Kublacon 2011

2011 Kublacon was this past weekend in Burlingame, and compared to last year, it seemed a little smaller. It could have been he days I attended (Fri, Sat, and Mon), but 2010 seemed busier.

This year I tried my hand at the Mini Speed Painting competition. I went to two different sessions, once on Fri and the 2nd one on Sat. The winners are invited back for the Masterclass version and for the grand prize. On Friday, I placed 2nd (out of 3 competitors). The second shot at it resulted in a 4th place (1st Place went to a former Reaper mini painter who currently freelances as a mini sculpter. Not bad and I had fun. I did find out more about the judging process and worked on time management in one of those contests. 45min is not a lot of time to paint to high standards. 2 sessions of Paint 'n Take resulted in a mounted swordsman for my 2 year old (I'll post pictures of her work later) and a pair of AoBR marines for myself (1 is painted, the other for me to work on later).

Besides painting, I sat in on a mini sculpting seminar. A freelance artist who sculpts minis for Reaper gave a demonstration on how to use green stuff for fixing gaps, making fur, scales, and other tidbits. He fell into the job after working for Reaper as a painter. Compared to last year's seminar, his answered questions and showed/demonstrated techniques versus the hands on teaching in the 2010 class. There were fewer people clamoring for this class since the Warhammer people were at the GT tourney and the Warmachine/Hordes group also had a tourney. Most of the remaining students were GW players who didn't play the tourneys, Malifaux, or Mordhei
players. It was about 20 people who were interested.

For the 40k tourney, that was going at the same time as the FB tourney, unlike 2010 where they were on separate days. 40k dominated a number of tables, but not as many as the 2010 tourney. There was still room for about 12 FB players, including a nicely painted Calvary Bretonnians, a Tomb King army, and a Dark Elf army. 40k was mostly SM builds, with only a couple of Spore Nids lists to balance the occasional Dark Eldar lists and the IG lists. A lot of flyers this year; plenty of Storm Ravens and Valkires.

I also checked out the WM tourney and the Steamroller on Mon. The Mon Steamroller felt like the players were on the lower side of the experience scale. As for the tourney, a lot of jacks were on the table.

More details to come later.