Overall the con was fun, with a lot to do. Plenty of demo games, tournaments, and seminars. Picked up some new tricks to use in my hobby work, which is always a plus. Even learned a bit about photography (which won't show in the pics for this post... comes from shooting on the move really).
I got in some Kill Zone games, and I am firmly behind this adaptation of the 40k rules. It's a lot of fun, and doesn't take hours to play. Had a ton of fun playing it, though I had to duck out during round 3 of the slot I was in for the Crystal Brush presentations (no I didn't place, but I was in it).
Checked out the vendors, bought a few things. While on this topic I have to say, the space for the con was large, but the vendor area was far too cramped. They need to get the vendors into a larger area. Far too often there were traffic jams due to the small amount of space for walkways between vendors.
Looked around the main 40k tournament. Saw a lot of interesting themes for armies, though one in particular stands out... pink necrons with flowers and butterflies. That one definitely was fun to see.
This guy obviously was there to have fun, and his paint scheme shows it. Kudos to whoever it is, I forgot to ask his name. Obviously he was playing Orks during this match (of course my oldest boy requested I take pics of orks, he's become a bit addicted to them of late).
So, to perk up his day (when he gets to see the blog after school today)... an ork army.
Okay, so it's two different ork armies, he'll be happier.
I also wandered into the Privateer Press room, and warmahordes was definitely in attendance. Though I did take some pics of the W/H forces at play one thing deserved being shown... the PP Display.
I was highly impressed with this display board. So many details you just had to look it over several times. And it gives an interesting story of Trollbloods attacking a Khador rail line. Those Colossi were just awesome.
This being a review I have to point out things I didn't care for at the con, and in this case it was some issues with the Crystal Brush.
Being a very new competition, only being in its second year, it is bound to have some issues. While the organizers were professional about handling most things, the issues I encountered will need to be addressed in coming years.
Firstly we run into the issue of 'cherry picking' for number of pictures for entrants. A fair number of entrants got one pic, period, while others got up to 6. In a number of cases this lack of equal camera 'time' left voters with a lack of full view to base their voting on. I know in at least one case with my entries that this basically made my diorama loose out on 2/3 of what was done, you just couldn't see it because it got 1 picture. Keep in mind, I didn't expect it to get high marks, it was a bit of a rush job and I knew it. But it did deserve equal photography time. All the miniatures should have gotten the same number of shots, whether it helped the entry or not. It's just a matter of fairness. If you limit some but not all then you are handicapping part of the participants unjustly.
Second, adhoc placement of figs into improper categories. One of my figs ended up in a category it wasn't entered into. And several of the entries should have been in completely different categories (1st and 3rd place fantasy/steampunk single figure should have been in diorama). Hopefully as this contest matures it will actually adhere to the categories as they describe them, which they didn't in some cases this year.
Overall, even with the issues, the Crystal Brush is a great contest. It just has some issues to work through and iron out. I'll be entering next year, and my entries will be much much better than this year. As I'll be giving each entry the proper attention it needs and not rushing them all 'last minute'.
Until later!
