Chaos Cup 2013: A Goat's Perspective: The Psychedelic Furs Invade Chicago

So I survived the experience of Chaos Cup 2013.
I'll break up the coverage into many updates: Introductions, 1 or 2 games per update, and a final wrap-up.
I went with some heady goals:

* Have Fun
* Enjoy the look of my finished thematic team on the cool Slannesh-themed Chaos Cup pitch
* Enter each of the painting contests
* Not lose all of the 6 games... quite a challenge with the team I took having only one-half of a game before.
* Wake up in time for the games despite the early time zone and being a nocturnal creature.

Would I meet or exceed these goals?  Stay tuned over the course of the next many updates to find out!

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The trip began with waking up at 4:15 am, after a long and restful night sleep of nearly 2 hours, to drive to the airport to catch my completely booked flight.  I managed this, though I have very little memory of it. 

The flight was a nightmare as a woman behind me with a voice like a high-pitched Marge Simpson talked, loudly, with another woman for the entire 4 hour flight, of which she dominated the conversation, talking at least 93% of the time. I can sleep through such things about as well as sleeping through hot wax being poured in my ears.  

I got to the airport and waited for my friend Dan who was landing just an hour and a half after my landing.  

Arriving at the hotel, Dan went in search of his addiction: coffee. I slept for two hours. It was glorious.  

Then we went with many others that were there for the Chaos Cup, to Medieval Times! 

Like most authentic Medieval Castles, this one had it's time period emblazoned on the front.  It is common. I've seen many homes in San Francisco with giant letters that declare "Victorian Era".

We entered the castle as honored guests.

And like any guests, we were invited to buy stuff.  They had a wide selection of authentic artifacts from Medieval Europe, such as glowing wands and electric light longswords.  Our group had some people who came to Chaos Cup all the way from Denmark and Sweden, who went to Medieval Times with us.

If you've never been, it is a dinner show with a Middle Ages Tournament theme.  As I explained to the Europeans, "America never had a chance to have a Middle Ages, and so we're making up for it now with a sense of kitsch that only America can excel at."  I think they were duly impressed.  Maybe. Or not.

And then with a fanfare, the announcer belted the historic call to tournament "Let's Get Rrrready to Rummmble!" and we found our way to our table.

Our group was assigned to the Green Knight.  Not the Red, Yellow, Red&Yellow, Black&White, or Blue Knight, oh no.. seeing our importance, they gave us to the Green Knight... which I think means Sean Connery with detachable head was our champion.  How could we lose?

well, if they gave us this guy's haircut, then I guess we'd lose...

But back to the tournament...

We filed in, ordered more drinks, and settled in to cheer the loudest, likely get the drunkest, and generally be the most enthusiastically obnoxious group they'd ever had.  We showed that 8-year old girl's birthday party group how to cheer for your knight. 

Yeah Medieval Times: You're Welcome. 

The procession started, and donning the elegant green crowns we watched the filthy peasants trample through the horses' litterbox.

The food was good.  If the servers are to be believed, people in Medieval Times subsisted on a diet dominated by Baby Dragons. That would probably depopulate a species pretty fast, and since there are no dragons around today, I think that proves she was right.

There's our champion!  The Green Knight!  Greenest of all the Knights!  Wait.. that doesn't sound like a compliment.  Hmm.  But just check out the radiance that's bestowing upon him.. that's pretty special.

The Zebra Knight performs the traditional River Dance over the corpse of the Blue Knight.

Blue Knight regenerates (they do this a lot) and they proceed to joust & hack at each other with large weapons.  The Red Knight cheated.  A lot.  And defeated our Green Knight.
We barely restrained ourselves from a Pitch Invasion.

Once they were done killing each other, they retired for some refreshments.
Cheating is thirsty work isn't it Red Knight?  But Green Knight takes it with grace.
And since Red Knight's wife is named Grace, we're even here.

It was a fun silly night. We got some cool take-home cups, like the real knights drink from apparently, and our tournament would start the next day.

Before Game 1 started we collected our free & pre-purchased haul:

I ordered the Chaos Cup pitch and T-shirt, the rest was free!

- A nice dugout, filled with lots of useful bits like a passing grid, the kick off & weather table, direction template and score chart.  The pitch has all of this, but if using another pitch now you'd have it all on one sheet.
- Chaos Cup patch
- Chaos Cup coin
- Chaos Cup resin trophy similar to the NAF trophies
- Limited miniature of a Chaos Apothecary (though could be a good coach too)
- Chaos Cup re-roll tokens
- 2 sets of d6's, which while very pretty, my weekend (mild spoiler) proves roll terribly.  Don't know about everyone else's but mine are defective ;)
- Collection of laser cut tokens for all sorts of things from reroll, score, bribe, and more.
-- Oh! & we have leather dice cups with the logo on them, but they didn't arrive until the day after the tournament, so we'll be getting those shipped to us. Maybe that's why my dice rolled poorly, they were missing their official cup!

Game 1 will be soon... watch this space.

Judging by this uncovered period footage, I think our Medieval Times experience was very authentic...

Enjoy!