There is nothing quite like the sound of a toddler giggling in the morning. My two year old is playing with my wife and her little squeals and giggles fill me with joy and happiness the likes of which are difficult to explain.

ICON finished last night and it was two days of tons of board games and a lot of warmachine for me. My wife got the opportunity to play a lot more games then I did, she won one of the raffles for a board game (it was one we already had so we traded it for Micro-Mutants, which is a blast by the way) and she won the Nexus-ops tournament! The prize for the nexus ops tournament was Conquest of Pangea which I personally really liked although I have only played it once.

The warmachine tournament was still a bit disappointing in the end. I really wanted a better turnout and I held out for people to show up that I desperately wanted to show. In the end no one showed that didn't explicitly say they would. However I cannot be too disappointed with nine players and some very intense games. One game came down to a d3 roll for the number of attacks Vilmon would get on Caine. The roll came up a 1 and then Vilmon needing a 6 on two dice to hit (and with the charge attack roll four dice damage) and most likely kill, the already injured, Caine. However he rolled a 4 and failed to hit ending the game in the most exciting tie I have ever seen. If Vilmon had rolled more then one attack or hit with his attack the game would have most likely gone to the Menoth player.

We used chess timers for these games and overall I really thought they were a great addition to the tournament format we used. I was very happy with how they worked out. I think in time as the players get used to using them it will be a much better solution to the time issues and victory point issues we have had in previous tournaments. It certainly didn't solve all the problems but I think it was a much needed improvement.

I have been incredibly busy this week with school, with the board gaming convention that starts today and with the RPG convention I am helping organize for this summer. I wanted to sit down and write something but things have just been too crazy.

The Idaho convention for board gamers starts today and I am running a Warmachine event at the convention. Its been completely frustrating. When we first started planning the event I really wanted to see a lot of the local people participate and wanted some out of town people to participate as well. I planned for sixteen players which is more players then we have here locally but not by much. I keep a database of all the local players, what faction they play, and their contact information. I have seventeen players on that list; granted some of those players are not very active, but my goal was to get ten to twelve local players and then get the rest from out of town. In order to get people interested from out of town we decided to provide a 50$ gift certificate to the overall winner. Its been almost two months now since I began advertising for this tournament and I have a grand total of seven people signed up. ARGGGHHHH! I have gotten absolutely zero interest from out of town and several of the people I expected to support me in making this tournament a success are refusing to participate. So what this boils down to is we spent over a hundred dollars on prize support and I don't think we are even coming close to covering our costs.

I am helping organize a Role Playing Game convention this summer as well and we wanted to have fliers and tickets for iCon (the board gaming convention). So I have been swamped the last two weeks with finding some graphic artists willing to help, delegating tasks to others, dealing with logistical issues and even creating some of the graphics myself. The gaming community here in Idaho Falls is absolutely great. People have jumped at the opportunity to help with this convention and without them it would just not be unfolding like it is. As of right now the venue is secured, the tickets are printed, the fliers have been printed, and I have a dozen events committed and being created for the con. Its been a hectic week but seeing this develop has been amazing and I am very excited to see how well the convention goes.

Even though I have been busy, things overall (other then the lack of committal warmachine players) have been great. Yesterday in the mail I received notices from my college letting me know that I have been awarded two scholarships, a total of 1500$! This was absolutely great news as I have been leaning heavily on my dad to help me with tuition costs and I feel somewhat guilty about it. I wouldn't have felt guilty ten years ago but I'm thirty now, own my own home, and have two kids; I feel as though I should be self sufficient at this point, but obviously if I was self sufficient at this point I wouldn't need more schooling. Cyclical I know, but regardless of the argument for not feeling guilty, I still do.