Holding a games convention on the weekend of the 50th anniversary of the Moon Landing, when the city played a major role in the original so there are free films, free talks by astronauts, live streams at the tracking stations of the original signals, and a plethora of lectures, presentations and other free events is a guarantee for reduced attendance.
However, the CGS - Canberra Games Society - had no choice. Booking the venue has to be done 6-12 months in advance, and there are no free slots available to move to. By being a regular, annual event from a reliable organisation that tidies up afterwards, the CGS gets a discount on hiring the venue that makes both Wintercon and Cancon financially viable for a group with only about 100 paying members.
Saturday attendance was about half normal. Sunday was so moribund there wasn't even a coffee stall open, and while there were still hundreds of gamers playing in competition events, the hundreds of visitors normally present for participation games were completely absent.
The good news is that under those circumstances, BFG did the best of all the participation games, with 8 players, 6 simultaneously. 3&3 the next day only had 5, 4 simultaneously, but that was still 5 more than any of the other games.
The BFG game lasted 5 hours, and that wasn't because play was slow, quite the contrary. New players picked it up quickly, due to the 1-page summaries we'd printed out and laminated, similar to the Cancon rules for WGF. Action was fast if not furious, as players dodged and evaded.
3&3 had many smaller games rather than the one long campaign one, 3 against Mk 1 tripods, 2 against a Mk 2.
Now to the AARs in following posts.
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