymes: Drench-a-Wench.  Xavier wanted to watch.  This is totally normal for him, he loves watching people do things.  A few younger kids tried and they got to stand really close.  Xavier was having a blast watching.  Liz went to a nearby shop to look around while I stayed with Xavier as there was no pulling him away.

I told him when we got to the festival that he didn't have to do anything he didn't want to and if he wanted to do something just ask.  Everyone in line at the Drench-a-Wench had their shots and left.  I told Xavier it was time to go.  He grabbed my hand and said "I want to try!"

I looked at him in shock.  "Seriously?!"

He gave me a big smile.  "Yeah!"

"Are you sure you want to try?"

"Yeah!"

I just started laughing.  "Okay!"

So we head over to the booth and the guy comes over.  "The little man would like to try!"  I was doing that proud daddy giggle.  Fellow dads will know the one.

"How old is he?"

I laughed.  "He's very nearly three."  He smiled and grabbed three balls as I gave him the whole $1 game cost.

By this point Xavier was already over to where he'd seen the little girl in the above picture and I was hurrying to get my camera.  Remember, Liz was nowhere around and I knew I had to grab a picture of this!  The nice gentlemen was telling Xavier to get twice as close as he already was and Xavier had no hesitation complying while I stood way the hell away from him (again, this is all very strange behavior from him. Good! But unusual.)

"Come stand here."

 As Xavier was walking up I heard the "wench" say something about him getting a free one.  I didn't understand until about a minute later what she meant.

Side note: For adult & older kids the wench calls out insults/taunts like at a carnival. For Xavier she was silent, as you'd expect. The sign on the lower right is sad, but probably necessary for some people.

"Try and hit right here."

First ball too low!

Second ball very close!

Third ball even closer!

This is when I figured out what the "free one" was.  The guy picked up a ball off the ground, handed it to Xavier and said "now close your eyes and throw it!"

I got him about to push the button!

 That was the best thing in the world.

Congratulations!

Priceless smile.

Fortunately Liz came over for the last actual throw and saw the rest. Awesome.

After the Drench-a-Wench Xavier found a bunch of people juggling.  Turns out it was a free juggling school.  Xavier was too young to learn, but one of the teachers talked Liz into trying.

Chillin' at the jugglin' school.  Prince-ing it up.

The school was right next to the playground, so we watched Liz learn to juggle one then two balls then went over to the playground.

Two ball juggling in full ren gear!

Another weird thing for Xavier: he played on playground equipment with tons of other kids around. That very rarely happens.

 After that he said he was hungry so we went back over the the juggling school and sat on a bench and ate some lunch.

Liz and her very cool and helpful teacher.

FOCUS.

So it turns out Liz can juggle now!  Who knew!

From there is was mostly general exploring and having fun.

It did not take much to convince him to ride that turtle.

Of course, he loved seeing the elephant and camel.  Wasn't interested in a ride, which suited us just fine.

Majestic creature. Also there's a camel and elephant.

 Eventually it was time to go. That's when Xavier discovered one of his favorite things of the day at a shop near the gate.  A puppet maker.

Xavier crazy loved that thing.  The puppeteer was clearly a super nice guy and very skilled.

Xavier could have stayed with that thing forever.  He's clearly inherited my love of puppets.

He slept the whole way home and that night Liz gave him the map from the festival.  We all sat in bed looking over it and recalling what we did.  We talked about what he liked and asked if there was anything he didn't like.  He didn't like the music that was playing at one of the stages we stopped at (it was damned good music though).  He said it was too loud.  Fair enough.

This morning when he came out of his room he had the map with him. He laid it out in the playroom and set to work studying it.

Basically, it was about as perfect as any day I've ever had.  And I think the same goes for Xavier.

Epic MERCS is Epic

Still fresh from my chain of wargaming this weekend, last night was board game night at Icons.  My buddy Josh was working around the clock (apparently) to get his brand spanking new USCR MERCS painted up for his first game.  He attended a demo I did a few weeks back at Icons and has been eagerly anticipating the coming of the people's army.  He texted me some in-progress pictures of his painting, but I was not prepared.

My god, they look beautiful.

The bastard.

Click on that shit for a larger view. Seriously.

Even the bases look amazing!  Son of a bitch!

We played the standard "first to kill 3 wins".  Its simple and elegant. I like it.

So with CCC vs USCR my strategy was this: split into 2-3 groups.  One group has the heavy & leader on Overwatch & Suppression, respectively.  The remaining groups of 1-2 units will run up the flank behind cover and try to get in the rear, where the Armor is lower.  Other than that just take as many shots with Strength 2+ weapons as I can to try and break armor, further reducing the Armor level.  Oh, and have my demo shove a grenade up the Behemoth's ass (spoiler alert: I never had the chance).

It probably would have worked brilliantly if my "noob" friend wasn't such an amazing wargamer!

He took to the system immediately and we ended up having dueling Suppression & Overwatch units, which took quite a bit for me to keep straight and remember how to properly trigger everything during a susceptible action.  It quickly showed just how complex a game of MERCS can be, greatly adding to its epicness.

Josh quickly got his Medic on the hill and put him into Overwatch.

Looking down the barrel of death of a healer.

Team 1 in position. Heavy on Overwatch, Leader on Suppression. Team 2, Go!

Team 2 moving up the flank. My Medic took a hit crossing the gap (Overwatch) but I made it before the Behemoth was in position. There's a USCR behind the building which my Demo ended up taking out.

As you can probably tell, I left the Sniper at home for this game, planning on getting the Incinerator into a rear position via Bounding. Eventually the Demo & Medic got taken out when both the USCRs behind the barrels on the hill went into Overwatch.  Demo & Medic poped out from behind the building and were cut down.  Good play on his part.  Getting into the rear is risky with all the movement (often into the open) needed, so it was a risk I knew I was taking.

It came down to my Heavy, Leader, Incinerator against his Heavy, Leader, Medic.  My Heavy had a good shot at the Behemoth, and I new he was going to fire, so I kept the Heavy on Overwatch.  Despite the fact that the Behemoth has a 2 Courage (!) Josh was rolling ballz Courage checks on Suppression, then I managed to hit him with the Incinerator, which couldn't do him damage because of his (even weakened through failed armor check) armor but did incur a +2 penalty on Courage check.  So the Leader stayed on Suppression.  By now my Leader had 2 Blood on him, as did the Behemoth.

This was it. First to deal 1 Blood would win.

Ballz Initiative roll!  Will this be the end of the CCC?! NO! Because the Behemoth failed his Suppression check!

This is where it got Epic.  Next round.  The Behemoth activates.  He aims the template at my Leader/Heavy.

It ALL comes down to this.

He hits the Leader!  My Leader is down!  But wait!  That shot triggers Overwatch from my Heavy! If I can score one of my three shots the Behemoth will take a Blood (remember, broken armor) and both the Behemoth and my Leader will simultaneously go down!

3 Blood on the Leader to record that he's dead no matter what. I roll for the Heavy...

THE HEAVY ROLLS THREE MISSES!!!  EPIC GAME ENDS WITH USCR VICTORY!!!

Victorious USCR are Victorious.

Nice try Incinerator. Maybe next time.

So in my post analysis, what did I do wrong?  Well I can't really think of anything; meaning my current skill level is telling me I played a good game, as did Josh.  I feel like I was on my game too, and didn't really make a bunch of mistakes.  I do have to be much more studious about keeping track of Suppression and Overwatch triggers, as I missed one very early on.

It was the kind of game you want every game to be: complex, engaging, and fun.

In a word: Epic.

Wargaming with Beardy Blackwell

The last four days had two things in common: I was off work and I got to play some awesome miniature games.  I only play two minis games and I got to play them both. Winning.  I was playing against Beardy Blackwell, who is one of my favorite people.  Double Epic Winning.

Too bad I lost every game I played.  I had fun though so I'm Winning at Failing To Win But Still Having Fun.

Thursday night we met at Icons for "minis gaming night", which was awesome because I ended up talking to two different people about MERCS.  Hopefully they'll get MegaCons and increase the quickly growing number of players we have.  Beardy Blackwell and I played two games, both CCC (me) vs Waza.

First game was a simple "kill three to win".  Despite the fact that my models looked AWESOME, The Waz dropped a nuke on my face and hella killed me.

Yeah, the medic has no cover, but nobody had LOS on him so it was cool. Why is the leader all by himself?  Good fucking question.

Game two was from the unofficial scenario generator.  We both ended up with Facility Defense, which sounded really weird at first but actually worked out pretty well.  For plots I picked "Technological Superiority" to his "Act of War" (these are secret, of course).  Well by the end of turn six I had two models left, so that sucked...

The worst part?  He didn't even bring the nuke.  Ugh.  I was not on game that night.

Why is the heavy behind the medic?! You fool! You've messed up the positioning!! Idiot. 

By the time the medic was out of the way the heavy's armor was broken. I was forced to move the leader up to get LOS. Nothing but bad calls that night.

The Waz being awesome.

Oh yeah, my demo?  Once again killed by the Waza sniper's "nat 10 autokill".  Statistically I'm pissed at that.

* * *

Yesterday I was at the Beardy homestead for a game of Malifaux.  Neverborn Zoraida vs Outcast Gremlins.  Fucking gremlins and their pigs...

Basically the way it fell was that if I could kill his Leader (Som'er Teeth Jones) I'd get 6 VP.  If I didn't I was pretty much screwed.  I had his leader down to four wounds (I think) but then he made a healing flip and flipped out the damned Red Joker! Heal all wounds!! As my toddler says "Are you killing me?!"

Shortly after that I forfeited the game in the interests of getting my fussy son home, also I was going to lose embarrassingly anyway.

We were playing on the awesome Terraclips "Sewers of Malifaux" set, which is insanely cool.  I'm hoping to get the "Buildings of Malifaux" for xmas because it would be killer for MERCS as well.

Beardy Blackwell assembling his crew, essentially determining the way I'm going to lose. Also his right hand is traveling through time.

Pig vs big ass winged guy! Who will win?! (Spoiler: buy pork futures)

See the big winged guy from the last photo?  No you don't.

I see Som'er! I just can't get to him!

This terrain is just awesome.  I think Beardy said it took him seven years to assemble it.

Totally wasted Red Joker which meant my Silurid jumped like an Olympian.

That mosquito is up my Silurid's ass.

"Rawr."*

* Translation: I was useless this game.

The main reason I did poorly in this game was that I made a very bad tactical decision early on which I then had to run with.  Essentially I should have not attacked anyone early on and just got my guys into position to jump Som'er all at once and kill him. I would have had a guaranteed 6 VP no matter what else happened.  Would I have instantly won then?  Possibly not.  That is Malifaux.  You play to play, not to have a winner.  Fortunately it's fun to play. 

Douchey-Bathroom-Mirror-Picture Andy agrees:

You play to play, not to have a winner.

And if that douche says it, it must be true.