Sorry for the late reporting but where we go.
@Tim A. messaged me Friday sending regrets because of family matters, totally understand and we missed seeing you and your lovely bride.
After meticulous planning the day started for me at 0730 with the arrival of Bruce @iambrb to car pool up to Anderson to rendezvous Chris @phantom II to drive into Atlanta. It was great to catch up with Chris who we hasn't been to a show with us since he moved to Florida several users ago, so glad he found his way back home to NC.
We had lively conversation navigating to the new venue for the Atlanta Figure show up until the time the rain slowed progress on I85, that road is bad enough without rain. As luck would have it, I had the EZPass and just tucked into the express lane and bypass all the lane changing and stop and go. Didn't do to bad of time.
Eric @errains sent out flares wanting to know where we were, went sent back our 10-20 and before the text got to him we were pulling into the parking lot of the beautiful grounds of the Hilton Atlanta/Marietta Hotel & Conference Center and found quick parking. Our wayward buddy was waiting at the door for us and we quickly got pass admission and split up checking out the vendors.
This being predominately a figure show I didn't see the regular cast of vendors I would expect to see. Most were focused on hairy brush painting and sculpting tools. I picked up a pack of very fine brushes and inquired the cost. $50 the vendor said. I quickly returned the package where it belongs, I'm not that serious of a painter to invest $50 on 4 paint brushes. I noticed there were a great number of figures to pick from (it was a figure show afterall) and a fair amount of armor kits but nothing jumped out at me wanting come home with me.
Brandon Lowe of Squadron was there with a good selection of kits and other things. He saw my open the display box of the Mobius .02 air brush and he was on me like a used car sales man on a slow friday. I told him my woes with Badger and I'm hunting something new, he bragged about the Mobius being the airbrush Squadron pushes to use with their own brand of paints. I haven't tried any Squadron branded paints yet, waiting to hear from you all. I agree with him, at $70 you can buy a lot of Mobius airbrushes for the price of one H&S airbrush. How do they compare? I don't know, Jury still out for my judgement, I think it's a fine brush so far, not seeing any cons just yet.
I wrapped up that purchase and proceeded with my browsing. It struck me, there were a great number of completed builds for sale, I don't know if the figure guys like to buy other people's models to display their figure painting skills with or were some builders being really optimistic about selling their completed kits. Or perhaps this is a market for the board gamers who don't know how to build models, I don't know.
One such vendor had a nice representation of Lulubelle with figures, I glanced over them and saw it. It was the King and Country figure of Sgt Joe Gunn! White metal and all painted up. So a 1:32 scale version of Joe Gun does exist in the wild. Vendor came over and greeted me, I ask him how much for Joe Gunn?
"It comes with the set"
"What set?" I asked.
"What's there, the entire set. I won't break it."
He was selling all the figures and the tank for $250!
"But I just need Joe Gunn"
He looked at me very confused, I don't think he knew who Joe Gunn is, he's just selling painted figures.
There was no budging, it was the set or nothing so I put Joe back with his crew. I did notice the vendor keeping an eye on me everytime I came around his table again.
We checked out the displays in the next room, there's some very talented figure painters out there and there's some that make you go. what da... Some of the displays reminded me of the play sets we use to get like Fort Apache, y'all remember that stuff right? I got a good laugh at one subject, it was one of the British mini subs with a couple of figures place around it on a base of wood that was maybe 12" by 4, maybe a foot long, it had a spigot on it. And the text of the entry was something about the model and "added the rusty spigot I found in the yard just for attention". I saw a couple of judges talking about it and you know me, I had to interject. "I think it's hilarious, some people take this stuff way to serious.". We exchanged some ideas about this for a bit and I decided to just keep moving.
There was one figure and I regret not taking a photo of it, I'll try to find it. It was a very lovely carved figure of a blond woman, large straw hat, sundress, she was sitting on a blanket with all sorts of picnic things about on a spot of grass. Title was "Terry (?), Bulls Run, 1982". I don't know if this was a tribute to someone's wife or girlfriend but it was a refreshing subject among all the military and scantly clad fantasy figures that were everywhere.
After this lunch was in order, since Tim put us all in the mood for Mexican we were locked in, first place we picked had a full 4.8 rating on Google but they had no parking, none. I'm sure they were good. We went downtown Marietta, neat place, all this little towns around metro have tried to keep their southern roots and developed the old town squares into nice little commercial centers with that old small town vibe. The square was very busy and we found our option two for Mexican after a short walk from our parking lot. Had a great meal but no one took any food porn shots before we dug in. We wrapped up lunched and made our apologies to the young family with the cute kids who were sitting next to us and made our way back Tundra for our trip up to the Kennesaw Hobby Town.
I was able to grab the last of the RAF Dark Earth and RAF Dark Middlestone off the Mission Model rack, the rack was pretty well picked clean and the ever helpful store dudes were worried about the restocking. According to them it's too difficult to work with.
All of us were able to avoid adding to any of our respective stashes though there was one large brown box that tempted me. I was able to talk myself out of it, afterall, why do I need 2 1:48 HS 129s and a Panther all bundled into one kit box?
We dropped off Eric, we didn't realize he was showing his award winning Bearhound build from several years ago.
@errains Show off that metal will ya! It ain't bragging if you can do it. 
Return trip to Outback at exit 19 on I85 to drop off Chris was no problem for us, can't say that for the folks heading south bound, sorry to be y'all backed up behind a wreck. I wrapped up the day at about 1700 hrs with my return to the farm house and returning Bruce to his truck.
It was a great time catching up with friends and seeing some good models. IPMS show at the union hall is next month on the 21st, I can't make that one but we have something in Columbia in June.
See ya then!
@Tim A. messaged me Friday sending regrets because of family matters, totally understand and we missed seeing you and your lovely bride.
After meticulous planning the day started for me at 0730 with the arrival of Bruce @iambrb to car pool up to Anderson to rendezvous Chris @phantom II to drive into Atlanta. It was great to catch up with Chris who we hasn't been to a show with us since he moved to Florida several users ago, so glad he found his way back home to NC.
We had lively conversation navigating to the new venue for the Atlanta Figure show up until the time the rain slowed progress on I85, that road is bad enough without rain. As luck would have it, I had the EZPass and just tucked into the express lane and bypass all the lane changing and stop and go. Didn't do to bad of time.
Eric @errains sent out flares wanting to know where we were, went sent back our 10-20 and before the text got to him we were pulling into the parking lot of the beautiful grounds of the Hilton Atlanta/Marietta Hotel & Conference Center and found quick parking. Our wayward buddy was waiting at the door for us and we quickly got pass admission and split up checking out the vendors.
This being predominately a figure show I didn't see the regular cast of vendors I would expect to see. Most were focused on hairy brush painting and sculpting tools. I picked up a pack of very fine brushes and inquired the cost. $50 the vendor said. I quickly returned the package where it belongs, I'm not that serious of a painter to invest $50 on 4 paint brushes. I noticed there were a great number of figures to pick from (it was a figure show afterall) and a fair amount of armor kits but nothing jumped out at me wanting come home with me.
Brandon Lowe of Squadron was there with a good selection of kits and other things. He saw my open the display box of the Mobius .02 air brush and he was on me like a used car sales man on a slow friday. I told him my woes with Badger and I'm hunting something new, he bragged about the Mobius being the airbrush Squadron pushes to use with their own brand of paints. I haven't tried any Squadron branded paints yet, waiting to hear from you all. I agree with him, at $70 you can buy a lot of Mobius airbrushes for the price of one H&S airbrush. How do they compare? I don't know, Jury still out for my judgement, I think it's a fine brush so far, not seeing any cons just yet.
I wrapped up that purchase and proceeded with my browsing. It struck me, there were a great number of completed builds for sale, I don't know if the figure guys like to buy other people's models to display their figure painting skills with or were some builders being really optimistic about selling their completed kits. Or perhaps this is a market for the board gamers who don't know how to build models, I don't know.
One such vendor had a nice representation of Lulubelle with figures, I glanced over them and saw it. It was the King and Country figure of Sgt Joe Gunn! White metal and all painted up. So a 1:32 scale version of Joe Gun does exist in the wild. Vendor came over and greeted me, I ask him how much for Joe Gunn?
"It comes with the set"
"What set?" I asked.
"What's there, the entire set. I won't break it."
He was selling all the figures and the tank for $250!
"But I just need Joe Gunn"
He looked at me very confused, I don't think he knew who Joe Gunn is, he's just selling painted figures.
There was no budging, it was the set or nothing so I put Joe back with his crew. I did notice the vendor keeping an eye on me everytime I came around his table again.
We checked out the displays in the next room, there's some very talented figure painters out there and there's some that make you go. what da... Some of the displays reminded me of the play sets we use to get like Fort Apache, y'all remember that stuff right? I got a good laugh at one subject, it was one of the British mini subs with a couple of figures place around it on a base of wood that was maybe 12" by 4, maybe a foot long, it had a spigot on it. And the text of the entry was something about the model and "added the rusty spigot I found in the yard just for attention". I saw a couple of judges talking about it and you know me, I had to interject. "I think it's hilarious, some people take this stuff way to serious.". We exchanged some ideas about this for a bit and I decided to just keep moving.
There was one figure and I regret not taking a photo of it, I'll try to find it. It was a very lovely carved figure of a blond woman, large straw hat, sundress, she was sitting on a blanket with all sorts of picnic things about on a spot of grass. Title was "Terry (?), Bulls Run, 1982". I don't know if this was a tribute to someone's wife or girlfriend but it was a refreshing subject among all the military and scantly clad fantasy figures that were everywhere.
After this lunch was in order, since Tim put us all in the mood for Mexican we were locked in, first place we picked had a full 4.8 rating on Google but they had no parking, none. I'm sure they were good. We went downtown Marietta, neat place, all this little towns around metro have tried to keep their southern roots and developed the old town squares into nice little commercial centers with that old small town vibe. The square was very busy and we found our option two for Mexican after a short walk from our parking lot. Had a great meal but no one took any food porn shots before we dug in. We wrapped up lunched and made our apologies to the young family with the cute kids who were sitting next to us and made our way back Tundra for our trip up to the Kennesaw Hobby Town.
I was able to grab the last of the RAF Dark Earth and RAF Dark Middlestone off the Mission Model rack, the rack was pretty well picked clean and the ever helpful store dudes were worried about the restocking. According to them it's too difficult to work with.
All of us were able to avoid adding to any of our respective stashes though there was one large brown box that tempted me. I was able to talk myself out of it, afterall, why do I need 2 1:48 HS 129s and a Panther all bundled into one kit box?We dropped off Eric, we didn't realize he was showing his award winning Bearhound build from several years ago.
Bearhound
modelersalliance.org
Return trip to Outback at exit 19 on I85 to drop off Chris was no problem for us, can't say that for the folks heading south bound, sorry to be y'all backed up behind a wreck. I wrapped up the day at about 1700 hrs with my return to the farm house and returning Bruce to his truck.
It was a great time catching up with friends and seeing some good models. IPMS show at the union hall is next month on the 21st, I can't make that one but we have something in Columbia in June.
See ya then!
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