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Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Genghis Con XXXVII Approaching Fast




Genghis Con (February 11th - 14th) is Denver's main gaming convention. This will be the first one run under the auspicious of the Gamers for Veterans non-profit group. I have very strong ties to this show as it was the first gaming convention I ever attended (I was 15) and I haven't missed a single one. I have filled virtually every coordinator position and was the con manager for GC IX through GC XXI and quite frankly I'm disappointed with the direction being taken by the new organizers.

They opted to not print pre-registration booklets because by the time of the show they aren't accurate. I won't argue that point but odds are that they are probably 90% accurate and by not getting them out to the local stores you have missed on a huge chunk of advertising. Currently the only advertising is the website which you can find here: Genghis Con XXXVII

It is a nice website but you need more than that to let people know that the convention is still going on. The sudden emphasis on cosplay kind of blows my mind, that has never been part of any of the local game conventions. Sure there have always been a few folks in costume but there has never been anything organized just folks that like dressing up. That's something we always left to the folks at the local anime convention, Nan Desu Kan, or DASFA's science fiction convention, MileHiCon.

The first convention GFV took over from the DGA was Tacticon. They did okay, but you could feel a substantial slip in attendance. One of the local RPG groups, the Pathfinder Society (?) wasn't there but they will be there for Genghis. That's huge from my standpoint as that is where most of the folks that take our painting classes come from. So that's exciting news, I just hope the attendance numbers level out and we don't see another big decrease.

Looking at the schedule there appear to be plenty of events so folks should be able to keep busy all weekend. Unfortunately our painting classes aren't in the event section but are under the programming tab. While the list is complete and the times are right I'm not quite sure how anyone is suppose to sign up for the classes. Hopefully that will be addressed at the registration counters.

Because we received confirmation so late the CMPA is running a very abbreviated class schedule this year with only 8 classes as compared to our normal 30+ schedule. With that in mind we are basically going to run basically an extended version of our 3rd Saturday painting sessions and you are welcome to just come and paint with us starting on Friday!

Friday
Basic Painting; 10am - Noon with Scott Kippen
Sculpting Texture: 1pm - 3pm with Gene Van Horne
Leveling Up: 4pm - 6pm with Michael Proctor

Saturday
Leveling Up: 10am - Noon with Michael Proctor
Sculpting Faces: 1pm -3pm with Gene Van Horne
Basic Painting: 4pm - 6pm with Kris Marquardt

Sunday:
Basic Painting: 10am - Noon with Kris Marquardt
Basing Noon - 3pm with Scott Kippen

So as I mentioned a very abbreviated schedule this time around. We are going to handle 8 people per session though to compensate a little bit for that. Reaper Miniatures will be helping us out with paint and minis which is always generous.



There will be an auction, something that was missing from Tacticon. This will be Friday night and Mark has been handling that aspect of my con time. I'm not sure it will be up to our usual numbers but we will know pretty quickly. I'm hoping for at least a reasonable turnout so we can get that back on track again. My only issue is that they are apparently allowing online registration of lots and I'm not sure how well that is going to work. I may have nothing, I may be swamped.

So its coming up this weekend and I'm actually looking forward to it. and I hope it goes well.



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