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.

Building Calamity 29 - The "Hardware" Store - Getting to the Roof On

Like I have mentioned before, I really like how the building is coming along. The weathered wood is not as "silver" as I wanted but that's always a matter of experimentation anyway. Rather than dive into the painting though I thought it was time to finally get to that scary roof.

I started just cutting out the two basic roof panels out of 1mm foamed PVC sheet stock. I then cut out the sections where the half dormer style windows sit. I also cut the sides of the dormers, and managed to get a pretty good match to the angle of the roof.

The really difficult portion is mating the dormer roof to the regular roof. I have always had trouble figuring out how to cut that angle. It is definitely slowing things down at this point. You can check out my current process below.

The two roof panels cut out

Roof sections marked for the dormer cutouts

Oops, had to modify the interior a bit to add some bracing to support the roof on the false front side. Had to trim away some wallpaper to provide a surface that would accept the plastic weld glue.

Braces in place

Test fitting the roof panels

Figuring out the correct angles for the dormer sides

Cutting out what will become my cutting template

Dormer sides

Gluing the dormer sides in place

Test fitting the roofs again, looks pretty good.

And the other side. The next big challenge is figuring out how to  making the sloping dormer roof which also lays tight against the slope of the main roof, tricky.

Kickstarter Watch 1 - Tiny Epic Western Boardgame - Final Days

This little kickstarter is now under the 72 hour mark to its end and they are close to breaking the $400,000 mark and reaching their final stretch goal. They report that all components, including the stretch goals, are tested and ready and none of these will delay the delivery date. Based on that the $400,000 stretch goal is the final goal regardless of how much money is raised at the end. This is an important stretch goal as it takes the boss mats from being double sided to being single sided which will add a lot more complexity and flexibility to the game right out of the box.

$26 will get you into the deluxe version of the game with all the achieved stretch goals both physical and digital. This is a good company and I highly recommend them from my last experience on kickstarter. What are you waiting for?

Here is a graphic of the current box contents

Care Package - Offensive Miniatures

This one felt like it took forever to get here. I managed to make the initial order while the company was on Christmas Holiday and then the Royal Mail and the USPS didn't handle the hand off very well. But my American Paratroopers finally arrived today, a little frozen but some heat should fix them right up. Not to much heat though I don't wan't molten piles of pewter all over the place.

These are very nice minis. They looked a little small coming out of the package but it looks like they will stand up well against my British Paras. Now I have all three components for some D-Day scenarios this coming year. Of course they need to be painted so they are going in the que, need to finish the British Paras first, then the Germans, then finish off the German vehicles conversion (which quite frankly has me stumped at the moment.) then I can get to the Americans. Probably will see a couple of these in as entries into the Lead Adventurers upcoming contest.

Nice plastic box came in an envelope

Would have been great packaging if it wasn't so cold here in Denver. A little cracked plastic during transit

Zip lock bags of minis.

I think this is a command team

A regular squad. I had them swap out all the BAR gunners for riflemen

Pathfinder group. Looking forward to painting these, maybe they will be the carrot I need to get back to painting.

Building Calamity 28 - The "Hardware" Store - Painting, the weathering layer

Like most of my other structures for Calamity, the first layer I paint is the weathered wood layer. I typically paint the entire exterior like this since I'm not always sure where I want to show peeling paint. I started out with the splatter ink technique but as I worked my way around the building I found that it was just as easy to "paint" the ink on instead of splattering and the pushing the ink into place.

Once this stage was complete I let it dry and then applied a coat of matte varnish. Instead of it Vallejo Model Color Matt Varnish through the airbrush this time I opted to spray it with Testors Dullcote from a rattle can. That should protect the weathered paint layer better than the acrylic matte varnish I have been using. I'll let all that dry and hopefully move forward to finish the painting.

I used some scrap mattboard to help protect the finished interior work

On the upper floor I started with the splatter method. Definitely messy

On the ground floor I applied ink randomly and then streaked it down with the brush, moving with the grain of the boards. Here Burnt Umber and Carbon Black have been applied.

Followed that up with Raw Sienna

Straight Burnt Umber

Carbon Black and Raw Sienna

A fuzzy picture of the front

And from the back.