Chimaeracon 2010 in Words & PicturesChimaeracon 2010 in Words & Pictures

By Paul Vaughn, on April 14th, 2010

Chimaeracon 2010 is over, but it was a blast. Lots of energy, lots of gaming and, according to the organizers, the con’s best year ever! I took my son out to Cimaeracon to see what we could see.

Early Saturday morning at Chimaeracon

Games were divided up into different areas. Card games in one area included Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon and plenty of others. The Magic: The Gathering demo was presented by folks who play regularly at Heroes and Fantasies. The kung fu action-themed card game Shadowfist had its own booth with continuous, personal demos from the head of Inner Kingdom Games, Daniel Griego. It was fun to learn a new game with someone who truly enjoys it.

Al Griego, a MIB from Steve Jackson Games, was there to show off two of their upcoming games. I didn’t play Cthulhu Dice, but I did get to try Zombie Dice. The game was a fast-paced and fun melange of zombies and Yahtzee and should be a decent hit for the Austin-based company.

The D&D tables were continually full and the players looked like they were having a great time. Sessions were run with both the newer fourth edition and with the Pathfinder system that improves the 3.5 edition. Miniatures and battlemaps were in full effect and I even saw a brilliant felt-lined dice octagon that inspired me with no small amount of envy. Miniature-based games were also present including some sort of mech battle simulation and Mike Gomez’s Circus Maximus, an intriguing hippodrome setup simulating a chariot race.

Check after the break for plenty of photographs of the event…

Video games were not ignored in this weekend of fun. Game Crazy supplied some video game consoles and Evolution Games had a bank of networked computers running a variety of first-person shooters.

I was able to chat with both guests of honor, author Scott A. Cupp and artist Victor Gabriel Burgos. They looked like they were having a good time speaking with a variety of attendees. Take a look below for a variety of photographs from the con.