Wolfson Survived Iron Painter

Hello everyone Wolfson here to let you know that I not only survived the Apocalypse but more importantly survived Iron painter and won that awesome trophy you see above.  The Iron painter was hosted at Dropzone games in Glen Burnie Maryland from 12pm friday the 21st to 12pm friday the 22nd.  The crew spent 24 Hours straight painting, gaming and holding off any craziness the Apocalypse could throw at us including zombies.  We did have some rules to keep things civil during this event.  You could enter in one of three categories with a cold hearted 4th category that i will explain in a second.  The cetgories were based on model count and consisted of small medium and large.  The catch however is none of the models can start painted besides a base coat and some people even built and converted models before starting and had to be a playable force for whatever game system you were painting.  Small was 10 to 19, Medium 20 to 29 and Large was everything else. 

So yeah the fourth category............. well your probably wondering why the hell my trophy is a hulk fist spray painted gold and holding a flash light and I would ask you why your questioning the awesome sauce that is the hulk fist but this time there is a method to the madness but only slightly.  Ok so so heres the breakdown.  Dropzone games has a large sign on the outside of the building that is illuminated from 7 to 10 each night and according to store manager Tom Gruhala is enough light to paint under.  At the begining of Iron Painter you selected one model to be the one that you would paint outside from 7pm to 10pm and said model could only be worked on outside.  Now for those of you devious bastards already thinking of well I would just paint in my car or do this or that to make my life easier, Tom policed us heavily to make sure we had no cheaters so no cars phones hoods of car or any of that crap.  You had your paints, brush, water cup, model and the damn curb to sit on.  The hardest thing to deal with was not the lack of light though if anyone was looking at the weather for this area on friday night you would see that we had a high around 30 degrees with heavy winds so windchill was in the teens.  I more than once saw paints and water cups blown over and brushes roll away amongst all the other silly things that could happen in the dark in addition to the biting cold.  I will say though that this part of the Iron Painter was not mandatory though due to the weather.  This category is the one I ended up winning with the plucky dark eldar grotesque that you see above and is also one of the most miserable but hilarious painting experiences I have ever had.

 I also entered in the medium category with the rest of my grotesques 10 wyches and a haemonculus. These models still need a lot of work but it was great to get so much done in one sitting and have them to at least a tabletop standard.  I promise you that the grotesque i painted in the dark will never be touched up as a tribute to the crazyiness that was the 4th category and aptly named "paint by the light of."

The overall turn out for this event was most impressive with all 24 painting slots being filled and 11 of those painters actually painting the whole 24 hours.  Gaming was going on for the whole 24 hours as well with the Escalation league in a day being played out for multiple game systems.  I saw people playing Warhammer 40k, Fantasy, Mordheim, Warmahordes, Malifaux  and more.  The sheer amount of completed models was just impressive to behold and I would like to apologize for the lack of photos as by the end of it i was up approaching 48 hours without sleep and just wiped out.  In the photo above upper right hand corner  you can see the edge of a Lord of the Rings  army that consisted of 165 models that was completed during the competition.

I would personally like to thank everyone the participated in this awesome event and an extra shout out goes to Dropzone games especially Tom for making this event the best experience possible.  See you next time.

-Wolfson