My Merry Tale Of BUCK 2014! · 8:13pm Aug 26th, 2014
You know that situation where you're looking for something appropriate, either a topic for a conversation or in this case, a picture, and can't find something. Then however you come across something weird and decide to use that thing instead... that's how I came about to use this cover picture for this here blog on my experience at BUCK 2014. Once again I've attended the UK based Brony convention, this time accompanied alongside my little brother, and once again have decided to tell you all about it. For those wanting to know how my previous year's trip went, here's the link to that blog post, but now let me tell you about my BUCK 2014 experience.
Buck 2014 Saturday
Now what should I begin with, perhaps with mentioning the difficulties in finding the convention. You see, this year the BUCK convention was being held somewhere different; as such it became tricky to find. I had asked a taxi driver to give us a lift to convention, but he kindly mentioned how it wasn't far... he lied, it took ages to get there. Admittedly in part due to getting lost numerous times, but still me and my brother managed to find it. It was right next to where the convention was held last year.
I don't even know why they changed the location either, for whilst the new location for the convention held a larger game room, the lack of a second floor and lack of separation for many of the events made everything feel smaller, and less organised. Honestly, the former convention was held in a much better location. They also didn't torture me, as for some odd reason the catering staff were unable to serve hot drinks and thus I was deprived of tea all day. We were in the UK! Why would you not serve tea! It's needed for the very British body to even function, let alone manage their way through an entire day out at a convention!
Luckily though, this is where my criticism ends for the rest is where my fun and enjoyment began, and I'm assuming my brother's as well (with such a monotone voice, it's hard to tell with him). I quickly browsed about the vendor stalls, and after taking a peek at each one, lunged towards the one selling the My Little Pony Trading Card Game and the MLP comic books. My current deck is a Honesty/Magic deck, so it is slightly frustrating that so many of the cards obtained were of the Generosity element but oh well, I got cards. I also encountered a slight conundrum wherein I couldn't remember which MLP comics I already had. I knew there was one issue of the Chryslais arc I was missing, but couldn't remember if it was issue 3 or 4 I lacked. Luckily I chose issue 4, which I found out was indeed the one I was missing.
Following that, my brother had gone off and started to obtain badges of each of the villains, making a nice set of them on his coat. We then went towards the BUCK Legacy table to talk to the creators about the game. It's a card game I not only purchased last year at BUCK 2013, but also went on to support the Kickstarter. The new edition they had there did not contain new cards per say, but the old cards had received new artwork along with some rule changes as well as rule changes to the overall game. So I ended up purchasing it, and a couple hours later attended the BUCK Legacy event being held. It was very nice to be asked "Experienced or newcomer?" and upon answering with experienced, being directed towards the 'Experts Table'.
So me, my brother Raphael (I already mention his name in the Grin Brothers videos so I'm sure there is no harm in mentioning it here), and three other 'expert' BUCK Legacy players known as Chris, Mick, and Young (probably not his name and I simply misheard him every time) sat down to play a game. Me, Chris, and Young were dead in the 1st round. Experts! Raph and Mick on the other hand proceeded to beat the boss of the 1st dungeon within the 1st session, a feat rarely accomplished but that is how overpowered going ranger class and starting off with the Scorpio-bow happens to be.
Many events followed, many purchases followed, many a whine from me about the lack of tea ensued, but the next big thing of the day came when the gaming event was opened. We signed up for the 1st of 3 Super Smash Bros Brawl tournaments, and whilst waiting for it to begin, I introduced Raph to the very 1st Super Smash Bros that happened to be set up. I stopped playing for a bit, and whilst Raph effectively begun tutoring some young kids in the art of playing video games, I re-encountered the person I had went to the Forbidden Planet comic book store with last year. He was a kid back then... now he's about as tall as me and with facial hair... I feel old.
Then the Super Smash Bros Brawl tournament started. Just moments before it as the matches were getting sorted, a guy named Al asked for a Pokémon match, having seen me with my 3DS. I noted that I was in the tournament that was about to begin and he agreed to hold it off, after all, he was in the tournament as well. The tournament began, Al being in the very first round as Peach. I unfortunately did not see it; nature called, but learnt that Al was the victor. Second match was mine, and I had entered the tournament as Ganondorf, rather than my better choices of R.O.B. and Kirby. As Ganondorf though I fought off both a Captain Falcon and a Wario player (for some reason, a lot of people missed out on their matches so almost all the opening matches were 3 player free-for-alls) and secured a victory. The 3rd round passed, with the victor being the Wario player, Ech. Raph immediately liked the guy because of his reference to Game Grumps and Jon Tron (something that would surprisingly come up later). So my next match was settled, it was going to be Al's Peach, versus my Ganondorf, versus Ech's Wario.
The next round though was Raph's and he marched valiantly into battle with Ike... he lost. To be fair, the Kirby player known as Sheep did steal one of his kills. Raph had used Ike's Eruption to KO a foe, but Sheep had been using Kirby's A move and it brushed up against the flying away foe, giving Sheep the KO rather than Raph. Other matches proceeded, though they are sadly ones I can't remember in much detail. My next match was soon, and it did unfortunately start off with Ech pushing both me and Al around Flat Zone 2. With Ganondorf's great strength though I managed to throw, shoulder bash, and elbow both Al and Ech off the stage enough times to secure a strong victory, and thanks to Ganondorf's greater weight avoided enough KO's to secure victory. I was into the finals... and going up against Sheep.
The cheers could be heard; "Go Sheep!" and "C'mon Sheep!" and "Baaaa!" rang out. I heard one distinct cheer for me, one from my brother as he yelled out to "I will gut you if you lose." If I lost, I was a dead man. We entered Delfino Plaza, I as Ganondorf, Sheep as Kirby, and found it rather funny that I was fighting against my favourite character. The match began and within a few seconds I was already nearing 100% damage without a hit on him. I tried to attack, but he'd dodge and dodge. I only narrowly escaped death when I got stuck in the water, and thankfully used my recovered landing to deal out some damage. I hung in there, and eventually got Sheep into a nasty juggling combo, flip kicking him off the arena. Despite being heavily damaged I had obtained the 1st KO. I tried my best to keep fighting, but it didn't take long for Sheep to obtain a KO from my heavily injured Ganondorf. It was a good 40-30 seconds to go; we were tied, and only one would come out the winner...
I have rarely felt so proud. Within the last 20 seconds, Sheep got self-destructed. Though I was at about 60% damage there was no way I was letting him KO me in the remaining time, I fought hard, survived, and achieved victory. My name lit up the screen, and I yelled out "Booyah!" I came away from the tournament with a Tepig cuddly toy, a Game Boy Pocket, Wave Race, Super Mario Land 2, and Tetris... and a bunch of Steam games that went to my brother because I lack a Steam account... in fact; make that a ton of Steam games. He lost in the 1st round and yet still ended up with more presents than me.
So afterwards my brother and I sat down with Al and played some Pokémon. Once again I left with a smile, as after a tough start my Carbink, Garnite, went on to clear house and win for me in my Pokémon battles against Al. Overall, I was doing really well that day. So well in fact that I even bumped into a friend of mine, Reakkor. I met Reakkor Shrike last year, and obtained a lovely FlutterDash commission from him that you can see below this paragraph, and we've since conversed occasionally on Skype. Naturally I paid for him to make another commission but as to what it is, you'll have to wait and see;
The day passed and my brother and I made our way to our hotel. Yeah, this year I decided to book a hotel. It took a good chunk out of my wallet but not to fear, I later found out I have a lot more money in bank than I ever expected. Suffice to say, I now love Premier Inn. I went through their doors and the 1st thing they gave me was tea. They then gave me a whole basket of tea bags, and when my brother and I found our room, we discovered it had it's own kettle. By Sunday morning, all 12 tea bags had already been used.
Buck 2014 Sunday
I would just like to remind you all that I now love Premier Inn. Waking up in a comfy bed, fixing myself a tea with the last two remaining tea bags, my brother and I soon got up to enjoy ourselves to a delicious breakfast. It was a buffet, a lovely breakfast buffet. So much tea, so many tomatoes, so much bacon! I knew the day ahead would be rough given the conventions no hot drink policy so I downed 4 or so more teas to get me through the day. Raph just had Coco Pops... and tea as well. We are British kids and the son of a builder, a need for tea runs well through our veins!
Now Raph isn't an early bird, in fact I'm pretty sure he eats the early bird when it tries to wake him each morning, but I got him up early so I could attend the Legends of Equestria and Rise of the Clockwork Stallions game panel. I think Raph was glad I did, he enjoyed the panel a ton. As for myself, I was mostly eager to see Rise of the Clockwork Stallions again, it being a panel I attended last year and then tried to download. It ended in failure, to whom Ugugg had to endure with me as he attempted to lead someone as inept at PCs as myself through various computer terms and do-hickeys. Still, both were great panels and presented amazing games. Legends of Equestria had one truly terrific quote "If enough people like it, it's not a bug, it's a feature." The Rise of the Clockwork Stallions panel had both of us laughing our heads off, and I did love the look of bemusement upon Raph's face when the singing corn appeared.
From there on I encountered another person I knew, but one I had never met; James Corck of the Awful Threat Destruction Imminent blog. You may know him from tons and tons of my blogs because I love his in-depth episode reviews and have often in the past provided links to them within my own episode review blogs. Anyway, I met the guy, and he also happens to be an artist. He also happens to be an amazing artist whom I paid for a commission for. He drew it up there and then, and I went on to leave the convention at the end of the day with what else; a FlutterDash drawing. Hopefully I'll be able to show you all it one day, he did take a photo of it.
Later on, and doing something I missed out on last year, my brother and I went on to partake in the free guest buffet that the 20% cooler ticket holders were provided. It was horrible. Sticky floors, cramped spaces, lack of seats or decent food outside of some pizza slices, my one enjoyment of the buffet was how everyone mistook Raph for a 18 year old. They were practically trying to force shots down his throat; no questions asked.
After that the day went on with few events. The only things that remained of the day that my brother and I wanted to do was to listen to some of the musicians, attend a raffle I had brought us both tickets for, and wait on my commission. We went on to purchase a few things, Raph happened to chance upon Game Grumps Celestia and Luna badges and quickly purchased them, and I obtained a G3 MLP purse. I'd say the only big thing left that happened was the raffle... oh gosh was that hilarious.
Here's the thing, before going to the convention, Raph and I would joke about him doing something to enrage as many of the bronies there. I thought this would come about from his anti-shipping stance, but no, it came about because of luck. We attended the raffle, one I had chanced by earlier. It was a raffle for a large, well made, Rainbow Dash toy; and it looked expensive. At the time I had a £2 coin with me, so I handed that over, grabbed one ticket for me and gave one to Raph. He had no idea what the raffle was for until we arrived to see who would win it, but he accepted it all the same. 154 was the raffle number drawn. I spun around to my brother and yelled "Raph! Your ticket! That's your ticket!" Raph did not even pay for the one ticket he had. He was surrounded by people who had brought tens of tickets. From then on, as Raph went about the convention holding a giant Rainbow Dash toy (Dad's horrified look on his face when we walked out of the convention with was priceless), he received death stares. Everywhere he went; it was like he was surrounded by kart driving Luigi's. One guy in a Rainbow Dash cosplay came up to us, and I swear an aura of darkness grew more and more as Raph mentioned how he'd only brought one ticket; this guy had bought 30. That was the last big thing I guess, all the key points of the convention have been told.
In the end, I enjoyed BUCK con once again, this time accompanied by younger brother Raphael, whom I doing a YouTube channel with known as the Grin Brothers. For this reason we may not be attending BUCK next year, I was lucky to have so much work this year to afford it, and might not be able to afford it again next year. An with wanting to promote the Grin Brothers I feel our convention visiting experience might be best spent going to cheaper, game centric conventions. Who knows though, I may be able to attend both BUCK 2015, as well as other 'game focused' conventions. We'll see.
If you want to know more about my time at the convention such as what things I purchased, feel free to ask, and if you were there at the convention, then do give a shout out about your experience in the comments below.
Hello. It's-a me one piece wolf. First question do you give your friend code to ever-loving-tea-drinking fan as like myself?
Second question, if you were to rate this convention out of 10 what would you rate it?
.......................I have nothing to say except have a great fall/summer!
Haha, I saw you at that raffle. Thought someone of us mentioned burning or blowing up the plushy if they would win it to see the reactions. Could you imagine what would have happened if we had a ritual RD burning ;)