Ah, the Game Summit Summer 2009 has came and gone this last weekend!I did attend both days, with a different goal this time. Normally I play the tournaments, but this time I took in all the little side events. The event was at the Nepean Sportsplex which is an alright venue. They had food avail but it wasn't tasty at all, and Greg actually throw out the Pizza he bought from them, lol!
The first event which I went to was the miniature painting clinic . For $2 you are given a space marine, which had sprue, flash and mold lines still attached and have access to about 80 reaper paints. I spent a good portion of an hour just messing around painting the marine really randomly for my Friends kids, since they get a kick out of this stuff. The on site staff for the painting area really didn't do much, he handed me a marine and walked away. Its not really a problem for me since I know how to paint in the end. Below is what I painted, yes its totally random but his twins will love it! lol
I gave out two prizes for a campaign being run locally from "sticks" I'll have pictures up later this week.
After painting and eating lunch, i played two pickup games on a planet strike table, since the good tables were being using already. Played a strange game where my marines lost to my Friends IG, good times being slaughtered! The game finished around 2pm, which was the start time of the resin casting event. I asked around and heard it was cancelled, which really sucked because it was still listed on the banners on the website in the morning.
Since the afternoon was shot because the resin casting was cancelled, I checked out some of the merchants. Crossed Swords had some great blisters from the early 90's, but were over priced so I passed over them. The comic book shop had great deals on allot of stuff, but nothing I was looking for in 40k marines or Warmachine. I know the owner well, and we had a great talk about Axis and Allies. I checked out Wizard's Tower section, and there stuff was the normal "Higher or Equal to" GW prices, so I passed.
There was a booth, for $8 you can get a caricature drawn. Sounds great, so I wanted to get one done for my fiance. I had an SD Card with a good picture of her on it, so he can use it for reference since she was out of town. He worked on it, and sent me a copy of it via email the day after, and it looks really strange. I don't fully understand what he did, but all I can notice is that he made the picture really blurry and made the eyes black. I thought he was going to do something interesting for $8 instead of apply some filters and such in paint shop pro. Since there isn't anything better to waste tickets on at this time of the day, I don't care.
The high point of the day came went we went to Burger King for dinner, where I had an Angy Whopper. The only thing the made me angry with the Burger was the fact that I spent $50 on entry fee's and tickets, with only a poorly assembled
starter marine to show for it.
We went back to the Game Summit and played a pickup game. About halfway through our pickup game were were asked by some players to basically hurry up so they can use the table we are using for apocalypse. Since this was late at night, and there were no events going we continued to play, even tho we were asked a few times how much longer we'd be! This time my terminators smashed Greg's Imperial Guard. Take that! I put aside my set of Kolinsky Brushes and some paints when I got home to bring for the speed painting event tomorrow.
The Next Day
I got up a little late at 8:30am and I knew I would not be able to make the speed painting even, which started at 9:00am so i didn't bringing my brushes. I brought my Lord of The Rings Gondor Army, a Land Speeder Tempest, and some other random things to sell at the garage sale.
When I got there I setup my items for the garage sale, and went to see how the painting was going, since it was now 10:00am. It hasn't started yet, and is running an hour behind! I entered the event and painted my marine, which turned out alright. I choose a space wolves color scheme and the yellow turned out bleh.
After the event I caught up with Darby and we all went to go eat lunch at A&W. It was a good relaxing time, since running on 6 hours of sleep in 2 days sucks!
We headed back and I had a game against Darby's Eldar. The match was really even until my terminators deep struck deep in his lines, and actually survived a round of shooting! A few lucky shots later, and there wasn't a surviving Eldar left on the table! Better luck next time you Xenos Scum!
The game ended around 3:00pm and I went to the garage sale to see if anything sold. Nothing sold but a father and son are eyeballing my Gondor Army! After a few minutes of talking, they buy it for $45. I cashed out and found out my land Speeder Tempest also sold for $40! I spent all the hard earned cash on allot of fun stuff. I bought Axis and Allies: Revised, Axis and Allies: Pacific, and Axis and Allies: Europe for $60 which is great. I also bought a Dark Angels, Chaos Marine, Chaos Mortals, Dark Eldar, and Ork codex all for $5. Clint was selling allot of 1:72 and 1:76 scale model kits, and I ended up buying about 10 model kits, which included about 5 Russian tanks for $15.
I asked the host when the speed painting entries were going to be judged and the prize given out, and I was told 6:00pm, which I think was five hours later then originally planned for. The tickets were non-refundable and were not valid for future events, which kinda sucked. A few of the events were cancelled, like the resin casting, blitz and the chess tournament without warning so I had six extra tickets with nothing to use them on. So I used my last six tickets to get six more poorly assembled starter marines lol!
At this point, I decided I've had enough of the event for one day and packed everything up. I took my Space Marine from the display case, since there was no way in hell I'd wait 3 more hours just to win a prize worth half as much as the entry fee. It was one of those cheap Games Workshop painting jar things.
At the end of the weekend, I left with some positive and some negative things.
On the positive side; I came out with some boardgames, I hung out with some friends, sold some stuff, and got some great deals on other stuff!
On the negative; The whole hobby section (minus Alex's painting class) was a joke, the value was lower then the previous Game Summit, I ended up spending allot of money on totally random stuff that was not fun at all, where was the music... ,
If anyone from the Game Summit team reads my review, please remember it came from someone who didn't actually play in any of the tournaments, which was a really poor choice on my side since the WHFB, Warmachine, Heavy Gear, 40k tournaments looked really fun!
... Mitch
