ReaperCon 2021 - Day 0 and Day 1

OK. Days 0 and 1 get a single post since Day 0 isn't very picture worthy in my opinion.

Day 0

Day 0 was travel, more travel, hotel stuff, shopping, convention check-in, and a 'Meet & Greet' dinner.

There was nothing special about any of that. We got our convention welcome pack then went to our room to start the process of making big piles of stuff.

There's also a gift certificate usable only at their convention booth and convention money (Reaper Bucks). They said each hotel got different special minis and I'll be checking into that when I go shopping.

We snuck in a day early to do our metal-by-weight shopping. We've always set aside Thursday for that but it seems the company only wanted it to happen Friday and Saturday. Our bad. We did our shopping anyway. There's some advantages to being old timers.

The factory, looking back towards the store entrance. This is all product storage now.

The mold racks. They have a lot of molds. Casting is done in a room behind these.

Way in the back are the unpackaged minis you buy by weight, either with cash or trade in metal value.

I'll have better pictures when I take the official factory tour Saturday. 

The pizza Meet and Greet was burgers and hot dogs this year. That was a welcome change since I think the pizza the hotel serves is vile. The last couple of years I've resorted to scraping off and eating the toppings. They also had cake.

Food and food serving stations are not picture worthy to me.

These have been the standard type of badges the last few years. The ribbons are given out both by the convention and attendees who bought their own. Some people try to get them all and end up with huge tails that hit the floor. I take the ones that I earn at the con and the ones that I happen to acquire. This will grow throughout the weekend.

I'm going against my nature to enter minis in the painting competition. I'm only doing it for the Reaper Bucks. The minis are ones I grabbed from my dungeon crawl case. I have no interest in being judged which takes all the stress of competition away.

One of them broke in transit. His fragile dagger finally succumbed to my casual handling. Since I feel it's the best of the bunch I felt the need to fix it. My attempt to sculpt a replacement was a dismal failure. I found a suitable dagger on the pile of returned metal and pinned it in place. That's acceptable and will be easy enough to paint.

I pre-registered for the competition to get the special coin. I was mistaken in what I thought it would be. All Resper Bucks are cardboard coins and you get a 'special' silver one for doing that. It's still cardboard.

These are the terrible pictures I took to pre-register. They'll take better ones when I submit them. I hope.

The day ended with me chatting while I fixed the mini and my weekend table buddy painted.

Tomorrow will be much busier.