This year at Mace I competed in the “Chopped” terrain contest. This was the second terrain contest that the convention has held in as many years. In 2017 the contest was a build it and bring event. DM Scotty was the Judge, and it was a fun event that they decided to grow. In 2018 they decided to change it up and introduced the “Chopped” contest theme. Myself I hope that they continue to run this in the coming years. This year the competition had a chance to bring home a 3D printer for winning first place. 

For us, the “Chopped” contest was going to be a special challenge. I decided that it would be a great way to still do something other than vending while at the con. Better yet it would also be something that Missy and I could do together since she had not signed up to play any games this year as well. 

The Chopped Contest Details

The contest was a blind box 22-hour timed event. With only a single rule, you must use most of what was in the given “mystery” box. The boxes were passed out at 8pm on Friday, and the event ended at 7pm Saturday. I will be the first person to tell you that this ensured everyone that competed was pressed for time. I will say that the vast number of us that were in the competition were lucky to manage to put a solid 6-8 hours in on the projects. 

The box that we received contained a ton of raw materials. That proved to be the first challenge as we needed to sort through everything and decide what we were going to build from it. The second challenge that we faced was that we had entered into a terrain building contest and had never built a single piece of terrain EVER! 

Regrettably, we were so overwhelmed with the contents of the box no one thought to take a picture of what all was it. On the 10th floor, there was a paint area and some items like proxxon cutters provided. But what follows is a little list to give you an idea. 

• 1 Roll of toilet paper
• 2 solid cardstock tubes 
• 1 Foam core board
• styrofoam
• pink insulation foam
• polymer clay
• several sizes of popsicle sticks
• string
• bendy straws 
• Aluminum foil 
• 1 Tea Light
• A plastic skull 
• some random plastic items 
• Army painter tufts of grass & flock. 
• A sheet of cardboard 
• 1 Glue Gun with Glue sticks
• Utility knife
• a few clay tools
• several types of glue 

The Resut

After some thought, we dove in and I was determined to want to build terrain that served more than one purpose. We settled on a working dice tower that would roll into a dice tray. The tower would look like a creepy lighthouse type tower. The dice would then roll into what was intended to look like a sewer well with pipes and bodies inside. 

We pulled it off, with some effort a little bit of burnt flesh and a whole lot of panic that we would not ever finish it in time we got the whole thing together painted and turned in. Better yet for our first piece of terrain that we built during a timed competition, we even pulled off a working dice tower! 

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Much of the material we had an easy time working with. The only exception was that GOD DAMN pink foam.. It is an hateful unforgiving medium to first time crafters in my opinion. Mind you we were working with it at a 4 foot table behind a vendor booth so my feelings about it might be a bit jaded. 

Honestly, were pretty proud of the ugly beast but it did not place. That’s alright though we finished and we had fun doing it! And not only did we use most of the items listed above but we even cut the box up and used it as well! 

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We were only given green brown and grey for colors, and honestly, we were so far behind at the time we got to the paint stage we just were hoping to get full coverage on the blasted thing lol. Maybe we will make some more terrain between now and next MACE and we will see how we do next year. 

If you would like to see a craft that we were able to take our time on. Use the following link and enjoy!

 https://runkleplaysgames.com/2018/08/09/crafting-thursday-making-d12-containers/