Adepticon pt III: And the rest...

Now for the final instalment of our award winning Adepticon 2008 coverage. Remember, when you want to know about shit that happened three weeks ago, Citizen Nick Hobby center is your #1 news source.

Anyway, I wanted to post a few of the pictures that I took at Adepticon. For some reason this year, I had a real hard time getting decent pictures. I'm sure it had something to do with the high prices at the hotel canteen or possibly theme score judging. Whatever was the cause, I didn't walk away with as many pictures as in years past.


Here's a shot of the massive 1st edition space hulk game I played in. This, for me, was one of the most fun games I played at Adepticon. I had forgotten how much fun 1st edition was.

Some genestealers.

The Chicago Way demo. Awesome game with some awesome miniatures. Hats off to Dave for running this one.

John from Plastic Legions calculating his scores in the Warhammer tournament. For his coverage of the event, check here.


You know, I was totally entranced by the pattern of this carpet. I have to figure out a way to work this pattern into a miniature somehow.


Well, that's it for this year, kids. A huge Thank You to all the wonderful people who organize this every year.

My plans for next year have already been put in motion. Watch this space.

There's a Disturbance in the Blog-o-sphere

I now interrupt my half-assed Adepticon coverage with two new blog links.

First up is the blog of nine-time Golden Demon winner, Dave Pauwels:
Rabid Bat Studio

There are some great miniatures on this site. Everyone should go over there and pressure Dave to paint even more.

Secondly, here is a new blog by Nick Barran:
Redemptors of Golinar

Nick is in the the same gaming group as me, a former game store co-owner, and former GW employee. Nick has already posted some great articles and I'm sure there will be more to come.


I've made some changes to links. I've removed a couple of blogs that have ceased activity. I also removed the Warseer link because I figure most people know how to get there themselves. Plus, blogs are better than forums any day!

Stay positive, people!

Adepticon pt 2: Dramatis Persona

Fair warning,I'm about to get really cheesy. Not cheesy in the Nidzilla or Mech Eldar sort of way, but more of a sappy rose colored glasses sort of way.

I said in my last post that stuff was not the most important part of Adepticon. What is? People, that's what (I warned you).

Seriously, it was very cool to hang out with so many awesome people. Most of the people I already knew, and it was great to see all the people I don't get to regularly see. It's funny, many of the people I got to hang out with I talk to via the Internet regularly, but the last time I saw them face-to-face was Adepticon last year!

The people who taught the seminars were also very cool. It's great when you can talk to people who have so much skill but are will to share they're knowledge with everyone.

Anyway, shout out to everyone who made this year so great.

Adepticon Pt 1: Swag

I'm still recovering from my convention hang-over. Not a drinking hang-over, mind you; just too much fun and stimulus. I made it to work, of course, but I'm beat.

Still, I want to report on as much of my Adepticon experience as possible. Over the next week, I'll post short articles about various aspects of this, the king of all GW conventions.

I want to start off with what is definitely not the most important part of Adepticon, but certainly the easiest to write about. I'm talkin' about swag!

Every year, it seems like Adepticon gives you more and more for your money. Here is a list of free stuff I got with my general admission:
-Three Black library books:
-The Ambassador Chronicles, by Graham McNeil
-The Bloodquest Trilogy graphic novel
-Warhammer 40,000 Quiz Book
-A Dwarf Lord miniature from Avatars of War
-The Adepticon Miniature "Baegor the one-horned"
-A little bag of bits from the Warstore

About that last item, I have to say, I got more useful bits in that 2"x3" little baggy than I got in my entire BattleWagon Bits going out of business grab bag. How did they do that?

Some of the seminars had stuff included in the price. For example, the Chris Borer class came with three types of putty, four sculpting tools, a full-color booklet and a tiny piece of Plexiglas (for rolling out putty). The James Wapple glazing class came with a cool metal black orc mini with which we practiced the techniques of the class. However, since his and Cathy's basing class had so much material left over, he gave us two scenic bases and enough material to make about five more.

I've never really taken advantage of Adepticon's deal-finding potential and honestly, I was on a pretty tight budget this year (same as every year). However there were a few buys I simply could not pass up.

Black library was offering their books at deep discounts. I'm a big fan of their art books but usually the price prevents me from purchasing them. At Adepticon, Black Library was offering them at 50% off! I bought the last copy of Xenology they had and the Sabbat Worlds Crusade book. Nice find.

I found some awesome stuff at Saturday night's bit swap. I bought six old White Dwarf issues for 50 cents a pop. Most of them are numbered under 200. One is a copy of issue 84! Old school, yo! From the same vendor, I was able to pick up two more of the Mighty Empires tiles that came with White Dwarf last year.

I got two old style sprues, one CSM and On Ork, for $2 each.

I bought some resin-cast bits from Rich at the Chicago Terrain Factory and a handful of bits from some other folks.

Over all, a nice haul and I stayed under budget. Thanks Adepticon!

Almost there..

Adepticon, I mean. I'll be there on Saturday and Sunday, so make sure to say hi if you see me. Here's that I look like in case I don't already know you:

(For the record, I don't own a dog. I don't even really like dogs. I just don't seem to have any decent pictures of myself on this computer.)

For those of you who are not attending Adepticon, let me know what you'd like me to report back on. I suspect I'll be taking a lot of pictures.

Chaos Space Marine Test Mini

This is the first member of the CSM contingent of my army. As I've mentioned before, I want them to look like Space marines that have just recently turned to chaos. That's why I've use both loyalist and chaos parts.

The gold parts are just the first layer. I was more concerned about the color of grey for the armor. Honestly, I think I need to go a lot lighter. The base coat of this one was Charadon Granite, which is very dark. Over that, I painted a layer of a 1:1 mix of Charadon Granite and Skull white. I shaded that with another layer of Charadon Granite. It looks better, but I think I'll go a shade or two lighter. I have a bottle of Vallejo medium grey that I might try.

I also tried a little painted-on battle damage. You can see a couple chips out of the figure's right fore arm and elbow guard. I think if decide to do that, I need to do more of it so that the over-all effect of damage comes through. At this point, it just looks like I made a couple mistakes with the paint brush.

I would really appreciate people's input on this one. Keep in mind, it's a work in progress and I'll be adding a lot more detail later.

Oh Forge World!

Why do you do things like this? Are you trying to get our attention? Forge World, you know you don't need to do things like this for us. We would love you if only made rhino doors for the rest of your life. We just want you to be happy Forge World. You don't have to buy our affection with big extravagant displays. You'll get burned out, Forge World. How about we go get some ice cream now?

Finally!

My wife bought me a subscription to White Dwarf for my birthday last year. I've really enjoyed it, but this month, it annoyed me. I received issue 338 about February 6th. I was feverishly anticipating issue 339 because I knew that it was going have a bunch of Chaos Apocalypse datasheets in it.When I didn't get it by about the 25th of March, I called GW Mail order.

Say what you will about GW in general, their customer service it great. They sent out my issue and I got it this Tuesday.

Unfortunately, by that time, they had already posted the datasheets online.

Still, it's a decent issue. I really like when they write articles about the history of their various games. Since this issue marks the anniversary of WHFB, they had a lot of articles detailing it's history.

The oddest part about this whole fiasco is that I'm not the only person who hasn't gotten his issue 339. Everyone I know that lives in Chicago failed to receive their issue. I have friends who live in the suburbs that got their issues on time.

What happened to Chicago's issues? I suspect Privateer press is somehow behind this.

Tip of the week

For the longest time, I just used old plates a painting palettes. Most of these were your basic grandma's china/ thrift store special. They got the job done even though sometimes the flowery designs got distracting.

After I had broken several of these plates, I decided it was time to invest in something nicer. I headed over to my local Blick art store and picked up a set of stacking porcelain bowls with a lid. The set is shown on the left in the picture below.




The set had five bowls at one time, but I broke one. I'm embarrassed to say that I paid in the area of $30 for this set of bowls. I thought that was awful high, but I really liked the set.

Fast forward to about two weeks ago. My wife and I were in Crate and Barrel trying to spend a gift card we had received as a wedding gift. I had never shopped at this store, but they carry a lot of plates, dishes, flatware, etc. I specifically noticed that they carried a lot of little porcelain dishes.

I really liked these little square ones pictured on the right. The best part is that they were only a buck a piece. I found them at Crate and Barrel's hipper "urban" incarnation CB2.

Granted, this made me feel like a yokel for having paid so much for a stack of pallets. Especially since these new ones were not only cheaper but actually easier to use.

I'd like to eventually get this, but right now it'd take up too much space on my tiny desk.