The SteamPunk Worlds Fair

The convention season, it has begun!

Just over a week ago (I know, posting way too slow) I took an adventure to New Jersey. Nate and Brooke, some of my oldest, closest friends moved up there a while back, and I finally got around to planning a visit. And, since we were just picking a date out of the hat, why not go on a con weekend? Thus I found myself able to attend the SteamPunk Worlds Fair in Piscataway, NJ. I'll be posting some pics of the rest of my explorations of New Jersey and New York, but lets start with the con, shall we?

The nice thing about this con was the people. That's always the case with a con (or any other event, forthat matter) but it was super-extra-true in this case. Somehow, this con became a sort of defacto meet-up for the miscreant users of Brass Goggles, and I really enjoyed the chance to meet in person folks I yack with regularly from as far afield as Alabama, Canada, and Great Britain.

The group photo from Saturday night (sorry we missed you and your lovely wife for this, Tinker!)



Over all, I had a blast, but there were a few minor quibbles. The host hotel seems to have had no idea what to expect from a costuming con, with pretty lousy slow bar service and very limited food. How the hell do you run out of chicken fingers? I think they are used to more business-oriented conventions, where folks stay for the parts they have to and then scatter to the four winds at the first opportunity. Still, it was a fine enough place and the issues were pretty minor, hardly capable of denting the fun.

I'm in a bit of a hurry to post all this, so I'm probably not going to offer much commentary, just a bunch of pics with maybe a few random comments stuck between them. I can always add more yack-yack later, right?


Friday Night

This is Vagabond Gentleman, with one of his lovely canvases (he's the artist who did her ink).








He's wearing real watch movements, and has plans to start casting them to fit common ear gauge sizes.



Saturday

Nate and Brooke love them a good costume party, and while SteamPunk isn't really their normal thing I think they managed to pull it off pretty well:



Seriously, y'all. Me and this guy go way back.




Myself and Malcontent, on of the BG fokls I have the most fun disagreeing with ;-)
(How'd you hid from all my other pics, dude?)










Yes, its a real bass, and yes, he could play it.




Utility Corset for the WIN


Some of the Boys from Brass Goggles: TimeTinker, Vagabond Gentleman, myself, and Maj. Clive Hathaway .




SteamPunk Boba Fett (who I'd have a chance to get to meet and hang out with, but that would have to wait for the next con, which at the time of this posting has already happened)










They had a whole hall way full of this stuff set out all weekend.














A lady of class in a den of thieves




Jake von Slatt, demonstrating his Wimshurst machine








The utterly inimitable Vagabond Gentleman, makin' his pimp rounds... that sexy douche-bag!


Dedication to a look.


Brooke with Steamed Princess Leia from Outland Armor.


Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band (more about them later)


There's a working digital camera down in there.


Myself with the Nordic One




Me with a little bit o' trouble




Maj. Hathaway and his lovely companion, chillin' with the Vagabond.


They changed cloths a LOT.






She was so shy...


Lord Wraste and SillyLilPuppet.


Mjr. Hathaway again, this time hunting Replicants.
















Resistance is, after all, futile.








Yummy yummy skirt of belts




He makes knives.


mr_Apricot




Me and the girl from Humanwine.




For a while it looked like Wraste would miss the group shot, so I took this to photoshop him in, and liked it anyway.






clockwork clones










There were some smart-arsed comments made about getting the three of us in a picture...




Vagabond and I make the most of the lame-ass dance party.


Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band

These kids deserve a special mention, and were the highlight of the show.



They must have had about 150 people dancing in the street Saturday night. NO ONE was standing still. I had to take three or four fast trips back into the dance party to rescue people from boredom and show them where the fun was (someone showed me, and I had to pass on the favor.

One of many YouTube clips of their show that night, here.

OK, there's the pics from the Worlds Fair, with exceedingly brief commentaries. Next up, New Jersey and New York, followed by ImagiCon in Birmingham. Seriously, I've been having a LOT of fun lately.

Reverse Engineered Alien Arc Reactor

I'm about to go off and get my summer convention season started, which pretty much means little fiddly stuff is going on the back burner. Fortunately, I managed to get a few projects wrapped up before the shift. As a for instance, there was this little project I was working on, something with paratroopers, and its finally done, wrap, fine, completed. Even took pics of them all, I just haven't had time to clean them up. Hopefully that won't fall too far onto the back burner, but between the Steampunk World's Fair and ImagiCon, its probably gonna end up collecting dust for a while.

This, on the other hand, I'm just going to sort of toss out there.



Its a 15mm scale model of an alien arc reactor, recovered by... someone... in the 1940s, reverse engineered, and pressed back into service to power some infernal war machine. Its also close enough to the size of a Flames of War objective market for



It was a very fast, simple build that started out as a small plasma sphere I got from Edmond Scientific. Its battery or AC powered, and works a lot better if you hook it up to an AC adapter rated just a few amps higher than the device is speced for. I wouldn't leave it on all day like that, but its cool.



I took the plasma globe and covered the base in whatever junk looked right from the bits box, plus most of a 1/72 scale Vietnam war era jet support crew accessory kit I picked up some place. I have some figures to go with it -- three techs and a German officer on site for inspection -- but they aren't painted yet. I even made the floor of the elevator (where one tech and the officer will stand) removable so that I could make another later, or have FoW sized skirmish bases fit on there.

City Fight

A few weeks ago, Dylan and I played us a city fight. Here are some pics.

Here's Dylan!



Tactically speaking, this game played about like you'd expect a city fight to go. I made ready to advance up either side of the table, with a good punch extra on one side with my Shermans, matched on that same side by his Panzer IVs.







You can see here the Shermans getting into position to support the infantry advance.



One Sherman got particularly bold, and earned good kills for it. After the tanks were gone, this one Sherman spent the rest of the game making good use of his .50 cal (I'd have had more fun with American shermans rather than British, but that's what the list allows for).


The other Shermans, and the proxyed Firefly didn't last so long.


A Tree Grows in Brooklyn:



The fighting on my right side of the table was a side-show, and never really amounted to anything.



But on the left (the side with the tanks) both of us were gearing up for our Big Push. But, looking at those burning Panzer IVs, Dylan hesitated, and it was then that I made my move (I moved up so close and hit him with so much small arms fire that assaulting seemed like a good idea.)








The eventual assault

Terminators 1

Squad Lorenzo

I've got some other stuff I've been meaning to post, recent games and tomfoolery and the like, but I've been working on these long enough that I'm really anxious to get 'em up here. So, finally, here's my first "real" platoon of Terminators from the new Space Hulk. I gotta say, I'm pretty happy with them. I wanted to go all-out on these guys, and see what I could really do on a high-detail 28mm figure after so long painting 15mm (or low-detail naked chicks). I was also still pretty amused by painting the vibrant colors of a Codex Marine Chapter.



I don't think I'm going to be painting too many figures to this standard, actually: if I tried, I just wouldn't finish many figures!

Sgt. Lorenzo


Seven-layer highlights look good, but just take tooooo damn long to paint. These started with a red spray-on base coat. I used Krylon Fusion, which is a good paint and a good base coat, but only if you can find the matt finish stuff. I had to settle for Satin, and it wasn't optimal, but that didn't really matter after the first base coat of paint and ink wash.



I wanted the sergeant (described in the fluff as 600 years old) to look like Lee Marvin, all old and krusty and mean. I tried to take a closer picture of the face, but the camera lens was bumping up between the bolter and the sword. Speaking of which...



I tried to make the sword match the box cover art, because its totally Metal.

Brother Valencio


Brother Goriel


Brother Zael


Brother Deino


Brother Claudio got mixed in with Squad Lorenzo. I split up the non-standard squad Marine figures so I wouldn't end up with lop-sided groups or left over figures I'd have to go back and paint in a 3rd batch.


The Objective markers got worked in with this batch, too.








I've got about a half-dozen Genestealers painted up, too, plus some more half-painted. But I wanna go do other stuff, so I'm going to let gamer-ADD kick in, and finish the rest of these guys, "later."