This weekend I went to Chillcon. This is a convention in Sheffield which has been going a few years now. This was, I think, their first attempt at a two day convention. There was a slightly weird arrangement where you couldn't buy a ticket on the day until 11am, when doors for pre-ordered tickets opened at 10am. We somewhat dodged this as we were helping people set up from about 9am.
The show is held in a college, so there's plenty of space and toilets. Due to the nature of the available facilities, the show was spread throughout several rooms over three floors. There were seminars, a board game space, a quiet room, food trucks, a "tuck shop", a painting competition and a whole bunch of vendors. There weren't quite enough food trucks, but otherwise everything seemed quite well organised. I also missed the kit bashing and speed painting competition.
There was a cake shop who I am pretty sure are Cozzmic Cakes. They probably ended up being the people we spent the most money on over the whole weekend. They also had a small game where you could win cupcakes.
My abject failure was not getting any good photos of Four Score Woodwork's stand. He has an assortment of cool gaming accessories, but also stocks Bad Squiddo, TMS brushes and an assortment of small producers' things.
There were a few different demo games going on. I was happy to see Infinity getting shown off, and it seemed like the table was usually busy when I went past.
There was also a great demo table for the latest edition of Warmachine. Their core mechanics haven't changed all that much, it seems, and there's a good range of 3D prints and plastics coming out. I won't have the time to actually play this, but I remember getting a demo of an earlier edition back at Grumpy Old Wargames Con at Wayland many, many years ago, so I do want to see it succeed.
A new discovery for me was Greyhawk Miniatures. They're producing an assortment of fantasy miniatures at the moment, in both 28mm and 54mm scale. The ones that stood out to me most was an assortment of anthropmorphic fantasy medieval figures.
One of the things that stood out to me was that the sculptor hasn't just scaled a sculpt up and down to make the two variants. Once sculpted, he's altered the details to better suit the scale so that they don't look out of place, or have problems taking paint. This is a great sign of someone who really understands what they're doing. Definitely one to watch in the future!
Something that jumped out at me as I wandered past was Brickskrieg. A simple wargame using legally distinct building bricks compatible with Lego, it's very different to anything else I saw this weekend.
Finally, this lovely gaming table by Natural Twenty Tables really jumped out at me. Definitely one for when we've decided where too settle down. They seem to be doing all the sensible things folk have come up with over the years for a proper grown up gaming table.
It was definitely a Big Day. We got in, ordered a big bag of Chinese take out, and nearly dozed off watching home renovation shows. Sunday has been a restful, slow day to recover. I don't think I'd survive a two day event without a day off to recover these days. But generally, the vibes of the whole event were excellent and definitely one we'll be looking to go back to.
No comments:
Post a Comment