ReaperCon 2016 - Day 1

I was up and at the PEC just after 8am on Thursday. I was able to hitch a ride over in the staff van , Gene Van Horne was doing the driving. My vendors gradually dribbled in through out the day with only a few spaces left open by the end of the day. Everyone was accounted for either on site or on the road.

In the meantime entries were starting to trickle into the MSP Open painting competition. This year people seemed to be making and extra effort to get their entries in early. Everybody was a little tense with excitement. By the end of Thursday night we had just over 250 entries on the tables.

I decided to take a tour of the factory this time around. Its been three years since I have been there, the last time that Reaper Con was held on site. Everyone was asking me what I was doing there, I didn't realize that so many of the employees even knew who I was. There have been some huge changes though!

The big open area upstairs has been converted into offices for everyone, including an awesome dedicated photography studio. The factory floor has been expanded vertically by adding a mezzanine level over most of one side. There are now rows of Bones miniature side by side with rows of pewter miniatures. Reaper has certainly been doing something right!

The food event for the evening was the BBQ that we didn't get on Wednesday. It was delicious! Nothing quite like TX BBQ.

Registration is open, that's Bryan behind the desk

The main stage, with four TVs, you an already see photographs of miniatures that have been entered into the MSP Open

Stacks of stuffs for the raffles and the auction on Sunday

The early bird painters stacking out their territories and trying to see if there will be anything to do.

The gaming area all dressed up and ready to go. There are some early morning games already in progress way in the back

I still have dealers missing at this point on Thursday. Badger Airbrush company is just getting setup in the right side of the picture

A line to get entries into the competition

I think this is the point that I realized that some big changes had happend at the factory. This area used to be two rooms, the miniature display room and a conference room/front office. Now its completely dedicated to painted Reaper Miniatures in a fantastic setting. You can also see many of the costumes and suits of armor that have been acquired over the years.

I guess if you are going to make a display room you may as well dress up the whole thing.

The new view from above. Walking out the door from the upper level straight on to the mezzanine. Looking towards he left area, where you  can see storage and the shipping area and the entrance to the truck dock. 

Looking forward and to the left, all I see is the new mezzanine level. Mostly for storage but there is now a place for some gaming and on site hosting of different groups. I suspect this is where the Reaper Saturday painting group meets.

Right downstairs just coming through the new automatic door. Nothing but BONES to the right and the vault has been  moved back to the casting area.

BONES and Pewter together. Definitely no room here now for Reaper con.

All the way in the very back the mold making vulcanizers have been moved even further back. A 40' container has basically been grafted on to the back of the building to increase the floor space.

Out on the loading dock, where you will find both the Tardis and Thomas the Tank Engine. Thomas is the nickname for the on site plastic injection mold machine. They produce all of their bases from this machine and this is the machine that will be used to fulfill their Bases Kickstarter which ended last month.

Moving to the front and into the newest part of the building. This area was added after BONES 1 and is the dedicated order fulfillment area. Racks and rows of virtually every miniature and paint produced by Reaper.

Paint production. Those are five gallon pails of paint on the left that is ready to be loaded into those little dropper bottles. On the right, Daryl is at a machine that is screwing the caps on filled bottles of paint.

Anne's chemistry area where she creates new colors!

And a bonus for me. I wandered over to the antique consignment store and found a carousel horse! The gentleman wants $1750 for it which actually isn't bad. I need to do some research and see if I can figure out what carousel company may have carved this one. This is an outside stander and he is pretty ornate. I'm also sure that the paint work is not original, that is the ugliest shade of green I have seen in a while.