For those of you who don’t know GameStorm, is a gaming convention in the Portland area. In fact it is one of the ONLY gaming conventions in the Portland area.  This seems to be the 12th one that they have done so far. As such you would think that it would be a veritable smorgasboard of gaming, well run conventionness, and in general live up to it’s name.  Unfortunately, this is not the case.  Twelve Storms in and the only thing they manage to “storm” is FailStorm.  The entire convention feels very amateurish, slap-dash put together at the last minute, and in general not worth the money that you pay to go let alone all of the other money that you pay for the events, food, gas, etc.

There were several interesting events that we attended, one of which was the Preconstructed Deck challenge against Peter Adkinson & Richard Garfield.  Me & Shananana Ben faced off against them as the first people to play and it was definitely a fun experience, for me at least.  Peter Adkinson is a decent player and actually a really nice person.  It was a pleasure to sit there and bullshit with him for 10 or 15 minutes while we played.  In the end I lost to him but I am fine with that.  I was there more for the experience than anything.   Ben faced off against Richard Garfield (the creator of Magic The Gathering in case you lick bus windows), and managed to beat him.  At the end of the convention I had heard that only two people actually managed to beat Mr. Garfield the entire weekend, and Ben was the first.   According to the Shananana though, beating Richard Garfield isn’t a very fun experience.  Seems the dude was either in a really shitty mood and was taking it out on those around him, or he just doesn’t like loosing at a game he created.  Either way I say Meh.

One of the things that I tried to do was hit up several of the panels just to try to get the full experience of the convention.  Most of them were fairly disorganized and amateurish and a waste of the hour that you sat there when you could have been next door in the console gaming room having a lot more fun.  One that while it was quite disorganized was still good was the Character Acting vs Acting out panel.  This one was chaired by Skull Dixon, Vincent Baker and someone else who I’m not sure if they were worth remembering or not.  Most of the useful discussion was done between Misters Dixon, Baker, and the attendees of the panel with Meesers Not-Named-In-This-Scene piping in something occasionally.  If I feel like it I might at some point right a post about this panel if I decide to get back into writing about gaming in general.

The final thing to mention was the Warhammer 40K tournaments.  These were run by the guys up at Game Matrix in Tacoma.  And boy, let me tell you they should have fucking stayed in Tacoma.  A lot of hype was put into this tournament by them stating that it was going to be $300 worth of prizes and swag for winning the tournament.  Knightfall Games had three of us there repping the store, plus one of the other local stores had someone in the tournament repping them too.  When it came time to hand out prizes it wasn’t so much $300 worth of swag for first place, it was more “we have a cardboard box with shit in it that we couldn’t sell at the shop and has been sitting around getting drawn on with permanent marker so we threw it in a box and now we are getting rid of it by foisting this shit on you” that maybe added up to $300.  On top of that KFG donated $100 worth of gift cards from the shop so it ended up everyone got some sort of prize and just for being in the tournament they got a $10 gift card from the store.

The MegaBattle & the Tournament were both won by yours truly.  As far as competition goes, the only real competition was from the people that regularly hang out and play at the shop here in town.  Overall it wasn’t worth the time or money that I put into sending three of us, there was a lot of drama with the people who run GameStorm, and I am not sure if it is worth it to go back next year.  The sad part is that unless I want to drive to Seattle I probably have no choice if I want to go to a gaming convention.

For my first one out I wanted to start out strong to get the ball rolling.  When I was thinking about it I quickly came to the realization that in all of the 40K Community there is one unsung hero everywhere.  This is the person that no one ever thinks about, few people if any talk about, and everyone just sort of generally ignores until they need them.  Who is this person you might be wondering?  It’s the employees and owners of the local gameshops and clubs that we all play at.  These people tire endlessly to give us our models, cut us good deals on our supplies, and make sure that we have a place to play and tournaments with great prizes.  Yet no one really stops to consider that they are there.

I got a chance to sit down and talk with Chris, the owner of the local game shop Knightfall Games, where I spend most of my time when I’m not working, at school, or doing stuff for the site.  Heck, most of my videos are even filmed at his site.  Chris runs a great shop that I highly advise anyone in the Portland area to come by and check out and maybe bring your army along.  He has several really nice tables in the shop, open gaming almost every day of the week, a large amount of terrain that he has either made and assembled himself or gone to great lengths to procure.  Always an interesting guy to talk to, and makes spending time at the shop really enjoyable. I found it to definitely be a learning experience to do this interview.

The fact that he took time out of running around the shop getting his todo list done to sit down and answer questions alone shows that he does care about his players and always makes time for his customers.  So if you ever have time I would suggest swinging by, no matter if your just getting started, have questions about this game or any others, looking for a new game to play, or just looking for a great place to hang out.   Now if he would just get my Rockstar Punch flavored crack in stock…