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.

Rogue Trader the RPG

One of the last single models that I have been working on before my next army project has been a  Dark Age Forsaken WarWind model that I got last year at GenCon. Since we will have some females (and female PCs) in our forthcoming Dark Heresy/ Rogue Trader campaigns, it seemed natural to have some female models.
First off, the Dark Age miniatures are incredible and I plan to get more of them in the future. While the game hasn't captured my attention, their sculptors and painters certainly have. There is so much detail on these models, you can spent a lifetime bringing them all out. However, as I needed to move onto more projects and I only needed to get this table top presentation... I had to move on.

Again, the base is a free resin base from Dragon Forge Design from Adepticon 2010. Jeff does a wonderful job with this resin bases and I hope to use a lot more of them in the future.

More Dark Heresy Henchman

Monday, I showed you the PC created for my friends Dark Heresy campaign. Today I have a Nurgle infested NPC. He wanted something that looked a bit more dark and tainted with Nurgle but nothing over the top. Something still recognizable. This won his approval.

Of note, I dumped that silly NMM idea and went with regular metal paints with lots of washes on top. Washing Nurgle acolytes with greens, reds, and purples gets the job done. The model also sports a 'home made' base technique from last years Wapple Base Class. Is simple, easy, and effective. Using Super Sculpey I scored the cooked clay into the checker pattern- from there its paint, wash, ink and done.

Dark Heresy: Inquisitorial Henchmen

After Adepticon, I already had a few commission projects on the table that were ready to go. First was some RPG models for Fantasy Flight Games Dark Heresy. We love DH around these parts, its just that we don't have the time to play it enough. Role playing in the dark future is emense fun. Our GM is running some Dark Heresy at GenCon this year and needed some guys painted up. Enter the Acoylyte.

A couple of notes- I tried using NMM for the metal parts. I failed. I hate NMM. The gold turned out pretty nice, but the silver not so much.
I also tried using the Wapples technique of washing the model to achieve shadows. This was from the class at Adepticon. It turned out ok and I need more work on the technique. First, I need to highlight the pre-wash much more. The final models below are a bit to dark (which might fit a DH character better).

All in all, I like the model- even if the metal and black look a bit to similar. But the client was happy with the result and I'll be shipping it to him soon.