So this past weekend, I went to MilleniumCon 8 up in Austin.  This is my 4th Millenium to attend, but only the second that I've been able to attend all three days.

MilleniumCon is a gaming convention.  It's mostly miniatures, but there's a very healthy RPGA and boardgames presence, and a lot of vendors.  A friend of mine (also attending the con) was gracious enough to allow me and my family to stay with him.  My wife and kids kept his wife and kids company while we were conventioneering.

Much of the con for me was spent playing Chain Reaction and its various spin-offs.  I got to meet many folks from the CR list, which was pretty cool.

Friday night, I played "All Things Zombie", which is a fun a very genre capturing game about trying to survive and find "stuff" in a post zombie apocalypse world.  The zombies themselves are sort of NPCs who follow a very simple script (move towards closest victim).  The tricky part about the game is that every time you fire a gun, you have a chance to attract another zombie.  So I frequently found myself in the situation where I was generating zombies faster than I could kill them.  In fact, by the "end" of the game (when we all decided that it had gotten "too hot" to stick around), humans were outnumberd 5:1 or more.  There was surprisingly little PK-ing going on.  I guess we all figured that there were bigger fish to fry.

Afterwards, I got the chance to visit with an old friend of mine (Chuck) who was also in from out of town.  That was an unexpected and very welcome bonus.

Saturday morning, I was in an LOTR game that was a large battle involving a number of "battle companies".  I played the Rohirrim, and had a blast.  The thing I learned though is that with warriors of Rohan, it is VERY imporant to get priority so you can charge.  Otherwise, they just aren't that tought.  But with priority, they can be very effective.  We unfortunately spent most of the game without priority, but when we did get it, I was able to do some impressive damage.  I also learned that Uruk Hai are so tough that they're almost broken.  It's making me re-think my Uruk battle company a little, since it almost seems unfair.

Oh, and I still haven't found those stupid Uruk Hai warriors.  NOBODY seems to have them, and my FLGS thinks the only way to get them is through a "bits" order.  I'm pretty sure they're wrong, but it's interesting just the same.

Saturday Afternoon was a game of Nuts!, which is "WWII Chain Reaction".  I was on the German side, and things started off badly for me.  When we rolled up troop quality, I got a squad full of newbies.  Then, one of them died during the initial artillery bombardment.  Shortly after that, a few of the idiots opened fire on some advancing allies, giving away our position.  So I was left with my squad leader and an SMG guy, holed up in a building with a Sherman and two full squads of GI's heading my way.  Luckily, our tank finished up what it was doing and came over to deal with the Sherman.  After that, I was able to wax two or three GI's from out of a window.  Unfortunately for our side, the main battle happening over on the other side of town went badly for us, and I was left with literally the only German soldiers on the table.  The good news is I was also out of LoS of the allied forces, and was able to make my escape.  Brutal, and lots of fun.

Saturday Night I spent a pleasant evening with my family and my host.  For Sunday morning, I had planned to play in a "Monjoie!" game, which is essentially "Medieval Chain Reaction", but instead we wound up taking our hosts out to brunch at Trudy's.

As for loot, I picked up a copy of Montjoie!, some more Reaper paints (they do very nice skin tones), a Reaper "Eldritch Demon" (exactly a Cthulhu miniature around 4" high), and a the flea market I grabbed up 30 Triarii (Roman "old guard" figures).  Yes, I know I'm not working on a Republican Roman army at the moment, but they were a good deal. :-)

Oh yeah, and even though I struck out on most of the LoTR stuff I wanted to get, I did score a "Mines of Moria" game, which gets me 24 goblins, a cave troll, some cool Balin's Tomb scenery, a plastic version of The Fellowship, and a copy of the new rules.  I'll probably give my new Gimli to my nephew (whose Gimli disappeared under mysterious circumstances).

This leaves me with the difficulty of needing some more Romans (about $80 worth, in fact), around the same price worth of LoTR stuff, and almost no spending money.  Well, Christmas isn't too far away, right? :-)

(I'm such a kid sometimes.)