Tuesday, June 2, 2009

PrairieCon at 30



PrairieCon is a tradition in the small gaming community of western Manitoba. Every Spring for almost 30 years (!) gamers have gathered to play roleplaying games, card games, board games and miniature wargames. While the premier event at PrairieCon is still the AD&D tournament (run continuously since PrairieCon I) other games have become increasingly popular.

I've been attending PrairieCon since PrairieCon III or so and most years I try to run at least one game on the weekend. Two years ago Conscript Greg B. and I ran a monster World War III game; last year Conscript Mike F. and I ran a very cool zombie game; and this year Conscript Frederick and I put on a big Star Wars game: "Escape from Mos Eisley". We set up the game with four factions, each with two players: the Rebels (Luke, Ben, Han, Chewie, 3PO and R2D2, plus a few Rebel survivors from the Tantive IV), the Imperials (Darth Vader, stormtroopers), the Sand People (led by a very disgruntled Jawa and including several Banthas) and Jabba's gang (bounty hunters and Fringe riff-raff led by the Hutt himself).

The scene is set just after Luke sells his landspeeder - credits in hand, he, Ben and the droids head towards the Falcon and passage off-planet. Han and Chewie are at the ship already, but in order to get there Luke and Ben must traverse a dense urban swath of terrain and elude the other factions! The winner of the game is the faction that has possession of R2 when time runs out. In the event it was an extremely close result between Cory (Rebels) and Conscript Mike F. (Jabba's bounty hunters) but Mike finally prevailed! Well done Mike (and 4-LOM!)

Now for the pictures...

a wretched hive of scum and villainy...
Tusken Raiders moving in single file to hide their numbers...
Over the clash of sabers...
... comes the sound of a thundering herd!
In a stunning revision of canon, Ben kills Vader!
Final battle for the astromech droid. 4-LOM won
Big thanks to Frederick for schlepping his buildings and terrain out to Brandon and for doing a great job running the game (while I kibbitzed with all my old gaming pals I only see once a year) and to the organizers of PrairieCon 30 for a job well done!

5 comments:

DaveV said...

Congrats to you and Frederick for putting on such an awesome looking game, Dallas!

Greg B said...

Great game Dallas and Frederick. But you left out a key element of the report - was 3PO killed???

FrederickC said...

C3PO took hits for Luke on two occassions and was finally gunned down by one of the Sandpeople as 4-LOM moved in to take control of R2-D2.

DaveV said...

What happened to crazy old Ben?

FrederickC said...

Ben was still in close combat with 4-LOM when time was called. Had the game gone a round or two longer, 4-LOM would probably have gone down to the sound of a buzzing light sabre