Hey all, I just got home from the expo, and I wanted to share my thoughts. I live here in Atlanta, and I've been trying to go to the expo for years, but always seem to have a scheduling conflict. This year, I was able to attend, and I was very excited to go. Unfortunately, the actual event was something of a let down for me. I'm an avid miniature painter, and I've been in and out of the hobby since I was a kid. I was looking forward to taking some painting classes, seeing some of the amazing work I've seen online actually in person at the Crystal Brush, and participating in anything and everything going on. I arrived at the show at about 11:00 AM today, and found that almost all of the classes were already filled, both Friday and Saturday. Now, I like the fact that you guys kept the class size small to allow the teachers to give attendees individual attention, but if they filled up that fast, you probably need to devote more people and space to the painting section. I was also disappointed at the number of painted minis on display. There were 2 crystal brush entries. The cases were almost completely empty. Maybe they fill up on Saturday, I don't know, but the only real selection of painted models to view were your Dark Age display.
I was also disappointed to see that the vendor section was basically CMON only. No paints. No other minis. None of the rare or hard to find miniature manufacturers from your store had a presence at the expo. Pretty much just Dark Age and board games. Which I can buy on your website... whenever, and at the same prices for the most part. I checked. Then there was the demo area. First, it wasn't being very well run. I sat down to play a round of Rising Sun, and had two different staff members coming and going, and only half paying attention to helping us learn the game. One in particular, an Asian lady whose name I didn't catch, was way more interested in telling people when they should go on break and hustling us off of the table than helping us learn the game. Otherwise, there were a lot of people milling around that area, with no organization at all. A queue list at each table would have been a big help, as would some indication of when a game was nearing completion, or being set up for a new round. Finally, I was really disappointed by the fact that some of your games, Kaosball in particular, weren't available to demo or try out until after 7:00 PM. I had planned to stay and try some from the lending library, but I got bored by about 4:30 and left.
I will say that the swag bag was very nice, you gave away a whole pile of stuff for free, and I was very pleased. Often those bags are mostly junk, and that definitely wasn't the case here. I'm really excited to crack open Godfather in particular and give it a try. I'm just disappointed that an expo from a website that's focused on painting miniatures seemed completely geared towards selling me boardgames, and didn't seem to care much about the painting side of the hobby.
I was also disappointed to see that the vendor section was basically CMON only. No paints. No other minis. None of the rare or hard to find miniature manufacturers from your store had a presence at the expo. Pretty much just Dark Age and board games. Which I can buy on your website... whenever, and at the same prices for the most part. I checked. Then there was the demo area. First, it wasn't being very well run. I sat down to play a round of Rising Sun, and had two different staff members coming and going, and only half paying attention to helping us learn the game. One in particular, an Asian lady whose name I didn't catch, was way more interested in telling people when they should go on break and hustling us off of the table than helping us learn the game. Otherwise, there were a lot of people milling around that area, with no organization at all. A queue list at each table would have been a big help, as would some indication of when a game was nearing completion, or being set up for a new round. Finally, I was really disappointed by the fact that some of your games, Kaosball in particular, weren't available to demo or try out until after 7:00 PM. I had planned to stay and try some from the lending library, but I got bored by about 4:30 and left.
I will say that the swag bag was very nice, you gave away a whole pile of stuff for free, and I was very pleased. Often those bags are mostly junk, and that definitely wasn't the case here. I'm really excited to crack open Godfather in particular and give it a try. I'm just disappointed that an expo from a website that's focused on painting miniatures seemed completely geared towards selling me boardgames, and didn't seem to care much about the painting side of the hobby.
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