Posted: August 10, 2018 at 11:41 am / by Steve Heineman / comments (0)
Convention Reviews
Gen Con 2018: A Weekend in Review (Plus Cosplay Photo Gallery)
SATURDAY
Sometimes at cons, you have to make a hard decision. Deciding between two panels you’d like to see, between things you’d like to buy, games you’d like to play… but on Saturday morning I had to choose between rest and a good opportunity. In hindsight, I think this 9a.m. Critical Role photoshoot could have been planned better because so many critters were at the live show all night. I know the amount of work that goes into putting on all that face and body paint, then the costume on top of it. I tried to get up at 7a.m. to get into my vault suit, but nodding off in the shower made my decision clear. I needed rest.
We made it to the con just before noon. So obviously, I very much needed that rest! It would have been different if we had stayed at one of the host hotels. I could have walked down to the shoot with just my camera, and then came back to the room to get into costume. Since our AirBnB was about a 10 minute drive away, I didn’t have that luxury.
Upon arrival, I quickly made my way to the cosplay photo area, hoping to see if any critters stayed around from the photoshoot earlier. The only ones I found said they also couldn’t make it that early in the morning because of the live show. It wasn’t long before I ran into Alan, a friend from Chicago known as Luke Hangover online. Until this con, I had only ever seen him at C2E2, but he is an absolute blast to hang out with. I love his mashups of old Luke and Alan from the Hangover. I had my photo taken a few times while I hung out in the cosplay area, and I have to say that I enjoyed every single reaction to my costume.
Until the weekend before Supercon, my vault suit had been clean… way too clean for the wasteland! My dear friend Rachael, a.k.a. Sally Quinn Cosplay, offered to help me weather it and teach me a few things. Damn, she is a good teacher. I learned so much from her about both weathering and makeup. She showed me how to apply my wound makeup once and I’ve done it by myself twice in a row with great results each time! I even convinced a few people that my black eye was real! I still have a few more things to do to the costume like weather the Pip Boy, but it’s already looking so much better than it did when I first started wearing it. I met up with Mark in his vault dweller costume and we ended up posing for a whole lot of pictures together, including a few at the Modiphius booth.
Speaking of which, Modiphius is the game developer behind Fallout: Wasteland Warfare. It’s a war game system similar to Warhammer that takes just about every element of the beloved video game franchise and brings it to the tabletop. The guys demoing the game for Modiphius went nuts over our costumes and were ecstatic to show off the new game to us, who looked like we just jumped right out of the wasteland for real! I pre-ordered it a while ago, and it just started to ship so my copy should be arriving any day! That means I have a whole lot of miniature painting ahead of me. The game is quite complicated, but so much fun. I had a great time maneuvering my Lone Survivor and her trusty companion Dogmeat around the environment, fighting off a pack of Super Mutants.
Shortly after leaving the Modiphius booth, I made my way back to the lobby for the GenCon cosplay parade. Just about every single cosplayer there was in that parade, and I took up a position by the door to grab photos of as many as I could before jumping into the parade myself to join Mark and another couple of Fallout cosplayers. As we made our way through the gaming hall, Dan joined us in his costume, which was Gerrard Capashen, a character from Magic: The Gathering. We made it through the gaming hall, surrounded by amazed fans taking photos from either side until we got to the doors leading outside. Not wanting to start melting, I bailed out of the line and made my way through the halls to where the parade would end to meet up with Dan.
After the parade, we still had a bit of time to kill until everyone would be ready for dinner. I took a few minutes to go back to a booth I had visited on Thursday. Hrothgar’s Horde is run by John Pratt, and I just have to say… this man is dedicated to customer service! While perusing his booth on Thursday, Dan and I decided to pick up a couple of wooden dice chests. I’m a big fan of the look of Purple Heart wood, but the most vibrant piece he had was attached to another kind of wood. The Wenge wood piece it was attached to had several blemishes on it, which he said was most likely caused by air bubbles in the finish. John took the piece back to his hotel with him and refinished it for me! I was blown away by his commitment to the pieces he sold and his pride in the shop’s offerings.
I ventured out of the convention center for the first time all day, taking a skybridge over to the Marriott across the street. Lauren and Ethan were part of a panel on cosplay positivity, which is a notion I can throw all of my weight into. I also needed some time away from the craziness of the convention center, so this was a very welcome break. I was delighted to see my Chicago friends Tim and Diana of HDC Cosplay and Fabrication were also in the cosplay program room. Tim joined Lauren and Ethan along with JediManda, Mogchelle, and Ginoza Costuming for the panel. They discussed some of their personal experiences with bullying and negativity in the cosplay community and shared some tips on how to deal with the haters. It was a good time, and we all hung out for a bit afterwards as everyone made their respective plans for the evening.
Everyone else was busy doing something else, so I took some time to go back to the AirBnB and shower off all the blood and makeup that covered my face and arm. I decided to hit the food truck area set up just across the street from the convention center for a quick dinner before rejoining the crew. I had some fantastic Jameson sliders from the Serendipity truck, which came with what are probably the best tater tots that I’ve ever eaten. I absolutely smashed the food on my way back to the gaming hall where I met up with Dan, James, and Dylan as well as our friends Joe and Scott who had just come out for Saturday. Dylan and Scott left to check out other games in the hall while Dan, James, Joe, and I signed up for what’s called a chaos draft.
In a typical Magic draft, each player gets three booster packs from the same set of cards. You open a pack, pick a card, and then pass it onto the next player. A chaos draft works the same way, except the booster packs you get are from completely random sets. Now we weren’t made aware of the specific format of this draft. If I did, I honestly wouldn’t have entered. It was single elimination, with no prize tickets for those knocked out in the first round. So I paid $18 for essentially three booster packs, which is nearly double their normal price. I did get a few nice cards, but it was essentially gambling and I definitely lost money on it.
Once again, we made it back to the AirBnB after 2a.m. and didn’t get nearly as much sleep as we wanted. Since we were leaving straight from the con on Sunday, I stayed up for another solid hour packing up all of my things. And on Sunday morning, we actually had a reason to be there on time.
