Gencon 2015

So at the last minute, I ended up going to Gencon.

Well, I can say "last minute" but it really wasn't.

My wonderful wife (Gawd bless her!), volunteered to work in the crafting room, and as a result, I registered for the full four day extravaganza.

I hadn't done the full package in a few years, but I kind of knew what to expect. 

The approximate crowds at Gencon this year was around 61-65K (yet another 10% increase, the sixth in a row)....

Speaking of six...

The floor of my parking garage....

IMHO, parking this year was kind of brutal.

There was construction going on at the city circle, and two of the garages were also closed due to "construction".

If it is one grip I have with Indianapolis, it's what I think is the lack of parking. When you have a six floor parking garage and 2 1/2 - 3 floors are taken up with "reserved" slots...there's a problem.

I ended up parking all the way over by Barcelona Tapas and humped it to the ICC.

The sky was indeed pretty blue though, and Indy is a nice city/town....

Not a cloud in the sky....

Egads...they still exist!!!! (and this one worked, and yes...
I checked for change...old habits never die...)

One of the more interesting buildings around here is the "Circle Tower". The front and the insides of it are done in what I can only call "Egyptian Style Tomb Motif".  I need to get some inside pics of this place. I do believe they might have a pharaohs sarcophagus on the 13th floor... Either that, or this is a nexus point for Gozar The Gozarian.

The entrance way....Who ya gonna call?

And here we see the crew "hard at standing...errr.."work", on the Indy Circle"....

But the downtown circle and monument is pretty against a blue sky....

And Ali-Babi asked the genie for a "Sure fire way to make some money in Indy during Gencon..." And the genie granted him...a food truck....

Registration at Gencon was pretty easy. Of course I had a will call badge, and there were some of the usual hiccups when thousands of people descend on something in the first opening day, but I was okay. I got through Registration pretty fast...

Registration....

According to Gencon, that piece of plastic with my name and barcode was worth approx $90.00... I'll leave it to the other people at Gencon to vouch for it was worth it.

Meanwhile some of the ads at Gencon....Games and Councillor Troy....hmmm...

 

Room 209 the SPA (Spousal Activities, Crafts Rooms, where my wife (Gawd bless her!), spent her Gencon....

So I hit the Vendors/Dealers Room/Hall/Lair:

With CS Forage Cap on, I made my way through the crowded hellishness that was the Vendors Room. Little Wars Attendees will definitely recognize that cap....

And yes the room WAS crowded....

With people buy "What'sits" and "Whosit's", and other fine fancy stuff....

One of the games that they were demo'ing that I wanted to try was "Mysterium". It looks amazing and if it sucked, I figured I could use the cool props for miniature stuff...

And of course there was this.....

This is definitely "THE GAME" for IT Service Professionals.....

While wandering through the aisles, I came upon this old school beauty:

I've got a copy of that "somewhere I do believe....and if you see the original $4.95 cent price, you can also see the "newer price" in the bottom right of $24.95....something things don't change...some things do....

Meanwhile, out on the streets of Indianapolis....

Yes we know what you want to say....(Go ahead...it's all right...)

While during Cos-play Saturday...we had Evil Queens and Sweet Princesses....

And bears...(Thankfully NOT Pedobear).....

And certain suave and charming 3rd World Dictators showed up, to show people that "Swaggering, Overbearing, Tin-Plated Dictators with Delusions of Godhood", can be well...."sexy"....

The man of the hour....all hail!

Glasses on....glasses off....A comparative analysis in modern political oppression, disdain of the people, and all things "Dictator-ness"....

And and nice full pose body shot.....

Stirs your heart with feverish nationalism, doesn't it?.....

But enough about all of that!

While there I spent money.....

I sucked it up, plopped down 20 bucks and bought the D&D 5th Edition Starter Set....

(I'll review this later in another post)....

Hopefully they didn't make it an upgraded 4.0 train wreck....

And being who I am, I also grabbed the DM's screen...

(At a quick glance of this, I can tell you that I am NOT impressed....)

And I bought some miniatures...

First off was some Reaper P-65 series, (which I had never heard of, but later found out that they were doing in resin and these were the metal releases).

So of course, I got "Strumpets".....

"Hello Ladies......"

And then I stopped over by the good ole' "Midnight Syndicate" booth....
For those of you not in the know, MS, makes a lot of "Soundtrack CD's." I've already got 13th Mansion, and some of other tracks purchased via DL...
But I wanted a copy of the D&D soundtrack they did, and while there I also picked up their "Monsters of Legend".
They make great background music pieces for games...

I'm actually looking forward to listening to them while gaming out...probably painting figs or building terrain....

Wandering around I saw a wonderful dealer with LARP boffers, and found one I really liked....

"What ho! That black handle long-sword seems just to be what I need to keep door to door salesman at bay! Let me check ye olde price upon yon sticker...."

"Hmmm...Handcrafted by The Danes...."

"GADZOOKS AND FORSOOTH!...Ummmm....No thanks...Not today...." (That's one of my college loan payments right there...)

So the really cool LARP weapon didn't come home with me..

But what DID come home with me was yet another bunch of miscellaneous figures from the Ral-Partha Bins, including four (4) cobras, some type of Jungle Cat, some floor terrain pieces, and of course, slave girls, bondage girls, and "damsels in distress"....

All ready to be painted and well...."rescued"....

That's GOTTA hurt for these ladies....

"Snakes....why did it have to be snakes?"...(oh and some terrain pieces and some poor wench stretched out on the rack...)

And yes...some more poor unfortunate lasses in various forms of physical discomfort and in need of rescuing....

But perhaps the coolest part of the entire affair was this....

Out of 60,000+ people there...

In all that crowd....

And all those events, and rooms...

Who do I run into?

The one and only.....

My son....

"The Geek is strong with these two...."

I spent 3 1/2 of 4 days at Gencon and had a good time. Didn't play as many games as I wanted but jut enjoyed the people, the experience, and getting stuff, talking to dealers, and buying yet more dice for my wonderful wife (Gawd bless her!).

Gencon keeps getting larger each year, but I am sad to say that this will probably be my last major four day full Gencon experience, unless something major happens. I'm just too old and it sucked up too much energy from me...

But next year...we shall see.....

And a big thank you to the City of Indianapolis for making it happen!!!!

End of November; (Figures, Fun, SCORE!, etc...)

The days of Summer dear reader are behind us, and the early fall colors have quickly given away to the gray chill of late fall and the onset of winter.
It's the season that I love....
November has rolled to it's final days and with it, I shall attempt some last minute painting tomorrow, but I doubt if I really get much done.
I've lost one weekend this month due to the death of my mother, so now I am pressed for time on my challenge of getting a certain # of figs painted by the end of the year.
And with it dear read, I present this entry for your enjoyment. This is quite long, (probably the longest one this year, if ever on this blog), so sit back, relax, get a drink, and get ready for lots of pics and lots of other things....

Here we gooooooooooo!!!!


1: Blue Moon Egyptian Figures:

Well, I am finally getting around to doing it.
A while back I had discussed the Blue Moon Egyptian Agents and my concern about how they looked painted as compared to the Blue Moon Hillbillies.

Readers will remember that I posted this picture of them:

From L to R: Figs #1, #2, #3, #4, #5....

Over the last couple of months, I went ahead and started painting them.

Here they are as finished "WIP's".

The paint jobs have been finished but they still need to be sealed, etc...

FIGURE #1 and #2:

The first two figures were two standard "Agents". So I went ahead and painted them up as suck. Figure #2 had a large amount of flash on his hands that required removal before painting.

Figures 1 and 2  BEFORE:

  

And Figures 1 and 2 AFTER:

Introducing Mosouk and Fezzik, Egyptian Agents that are up to no good....

ACK! I have realized that I do not have a photo of Figure #2 yet...Fezzik is a Pulp Minis Figure...sigh...Okay I will fix that....

FIGURE #3:

This figure had little flash, and was a lot easier to paint. The detail was good, and he came out well....

Figure #3: BEFORE:

And Figure #3 AFTER:

Introducing "Abdouk The Slave-Trader"....He can get you what you want..."IF" you can meet his price..."

FIGURE #4:

Figure #4 was a bit of a challenge.

Unlike the others, this one had a world of detail to her, and present different ways she could be painted. Truth be told, I painted her outfit twice before I settled on the second color. I think though that in the future I might get this set again and paint her up in the first color scheme...or maybe a light Princess Pink.....

Figure #4, BEFORE: 

And now figure #4, AFTER, in both paint schemes....

Paint Job #1:

The red looked nice, but I just wasn't "satisfied" with it....

And Paint Job #2:

From red to green to help the gold trim show up. Not sure if I am still happy with this, but she's pretty much done for now. A final plan for her is to have her belly button area drilled out and a small glittering jewel inserted in it....

And finally FIGURE #5:

This figure was supposed to be an elderly woman, (possibly in mourning), but as I said before, I just couldn't do it, and be happy with it. Somehow or another this then became painted up as either an old funeral cemetery statue or a restless spectre....

Figure #5: BEFORE:

Not much to this figure as you can tell.....

Figure #5, AFTER:

"An old statue in a forgotten cemetery...perhaps whispering a long forgotten secret???"

OR

"A restless spectral spirit....doomed to wander the grounds of the old cemetery until the mystery is solved that will lay it to rest...???"

Looking back, I can say that the figures had more flash on them than I though but also they painted up A LOT better than the Blue Moon Hillbillies. I think that it had to do mostly with the humidity acting up with my primer.

2: SCORE!!!!! (Old School Style)....

Okay, so last night, my wonderful wife (Gawd bless her!), and myself went over to the neighboring town of Danville, for their annual "Christmas On The Square". Essentially what they do is light up the town square....

It's truly a beautiful sight.

One moment the square was dark....

Then the tree lit up....

Followed by the town square....

Soooo...while all of this was going on....

My wife and I found this old vintage retro store on a side street and we wandered in.

I usually take about 10-15 minutes to go through the place, but in this store...something caught my eyes....

Glory be!  A box of Grenadier Dwarves?!?!.....

So I tried to be as calm as could be and said "Uh...Ex...Ex...Excuse me....How much for these???"

He looked and there was no tag on the box so he made a call and then said "How does 10 dollars sound?"

I almost yelled at him to "SHADDUP AND TAKE MY MONEY!!!"

Quickly I agreed, plus I went ahead and gave them my name and number "just in case" they come across anything else like this.

With my prize in my hand, I wandered outside and on a plastic garbage bin lid, I opened the box....

Holy Crap!!!!

JACKPOT!!!!

The original box set had 10 dwarven figures in it.

I looked in the box and not only were there the 10 as per box, but another 10-11 figs also...for a total of approx 22 figures of Old Heritage and Grenadier, etc, manufacture!

SCORE!!!!!

Okay so tomorrow I hope to get them out of the box and will check them out and get photos....

All in all (in the words of Bill S. Preston, Esquire, and Ted "Theodore" Logan), a most "excellent" weekend!!!!

And tomorrow I will try to paint some!!!!