To Paint or Not to Paint?

I have been motivated to play more of GW awesome Lord of the Rings game lately, not sure why, but having a blast with it. So for the longest time my figures have been largely unpainted for this, but I have been bitten by the painting bug to get them finished. I think this is partly due to me not wanting to play with unpainted minis out in public. Let me explain.

The guys I game with are for the most part Historical players and we have an unspoken rule about using unpainted stuff. Well it’s really not a rule, we just don’t do it! This unspoken rule has a plus & a negative to it. The plus side is that you get to face off against nicely painted armies or figures. The negative side is that you usually don’t get to play much because you are painting most of the time.

I started wondering why that is and I think I might have figured it out, well why I don’t anyway. Besides gaming, I have been an avid model builder & model railroader. This seems to be the reason why I don’t like playing with unpainted stuff. I have noticed that whenever I go to a game shop I always will stop and watch a game with painted figures over non painted stuff. The best way to advertise your “game” is to have nice looking stuff on the table. Eye appeal is everything, and nice looking stuff will always catch people’s eyes. Take for instance a few weeks ago while I was at my local game shop, there was a huge mega-game of 40K going on. It had about 6 or 8 people playing. The only thing I could tell you was that there was a lot of grey plastic & silver metal on the board. I couldn’t even tell you what armies were being used.

Now there was a game of Battle Fleet Gothic being played as well with two fully painted Imperial fleets slugging it out over some distant planet. Both players were new to the game and were playing on a nice space board that was reversed painted on Plexiglas (painted on the bottom side). The each had two cruisers and a few escorts and played for about 45 minutes. This game was going on at the same time as the huge Mega-battle but you can tell which one I watched.

So to make a long story short, this is why I have been busting my butt on getting the Mordor Orcs painted. I figure if I have nicely painted stuff, than other people will stop and watch our game and maybe inspired to paint up there stuff. I will try and post pictures in the next few days of my progress since I have a game coming up on Monday against a few friends…

Christmas Haul

So, what did I get for Christmas…

This seemed to be the year of DVDs for me, here’s what my friends & loved ones got me.

Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Mans Chest 2 disc DVD. My wife got this for me, really a no brainier since I told everyone that I wanted it. Spent Christmas morning watching all the bonus features about the movie, some great stuff on the second disc.

My mom sent me a $50.oo gift certificate to Best Buy, I had received that on the 23rd of December so off I went to fight the crowds. I was looking for the Band of Brothers DVD set, but it was a little more than I had ($67.00 but I heard on the 24th it was half off! Arrggghh!). So I picked up a classic Sci Fi movie, Logan’s Run (1976) got this gem for only $7.00. I also picked up the Chronicles of Riddick Trilogy. I didn’t know there was a third movie, which there isn’t but it’s a 30 minute cartoon that takes place in-between Pitch Black & Chronicles. Pretty good stuff. I also picked up two CD’s one Disciple Scars Remain http://www.disciplerocks.com/ and Mute Math http://www.mutemath.com/ both Christian bands. Disciple is very hard & edgy and Mute Math is a cross between Sting/U2/Linkin Park all rolled together.

My In-law’s sent me a $40.00 gift card to Hollywood video, so on the 24th I headed off with my son to see what I could get there. Once there Hollywood video was having a buy 2, get 2 DVDs free, so we dove into the DVDs looking for movies. What we came up with were, Kingdom of heaven, The Great Raid, Doom & I know this one doesn’t make sense, but the Lakehouse (that one was for my wife).

I also received from my good friend Brandon F, a plate of home made cookies (which he makes every year, but all I like are his Cheese Cake cookies) and as a surprise he gave me a Pirate board game by a German company, looks pretty good but I have not opened it up yet, so we will see.

Also I got to play some games over the Christmas weekend as well. I got to play Legends of the Old West & some Lord of the Rings with my good friends Tom O & Mike G. We played a three way battle of LotOW and sadly my Mexican Banditos were the first to run for the hills & I was the first one out of the game.

I did better with the LotR game which was a 400 point per side with Tom & Mike taking 200 points each (Riders of Rohon & a Minas Tirith with Elven allies). I took Cirth Ungol Orcs and by the 7th or 8th turn I had the game won. So a good day for gaming.

So all in all a very good Christmas was had, the only thing that would have been better was to have my family from California out to spend the holidays with us, but there is always New years…

How I will spend Christmas

Well that time is upon us, and for me besides the traditional stuff, I look ahead to the New Year and what it will bring. That usually means taking a look at what I got done this year and what I painted, then the reflection moves to next years projects.

So let’s take a stroll down memory lane of 2006 and see what I accomplished.

I wrote my own rule set based on Pirates and will have them published in the very near future.
I finished… well not much really. The Pirate project kept me very busy all through the year. I did start a few projects so maybe I will list off what I started instead of listing what I did.

So with that, I started…
Painting a huge Sister of Battle army I got from Lonnie G. but I only got to about 60 figures out of the 250+ models I got from him. I will post up a few pictures once I get further along.
I started a Mongol army that I got from Robert B, this army has traded many hands but no one really took up the challenge of painting it. Well when I got it from Robert, I based all the figures on GW cavalry bases, but that was about all I did. Maybe this army has a curse on it???
Got two platoons of Imperial Guard figures from my friend Brandon. He has had a platoon of metal Mordians & Valhallans for some time now. Well after some trading & begging I finally got those figures from him. Now for years Brandon only had them in bare metal. Once I got them, I primed them white, then stuck them into a box to never see the light of day for the rest of the year. Hmm perhaps these are cursed as well…
Continued working on painting 15mmWW2 figures for my friend Tom O. I took on this project as a trade for something, but now I can’t remember what, but Tom does. You see Tom took advantage of the Old Glory sale and purchased a huge part of there 15mm line for WW2 for Flames of War. Tom didn’t have the time to paint so he asked if I would paint them. Well I started with the Tanks and busted them out pretty quick, but now I’m down to the infantry & I swear I think they are multiplying! I’m sure these are cursed!
Also for Tom O I took on building some cool 28mm tanks from Pig Iron in trade for some GW Space marine scouts, but as far as I got was washing the models down and that’s it. Hmm I think I hear the C word coming again…

There are also other projects that are still around from 2005 (28mm buildings for Mike, Near Future project for Tom, LotR projects, LotOW Projects) as well as my own 28mm WW2 collection I’m working on and a whole lot of other projects too.

So what are my plans for 2007, well I would like to say I will finish up all of these projects & start something new, but realistically I will probably still be working on the Pirate project, so that will be answering questions about the rules, painting Pirates, and playing demo games of Pirates as well as running a campaign or two.

So I guess I’m cursed to never finish projects, Oh well, A Pirates Life for Me!

About my Hobby Part II

Well I left off with me getting involved with WAB, so I will just go from there…

So after getting the WAB armies up, I was soon corrupted by Rob B to start playing a neat little game called Necromunda by Games Workshop. Rob soon organized a group of us (Myself, Brandon F, Lonnie J, Tom O, Dave C) into a campaign and we played for a few weeks straight. Rob & I also were commissioned by Darren at Imperial Outpost to build some cool Necro/40Kish terrain.

Soon after that my interests started to turn to more skirmish style games. I found that I really loved the Necromunda system (I had also played Mordheim) and soon was looking for similar games. Rob had put together a cool modification of the necromunda rules for World War II and we started playing that.

Rob & I continued to play this mod of Necro and soon Rob talked me into playing 40K, 4th edition. But I really never got into it until that version until the published the Trial rules. After that I was hooked and it seemed that 40K was my new game. I jumped headlong into building a Night lords army but soon lost interest. What I always wanted to play was Imperial guard, but I couldn’t justify paying the price for the metal troops. That all changed when GW released the Plastic Imperial Guardsmen. I soon had a huge army of plastic men to assemble and paint. Well long story short I know have a good sized IG army along with a small collection of tanks & vehicles (40 or so!). My friend Lonnie also gave me his huge (250+) Sister of Battle army that was unpainted. So now I have two huge Imperial armies to play with.

After painting so many IG figures, I needed a break and about that time Warhammer historical released Legends of the Old West, a skirmish game set in the Old West. I soon was hooked and started collecting Cowboys & Desperados and soon had a campaign going. I also was distracted by the Lord of the Rings game along the way & have only now started playing it (it’s my replacement for WHFB).

So there you have it, 25 years of gaming wrapped up into two short stories. When I look back I can’t believe all the games I have played (and still play!) and the friends I have met. Now on to another 25 years gaming…

Whats with the name??

So some may ask whats with the name?

Well the name comes from the Disneyland ride pirates of the Caribbean. If you have been on the ride you used to hear it after seeing the treasure pile and a ghostly voice would say:
“Perhaps ye knows too much. Ye’ve seen the cursed treasure. Ye knows where it be hidden. Now proceed at your own risk.

Well thats where it comes from!

So why did I use that for the name, well I'm glad you asked. As some of you know, I have been working on a little project that has to deal with Pirates for my gaming. I have been reading books, watching movies, going on rides, and doing everything I can to learn about pirates for this project. Hopefully in a few more weeks I will be able to announce this project to the world, but until then...

Dead men tell no tales.....

About my hobby

So what is this blog about & who am I?

Well my name is Tim Kulinski, I reside in the Valley of the Sunstroke, Phoenix Arizona. This blog will be about my passion with war gaming as well as any other thoughts or rants that pop up.

So on to my hobby, I have been a gamer since I was 13 and it all started with the red box edition of Dungeons & Dragons. I then advanced to the Advanced D&D system about a year later. I have to say that I absolutely loved the old TSR products & I used to save my allowance to purchase the books. Back then the only cost about $15.00 for a hard bound book (The old DMG guide & Players Handbook). So I feverishly purchased them every two weeks from my lawn cutting money.

Shortly after getting into D&D, I found a wonderful company called Grenadier and back then they released Official D&D miniatures. That’s what started me into minis and I soon found companies like Marauder, Citadel, and Ral Partha to go along with the Grenadiers. In fact I still have a bunch of those old minis & some are still being used today.

My gaming stayed primarily RPG’s (Role Playing) with title like Star Frontiers, Gama World and other classic TSR title. I also started to branch out by playing Star Trek by FASA games which then lead to Battletech. I never really jumped into the Games Workshop games, but was aware of them. Until my wife & I went into a local shop (Quest Games) and she suggested we purchase Space Hulk. You see my wife loved the 2nd Aliens movie and Space Hulk reminded here of it. So we happily plunked down $40.00 and went home and played Space Hulk.

Well after we played a few games with friends the fever spread & we soon ended up buying Blood Bowl (the version with the old Astrogranite board). This lead to some friends (Jeff O, Don G, Pat O, and my brother) buying their own BB games & purchasing the GW teams.

After the BB fever subsided, I was soon looking at other GW products like Warhammer Quest, Space Marine, and Warhammer Fantasy Battle. WHFB soon became the game I started to play & I soon was a proud owner of an Undead Army, then followed an Empire Army, High Elf Army & Orcs. But my main focus was on the Undead.

Then the unthinkable happened, My Company moved me from Southern California, to Phoenix Arizona! The reason why it hurt was that I was going to a new city with no friends to game with. Well once the family (My wife, Son & three Cats) got settled in I went out looking for Game shops here in the valley. I visited many shops, but the one that was closest was Imperial Outpost rune by Darren Johnson on 43rd & Cactus.

Imperial soon became my new home and I soon struck up a friendship with Darren and started to build terrain for him. Darren soon prompted me to play in a few of his WHFB tournaments and soon found a good group of guys to game with (Brandon, Mike & Jim). We gamed a lot of WHFB and we still do some gaming today even though we are all so busy.

Then one day at work a co-worker (Kathy B) mentioned that her husband Rob played with “little toy soldiers” and that we should meet. So we set up a time to meet at Imperial Outpost and I soon had a new friend by the name of Rob B. He and I had the same background with gaming & I often wonder if we were not twins separated at birth since he has the same likes that I do. You can see Robs stuff here at:
http://robert.bluedream.com/

Well Rob does primarily historical gaming and I had been getting tired of just playing WHFB and been wondering about trying something new. Rob introduced me to the North Phoenix Irregulars, which is a Non Club of guys that do mostly historical games. And when I mean non Club, it’s basically a group of guys that play whenever & whatever they want.

Anyhow, most of the guys play Warhammer Ancients Battle (WAB) and this was the game that got me to do historical gaming. After consulting with Rob & a new friend Tom O, I decided on doing a Viking Army from the Shieldwall book.. Soon followed a Norman army & I have acquired a Mongol army as well.

More later…

Test

Trying out posting pics, how about this??

Well I did it!

Well I finally did it, I started my own blog after thinking about it for years. I hope to add to it weekly, but we will see...

TK