My Adepticon 2017 Overview

So I had this huge blog post written up describing my experience and thoughts about Adepticon 2017 in detail.  After re-reading it this morning, I decided to delete it and do a short condensed version.  I'm sure most people who visit here could care less about me bitching about Adepticon classes, or my thoughts about the "painting elitist club" outside the classrooms that's turning into a staple at show.  Yeah, I hate cliques so nothing new there.  In all honesty, I'm not sure how I even feel about half of it.

It was a "Frostgrave heavy" show for me, with smatterings of Konflikt 47' and Necromunda mixed in.  I snagged 3 awards, 2 for best painted, 1 for best general.  I haven't played Necromunda since the 90's, so it was a shock to me that I took 2nd place overall.  I also helped my buddy Brent run 10-man Frostgrave battle Saturday night which was a lot of fun.  On Sunday I played a Frostgrave wizard death match with Ash the host of Guerrilla Miniatures (a youtube channel I regularly frequent).  I got to show that the Sigilist can be just as lethal as any other wizard with the correct spell load out and walked away with a box of cultists for my trouble.  I think Osprey made a wise decision in bringing Ash into the mix at Adepticon.  He was a lot of fun to be around.

Myself hanging with the famous Duncan Rhodes

Our 10-man Saturday Night Frostgrave Game

My awards for Adepticon 2017.  I took best painted in Frostgrave and Konflikt 47', and 2nd place overall in Necromunda

I took 2 classes.  One with Duncan Rhodes from Games Workshop's Warhammer TV which was awesome, one with Francesco Farabi (a 2017 Crystal Brush winner) which was awful.  The terrible lighting situation in the classrooms at Adepticon has reached a point where I refuse to sign up for any more classes until it is fixed.  Mr. Farabi is a fantastic painter, but his teaching style just doesn't work for me at all.

I got to hang out with Joseph McCullough (the author of Frostgrave and reader of my blog) for a few hours.  It was awesome getting to know him and ask him questions about his game.  It was refreshing how honest and down to earth he was.  Thanks for spending time with us at Adepticon, and thanks for letting me invade your "build and paint" event and swipe like 20 models.  It was a great time.

All in all, Adepticon 2017 was a blast.  Sure, the classroom lighting situation needs to be rectified, but I think from now on I will be playing in these smaller half day tournaments at Adepticon.  I look forward to Adepticon 2018.  If you are even remotely into miniatures, this is the place you need to be.

Filthy Dungeon Rats

As the title would suggest, I got some Reaper Bones rats for dirt cheap.  We needed some rats for Frostgrave and since they were so cheap, I ended up picking up 3 packs of 4.  My thinking is you can always use rats for any sword and sorcery game so the more the merrier.

I mixed up the fur colors a little bit to give the horde more a random appearance.  They were pretty simple to paint and I think the lot of them took me like one night.  Anyways, that's it for this post.  It's off to Adepticon for this guy.  I'll post a review sometime next week.

The most ridiculous creature in Frostgrave

Imagine, your exploring a ruined city in the frozen north.  A frozen city that is beginning to thaw out and all manner of evil is awakening along with all manner of treasure now being accessible.  You and your buddies turn a corner and you are faced with a terrifying beast charging right at you.  And that beast my friends..... is a giant albino ape.

Yep, a gigantic ferocious albino ape. I dunno.  It's an interesting choice for an NPC in Frostgrave.  I can't really knock it.  I've played hundreds of RPG's, rocked more hours than I care to admit rolling dice fighting fantastical creatures whether it be via D&D or miniatures, but I can't ever recall fighting an albino ape.  I think the only other reference to them I've ever seen was in the movie Congo back in the late 90's.  Either way, it put a grin on my face.  Here's the model I painted up.

I tried to follow examples from Northstar that I saw.  I think he turned out good.  Sure, I could've gave him a bare butt, but that would've been too funny.  I mean, it's already hilarious to think of a gigantic albino ape running on the board and dry humping one of your guys.  Either way, it made me laugh and was a fun model to paint.

Zombie Troll/Ogre

This next model is from Mantic Games Dungeon Saga board game.  I actually never bought the board game (though I watched a few play-throughs on youtube and it looked pretty cool).  I mentioned this miniature to my friend Brent who got in on that kickstarter and had a few extra models, so he gave me this bad boy.  It was affixed to a square base that I cut off him.  It's also that soft plastic material (think reaper bones, but a little harder), though I'm not sure what it's called.  All I know is removing mold lines from it is a paint in the ass.  Either way, it's still a cool model.  Here is my attempt at painting him...

Other than the prep time going into the painting, I had a lot of fun painting this guy.  I love all the muscle and bone sticking out.  As I was painting it, it was challenging to identify where the muscle was sticking out of the skin in particular areas.  Either way, it's a really cool model.

The Frost Worm

I actually had a lot of fun painting this creature.  This is from Reaper Miniatures, part of the bones series.  I think I ended up picking up two of these guys for like $2.99.  Bones are interesting to paint.  Sometimes you end up with a really shitty casting, sometimes you end up with a pretty decent one.

Like I've said in the past, the worst part of bones is cleaning mold lines due to the fact that since it's soft plastic, you can't just scrape it away.  You have to cut it off.  Thankfully on this model, I had no issues and everything worked out pretty good.  Take a look

I wanted to do this one up as a frost worm for Frostgrave since Northstar/Frostgrave doesn't produce an official one.  Hence the reason I went with Reaper.  The model reminded me a lot of the frost worms in Shining Force for something reason (early 90's SRPG for the uninitiated, and one of my favs)  Again, this model was a joy to paint.  I used a drybrush glazing method for the bulk of it which is what I've been doing for a lot of these big bulky monsters lately.

See you on the next one!