Going into GenCon 2011, Johnny Pong and I had high ambitions. We were going to throw all of our cares to the wind and attempt an epic feat: a three day gaming binge with 10 different game systems, a head-to-head decathlon that would determine QCG bragging rights over the tabletop world. We were optimistic that we’d accomplish the feat and that one of us would be proclaimed the toy soldier tyrant. However, it was not to be. We ended up completing three games. It’s about the weakest sauce you can come up with, though if we were playing baseball we’d be hitting a highly respectable .300l; but wargaming ain’t baseball. Here’s how you GameFail this hard:

Factor 1: GenCon – There is so much to do at GenCon that you can inevitably get sucked into the dealer hall for three to four hours at a time. This happened to us on at least two occasions. First, Thursday when the dealer hall opened and there was the mad-dash to see what shiny baubles everyone had to show off. Second, on Friday in the morning to make sure we didn’t miss anything. There’s eight hours gone right there.

Factor 2: The Kindergarten Rule – You have to share each other’s game time with other people, otherwise you’re just a dick. As a result, Johnny Pong played games with The Canadian and Lord Sculpy Bits, and I played a few games with the WarGame Wife. These games ate at least six solid hours of decathlon time. Diversifying your opponents is always fun to do, but isn’t perhaps the best decision if you boast on the internet that you’re going to complete an epic wargaming decathlon.

Factor 3: The Irishman’s Demo Schedule – Yeah, I blame a lot of the decathlon fail on myself. I was demoing the Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game for Fantasy Flight. I did this for a total of 18 hours over the course of the weekend. I had a really great time doing it, but you can’t exactly multi-task while you’re demoing a game.

Factor 4: Alcohol – As Homer Simpson famously referred to it as the “cause and solution to all of life’s problems,” he failed to realize that Purple Drank (or in the GenCon instance, Pink) does not give you time travelling abilities. Nor does it make the day any longer. What it does do is get you drunk and make unable to stay up gaming at 3 am. It also forces you to go out gallivanting and rabblerousing at downtown brewhouses like The Ram. These things eat precious hours. And we did a lot of drinking. A cigar dipped in Gran Marnier 150 makes you feel like you’re drinking ambrosia with Hermes, but it does not give you the ability to move faster to play more wargames.

So in the end, our Decathlon ended up a Triathlon, with Johnny Pong taking the inaugural GenCon Decathlon title 2-1. He demoralized and humiliated me in a game of Malifaux, in which Marcus was primed to bolt in and decapitate Nicodem on turn two, only to be paralyzed for the rest of the game until his face was eaten by an angry Flesh Construct. In other news, the WarGame wife destroyed my Marcus crew with Sonnia Criid in her first ever table top experience. You’ll hear more from her later.

We made the mistake of playing Warhammer Fantasy as our second round (I only say mistake because we probably could have drove through two games in the time our WHFB game took) battle, but I did bring home the gold in that one, with my Lizardmen making quick work of Johnny Pong’s beautifully, but mercifully 7th edition outfitted Orcs. The game didn’t end in annihilation, however, but rather was an agreed upon concession, due in part to the fact that my Carnosaur was about to chew through the last block of meaty infantry the Orcs had, but mostly due to Johnny Pong being too drunk to keep his eyes open and roll an armour save.

In what would be the finale of the decathlon, Johnny Pong and his Dai-bakemono won a hard fought battle over my stout Dwarves of Tir-Na-Bor. I was winning for the better part of three stages until attrition, and Johnny Pong’s Black Troll, started to wear on the dwarves, ultimately sealing my fate.

In the end, however, Lord Sculpy Bitz ended up on a winning streak, tirelessly bragging about his dethroning of Johnny Pong as the QCG Malifaux Tsar and his victory in our game of Blood Bowl: Team Manager. He somehow ended up the victor of the weekend, while Johnny Pong and I ended up biting off way more than we could chew, resulting in a GenCon GameFail.