GenCon 2011 Wrap Up

Its only been a month since GenCon Indy, but with summer ending, the kids starting school, and recovering from all of my summer vacations, its been busy around the workshop here. I got the paint brushes out this week to complete the Orc and Goblin army for Papa JJ. Pictures will be coming soon, but I wanted to show you all some of the pictures from Indy!

Steampunk is awesome, right up to the part where I try to wear it. 

For those who haven't heard, the con had over 36,000 attendees this year. That smashes all of the previous GenCon's. And I think that most were there to see the new Star Wars stuff!  FFG games announced the industries worst kept secret just prior to the con that they were acquiring the rights from Lucas to produce just about everything this gamer wants to play that falls into the Star Wars Universe. The X-Wings of War, errr X-Wing game looks fantastic and the card game looks to hold interest to my gaming group as well. The key things I saw were that they are focusing on the 'original' SW story and they are using (new) art over movie stills. Surly FFG hopes to inject new life into the SW story. 

Star Wars Card game- with original art!

Of course, I'm the most interested in the RPG that I hope is announced next year at GenCon. There has been no word on anything about the system, rules, sytle... nothing at this point. But it is safe to consider this the hottest item already for next year!

X-Wing looks great. 

On a personal note, I took one step closer to looking into Warmachine/Hordes. The system and style hasn't bee my thing for a few years now. However, the big fella up there made some threats! However, I did spend a lot of time at the Wyrd both and Malifaux is in my sights for this next year.

Dan (ETW) and me. 

I did get to meet up with Dan from the Eternal Warrior's podcast. We had some lunch and got to play a fun game of Dark Heresy RPG along with some other listeners and Bill from the Gamers Lounge (well sorta!).  More on that next week. It was a blast to hang out for a day with someone that I've spent the last couple of years listening too online. Don't fret, he is still pretty much a douche bag in real life as well!  (I kid, I kid!).

It only took one rum and coke to build up the guts to do this. Yeah, just one!

But to be honest, I spent most of my time playing Pathfinder RPG's in the small room with lots of people! It was a total blast despite the lack of space.

GenCon and Kara Black

I've been back from GenCon for a week and a half and just got my oldest starting school this week (he is a big kinder-gardener now!). So life at the DrGabe blog is coming off of its summer hiatus and back to grind. It was a great summer, filled with a few vacations and of course the big daddy gaming convention of them all, GenCon. 

I'll have more to report about GenCon in the coming days, but I wanted to talk about my miniature that went into the painting contest, Lt Kara Black. This is pretty much all I painted this summer and it was a blast to paint only one model and give it the best I could when it comes to blending in the highlights and shadows. Unfortunately it didn't make it past the first cut, since there really wasn't such a thing at this competition. The winning entries were fantastic, but we were all going up against professional painters who took home almost all of the trophies. 

When I was picking up my entry the organizers were talking about how Marike Reimer was embarrassed to have won all of the Dark Sword Miniature prizes, since she is one of there staff painters. The comment I heard, was "What stuff is there left to get at this point."  Anyway, there is probably a long rant coming about professional painter and the hobby painter somewhere down the road.

So what would have make Kara stand out more? The blending is actually pretty well done, but not perfect. There is space on the back for some freehand work (I was too chicken to do it!), and there were no conversions on the model (something almost all of the winners had, even if it was just the base).  The good news is that its open to enter at Adepticon! :)