ReaperCon 2018 Day 2 & 3

I'm just going to combine Friday and Saturday together. They all start to blend together after a while and from my standpoint they are pretty much the same. Lots of classes going on, lots of shoppers and lots of gaming.

A Freeblades demo game in Action

We use a modified version of the Open or Medal system created by the MMSI in Chicago. In Chicago dioramas are included in the Open category, at Reaper we elected to split them out into their own category resulting in a total of 4 categories: Painter (stock figures), Open (scratchbuilt and/or converted), Ordnance (Machines of War) and Diorama. Here is a selection of a few of the 500 plus entries in the various categories in the painting competition. I'm the captain for the Ordnance judging team. And no we don't score our own entries, we have an alternate step in to do that.

I love the creativity behind this diorama featuring Moby Dick.

The exclusive Con Sophie as painted by Rhonda Bender

I really just loved this horse, very well done

A good example of an Open piece, this is a scratch sculpt that started life as a piece of dead wood

I like the miniature in the pocket watch

Ordnance, from GW

To 1/35th scale Armor

While this diorama is extremely well done, it takes some time for the story to really come out,

This one was just fun

Here is my FT-17 in progress, this would eventually get a silver medal.

While I'm thinking about it. The one thing that is really holding people back from getting gold medals in the Ordnance category is mold lines, seams and poorly applied decals. Take some effort to clean up all your mold lines and fill the seams, they distract so much from the model. I saw some beautiful GW kits in the competition, that suffered from this plus poorly applied decals. If you are going to spend $100 plus dollars on a kit at least take the time to build it right!

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 2018 Day 0

I think I have, more or less, recovered from the attending Reaper Con enough that I can speak about it again. This year we were in, yet another, new facility. But what a facility! This is Denton's new convention center in the Embassy Suites Hotel, not even a year old yet. We know that we have this site for next year and Adrienne and Ron are working to make sure that this is Reaper Con's new home for a good long time.

Day 0 for me is the Wednesday before the convention officially starts when the vendors can start rolling in to set up. Since we opted to drive we left Denver on Tuesday after work and stayed the night in Amarillo TX. We left a little later than planned in the morning and arrived about an hour late at the hotel so a number of the vendors were already setting up. This was a tough show to get the vendors into. It was Reaper Cons first time on Labor Day weekend and while I think it was a good choice some vendors had to make decisions on which conventions to attend. We still managed to fill the room with a great selection of vendors.

Wednesday night was the Pizza Dungeon, also known as the meet and greet. There was plenty of pizza and drinks for all. We ate our fill and locked down the vendor hall for the night.

The entry into the vendors' hall. The airwall on the right was open to the main hall when the vendor's hall was open.

Taking a left turn

And then a right

Moving towards the back and the Reaper booth along the back wall

A quick look into the center aisle

And another right turn, looking back toward the entrance

The Reaper Booth, run by Cheryl Storm and crew, all set and ready to go

A look into the main hall and the infamous metal trade table

A look at the stage. The four TVs would feature a rotating display of the pictures used for the painting competition for the entire weekend.

A look towards Artist Alley and the game machines

First look at the painting competition area

Looks spacious now, it would get a bit crowded later

Getting ready to accept entries.