Golden Demon 2012 Coverage

It's late July and that can only mean one thing, it's time for Games Day Chicago.  What really gets me excited about Games Day is the Golden Demon painting competition, and winning one of those fancy trophies.

This year I decided to throw in my hat by submitting a grotesque with flesh gauntlet that I had modeled a year ago with some accompanying Talos/Cronos bitz.  Here he is.

I decided to go a little out of my comfort zone this time and do something that I had never done, lighting effects.  What started as a trial and error learning process (more error than trial to be honest), ended up being quite enjoyable project.  After all was said and done, I ended up with three different colored light sources which overlapped and interacted on some areas of the model and a ton of green glow.  Painting lighting effects was a lot of fun with a classic brush technique, but now I'm excited to see what the possibilites are with an air brush.

Though the model took up weeks of my time, it was only half the story and with Chicago nine hours away, only a road trip would do.

From left to right: my brother Andrew, me, Kent Plumb (five time demon winner), and Brandon Hershey, loaded up a budget rental and hit the road.  Unfortunately, my dog Zelda didn't go with us, but she likes being in pictures and hanging in the wolf pack.

The traffic was bad leaving KC, but after Brandon passed a multitude of "jink saves" around motorists and the like we were well on our way.  After four hours on the road, we stopped to get dinner at a likely sub shop and I decided to get soup with my sandwhich.  I know, I know, soup in July?  What madness!  And it turned out to be, for after eating the only offering they had (chili) I found myself groaning and doubled-over in the car dreaming of a rest stop.  None were to be found.  We zipped off the first exit we saw and wandered into a small town well after dusk had settled only to find that all the gas stations were closed.  Brandon quickly spotted a hole in the wall bar and dropped me off outside.  This was the kind of small town place where everybody knows your name, but they didn't no mine.  "The diarrhea walk of shame" my brother dubbed it and it truly was.  Lesson learned, don't eat chili in July.  Who knows how long that brown devil soup had been sitting out?

After we made the convention, things started to look better.  Here, Brandon, Andrew, and I are in line for the "speed demon" painting competition.

I got second with my night goblin!

After speed painting it was time to pop back over to the GD cases to see where our entries stood.

Sadly, Andrew and Kent's Lord of the Rings solo minis didn't make first cut, but mine look well into the running.

You'll have to forgive the video quality (blogger's hosting isn't the highest), but there turned out to be a whole case full of 40k monster entries, in fact...

After hours of waiting mine remained at the top of the case as one of the final five!  By that time I was contending with a winged hive tyrant and a couple of orcs.  Making the tough cut, I was feeling pretty good about my chances, but only time would tell who would walk away with a trophy. Duhn duhn duhn.

In the meantime we divided our time between looking at Armies on Parade (tons of cool ones, I voted for the death magic cult entry), standing in line waiting to look at the demon entries (pictured above is Christophe and Kent), browsing club events, and spending $$$ on limited ed models.  I restricted myself to one of each of the Games Day promos, a dice set, and a print of the the Path of the Ranger cover art.  Whoo!  Go Eldar.  There is a benefit to being a fan of that enigmatic race, there's always plenty of your product left at the end of the day!  Rumor was going around that a single individual (the first customer to reach the Black Library stall) had bought ALL of the primarch prints and a good handful of the Blood Angels ones.  His total bill was well within $800.  Madness, shear madness.

Kent also threw his hat in the speed demon painting competition.  At the rear table you can see the illustrious company he kept in his round, that of James and Kathy Wappel.  

After that he headed over to the quick draw competition, where he placed first with his sketch of a sister of battle.  The pic was really well done, but he was just edged out in the end for the overall by a pretty outstanding sketch of a dreadnought firing an assault cannon.

But what about that top model of mine sitting in judgment for a piece of hardware?

Unfortunately, I was edged out of the top three and took home a finalist pin.  Though this was sorely disappointing, the whole experience was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to competing in future painting competitions, at Games Day or elsewhere!

July's Hobby Spotlight: Andrew Pfannenstiel

This month we're honoring a long-time wargamer as July's Mad Hobbyist.  Andrew Pfannenstiel has been hobbying for over a decade, ever since he put paint to model on his first Necron.  He's come a long way since then and collected a wide variety of models in both the Warhammer fantasy and 40k ranges.  Let's take a look.

Andrew enjoys painting vehicles and has built up a sizable armored Imperial Guard force.  Basing his army on an Elysian force, he went with dark earth tones and greys as camouflage for his flyers and tanks.  His basing uses ash flock to emulate the fallout that has settled over the land on his force's home world.

Andrew fields Pask within this LeMan Russ, allowing him to lay down two S8 autocannon shots, one S10 lascannon, and two S9 multi-melta.  

To represent his vets, Andrew uses storm trooper minis, which are perfect for upgraded 4+ armor save guardsmen.

One of his newest projects, Andrew's Tau use a lot of fire warriors, stealth suits, and fast moving piranhas.

He branched out and pushed his hobby limits with a new basing scheme.  Andrew wanted to depict his Tau fighting across a truly alien landscape where the water is red.

Andrew's Dark Angels are another of his many smaller forces, which take advantage of the new 6th ed. rules to ally themselves with his guardsmen.

The force is primarily comprised of Deathwing terminators, backed up by devastator squads of rocket launchers and lascannons.

His Dark Angels look awesome fighting across a ruined city landscape, their basing really bringing the models to life.

A pride of Andrew's fantasy model collection is his Arachnarock Spider.  The spider's fiery body hues compliment nicely the rich greens of its contrast details.  The blending to dark brown on its legs is a subtle touch that really brings the model together.

Andrew hand sculpted warpstone embedded into the spiders abdomen to represent its use in Storm of Magic games where it would be allied along his Skaven force.

Speaking of Storm of Magic, Andrew's breadth of models extends to this arcane fulcrum.  He perfectly balanced the detail work on the the stone carvings with a healthy splash of blood from the fulcrum's "gorenado."

The centerpieces to Andrew's huge Skaven force, his heroes do a huge amount of killing.

Nowhere in his army is there a better balance of disgusting and well done.  His Hell Pit Abomination has an deathly pallor, weeping sutures, verdigris, a warpfire cencer, and even a disturbingly painted rear section (decayed and poopy).

Andrew has done a really great job on his warp stone pieces, building the pieces from Dark Angels' Green all the way up to Scorpion Green, and then finishing it off with a healthy gloss coat.

These globadiers' globes are simply awesome, a perfect representation of their in-game potential.

Congrats, Andrew on being named July's Mad Hobbyist of the month!