Time flys when you’re having fun and this 4 days have certainly flown past. Several players are already packed and left (having 14 or even 20 hours to spend driving home). Others are still sleeping, several have had breakfast, there are only a hundful of us in the con room at this hour (09:30 local time).

As I start to pack things back into the car I thought I’d mention some other observations of the con. To begin with, the way google assumes I speak Dutch. The way there are two network switches, one at each end of the room, along with lots and lots of power cables. The background music that always seems to fit the atmosphere. The humour (Ninja, at the beggining of his duel, jumping up and waving a broomstick with a white T-Shirt tied to it shouting ‘I surrender’). The differing types of setup that people have to play the same game (from one player with full flight control system, rudder pedals, joystick mounted in front of the chair between your legs just like you’d have it in an original fighter – to some playing with basic old joysticks on laptops that struggle to maintain the frame rate at the lowest of all graphic detail settings). The way so many different languages are spoken around the table and watching English be used as a middle language between Dutch, Polish, German, Spanish and French players.

It’s been great fun, I’m going to enjoy the last few hours so this is my last blog post from the con.

Last year, the duel became an epic. Myself and Unguis faught until our fuel ran out – twice!

The duel is played as a pair of players and this year I flew with Zonix. You fly towards the enemy at the same altitude, once you have ‘merged’ (passed each other head on), the fight is on. You can do anything you like, but the goal is that you must kill both your opponents. The rules were changed this year, so that if you run out of fuel the first to crash, lose.

Our second game was against Tomkin and Unguis, just like last year. Just like last year, Tomkin was damaged quickly and was out of the fight and my partner (Zonix this year, Dhyran last year) was shot down, leaving just Unguis and me to battle it out. In an almost exact replay of last year, I ran out of fuel seconds before unguis.

Oh well, maybe next year.