Black Cats & the Police

Well, As the title states I have a few things to write about tonight. First off would be these guys,

My wife happened to surprise me with an awesome Fathers day present of getting tickets to the Police show at the US Airways Arena on Monday June 18, 2007. She got the tickets from a guy in our church that was selling the tickets for just over $4.00 over face value. So we spent $97.00 or each ticket, which was allot better than some of the prices I saw on the Internet. So how good were the tickets, well we were in the second deck & could see the stage very clearly and we could tell there were people on stage, but thankfully they had three huge screens above the stage that showed close ups of Sting, Stewart & Andy.

So how was the concert you ask, well it was AWESOME!!!!!! It has been 25 years since the Police last performed and it sounded just like they never stopped. They played all there hits and the show lasted for about 2 and half hours! It was well worth waiting 20+ years to see them and I only hope they continue to make records together. I'm glad that I got the chance to see them play, it made my Fathers day great!

Another Fathers day present I got a week early was this cabinet for all my painted figures. I have been looking for something like this for years.

We found this at Ikea for a nice amount of $59.99. I added a light to it for an additional $9.99 and this now resides in the computer room while I wait for my "Game Room". Here are a few pictures of some of the figures in the cabinet. First shot is of my Pirates that I painted. I have a bunch more but was being picky as to which ones I have in there.

The next shot is a mix of Cowboys that I use for Legends of the Old West (One the Left) and on the right is my slowly growing Pulp figures that I have painted. You also see some o my Sisters of Battle in there since most of the army is over at a friends house right now.

Also today I received a box from across the pound from Black Cat bases ww.blackcatbases.com Here is what was inside the box:

I have been in contact with Jo over at Black Cat for awhile now about getting some of there stuff in the LotHS book (which they will be). So as thanks they sent me a few figures. I was surprised that they sent me so many, I was only thinking I would get two or three, not 14 figures plus some of there bases as well. Upon looking at the figures they are a tad bigger than Foundry & Old Glory Figures, but as many folks have mentioned, it is not that noticeable. In fact I like varying sizes on my models, real people are all different sizes so why do all figures need to be the same?

The figures have very little flash (if any) and are nicely sculpted. They will all fit in nicely with my collection and I can't wait to get started on painting them. I would highly recommend them to folks and I can't wait to see what else they come out with. Also these figures will mix in well with Black Scorpions figures as well as GW's militia figures that I used for my own Pirate Crew. Go out and buy these, they are worth every penny.

TK

Some Pulp

Here are a few Pulp figures I finished up the other night...

TK

WAB and writting books!

I have been visiting many fourms looking for info on LotHS and what people have been saying about it. For the large part folks can't wait for it to be out (neither can I!). But I came across a few folks on a certain forum that see to be disgruntled at the fact that Warhammer Historical is even doing these legends books.

It seems that they would rather see WHH focus only on WAB (Warhammer Ancients Battles) supplement books before seeing anything else come out from them. Now as I posted here a few days ago I wrote the LotHS book. Now I had a unique first hand look at how WHH or even GW gets books out there on the shelves. And I can tell you it is a long process and what makes it harder is that Rob Broom of WHH is really a one man show. So I thought I would give you and everyone else a look at how a book comes to the shelves. now you must understand that this is what I saw & this is only my point of view. Much much more goes on after the author turns over the manuscript.

So a little background info of me, I'm a regular guy, with an ordinary family (Wife, Son, 3 cats and a mortgage payment). Writing is not my job that brings home the bacon (as my wife & friends will attest too!) I work for a large Auto Finance company by day, and play with toy soldiers by night.

This idea for a Pirate game started out way back in when I purchased GW's Lord of the Rings game Fellowship of the Ring. After looking over the rules and playing a few games with friends, I decided that the rules system would leaned themselves to a Pirate game. Now the local guys here in Phoenix would often host participation games for the rest of us and I wrote the rules after playing Tom O's home brew game called the Good, the Bad and the Dead (which he used for Old West & Pirate games).

Well after tinkering around with the LotR rules I set about creating a modification of the rules for Pirates. Well as most folks know, I tend to start things but never get them done in a timely fashion. So the Pirate rules fell by the way side as something else peaked my interest. Well that something else was when the Disney company released Pirates of the Caribbean, Curse of the Black Pearl. I remember as I walked out of the theater I told my wife and son "You know, that would make an awesome mini game" They both shook there heads and dismissed me as crazy. On the ride home I remembered that I started a set of rules and that I should see where I was with them.

It was a few days later that I had lunch with Tom O and I told him about my idea for a set of rules. he said why not submit the rules to WHH. So after going home that night I put together a proposal for a game based on LotR for Pirates much like Legends of the Old West that Mark Latham had just written. The other thing that Tom told me was to keep writing the rules, even if I don't hear anything from Rob Broom, keep writing. So I did, I kept writing and sent the proposal off to Rob which was sometime around late 2004 or early 2005.

I finally heard from Rob and was being considered for the job but he had other proposals to look at. In the meantime, Tom kept saying "Keep Writing" so I did. Sometime in mid 2005 I heard from Rob B and he said i should start assembling a play test group together, this was of course after I sent him a 40 page word doc with what I had. I then started asking guys if they wanted to play test a set of rules I was working on based on LotOW rules and I had a yellow light from Rob B to proceed. The reason I had a yellow was the fact that Rob B was still trying to sell the idea of the book to all the GW sales folks. Even though Rob is head of WHH, he still has boss' above him. Well the sales folks at GW gave the thumbs up around the end of 2005 and Rob passed the info on to me. Rob then asked how soon I could have the final manuscript to him, I told him I could have it all ready to go by the first weekend of December 2006. So with that target date I set about to finish & get the rules out for folks to play test the system.

Now a word about play testing, for those of you who have not done it, it basically means that your trying to break the rules of the game that was written. I had guys all over the globe playing my game & one guy in person was always complaining about everything. Now this would usually bother me, but this was what was needed for the rules, I had to have folks see if it was broken. So I appreciate the one guy (who I will not name) for always pushing me to fix this or that.

We now flash forward to December 2006, target deadline, I finally had the document ready to send off to Rob (86 page Word document, size 10 font, no double spacing) ready for him & I sent it off. it was a relief and also frightening at the same time. Now obviously it was relief because I had no more deadline, but now I knew that Rob B would be doing the final editing and that I was one step closer to getting the book out there.

So that brings us to June of 2006, right now, where do we stand, well that's a good question. I heard from Rob B last week and the book is in final editing and in the layout stage. Rob will be sending out an email about needing figures & scenery for the book. that will be in the next few weeks. I can also expect to do some re-writes due to editing, which in fact I did one small edit to the non player character section of the book. From what I heard from Rob, the book is expected to be out by September in the UK and October here in the states. That's if everything stays on track. We were supposed to see the book by now, but Rob had new additions to his family and was also ill for about a month, this pushes everything back and I can only imagine he has a ton of work to catch up on as well.

So whats the point of this, well to bring this back to the beginning of this huge post, it takes time to produce a book! It takes alot of time, as a gamer of WAB, I would love to see a steady flow of books coming out every month, but seeing how long it took for my own book, I understand why there isn't a steady flow. The WAb community is huge, and there are many folks out there that write books, but there isn't enough people to do a steady stream of books like the community would like to see.

So there you go, to quote a friend of mine "If you think you can do better, have at it! Otherwise, shut the hell up!" and I would add, be appreciative for what you have and what you get...

TK

Well it's been awhile since I posted and I need to bring some folks up to speed on whats been going on. So here goes:


Lord of the Rings Campaign - We got started on this last weekend (June 3rd) over at Lonnie's place and we had a great time. The players that were there were Myself playing Easterlings, Rob playing Isengard, Carl playing Moria Goblins & Tom F playing Mordor Orcs. The Good side that was opposing us had Howard playing Elves, Mike playing Dwarves, Lonnie playing Rohhan & Tom O (who couldn't make it) playing Gondor.

For this campaign I'm Using the Fantasy Flight map from their game War of the Ring, and each player had to nominate a capital and place there armies. The good side & their capitals were Howard's Elves in the Grey Heavans, Lonnie' Rohan in Edoras, Mike's Dwarves in Erbor & Tom O's Gondor forces in Minas Tirith. The Evil sides captials were Tom F's Mordor Orcs in Gorgoroth, Rob's Urkhai in Orthanc, Carl's Goblins in Agmar & I was in the South Rhun.

Turn 1 of the campaign saw all the armies redeploying to strike later except Rohan vs Isengard fighting for the Westemnet with two 500 point armies playing the High Ground Scenario. The Urk hai barely got a Minor Victory but they had a huge moral victory with the killing of Emor who was leading the Rohan force.

Turn 2 saw more movement with armies and once again Rohan decided to push the fight against the Urk hai in Westemnet again but by sending 750 points against a 500 point Urk Hai army. The battle fought was Reconnitre and Rohan had a Major Victory. The other battle that took place was between the Dwarves against the Easterlings in North Rhun. The battle was Contest of Champions and the dwarves surprised the Easterlings and massacred them to a man in this fight and took the Noth Rhun territory.



All in all we had a blast, the guys that didn't play campaign games played pick up games and we had a blast. Also I must mention that we were playing in Lonnie's garage and it was about 100 degrees out, but Lonnie had a portable swamp cooler and it made it nice inside the garage. The only thing that was hot was when I was out BBqing the food, but hey it was worth it!


On to this past weekend, we had our 5 Warhammer Ancients tournament http://wab.bluedream.com/ over at Imperial Outpost games. It was an open tournament which meant that anyone could fight anyone. Usually we try and keep same historical opponents matched up together, but this won meant you could be playing Romans vs Vikings in any game.

Well I took my Vikings again and I did pretty well going 1 tie, 1 win, 1 loss. My first game was against Mike playing a Danish Viking army and it was Meeting engagement. The game was close and I thought I had a loss, but it was only a tie.

My second game was against Rob and his Saxon army and we were playing Take and Hold. Rob surprised me with a huge (64 man!) unit of Saxons that he marched up & parked 3" away from the center of the table (and the objective). It was a hard fight and it looked close until that last turn which I broke his Generals Unit and caused them to flee. With that I secured a victory.

My last game was against Tom and his Late Romans. Now I have to say I hate playing out of period play and this game showed that. Tom played a great game and had control of the battle the whole time, but what can a Viking army do against Cav and being outnumbered on the table.

All in all I finished toward the top of the pack, although there was only 10 of us playing. I got to take home a pack of Gripping Beast Pict Nobles that Darren at Gripping Beast had sent as a prize. So it looks like I have my first new unit for my Pict army. Also I have to say thanks to Tom O for running this event & to all our supporters that sent Prizes, Warhammer Historical, Gripping Beast, Perry Mi natures, War Games & Darren at Imperial Outpost. We had enough stuff to give everyone a prize.

Oh had to include this photo because I thought it was too funny! This is the Saxon King I played in the second game, I think he was trying to get his victory dance on before the game started!

Here are two more photos that set the tone of the event, Al (the guy smiling) likes to watch!

And here Tom is trying to bribe Rob with some sort of Lood Scottish suggestion.

Also things on a Pirate front have been moving along well, my Pirate Project officially has a name now, it called Legends of the High Seas, which I wrote for Warhammer Historicals. It is going to be released sometime around September or October of this year by Warhammer Historical. It's based on the great game that Mark Latham wrote, Legends of the Old West, but this set of rules deals with Pirates & ship Battles. I have heard that this week the book starts layout work and set ups as well as the pictures will be taken for it. So I'm looking forward to seeing this hit the shelves and with the Pirate craze of Pirates of the Caribbean At Worlds end, this book should sail right off of the shelves.

Well that's it for now, will try and do a better job of updating...

TK