For the second year in a row, Four Horsemen Studios played host to a trio of events known as “Mythic Weekend." This combination of Intern for a Day, the yearly G-con reveal broadcast, and the epic LegionsCon live event have become a “must attend” for Legionnaires, and this year’s events saw fans come in from all over the country and all over the world!
There is no way we can accurately capture the awesomeness of these events in an article, but in this latest “Behind the Scenes” article, we will at least share some of the images and memories of Mythic Weekend 2022.
Intern for a Day
An incredibly popular event that we started years ago as a reward for our Kickstarter campaigns, the “Intern for a Day” event allows fans of Four Horsemen Studios the chance to visit the studio for a full day of workshops, tours, activities, and more. The entire team from the studio is on hand to greet fans and welcome them to our home!
Interest in this year’s event was so high that we actually had to utilize a “lottery” approach for the first time! Hopeful Legionnaires submitted their names for a chance to purchase tickets to the event, and the lucky fans whose names were selected got to be part of Intern for Day along with a guest they could bring with them. Below is a shot of just a few of our November 2022 Intern Class.
Welcoming fans early on the morning of Thursday, November 3rd, the studio opened its doors and the latest class of Interns filed in! After some bagels and coffee, we welcomed the group and then broke them into four smaller groups. These groups went off to enjoy one of four workshops we had prepared:
- Sculpting demonstration with Eric Treadaway
- Studio tour with Jim Preziosi
- Art of Legions split session with Nate Baertsch and Trevor Williams
- Painting demonstrations with Sherri Lynn Cook and Cameron Smith
Each group got to take part in each workshop, as we rotated every 60 minutes. Lunch was provided during the afternoon and the entire class of Interns got together at the end of the event for a live painting session where the actual Interns were presented with a gift – a bust of Malleus! We do one of these busts every single year, and with Necronominus on everyone’s minds, it was appropriate to turn to one of the Lord of Death’s “children” for this year’s bust! Below are images from the day's fun!
As the day ended, Interns filed out excited from the day’s fun and eager to return the following morning for G-con: Necronominus! For the second year in a row, these Interns were all indeed welcomed back to be part of the live audience for the reveals of the newest Legions wave!
G-con: Necronominus
The annual G-con broadcast is always a highlight of the year for Four Horsemen Studios. Started in 2018, the past three years have seen G-con used to reveal the latest “horseman” wave, unleashing the Dark Four back into Mythoss! 2023 would be the reveal of the fourth and final horseman, Necronominus, and anticipation was high as to what we would be bringing out for these reveals! Our team got the room ready to welcome our guests as we also prepared to broadcast the fun worldwide!
One of the changes we made for this year’s broadcast was to actually do it in front of a live audience. Rather than hosting our guests in a separate room with a delayed broadcast, these Interns and other invited friends of the studio were seated in front of our team as we streamed 6 hours of Legions content (6 hours where Eric and Jeremy did not get up ONCE from their seats - not even when the treats truck arrived outside with goodies for Eric's birthday! Talk about a pair of warriors!).
The G-con broadcast, which is still available to watch in full on our YouTube channel, featured a range of special guests and interviews, all while we unveiled the new wave with a reveal every 30 minutes! We even had some surprises at the end with the announcement of the “dead heads” that would be added to most of the hero figures in the wave and that the Eathyron versus Necronominus battle would extend through 2023 and into the Mythic Legions: All Stars 6 wave! Below are a number of images from this event!
In the end, fans in the room and those tuning in remotely got to see us reveal 11 new figures, plus a few accessory packs, for the Mythic Legions: Necronominus wave. The reaction to the reveals was incredible, and Legionnaires were buzzing about the new figures at the event and all weekend at the epic LegionsCon event! You can see images of the full wave below, and the preorder for this wave is open now at StoreHorsemen.com!
LegionsCon 2022
The first ever LegionsCon event was held in 2019 as a small fan “meet up” from 5pm – 8pm after Day 1 of the ToyConNJ show. From those humble beginnings just 4 years ago to the incredible 2-day event where Legions fans essentially took over an entire hotel in Secaucus, NJ, the growth of LegionsCon mirrors the growth of the Legions community itself!
In many ways, LegionsCon 2022 was the realization of what the founders and organizers of this event, Joe “Lord Veteris” Veteri and our very own Sir Girard, had imagined after that first year. The global pandemic forced LegionsCon to go virtual in 2020 and the founders also had to scale back the bigger show plans last year. For 2022, the event was moved to its own location and expanded to 2-days, really bringing the show to the point where the organizers felt it should be. It proved to be the perfect move as the Legionnaires supported LegionsCon by selling out the vendor spaces for the show, the rooms allocated at the hotel, and eventually the tickets to the event itself! With so much enthusiasm for the event, we knew we had to GO BIG, and there is no better evidence of that than the monster who greeted fans when they entered the lobby of the venue hotel – a life-size statue of the ogre Kkurzog! The lobby also contained displays of both Mythic and Cosmic Legions figures displayed in diorama from Brian Almeida.
This monster, life-size Kkurzog will get its own “Behind the Scenes” article soon, but there is no way we can talk about LegionsCon without mentioning his presence. Since the lobby of the hotel became the after-hours hangout spot for so many show attendees, having these displays in place gave fans lots of cool stuff to look at – and some great photo opps! The only person who appeared in more selfies at LegionsCon 2022 than Kkurzog was probably Walter “the Mad” Hagen (actually it's not a contest at all, Walter wins - as evidenced by all the images in this article)!
As for the show itself, we were blown away by everything. The showroom floor was incredible. To see the level of artistry found in the Legions community was insane. Figure customizers, 3D sculptors and printers, diorama creators, artists, photographers, and more filled that showroom with items for display and for sale. We also were delighted to welcome some fellow independent toy companies to the event to showcase their original creations, including our longtime friends from the Glyos community. Having them there amidst this celebration of Four Horsemen Studios and the community supporting our brands was pretty special for us.
The line for the Four Horsemen table started forming at 4:30pm the night BEFORE the doors even opened (seriously, that is nuts)! Seeing diehard fans camping out in the hallways was pretty unbelievable to us, and the line to our table did not stop for the entire show on Saturday! Thank you to everyone who patiently waited in that line for our figures or for the show figure releases. The reaction was so much more than we expected, and we had to adjust our setup on Sunday because of that. Anyone who came to both days would’ve seen that we made some changes on Sunday that greatly improved the speed of the line, both for the studio table and for the show figures. Live and learn – we now know how to help speed that process up for next year! Below are a number of photos from both days of LegionsCon 2022.
One of the coolest things at LegionsCon 2022 was the schedule of “breakout sessions” that fans were able to attend. Some of the “hands on” sessions, including “How to Paint Eyes” with Eric Miller, an “Undead Painting Demo” with Dennis Derby, and the “Pop and Swap Academy” with Wolf King Customs were ones we heard lots of fans excitedly talking about.
In addition to these fan-led sessions, there were also a handful of presentations given by people directly involved with the studio. Nate Baertsch presented a demonstration on packaging art, showing attendees how he paints some of those incredible pieces found on the Legions packages, while Trevor Williams gave a demo on his figure photography. One big reveal presented during these sessions was the announcement of the “Mythic Legions: Rise of the Dark Four, Volume One” book! Jeremy Girard and Eric Treadaway treated fans to some details on this long-rumored Legions book, while also reading 3 chapters from the volume and showing some sample page layouts from what is planned as a deluxe, hardcover book filled with art and images alongside the “Dark Four” Legions story arc in full narrative form! Below you can see one of the sample pages that was shown during this session.
The main floor of LegionsCon was open until 5pm on Saturday and 3pm on Sunday – but the fun of the event does not end once the doors to the showroom close. As we have said, a big part of LegionsCon is the “family reunion” aspect of the show, and Legions fans partied long into the night on each evening of the event. It is worth mentioning how proud we were to see such a diverse group of people coming together to have fun in a respectful way. No one did anything stupid or disruptive and everyone had each other’s back – further evidence of what an incredible community we are lucky to have in our camp! Here are some photos of the after-hours fun!
As the weekend wound down, we already heard people excitedly chatting about “next year” and looking ahead to 2023. We even had multiple conversations with Joe and Jeremy about the plans for LegionsCon 2023 and what lessons could be taken from this year’s event and also how the show would grow while still maintaining this intimate, “family reunion” vibe. It is definitely not an easy task, but considering the growth the show has seen in just 4 years, once of which was forced to be virtual, and how it has still kept that intimate and community-focused vibe, we know that next year will be more of the same – just bigger and better and with more members of the incredible Legions community coming out to support our studio and the larger community of fans and creators!
Look for details on LegionsCon 2023 to be announced soon. We hope to see you next year! In the meantime, enjoy this photo dump of images from LegionsCon 2022.
*Thank you to Walter Hagen and Cullun Culp for the images used in this article
Published on 11.26.22