Over the Labour Day long weekend in Queensland (30 April to 2 May 2011) WarPuppy attended the very first Auscon games convention. Auscon offers three full days and two nights of gaming, painting displays, seminars, retail stalls, hobby displays, board games, card games and all in a professional, air-conditioned and licensed venue!  The event is also home to the Wizards of OZ painting competition, in which the top painters and modellers from Australia enter their best work to compete for top honours across a range of categories. There was also lots of demonstration and free play areas to try your hand at games you've never seen before as well as war gaming tournaments. It was a great event and for it's first year suprised us with the numbers of people in attendance. The event will be bigger and better next year and really holds something for the whole family. If you were thinking of attending don't miss out next year, it will be huge!

WarPuppy attended the event as a retail trader which gave us a great opportunity to show off our huge range of gaming goodies, chat to great folk and throw our support behind a fantastic event. We put a lot of effort into doing something a little bit different with our stall to make it interesting and inviting. We have received awesome feedback on the stall from people who were there, which great to hear. Thanks.

During the 3 days we had a few fun events and spot light focuses on games, with prizes to give away and great bargains to be had. We also ran our cheeky 'Golden Bone' competition where lucky Auscon attendees who found a gold bone in their showbag could bring it to the the 'Pup and 'give the dog a bone'. In return we gave $100 to spend in store!

On the Saturday we had a spot light on the Anima Tactics miniature wargame where we offered discounts off the entire range and ran demo games to intro people this awesome system. We even had our very own Anima Girl! Thanks Kelly for making it a fun day for everyone. If you are interested in following some of Kelly's Cosplay antics you can follow her on twitter.

On Sunday we had a Hell Dorado and Wings of War spot light, and on Monday a WarGods spot light. At the end of each day we gave away great prize bundles for each of these games. Congratulations to all our winners and thanks to everyone for getting involved and helping to make it a awesome weekend.

It has taken us a couple of weeks to recover, but our excitment over Auscon has not abated. We have already been talking about what we will do next year, and have a couple of nifty ideas to make it interesting and worth your while to pop in and see WarPuppy at Auscon 2012.

Adam and Mick would like to offer a special thanks to Chris, Troy and Kelly for helping us out with the Anima Tactics demo games. We hope that together we have created enough interest to see an Anima Tactics tournament next year! We'd also like to thank Al and Mark and all the Auscon crew for their help over the weekend. Everyone went out of their way to be of assistance and it did not go unoticed or unappreciated. You are a great bunch of guys and gals, many of whom we've know for a while now, and the rest we are glad to have met.

Till next year. We can't wait!