Premier Group at Gen Con

I recently found out that Team Hassenplug will be listed as a Premier Group at Gen Con in 2012.  That means we'll have a special write-up in the event guide, and priority scheduling for our events.

We earned this honor because last year our games were more than 70% full (we were above 95%).  We ran around 22 games of Super Robo Rally over the course of four days.  We're scheduled to do about the same this year, and I expect them to fill up, again.

If you can make it to Gen Con in August, you really should come check it out.

Steve

Mt Tech

Building a mountain

Bryan, John and I wanted to build an area to display Technic vehicles at shows like Brickworld.  Bryan initially suggested we pile bricks on the table, and put the trucks on it.  John and I put a bit more work into it.

The internal structure will be totally rebuilt, before we take it to another show.  Neither of us were happy with it.

I took a bunch of pictures, so we can show how the whole thing developed.  Unfortunately, I think the mountain turned out better than the pictures.

The mountain has an entrance, so vehicles can go inside.

There's also a path where trucks can drive right up the side.  This normally requires a winch...

John did a good job with the stream.

Showing Mt Tech

In the end, it turned out pretty good.

The only bad part was we didn't have enough space on Mt Tech for all the Technic vehicles we brought. So, a few sound their way to an nearby table.  (not shown)

We thought it would be cool to put some construction equipment inside the mountain.  Again, it's a bit crowded in there.

Super Robo Rally at school

Last week, we took Super Robo Rally to a school carnival near Bryan's house.  

We set-up SRR to play "King of the Hill", where players had three turns (about 1/2 hour) to program the robots to race to the flags (red squares) and stay there as long as possible.

The people running the carnival were great!  They set up a system where up to six kids could get a "Quick Pass" ticket for each half-hour game, and two others (waiting in line) would also join.

Bryan would spend a couple minutes explaining the rules to the players and their assistants (parents).

We weren't really sure how this would play out for elementary age kids, but in retrospect, I'm not sure what we were thinking...  Kids (mostly boys)... programming robots...  made of LEGO...   to race... and shoot each other.

Win.

All our games were full, and the only complaint I heard was from a parent watching her son play in the last game.  She said, "I'm just mad we didn't find this game sooner."

Overall, this format worked VERY well in this context.  The kids had enough time to understand the game, they were able to play several turns, and everyone seemed to think it was super cool.

Boxes for Super Robo Rally

Transporting 200 LEGO baseplates can be quite a problem.  It's even more of an issue when they're all covered with tiles.

A single baseplate with tiles weighs about 1 pound.  It's really hard to find a cardboard box that can survive very long, even filled with only 30 of the boards.

Last weekend, my father-in-law helped me build some very nice wooden boxes that I can use to transport the baseplates from show to show.




They are designed to stack, to make it easy to transport and store them.

Today, I'm taking them to their first show.  We'll see how well they work.