Games Day Coverage! #2

I'll start the final Games Day coverage post with some extra pictures from the Monstrous Creature Converstion contest, simply because we all love big nasty things that go "RAAAAAWR". Right?

Squeekdor was a rat. He was a dragon-rat. Or maybe just a dragooon!

Parasite of Mortrex, I presume?

There. Now that they are out of the way.. Oh, I totally entered the Speed Demon painting competition and painted a Watermelon Space Marine. He was like.. green.. with green stripes.. and purple/red shoulder pads with black dots. But I forgot to take pictures and never picked him up. Good luck out there, Watermelon Marine. 

"orkz, orkz, Orkz, ORkz, ORKz, ORKZ, ORKZ!!!"

Another cool event that I got to participate in was the BIG GAME. You know, the one with the hundreds of Ork and Imperial Baneblades? Usually it's not my cup of tea, but me and three Games Workshop ex-employees decided to drive some of the Ork Skullhammers and unleash some dakka on da oomiez, if you know what I mean. (Huh?) Our plan was to simply focus fire on a different Baneblade each turn in order to systematically purge any Imperial presence in our sector, stating with the opponents who were an obvious nuisance and just needed to go away (okay.. not very proud of this, but war IS war..). Apparently the Orkz had one all of the previous games for the day, so the Imperials had to control every single objective in order to win. Well.. we made sure not to let them anywhere near them and despite various WAAAAAAGH-offs and tactical boons the Imperials failed and yours truly managed to snipe one of their Command Tanks. Gotta love Unlimited Range and True LoS in a game where no cover is allowed, lol.
 The highlight of the game, however, was this little kid. The lil fella was super excited and was giving orders left and right despite barely being able to reach the tanks on the table. He wanted us "big guys" to control the bigger tanks while he would take control of all of the little ones, so people would discard him as being an actual threat. Oh, he also insisted that I, as one of the taller people should have taken the tallest Skullhammer because I would have the best... wait for it... "trajectory".  Whatever that means, right? I just patted him on the head and assured him that us orkz don't need any trujekturiz.

Golden Demon
As always, Golden Demon made me jealous.. but oh well. I keep on telling myself that I'll practice my painting techniques more and just paint more in general but it never happens. Got a chance to talk to my buddy Tim Lison, who was one of the judges. Actually, I just got to say "Hi" because he was super busy.  The models this year was fantastic, but a lot of them were put behind very badly scratched plexiglass, which made pictures a pain in the butt. Here are some of the pictures I took:

Bjorn the Fe-oh, sweet, look at my sweet fingernails in the reflection!

Back as we promised, mortals!

Brother Al Gore of the Global Warming Marines..

Storm Warden Dreadknight!!!

 :P NSFW btw. 

Bill and Brian being all gentlemanly and charitable. :)

One of my favorite parts about the event was knowing that at least half of the Heroes of Armageddon table was going to be in good hands. That's right, ladies and gentlemen - Bill, a regular at the local Games Workshop Deer Grove decided to buy 2 out of 4 tables, snagging the Hive city portion, where his endless supply of Eldar vehicles can park and relax. Bill already has his own Apocalypse table with like.. over 9000 bastions, so Hive Hades is truly a nice addition to his terrain collection. Thank you for your donation, Bill, and the I think I speak for everyone from the HoA crew when I say that we all hope the tables see as many games as possible.

Conclusion.. 

Sweet Eldar titan table!

Games Day is really what you, as a gamer, make of it. As me and my friends were covering every part of the convention for the third year in a row we quickly realized that the times... they were not changing. At least not in a good way, anyway. Each year the convention space seems to be increasing as the actual event, freebies, exclusive goodies and other jibjabs are dwindling.  Notice that more than half of my Games Day coverage had to do with club events and not actually things ran by Games Workshop. Yes, there are a lot of cool things to see at Games Day. Don't get me wrong. There will always be cool fan-made conversions, initiatives and tables thanks to people like John and Mike from Santa Cruz, Brian, etc. There will always be new models and Golden Demon entries to stare in awe at. 

I guess what I'm trying to say here is we all need to realize the big part that clubs and fans of the hobby play at Games Day and try to be a part of the convention and not just idle bystanders.
Nowadays participation is so easy that we should all think about participating. It is not like you have to go out of your way to play your part - you already convert and paint miniatures on a daily basis. Just try to think ahead and think of how you could turn a local event into something bigger for Games Day.
Sure, walking the walk might be harder than just talking the talk. Yes, having to built, paint and transport armies and tables at the convention and setting up could be time-consuming and annoying... but in the end it will be worth it. You would then have played your part!
Do you HAVE to? Nope.. Just like you don't have to build your miniatures, prime them or paint them in order to play. We can all just play with empty bases. ;-D

Games Day really doesn't have any exclusive items to offer, besides a Games Day miniature, T-shirts and maybe a few early boxes to pick up. Don't spend all of your money at the convention for things that you can always buy from your local Games Workshop!!! Think of your local GW store or independent FLGS - their stores won't get credit for your purchases, especially if they are stores in the vicinity of Games Day. Local GW managers this year had to close their stores on a Saturday to help with the convention just to sell the same product to people. Their stores lost money and I bet corporate GW doesn't care and won't listen to any excuses. Don't hurt the stores that let you play on their tables..

Don't wait in line at Forge World for hours just to save a few bucks on shipping. Games Day is once a year, you can always order from their website. Some people I know spent 2 hours in line after driving to the convention from different states! Seriously..

It is sad to see so much of the flavor from Games Day gone. I keep on hearing about the glorious days.. I'm also pretty sure that Games Day 2009 in Chicago was the last Games Day to have the $5 grab OOP blisters. But hey.. now we have the Carnival of Chaos. You could win a pen with the words "WAAAAAAAAAGH!" on it....

I really didn't mean to sound negative, but it's important to call out Games Workshop on some of their bullshit from time to time.

It was fun nonetheless. See you next year!