Posted by Ranillon on 16. August 2009 20:08
I am back from Gen Con and as usual I had a good time, although not quite as good as usual. This is mostly because one of the attractions to such a large convention -- the largest gaming convention in the world -- are all those things I can't do at home. I mean, if I want to play 40K or Magic: The Gathering (which, actually, I haven't done in years) I can do that at my local shop. However, I can only take in special seminars and presentations at a place like Gen Con. Sadly, such events were unusually meager this year. Basically, if you weren't a writer looking for pointers there wasn't much to choose from (but, if you are, I suspect it was great). The one good seminar I attended was on skepticism.
However, even if I had gone looking to play Games Workshop games the only example I could find was the above -- a modest Apocalypse game that was offered repeatedly over the course of the convention (but which certainly looked fun). This is just mind boggling to me -- remember, this is the World's Largest Gaming Convention and the premiere miniatures company and/or its games in the world can barely be found. Beyond this the only real GW "presence" was two dealers in the dealer's room, The Game Room (from Toledo, I believe) and the Warstore.
What is wrong with this picture? I understand that Games Workshop has its own Games Days (but, at least this year, no Grand Tournaments), but are you telling me that showing up at Gen Con is somehow prohibitively expensive or that displaying your product in front of an estimated 30,000 people is a bad thing? The non-attendence of GW goes beyond lost opportunities, but it also ultimately harms its credibility to the average gamer. True, most of the people there were no doubt more interested in collectable card games or a session of D+D, but not even making an appearance makes Games Workshop seem distant, even perhaps elitest. And, it's not a matter of GW being an European company as there were a number of those present, including Rackham.
Come on GW -- get a clue and start showing up at the big conventions.
Continuing on with the report proper there was more to see than just people playing Pokemon. One example is the statue above. It's the good old Serra Angel from Magic: The Gathering except that in this case she's fifteen feet tall! I wouldn't want her mad at me!
Another event was the Gen Con painting contest. The above is an example of one of the best paint jobs submitted -- and, at the same time, an example of how the competition isn't (IMHO) run very well. That head you're looking at is only a little more than an inch wide, yet the model was entered into the large miniature category. How did it manage that? Because the base it's on is five times it's size! So, it was "large" not because it was a large model, but because it's base was artificially large. By any reasonable standard the model should have been placed in the "Single Miniature" category.
This may seem like nitpicking, but it's actually fairly important as it gets at the integrity of the competition. The skills that go into painting an average "off-the-shelf" miniature are subtly different than those that go into painting a large model. For one thing a large model is far more likely to require extensive work putting it together in a way that looks natural. It is also more likely to be converted. Most importantly, its bulk makes the act of painting itself somewhat tricky as you can't just place it on the end of soda pop top and go at it. You often have to paint it in sections or manhandle it carefully (which is not the oxymoron it sounds like). Point is that the two size categories are treated differently in competitions for a reason.
For the sake of full disclosure I did indeed enter a figure in this category and did in fact not win anything -- while this model came in 3rd. It is also telling that the same artist won an award in the "Single Miniatures" category as well. Accuse me of sour grapes if you like (I thought the top two winners well deserved their awards and that there other deserving models better than mine that didn't win), but issues like this don't make me eager to enter the competition next year.
Of more fun and less controversy was the dealers room which you see above. Yes, the hall does go back as far as it seems to. It's always the center of activity and a major reason why I go -- there are usually good deals to be found. Unfortunately, there were no real good deals on Games Workshop product, but there was plenty of other stuff. This includes a treasured acquisition of mine, namely new t-shirt from Rich Burlew, the The Order of the Stick guy.
Finally, let me leave you with this picture. It is one of a tournament being played. A miniatures tournament, in fact. Only, it was a tournament for Warmachine/Hordes from Privateer Press. The event had perhaps sixty people in it. Likewise, Privateer had a huge booth in the dealers room with demos and even a painting master working his craft who welcomed any and all questions. Privateer also ran a painting competition that was far more popular and produced far more quality entries than the more generic Gen Con version.
So, again, why is it that Games Workshop can't show up?
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