50,000 and Genghis Con XXXIV convention ramble

While I was heads down at Genghis Con XXXIV my blog rolled over the 50,000 mark for hits. Compared to some of the other gaming blogs out there 50,000 is pretty insignificant number. For me I still find it pretty exciting, it means people are coming and finding it worth reading. I'm getting better about staying on target on at least one project and I hope that continues as I push forward with my old west town of Calamity. What I do find interesting is that it took almost exactly 10 months to get the first 25,000 hits but it only took 5 months to get the next 25,000. I'll try to keep everything moving and maybe I can hit 100,000 in 2013.

The main reason I didn't notice rolling over the 50,000 mark was I was curled up in the fetal position while I came off that convention high. I do love going to Genghis Con though and I haven't missed a single one and in fact I have managed over a third of them over the years. I think the first one that I was completely in charge of was Genghis Con IX, we only had a $1,000 left in the bank and the convention was down to about 250-300 attendees and there was a very real chance that this would be the last show. For some reason we hit a chord with the RPG folks and attendance shot up to about 800 or so. I managed all the shows from Genghis Con IX through Genghis Con XXI. We also started the second convention, Tacticon, in 1989 and I ran those from 1989, through about 1999 or so. The peak attendance for Genghis Con while I was running it was 2100 or so (that's unique individuals), I think they are starting to close in on that number again.

These days I'm happy to just run the auction and the painting conference and competition. I'll try and get pictures posted of the painting competition shortly some here but mostly on the CMPA website. The top end was very, very good, but the competition seems to be growing again and I saw a lot of new people take that first step into competition painting. I also got pressed into teaching a blending class this year. I don't normally teach at conventions but everyone seemed to be picking it up and enjoyed the class. I didn't have any entries in the competition itself, nothing was inspiring me on an individual level and the key component I needed for my vignette didn't arrive until the week before the con and there just wasn't enough time to get it done properly. Hopefully, that will be finished for ReaperCon which will be in April this year (18th-21st)

Which brings up some thoughts about the differences between conventions here in the US and those in the UK. I am just amazed at how truly different they are. Genghis Con is a 4 day convention, featuring lots of boardgames, RPGs, and table top miniature games of all kinds. Most of the miniature games are run by individuals rather than clubs. We also have a lot of tournaments as well as one-off games. Of course there is an exhibitors' hall but most of the dealers are catering to the role-players and boardgamers and only to a few of the miniature gamers. Typically if a dealer has miniatures its going to be Flames of War from Battlefront or Games Workshop. The UK shows seem to be opposite in just about everyway. Yes, there are one-off games but most of what I see are demo games setup by clubs to show off stunning scenery and miniatures not necessarily to play. The exhibitors' hall though is just stacked to the gills with different miniature companies hawking their latest releases. I need to go someday just to experience the difference for myself. Oh, and near as I can tell we have a lot more women at Genghis Con than any show in the UK, must be the RPGs!

So thank you to everyone that has stuck with me through this first year and a big welcome to those that have joined up recently. Hopefully there will be more good stuff to come!

A shot from ReaperCon 2012 of the Warlord Tournament in progress. I didn't take my camera to GC XXXIV this year and I just have a couple of poor shots on my phone.

Genghis Con XXXIV Painting Competition Poster

Just to remind everyone that Genghis Con XXXIV is coming up very quickly here is a picture of the poster that the CMPA is sending out to stores. Mostly in Colorado but I know a few have gone out of state as well.

Let's get moving on those Dark Sword pieces!

Genghis Con XXXIV Painting Conference & Competition

Well its official, the DGA has opened up registration for Genghis Con XXXIV http://www.denvergamers.org

The CMPA will be handling the painting conference and competition portion of the show. Our sculpting guest of honor this year is Jason Weibe! Jason will be teaching classes and should be generally available to answer questions throughout the course of the show. 

Here are the rules, the entry categories, as well as information about trophies, and other awards (including one to be given out by Jason).


Competition Rules & Regulations:
1) Entries must be received by 3:00 pm on Saturday.
2) Entries must be made in-person by the painter, and be the work of the painter. Any entry painted by anyone other than the entrant will be disqualified.
3) No more than 3 entries per painter per category.
4) You cannot enter winning models from other contests or competitions.
5) You cannot enter painted models published prior to this CMPA competition in any professional print media, i.e. manufacturer magazines or gaming material.
6) Entries must be finished, including bases, within size restrictions as noted separately.
7) All competitors are responsible for the transport of their models to and from the competition and for storing their own transport and packing materials
8) Management determines final category placement of all entries and can change that placement before or during judging.
9) Entry registration includes permission for the CMPA, sponsoring manufacturers and the DGA to photograph entries and show them in all public media both online and print.
10) DGA and CMPA staff and volunteers cannot be held responsible for damaged or lost miniatures.
11) All decisions of the judges and management are final.
12) Entries and Prizes must be picked up by 3:00 pm Sunday at Genghis Con, or the entrant will pay shipping and handling for their entries and prizes to be mailed to them. If we receive no replies to our attempts to contact you by phone or email by March 31st, prizes will be forfeit and entries still in our possession will be auctioned off at a future convention.
13) Disqualified entries forfeit all prizes, titles, and awards. The painter is barred from entry in future CMPA competitions. Awards are given to the next winning entry. Information that may result in disqualification should be brought to the attention of the CMPA immediately.


Entry Restrictions:
The height measurement includes the miniature(s) only, not bases, movement trays, or display stands.  The maximum dimensions for an entry is defined by the category that it is placed in.
   

Judging Criteria:
Judging Criteria for all categories is given in order of general precedence. When determining the placements among close entries, each category has a Primary Criteria. Judges, Competition Administration and Volunteers are dedicated to conscientious judging.

Technical Quality: – The technical proficiency used in the painting and modeling of the entry. Obvious technical faults are mold lines, sloppy joins, rough primer, or sloppy paint.

Artistic Quality: –The artistic effects of the piece, including color choices, added detail work, pose, basing, and the overall effectiveness of the artistic choices made.

Unit Cohesion: –The unifying theme showing these miniatures belong together. This can be done, through effective use of uniforms, insignia, basing of the miniatures, including unifying display base for adventure groups.

Story: – How well the miniatures and the composition present a clear and enticing story to the viewer. This is the emphasized for the Diorama Category; however, it is looked for in most entries.


Prizes:
The top 3 from each category will receive an award: trophy for 1^st place and ribbons for 2^nd and 3^rd place.

The Best In Show winner will receive the coveted Best in Show trophy and free round trip airfare to Chicago to attend Adepticon (April 18 – 21, 2013) and may compete in the Crystal Brush competition. For more information on Crystal Brush competition, visit: http://www.crystalbrush.com/about

The Runner Up of Best in Show will receive a $75 gift certificate to Cool Mini Or Not.

2^nd Runner Up of Best In Show will receive $25 voucher to Cool Mini Or Not.

The Wiebewocky Award, sponsored by Reaper Miniatures.  Special guest judge Jason Wiebe will be awarding an autographed copy of his legendary Wiebewocky to his favorite entry in the competition.

The Best of Darksword Miniatures entry will receive a trophy and $200 gift certificate from Darksword, all entries wishing to compete for this prize must be entered in the Masterclass category to be eligible for this award.

Hangar 18 Miniatures will award a $100 gift certificate to the best painted miniature from any of the miniature lines they carry: Kabuki Models, Infamy Miniatures, Guild of Harmony, Ax Faction, Ares Mythologic, Draconia, ST Models and Miniature Factory. Check their website for the full list of miniature lines they carry athttp://www.hangar18minis.com



Category Information:

Single Miniature Small
40mm or smaller miniatures, this category includes animal or vehicle mounted miniatures, such as a knight on a horse or a trooper on a motorcycle, which fall within the size restriction. This includes base, mount, and appendages. A competition judge will rule on any bits, such as a pole, extending beyond the size restriction, at time of entry.

Size Restriction: 3”x3”x4” (length, width, height).
Primary Criteria: Technical Quality, Artistic Quality

Single Miniature Large
Larger than 40mm, this category includes busts and animal or vehicle mounted miniatures, such as a knight on a horse, which fall within the size restriction. This includes base, mount and appendages. The size restriction is somewhat looser for larger scale miniatures, the base should be a reasonable size based on the size and scale of the miniature.

Size Restriction: 12x12x15 inches (length, width, height)
Primary Criteria: Technical Quality, Artistic Quality

Unit
Models in military ranks or groups that constitute a unit, squad, or team of individuals, or adventure group. Units must include unifying base, board, or movement tray to allow moving miniatures within the case and for judging. Units without such a base are not allowed.
Note: Unifying Base/Movement Trays will be considered during judging as part of the Unit Cohesion, though an entry will not be downgraded solely based on an obvious attempt to satisfy this rule and is not part of the intended entry. Only basing of the miniatures themselves will then be considered for this portion of the judging criteria.

Size Restriction: Measurement/size max of 10x10x10 inches (length, width, height)
Primary Judging Criteria: Technical Quality, Unit Cohesion, Artistic Style

Vehicles and Ordnance
All vehicles and machines with or without crew. This includes all tanks, motorcycles, ships, siege engines, all weaponry that contains or is run by one or more crew miniatures. Multiple freestanding miniatures (as in crew) must include unifying base, board, or movement tray. The crews are judged based on their cohesiveness with the vehicle or weapon.  The focus of the judging will be on the vehicle or weapon and not on the crew.

Size Restriction: 12x12x12 inches. (length, width, height)
Primary Judging Criteria: Technical Quality, Artistic Quality

Diorama/Vignette
Emphasis is on the display as a focused scene telling a story with miniatures.
This may include battle scenes or other dioramic displays. Must be on a unified base, miniatures do not need to be permanently attached to the base, but judges will take into account the technical aspect of the miniatures as presented with the base.

Size Restriction: 12x12x12 inches. (length, width, height)
If you have a larger entry and would like to make special accommodations please contact Lili Troy before Genghis Con
Primary Judging Criteria: Story, Technical Quality, Artistic Quality

Masterclass Single Miniature
This category includes miniatures of all sizes as well as busts. It is open to anyone, however, the judging will be much more stringent as it is primarily intended for previous Best of Show winners from previous Genghis Cons, Tacticons as well as other conventions. Size restrictions are variable and based on the size of the miniature being entered.

Size Restriction:
40mm and smaller miniatures 3x3x4 inches (length, width, height)
Larger than 40mm (including busts regardless of size) 12x12x15 inches ((length, width, height)
If you have a larger entry and would like to make special accommodations please contact Lili Troy before Genghis Con
Primary Judging Criteria: Technical Quality, Artistic Quality


Painting Contest Timetable:
Receiving entries
Friday 9:00 AM – Saturday 3:00 pm
Entry deadline
Saturday 3:00 pm
First cut judging
Saturday 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm
First cut result display
Saturday 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Final judging
Saturday 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Award Ceremony
Saturday 8:00 pm
Entry pick up
Sunday 9:00 am – 3:00 pm 

Genghis Con and Tacticon Miniature Painting Competition Galleries

Recently the CMPA (Colorado Miniature Painting Alliance) website was hacked. Lili Troy spent three or four days of work restoring the site. She is unhappy to say the least! Fortunately she was able to recover almost everything for which I'm eternally thankful. If you haven't had a chance to check out the talented painters in Denver then I would encourage you to pop on over and check out the painting competition galleries; CMPA Painting Competition Galleries

Genghis Con XXXIII - Competition Pictures Posted

I finished working through the medal winning pictures of the competition miniatures from Genghis Con XXXIII. I have posted them on the CMPA Website http://www.cominipainters.com/gallery/

And a couple of pictures here

Genghis Con XXXIII - The Pictures

Since I basically couldn't be bothered to take more pictures the lovely Heather Smith-Matthews snapped some great pictures of my CMPA compatriots along with a few random convention pictures. There are even more pictures in the gallery that Heather has online (she is a professional photographer and this is a link to a website): fortuitousphotography

Back Row (L-R) Doug Sundseth, Torin Reed, Michael Proctor, Kirk Troy, Bob Crum
Middle Row (L-R) Lili Troy, Jen Kaufman, Kris Marquardt (me)
Front Row (L-R) Bianca Weeda, Derek Matthews, Marike Reimer (yes, that Marike)

And our Big Sponsors

A real painter's palette

And a Dragon popped out

and BOOM I was done

something about paint

Random Instructor Moments
Start from here when stabbing the eye                          And BOOM, Bob was done

                                   Marike Phone Home                                            

and next year the slaves will be...

Random GC XXXIII Convention Pics
Checking out the painted army competition

 I think its called a game

 Random miniature game

 So many games, so little time

Genghis Con XXXIII - Wrapped Up

Much as I figured I wouldn't be able to post much during the convention. The auction Friday night ran from 7:15pm to about 2:15am. Its becoming quite a marathon and I have to figure out a way to shorten up the time it takes. However, it was a pretty successful auction overall as people seemed to have more money to spend than they have had over the last few years. Once again no one bothers to take pictures of the auction and the wall of games that faces me when I start selling stuff off. My first auction as an auctioneer was at Genghis Con VI so this was my 28th appearance. For a lot of those years we were doing two auctions a show, one on Friday and one on Sunday but that quickly became overwhelming. I have done all the auctions at Tacticon as well so coming up will be my 24th appearance there. I have also put in guest appearances at other conventions, Origins three times, GenCon twice, LA twice (forget specifically which LA cons I was at though) and every Reapercon (except the first, because there was no auction at the first one). Reapercon may be my favorite auction because there is no money involved, you can only use Reaper Bucks and all the stuff coming up for auction is provided by Reaper so the reality is that the auction is "free". Its a ton of fun. In fact I highly recommend going to Reaper Con at least once just to experience a very different type of game convention. Helping with the auctions and being an auctioneer is one element of a game convention that I really like doing. Probably because all that attention is focused on me and no one can escape my bad jokes.

Most of Saturday was spent getting entries into the painting competition and then 4 hours of judging. Everything is entered into specific categories like Single Fantasy Miniature or Dioramas. Within a category we award medals; gold, silver, bronze or certificates of merit. If a person has multiple entries in a category then the judges will discuss which piece will be judged. After this there is no more discussion and judges award a score between 0 - 4 (0 being try again, and 4 being gold). The sheets with the scores are turned in and put into a spreadsheet. For each entry being judged the high score and the low score are thrown out and the remaining three added together to get a result from 0 - 12. Judges are also allowed to put a + or - next to their score indicating that they are willing to go up or down a step if that puts them more in line with what other judges are indicating. The scores break out as follows:
11-12 - Gold
8-10 - Silver
5-7 - Bronze
2-4 - Certificate of Merit

After the entries are judged, we select the category winners (sometimes that's easy sometimes its hard). From the Category winners we select Best in Show, Best in Competition and Best Theme (Mongol). We have a separate category that we call Master Class, this is the class that people who have won previous Best in Show awards, GW Slayer Swords, that kind of thing. Typically Best in Show, at Genghis Con, comes out of this category, so we created what we call Best in Competition, the best non-masterclass entry. The winner of this gets moved into the Master Class category and hopefully gets pushed even harder to bring in his/her best work. The quality of the entries continues to climb every show, its almost mind boggling.

There were lots of painting classes on Saturday and Sunday as well, followed by getting everything packed up and headed back to the house.

I took my painting slave....er guest of honor, Marike Reimer, skiing on Monday at Keystone. We had a great time but the wind yesterday made it really cold. Still feeling the effects of that today, some muscles are loudly complaining about how hard I skied. I have skied since I was 12 and I'm very good, did a little amateur racing and so I tend to attack the hill pretty aggressively and I'm getting a little old to be quite that aggressive anymore. My knee was letting me know that towards the end of the day.

Anyway, it was a terrific show, one of the best we have done and they only seem to be getting better. Genghis Con is growing again, I think the final attendance numbers were between 1900 and 2000 (starting to push my attendance numbers when I ran it) which is really good to see.

Genghis Con XXXIII - Day Two

Well day two of the convention finds me...at work busily writing requirements and use cases (if that makes sense to you then you have my condolences). I did manage to acquire the painting guest of honor last night, so one quest successfully completed. Of course her plane was an hour late getting in and it took her forever to get from the plan to the main terminal (Denver International Airport is pretty big and she came in on the farthest concourse out). Then I'm driving us back to the hotel only to discover that the highway leading directly to the hotel is closed and I have to take to the streets and add another 20 minutes to the drive. Upon arrival at the front desk I try to get her checked into her room, politely asking the nice hotel clerk for Marike Reimer's room. Marike hands over her ID, the clerk looks grim, there is no Reimer in the system. She looks a bit more and discovers that it had been setup as Marike, Marike in the system...whew dodged that bullet. So I politely haul her suitcase and 70# backpack up to the room.
Today she is in the hands of  Jen Kaufman, my right hand at the show. I expect to zip into the painting area after work, then proceed directly to the auction where they should be starting to check in items to go up for bid tonight. I'll sort items and develop a game plan and probably from 6 - midnight will sell as much stuff as I possibly can. Well actually we will sell all of it. I expect to move somewhere between 400 - 500 lots this evening. So there may not be pictures of anything going on today. But I will update this with pictures tonight if I get a chance and there will definitely be pictures tomorrow as the convention will be in full swing on Saturday.

Genghis Con XXXIIII - Day One

UPDATED with pictures from Thursday night (Thursday is traditionally the zero slot for the RPG events when the judges get to play, my painting group and the boardgamers have kind of attached ourselves to Thursday as well. No miniature games tonight.

Actually day one hasn't officially begun yet, things don't kick off until tonight. However, I have my car loaded down with all my usual equipment to get the painting conference and competition portion of the convention up and running. The CMPA is even running a class or two this evening, which I believe are already full (we only have 5 spots per class). I'm already feeling the effects of a weekend of gaming as I have tried to combine last minute painting, organizing and the homework of my first college class (my last one was 15 years ago, hopefully this time I will finish) into these last few days before the convention. Late tonight I'll get some pictures up at least showing off the banners that we made for our sponsors this year. I was hoping for a green of our Genghis Gal mascot but we just didn't get that far along. Which reminds me if anyone sees a miniature (a green in this case) of someone that looks like Lysette (see the picture on the top right of the home page) let me know. The green was sculpted by Gene Van Horne and was stolen from my box as I was taking her on tour to the local FLGSs. Anyway, hopefully pictures tonight of the start of another great convention (Genghis Con, obviously is in its 33rd year and I have been to every single one of them!).

 My Part of the Con

  

First painting discussion of the con

 And the classroom

 JMD comes through big time again

Thursday Night Boardgames

 Thursday Night RPGs

Genghis Con XXXIII Show Banner