@PizzaPete said in Gen Con 2025 - AAR:
I’m very curious to see how the bid went for the championship.
It was Axis +0. @djensen can attest to that.
More importantly, I want to say that I could have written this post about your final assessment of your experience after last year’s tournament, which was my first experience at GenCon. The only differences would be that I played with a partner, so I could remove that mistake, but would have to add that I booked my hotel too late, leaving me with a cheap a hotel, too far away and lost sleep to a crappy bed an unnecessary travel back and forth
I wouldn’t say my “playing without a partner” was necessarily a mistake. I tried convincing any relevant A&A player in my life to partner with me. It just didn’t work out (and I didn’t want to miss the event outright). That being said I will continue to advocate that 1v1 should the official format for tournament play, even if I am in the minority. Most of the teams I played against were basically “the main player” and “the advisor who catches mistakes” anyway, in my opinion.
We played too fast for our own good.
Yup. Although playing fast is necessary in some cases to force extra turns in the format as-is. I needed to force extra turns in game #3, for example, or I would most certainly have lost.
We tried to cram in too much practice just before the tournament.
I can relate to that for other games, but I spent about 7 months prepping for this specific tournament format and have been playing semi-actively since 2008 (although I have never bothered with this one in Online Leagues, so my level of play isn’t as high as something like Revised for 42SE. Online Format Vs. F2F format are basically completely different games anyway, so that sort of experience wouldn’t necessarily help beyond a firmer grasp on the openings).
We did not bring enough snacks to the hall and had to fight through the convention crowds to grab meals between games.
Yup. At least the Gen Con food is pretty good as far as convention hall stuff goes (I’ve played TCGs for most of my life, so I’ve had way worse).
All of it derived from a severe underestimate of how a lack of sleep would effect our play. We lost on a mistake I would not have thought we would ever have made, and it was far from our only error.
The 9-hour car ride on top of everything else was something I forgot to mention on my end. I’d like to imagine the lack of sleep affects everyone (mostly) equally though.
If you have not played in GenCon or a similar tournament, you have to know that you will try to play at your max speed to get in the most game you can. Going fast and not sleeping is a recipe for mistakes no matter how experienced a player you are.
I have about 3-4 years worth of playing other multi-year conventions for A&A + a lot longer for other games, so I at least knew about this stuff going in. It’s very good advice to give new players coming in off of YT videos and such, though.
The trick is to ensure you’ve got enough sleep and awareness that you won’t miss the devastating mistakes that will cost you the game. It is not hard to do, you just need to go in with an appreciation for what its like deep in the tourney. Hopefully this thread is enough to provide that for anyone considering attending for the first time.
Yeah. In my case I think physical conditioning is also a big factor. I should not have been skipping gym days in the month before the tournament for sure. That sort of thing was never a problem for me in the past but I just do not have as much natural stamina as I did in my teens/20s. Part of getting older I guess.
Anyway, thanks for the comment! Sorry that you were also not able to win it all. I can’t make it to the Dayton tournament later this year (just not in the cards money/time-investment wise, as November is crunch time for both my job and wallet due to Christmas), but will hope to come to more events next year.
