ReaperCon 2018 Day 1

Day 1 starts off bright and early for us. The vendors' hall is open at 8 for the rest of the vendors coming in which really is most of them. Thursday is the lightest day for activity but I would guess we still had about 300-400 attendees on site. The vendor hall was busy with shoppers right from the time we opened it up.

One of the things that we do to encourage attendees to stop in is the Vendor Punch Card. We give each vendor a punch to use for the convention and attendees bring their punch cards (from the their swag bag after they register). If you get a punch from each vendor then you can turn it in at the Reaper booth for an exclusive con miniature. It guarantees that most of the attendees will actually visit your booth, although there is a certainly level of rudeness that has cropped up with it over the years. Lots of attendees have started to really just stick the cards at the vendors without so much as a "hello, could you please punch my card?"which bothers me, but the vendors haven't really complained to much.

The first entries started to show up in the competition area too. Its best just to have it ready to go and get it in rather than try and finish something on site. That never works for me very well. In the end I decided not to enter the Sherman from Trenchworx as I felt it just wasn't ready, so I opted for the Trenchworx FT-17 and two of the 21st Panzer Division Normandy vehicles that I did from Mad Bob's last kickstarter.

DGS and their skirmish game Freeblades

Talon Games, the owner of CAV. Who doesn't like stompy mechs?

Texas Viking, local game seller

Forge Prints, although the company name is officially changing. I'll have to dig that up.

And there is one of the new cards right in the photograph!

Best Little Craft House in TX

Complete with Cats

Hanger 18

Bombshell Miniatures

Bobe's Hobby, a con staple

Badger Air Brush Company, back in attendance

Jane's Tools, he usually does model railroad shows but decided to give us a try this year. What painter/modeler doesn't love tools?

Another local game seller, specializing in used material

Queen Penquin, making all kinds of cool jewelery

Another Convention Staple, Frontline Games

The Reaper Booth, already seeing traffic

Darkflame books, finally releases her second book

MidKnight Heroes

Frozen Ninja 3D

And a close up of their display board

Tabletop Plus, another con staple

Typhoon Paint Mixers

Scale 75

The main hall filling up

Those are game demo booths on the left side

Registration, in between rushes. We had some issues with the Growtix software we were using but I think everything will be ironed out for next year. The company was on site and I think has a much better idea of what needs to change.

ReaperCon 2013 Thursday Day 1

I didn't suffer to much from the long travel day on Wednesday. What I did miss is getting the chance to take some setup photos. Today I mostly helped out in the painting competition room. Figured out the software, helped take some entries and take some pictures. Reaper is currently streaming the pictures of the contest entries here: Painting Competition Entries. Go ahead and take a look and see what's been entered so far.

I mostly spent today catching up with folks. I worked on my painting entry but I'm not entirely happy with the third figure so its probably not going in as a diorama this year. Fortunately I sort of planned for the possibility so I will still have an entry. I'll get it up tomorrow but probably much later in the day.

Easier to describe the convention with pictures so here you go.

The "shed" that was in front has been moved to the side over by the loading dock.

The original building front is mostly hidden by the new building, the shorter structure on the right.

The new building is serving as the entrance to the con. They lost a lot of parking places and three cars were almost towed away today and its only Thursday!

The entrance to the Dark Carnival

The traditional Convention Sohpie Banner

The Registration "Tent"

The Big Top. Open Painting along with Painters and Sculptors are located here.

The front breakroom

A view from the back looking towards the front.

Sonic onsite and getting ready

The line is already forming

The original Dungeon Crawl, ready to go

The Dark Carnival Dungeon Crawl

The Alice in Wonderland Dungeon Crawl. All the Dungeon Crawls use a modified version of the Warlord Rules and run about an hour. Participants earn Reaperbucks for the auction on Sunday.

Painting Competition room, a few entries had already rolled in. That's Kit in the middle discussing the software.

Contents of the swag bag

A little closer look

The lounge. I have no idea what that's for but it looks cool

Vampire boxes on the mezzanine level in the back. The metal molds are underneath, the metal boneyard is to the left (all the little yellow boxes).

Miniature Building Authority, right next to the lounge.

Frontline Games, this is where the shipping area and where we used to run the Dungeon Crawls

Bryan and Ron

Matt Clark making annoucements

Anne's painter and sculptor schedule. Notice she doesn't bother to schedule anything during or after my auction. I really do shut the show down.

Tomorrow should be busier. I expect to see a lot of people bringing in their entries for the competition and a ton more people there for classes and games. So more pictures tomorrow night but not till after the the painting competition judging is finished!