How to Reapercon

Hello once again,

After a ~10 month absence, it's time to write again. First up, How to Reapercon.

This is written for folks that are perhaps new to Reapercon or new to Conventioning in general.  

This is a very tailored list. Reapercon is a very special event. It's small, cozy, and welcoming.  It is perhaps scaled like a large-ish local 'con, but draws people from all over (we drive 14-16h to be there), so things I'm going to suggest here don't necessarily apply elsewhere.  YMMV.

Reapercon 2019

It's been almost 3 weeks, I guess I should post a ReaperCon Report!

First, let's rewind the clock even more.

Display Bases 101

Ready for Reapercon. Kuzaarik Stoneclaw Savage.

One of the best things about this hobby is that it can bleed over into other parts of your hobby/interests. Whether I'm stealing techniques from my Radio Control Car and Boat past, or I'm using household materials to get something to work, it's fun for me to step outside of the accepted norms of the Miniature / Boardgame / Wargame world and bring something else to the table.

I was fortunate to have a father that was trained in carpentry.  He's had a woodshop since the early 70s, and as a kid growing up without the internet, the shop was a place to play and doodle and build things.  I don't maintain all of my father's skills, but just a little bit of it was passed on, and today I have a small glimmer of his woodshop here in my garage.  And that lets me do some fun things.

The task this weekend was to make a display base for my Reapercon entry - the Freeblades Kuzaarik Stoneclaw Savage from DGS Games..  

And then Bones 4 Delivered....

I've started to feel a little better about my painting backlog.  Inspired by Adepticon (before and after), the past few weeks have seen some pretty reasonable progress at the bench.  As I type, I have one Gencon contest entry nearly done, and 3 different batches of Dropfleet ships getting ready for a tourney in May, the Brimstone Lava Giant assembled and awaiting primer once the Dropfleet stuff finishes.  Progress is slow, but steady, and I'll wrap up some of the Dropfleet today.

I have my summer projects queued up in a spreadsheet, and am looking forward to having items to display both at Gencon and at Reapercon, all while getting more fun things on our table for Brimstone, plus more Dropfleet, and plus a foray into Freeblades. 

All of that means fewer sprues on the shelf awaiting assembly, which makes me feel good; it's the first time I can say my backlog is actually reduced in quite some time.

And then Bones 4 delivered.  Behold its glory.

No way around it, that's a lot of Reaper Bones.  Hard to show scale; the Core Set box is about the size of a large shoe (boot) box.

It seems like a long time ago that we pledged this on KS, and it's a little surreal to have in our living room.  We did not go all in, but this is still a pretty hefty box.  There are 150 (!!) individual figures in the core box alone, plus 40 more in the expansion box.  That's before you get to the individual poly bags.

I'll admit that I was so afraid to open the box that it sat conspicuously in our foyer for a couple of days.  But, I knew we needed to at least check inventory, so out it came.

I am pretty excited about checking out the 4 new boxes of paint (small brown boxes on the right), and there are a few figures that I might pull ahead in the queue - a couple of large Dragonkin, for example - but yeeeeeeeesh.  This did not help the backlog at all.

Reapercon 2018 - Part II

Part II.  Here's the mini-review / how to.

Home sweet home. The Embassy Suites in Denton Texas was so new it smelled new.

View from our room on the 11th floor. I suspect this will be filled in with commercial offerings galore next year.

The Good:

• The Classes.  The classes we took were excellent.  They are only an hour and 45 minutes in length, so it's fast paced and in some cases just a little too short.  We didn't take as many classes as we could because we were worried about fatigue, but we left each session excited and wanting more.
• The People.  As I mentioned in Part I, this is a tight knit, but welcoming crew.  Reaper Staff were great, and we met so many accepting people.
• The Venue. The new Embassy Suites was fantastic.  The staff (for the most part) were outstanding and got on board with our nerdly ways - for example, I saw employees wearing convention badge ribbons under their Embassy Suites badges.

The Bad:

• The GrowTix registration site is ... well, I started to type "not adequate" to be polite, but ... it's trash.  Sorry.  All of our tickets came out in the end, so no harm to us, but I was meticulous in figuring out their systems and double checking everything because the interface is so horrendously bad.
• The Auction.  Throughout the event, you can earn "Reaper Bucks" (play money) to use at the closing ceremony auction.  All in all we had fun, and even won a Badger Krome airbrush, but as tables started pooling their funds, it left out a lot of people who wanted to bid on items.  We were at a good table - thanks to getting adopted - but it was apparent that some people were frustrated.

Things to Do Differently Next Time:

• Pack a lunch.  We ate restaurant food and junky snacks from the time that we left on Tuesday until we got home late Monday.  It's hard to leave the venue, get food, and get back in a reasonable amount of time, despite a lot of nearby options.  Each room had a kitchenette that we could have made use of - even if it was PBJ or deli meat sandwiches.  And we spent a lot of money on food.
• Take more classes.  I don't want to spend every waking moment in class, but we could have handled more classroom time.
• Volunteer to run a game.  There wasn't a lot of board game / tabletop wargame options.  Reaper obviously only offers what people are willing to run.  Maybe I should step up - I'm thinking Shadows of Brimstone would be a fun thing to run.
• Enter the painting contest.  We pushed ourselves to get entries into GenCon and then the Miniature Monthly Masters.  I had things that I'd painted earlier this year, but didn't feel that they showed my current capability and left them at home.  I should have done SOMETHING though.
• Bring stuff to paint.  Although we painted in classes and did the painting events ("Sophie Says") I could have brought a few models to play with at Fort Wappel.

Reapercon 2018 - Part I

Miniatures. Gaming. Fun.  That about sums it up.

I've started typing this post a few times to consolidate some of my Reapercon thoughts.  Nothing I've written yet really conveys exactly what happened to us.  "We had a great/wonderful/excellent/terrific time" is kind of cliche.

So, I'll start with a post I wrote for another forum and then modify/merge and turn this into sort of a mini-review / how-to at the end.

We signed up not really knowing what to expect.  What we found is that Reapercon is first and foremost about the painting aspect of the hobby.  Secondarily, it's about D&D and a smattering of other tabletop systems.  I saw just a handful of board games in play, but there were tons of tabletop RPGs.

But painting, lots of painting.

The Trip:

Anyway, we opted to drive. People called us crazy, but I really wanted the "road trip" feel to our experience.  And I really detest airports.  Between our home and the Texas destination there were a couple of states that I've never physically been to, except perhaps during a layover for a flight.  And I really detest airports.  Did I mention I don't like airports?

We set out after work on Tuesday evening and set our destination for St. Louis and the physical store for Miniature Market.  I've used MM over the past several years as a source for all kinds of things, and it was super fun (and a little surreal) to park our car in the front row beneath the MM sign.

The store was really cool, and I would recommend stopping by if you are in the area, but wasn't a mega-mart by any stretch.  Huge for a gaming store, and well stocked, but much of the obscure stuff that I know they have is managed out of the warehouse - which is a separate address.  We bought a few things and chatted up the store staff - they seemed impressed and honored that we made them part of our road trip.

Initial Destination:  Miniature Market physical store in St. Louis.

We arrived in time for the Wednesday night pizza party to kick off the event.  We randomly sat next to other people from the Reaper forums, and that served as a gateway to meeting many (many) more people throughout the weekend.

We signed up for 3 classes spread throughout the weekend (more on this later), registered for a run-thru of the Pathfinder 2E scenario, and we did the Reaper factory tour.  All of this was good fun and quite worthwhile.

Aaron Lovejoy giving a class on NMM.

My rough NMM attempt in the limited time we had; focusing on lighting and colors.

Setting up for the "Everything Chibi" course.  Here I've basecoated the Reaper figure.

The factory tour, in particular, was fantastic.  Reaper is a small shop in the grand scheme, and it's apparent that they've grown very organically over the years and figured out what works best for them.  I've been in/around large and small manufacturing since my first job in my teens and the sad/sterile/lifeless corporate factory is far too common.  Their entire factory just oozes with personalized touches and customized processes.  It made me want to work there.

Shifting topics:  the people that attend Reapercon are a tight knit crew and quite fantastic.  It's not a "small" con, but it's far smaller than PAX-U, and it goes on for 4+ full days (with most people arriving Wednesday evening for the pre-party and some staying through to Monday morning before setting off for home, so it's almost 6 days for many).

Convention Layout. We had most of the convention space but there is room to grow.

Registration desk.

Vendor area. Two short rows of booths (this is not Gencon) but there was good variety and things worth looking at.

General 'free area' for painting, gaming, or sitting down to chat or have a bite.  I'm showing maybe 1/3 of the available space.

Here's the part that I have trouble describing:  we got adopted by two groups and then met friends-of-friends and friends-of-friends-of-friends.  After 5 Gencons, 3 Blizzcons, a PAX-U, and random visits to the game stores near us, I feel like I can find common ground and have a pleasant conversation with most nerds.  But in the small confines of a mult-day event, those incidental encounters were compounded with repeat conversations.

Fort Wappel is a gathering point for many painters and social hijinks. We spent a lot of time here.

I grabbed reference photos of this dragon for my KDM Dragon King. 

Face detail on the dragon. Those eyes!

We started Wednesday night awkward and anonymous, but went up to our room on Sunday with handshakes and hugs.  It all happened in a blur, but looking back at how the weekend evolved, it couldn't have happened any other way - and could have never been planned or premeditated.

So, we had a great time; already talking about next year.