Top Eleven in 2010

Well it that time of year again, that's right, time for the Top Eleven count down of what I did for the year. So here is what I wanted to do starting with number 11.

#11 To Document My Games - I have done a lot of things that never make it to the Blog. I get lazy about getting things up, sorry no better excuse. So I want to be able to bring folks more in 2010 about what I am doing & playing, so hopefully I will get over being lazy and document what I am doing.

Well it looks like I did not do a great job, I only had 50 posts this year compared to last year with 72 posts. Although I think I did do a better job on the post that I did (they were not all over the place and stayed on topic). Also 50 posts means that I averaged about two post a month which was one of my goals. So not all bad.

#10 To Play More! - Pretty simple really, I need to play more games. DrunkenSamurai and I only get to play once a month if that, but I want to increase that this year. I have all these games, if they are not getting played than why did I buy them?? So I want to increase my game playing this year. So I guess I will be throwing the doors open at the old SPL (Secret Pirate Lair) more often for games.

Well this looks like another miss, since time has always been an issue for gaming. I think I averaged one day a month for gaming, not good. I did open the SPL doors but life has a way of getting in the way. Hopefully this will change in the new coming year.

#9 No New Game Systems! - With me still out of work, I do not have much of a income, so I want to use 2010 to focus on the games I already have. You see I am like most gamers and when the newest thing comes out I want it, but I need to have some self control. I guess that's the sign of maturity, when you see something you can say no. So I will not get into any new game systems this year.

Well this one was easy, I did not get into any new games at all this year. With my work situation it was rather easy. Trust me it was tough to do since there were all kinds of games I wanted to start, but not having any extra income helped. So I would say this one was a huge success!

#8 To grow Gathering in the Desert - My idea for GitD started a few years ago and I would like to expand it from LotR to other systems of 40K & WHFB. I am not looking at running the other two systems, but to find people who share the vision of GitD which is to have the very best events we can run. I have spoken to a few people for both 40K & WHFB and I think we can grow GitD into a big 3 event. So 2010 will be about expanding GitD.

Well I had hopes for growing GitD to add the other game systems, but plans fell through for this. And to be honest, I think I will keep GitD just to Lord of the Rings. So GitD will happen in 2011 and it will be the best that it can be and we will see how well it goes after 2011.

#7 To Run a successful Campaign - In years past I have tried to run many game campaigns but have always either bit of more than I can chew, or participation waned. This year I would like to run a simple WHFB & a narrative 40K Campaign. I am very interested in both but 40K seems to be taking the lead, I love the Inquisition stuff and I would love to develop a nice storyline campaign for a few friends.

Well this was a complete failure! I had plans but life kept getting in the way. Also finding people that wanted to play and be able to play was tough. I still have plans for a cool ongoing campaign so perhaps in 2011 you will see something here.

#6 To Attend Adepticon - This is really a no brainier, but with me still out of work, it is hard to justify making the trip again to Chicago. All I have to do is cover the airfare and spending money, but with me not working it is starting to stress me out a bit about going. I love the event and have made some great friends in Chi Town, but need to find the funds to make the trip. So I add this to the list for 2010.
Well as luck would have it I was able to make Adepticon thanks in part to my parents. Had a blast with friends there and made some new ones. But sadly I will not be going in 2011, it looks like the next Adepticon I get to go to will be in 2012 on there 10 year anniversary. So this up coming year I will be enjoying Adepticon like most readers of my blog, from the Internet!

#5 To write up Articles for LotHS - Ever since I wrote Legends of the High Seas, I wanted to add more to the game. I thought that Warhammer historical would want another book since the first did so well and I have a ton of ideas for a second book. But when Warhammer Historical went over to the guys doing Forgeworld, there has been no talk of another book. So because of this and a few other issues, I have not been overly excited about writing lately. But I would like to get a few articles out there in 2010, I just need to buckle down and write.

Well, this never happened and I can tell you I have not been excited to do anything for LotHS. This feeling comes from the sure lack of anything coming out of the Forgeworld crew as well and just not wanting to work on anything for it. I am proud of LotHS and still have a ton of other ideas, but I can't get excited about writing anything. Maybe I will get bitten by the "writing bug" in 2011, who knows.

#4 To add more Units to my 40K armies - This one is interesting, you see both of my armies are at the level of being done to me. The IG army has about 3000 points painted and the Sisters of Battle are at 2000 points of painted stuff. I still have a ton of SoB stuff left(about 3000 more points unpainted) and a ton of Armour for the IG unpainted. But I have this mental block about painting up more stuff. In my mind I think the armies are done, so why do I need to add to them, but in reality both armies could use more different troop choices. So starting with 2010, I plan to add more units to both armies.

Well this is a hit and a miss, I did add new units to my Sisters of Battle army with getting a few new Rhinos and Immolaters as well as painted up a few more troops. But I did nothing with the Imperial Guard except take out the armour units and look at them. So not too bad at least I added units to one new army.

#3 To Play in Some Local Tourneys - For the last two years now I have been running Gathering in the Desert, a LotR Independent GT style tourney. This takes up a lot of time with planning and such and I never get to play in the tournament since I am running it. In fact, I have not played in many tourneys because I was the guy running them. Well this year I want to be able to play in a few of the local events, so this year I would like to enter at least one WHFB and one 40K tourney held here in the valley. This should be pretty easy since there are a bunch of local events here in the valley of the sunstroke.

This one is a utter fail! I think the problem is that I hold other local tourneys up to what I do for GitD and in my mind they all fall short. Not saying that GitD is done better, it is just my own issues is all. As Drunkensamurai has said, "how will I know if I don't play in them?" I did make a trip to Colorado to play in a local LotR tourney (Mayhem in the Mountains) up there, does this count???

#2 To play Warhammer Fantasy - I used to play WHFB about ten years ago, but left it for Warhammer Historical. I had about 6 different armies of various sizes, but sold them all off to get into other things. As some will know, I had a huge Tomb Kings army that I had acquired a few years ago, but could not get excited about it. Well thanks to Rob (aka DrunkenSamurai) he planted the seed in my head to play WHFB since he has been building a beautiful Beastman army. So I made a deal with another friend and I am now the proud owner of a 2500+ point Orc & Goblin army.

Well this one went down in flames! Not only did I get a 2500 Orc & Goblin army, but after only a few months I sold it off! You see I got the army and had the current rules (7th at that time) and army book and was all ready to play. Then the 8th edition came out and I was stuck with having to buy another set of rules. Couple that with the fact that the local AZ forum I was on had a ton of WHFB players on it and they all basically soured my mood on playing WHFB. All they did was seem to bitch about the rules and how this is broken and that is wrong, it just turned me off even before I played a game. I also came to the realization that LotR was my Fantasy game and that was all it took.

And now for the number One out of the Top Eleven...

#1 To play more 40K - Hmm, this seems interesting since it looks like I played a lot of 40K last year. My goal is to be as comfortable with 40K rules as I am with the LotR rules. The only way this will happen is if I play more 40K. I have two armies already (Imperial Guard & Sisters of Battle) so there is no reason why I can't play more games. So we hopefully 40K will hit the table more often in 2010.

Well, I think I only got in 6 to 8 games this year of 40K, so it looks like I failed here again. I had thought 2010 would be the year for 40K, but once again life had interesting things to throw at me and I just never got this game out that often. All the times I had 40K on the table, I had a blast, but it just never got out much. This in itself is funny because Drunken Samurai and I both wanted to play but just could not find the time.

So there you go, I have 7 1/2 failures out of eleven. Not too good really but that's how things work out I guess. I think some of this happens to be because of the work thing and struggling to pay bills. On a more positive note, Saguaro Painting Service is doing well and business is starting to pick up. This month alone I have painted well over 500+ figures and the money has all gone to the household budget. So even though I may not be playing games and doing my own hobby thing, at least I am making some money doing hobby related work.

So stay tuned for whats coming in the new year, all I can say now is it is looking to be a very Orky New Year around here...

TK

Merry Christmas

Well,

Hobby stuff has slowed down due to the Holidays, will be back in 2011 with more fun posts.

So Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night, see you in 2011...

TK

World War II with Legends

So,

Last weekend Drunkensamurai and I got together over at his place to play some WWII in 28mm. We have both been in the mood to bust out our collections of stuff and play some games, but there is one problem, what rules to use?

Drunken & I have been on a quest for finding a good set of WWII rules for 28mm for years now. We have tried many rules but there was always something that was not just right with them. Heck we even collaborated on writing a set of rules using 40K 5th edition to pitch to Warhammer Historical which they choose not to pursue. (Hmm sound familiar for Flames of War???) Anyhow the rules we worked on (Called Hammer & Anvil) work rather well, but Drunken wanted a rule set that was commercially sold to the public.

Basically we did not want to be "those Old Guys" playing with their own rules, you know who I am talking about, we have all seen them in our local game stores. The have their huge 3 ring binders with poorly hand written rules that only they can explain.

So the search goes on for a good set of WWII rules. Now the other day Drunken calls me and states he has an idea, since we both love playing Lord of the Rings from Games Workshop, why don't we use the Legends (the LotR rule set for Old West and my High Seas game) for WWII? Well it could work I thought as long as we thought out a few things (like vehicles!).

So with us coming up with a few simple conversions and stats for guns, we busted out the collections and some terrain and went for it.

We each took about 45 models, Drunken using his British Commandos and me taking a German force. Here are the basic stats we came up for the troops (using the LotR/Legends stat line).

F3/5+, S 3, D 3, A 3, W 1, C 3, M 0/F 0/W 0

We also came up with some basic weapon stats:
Kar 98 24"range, Strength 3, Half Move Penalty, RoF 1
SLR 24" range, Strength 3, Half Move Penalty, RoF 1, May Reroll Miss's
LMG 30" range, Strength 3, Half Move Penalty, RoF 3, Cause Terror
HMG 36" range, Strength 4, Full Movement Penalty, RoF 6, Cause Terror

The game played rather well and we only had a few issues come up, like how to deal with weapon teams and such (Can you target the gunner of a HMG and stop it from shooting that turn?) but other wise it worked very well.

We set the objective as the Crossroads in the center of the table which was a modified King of the hill scenario from the Legions of Middle earth scenario for LotR. So basically you had to have more troops within a few inches of the crossroads in order to win.

Anyway we called it a Draw since Drunken had more Commandos moving towards the crossroads than I had Germans left. All in all it was a great game. As you may notice there was a large amount of terrain on the table and for the first half of the game we used the standard In the Way rules from LotR. Meaning that if your shot passed over any sort of obstacle that you had to make a separate roll of 4+ to clear the obstacle and your shot would go on to the next obstacle or target. If you rolled 3 or less than your shot hit the obstacle.

The second half of the game (we broke for lunch) we tried the modified In the Way rules from the Legends rules that assign a different value to the obstacle, from a bush being a 3+ to a brick wall being 5+. This seemed to work better than the LotR In the Way rules and we saw more troops being taken out of action and seemed to have a better feel for the game.

All in all it was a good game and we are now both thinking about how to incorporate armoured vehicles into the rules. This can be easy or tough depending on how we approach tanks and we are still kicking some ideas around. So stay tuned for more thoughts and ideas of using the Legend rules for WWII.



One last thing I will leave you with today, while scrolling through my usual Blogs and websites, I found a new Blog dealing with some awesome Flames of War Terrain, called TheTerrainguys I was totally blown away by this site and this guys You Tube channel, finally someone doing awesome terrain for war gaming that reviles model railroad terrain. Here is a shot of his terrain from his blog.
This is the sort of stuff that really makes a game come alive! Needless to say I wasted about 2 hours this morning watching his videos and going through his blog. If you have a weakness for nice looking games, than don't look at this stuff, it will blow your mind away! Like a bad train wreck, I keep going back for inspiration, so be warned!

TK

Sail on the Horizon

So,

As most followers of this blog know, I usually make the trip out to Adepticon in Chicago. In years past I have run a few Legends of the High Seas Demos as well as a multi-player games. Well this year I got together with my friend John over at Plastic Legions and threw out the idea about running a LotHS mini campaign. You see John ran a campaign day for his regular game group awhile ago and I thought he would be the perfect person to pair up with for an event at Adepticon.

Well unfortunately it seems that I will not be able to make it out to Adepticon this year. But I still will be supporting John and his event from afar, so all is not lost. Now last year I was able to acquire a (Thanks to another friend Merle Dellinger) a Old Glory Miniatures 25mm Pirate ship, the Pirate Hunter.

Now one idea that I had for the campaign was to use two of these cool Old Glory Ships for the Boarding Action scenario from LotHS. John is up for it and has access to another ship in Chicago, so that means that my ship will need to make the trip out to Adepticon without me. That means that I need to assemble my ship and get it painted before Adepticon in April.

So as I un-boxed the beast that is the Pirate Hunter I noticed that there were no instructions and I could only find a few pictures of the model. So I thought I would document building this beast and getting it painted. So over the next few weeks I will post up shots of this thing as it gets built and painted.

So first up is the un-boxing of this huge ship, which I shall call the Wicked Wench, named after the Pirate ship in the original Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. The ship is made out of a high density foam and it comes with a bag of white metal parts, which I will get to later.


This thing is huge and has plenty of room on the decks for figures to move around on. Here is a shot with a few Artizan 28mm figures on it.


This ship measures out to be about 28 1/2 inches long, which is definitely a large ship in LotHS terms as well as just being plain big on the table top.


She is also 7 inches wide at the mid-ship and as you can see there is a lot of room, even taking into account that there will be 8 cannons on this part of the deck alone.

Here is the white metal parts that are included, it has 16 full cannons and 36 partial cannons to go below decks. It also comes with one decorative railing, 3 smaller railings with belaying pins, a capsin, 4 deck ladders, 1 ornamental lamp for the back of the ship and 3 sets of parts for the main masts along with wooden dowel for the actual masts. It also comes with one Helmsman with 4 separate heads so you can create a unique helmsman.

My only issue with this is that there is no instructions for anything. It would be helpful for at least some description of where items have to go. But if you know ships, it is pretty easy to guess where items belong. But other than that this a great model and will be an awesome ship for Legends of the High Seas games.

Next post on this will be assemble and preparing for paint.

TK

Archos Fianlly Done!

So back in August of 2009, I started working on some Arco-Flagellants but they fell by the wayside on the painting bench. Well this week I decided to bust them back out and get to painting them. So here they are in all of their painted glory!







Here is my Puritan Witchunter that I painted a while ago, but never got to taking pictures of him. I call him Inquisitor Bane and he has had a few adventures, the most recent being sent to drive out Ork looters.


Here is a shot of Lord Bane and his retinue which was also painted a while ago.


And the final shot is with the arcos being released onto some foul Witch cult!


Hope you enjoyed...

TK

Return of 40K to the table!

So, after a long break, 40K finally got back on the table today with Drunkensamurai and I playing not one, not two, but three linked games! We played a 200 point Kill team mission, than did a 400 point Combat patrol mission followed by a 1500 point battle.

Before I go on, let me tell you what I have been thinking about for 40K. You see as some may know, this year was to be the 40K year for me. I had planned on playing more games than in 2009 and even wanted to play in a local 40K tournament. But life has a funny way of getting in the way and other gaming interests always took the spotlight. Also this week Drunkensamurai and I were talking about how we just do not get to play as much as we like and 40K was one game that we wanted to see more of.

My interest in 40K this year was also going to be towards doing some sort of narrative campaign and another friend said he was working toward getting one together. But alas, nothing ever happened. So with talking with Drunkensamurai we decided to just get together and play 40K this weekend. I would take my Sisters of Battle, while Drunkensamurai would take his new Orks. So what follows are pictures from two out of the three games we played today.

First up. 200 point Kill Team mission. My force included 15 Sisters of Battle against 20 Orks. We set the town up as a small settlement and the story was that the Orks were raiding it for loot. My Sisters were to try to stop the vile orks from looting the storage containers.

The Orks swarmed into the town taking the Sisters by surprise. The orks brought a buggy to haul off some of the loot that they hoped to scavenge from the settlement.


The Sisters took up positions at the walls around the containers and tried to keep the orks out. Seeing how the Sisters were caught unawares, they scrambled to fend off the invaders.

Two Sisters made a break for the communications office to radio for assistance and to warn the surrounding area of the invaders.

The Sisters put up a valiant fight trying to defend the storage containers, but the orks were all over their positions and were over running them.

The two sisters that made it to the communications office held off the orks in a brutal hand to hand fight and the warning was able to get sent out, which was received by a local Sisters of Battle Patrol in the area. Needless to say, out of 15 Sisters, only 4 made it out alive and the orks began their looting of the containers.

Game two was a 400 point Combat patrol mission on the same table as the kill team game. This time the Sisters showed up with one Imolater with a Dominion squad inside and 15 more Battle Sisters. The Orks also reinforced their position by bring in 3 Killer Kans, two buggies and a truck with some boys in it.




The 15 Sisters took up defensive positions inside the central building while the Imolater swept to the left flank to try to stop the killer kans.


The Imolater was ineffective against the killer kans but the meltas in the Dominions squad blew two of the machines to pieces.

But a bitter fight broke out as the boys in the truck engaged the Sisters in the middle of town and beat them to a bloody pulp and sending them racing out of town. Needless to say, the Orks defended the settlement and beat back the Sisters.

Game three saw us playing a new scenario out of the missions book, Cut & Run. This scenario has the Orks trying to leave the table while trying not to lose too many kill points. This scenario fit perfectly for the third game as it seemed fit to have the Orks making off with the loot.

I wish I would have taken pictures but I was too caught up in the game to worry about pictures. Needless to say, the Sisters of Battle took their revenge on the orks doing a total of 9 Kill points vs them loosing only three. It seemed that the Sisters wanted the settlement back.

It was a great day of gaming even though I lost two of of the three games against Drunkensamurai. My mind is already spinning about the next time Drunken & I can play. I think it will be another Kill Team game with the Sisters trying to get back the stolen loot that the Orks took. So stay tuned...

TK

Gathering in the Desert Practice Event Results.

Well today we had the First Practice event for Gathering in the Desert 2011. Seven local players came out for the event (3 others had work and Family commitments) but seven was a good showing.

The players and their armies were:

Dominic Winton (new player) with Isengard Uruk-hai
Mike Wilster (new player) with Cirith Ungol Orcs
Howard Beam with High Elves
CJ Beam (new player) with Gondor
Robert Brightwell with Rohon
Tom Opalka with Isengard Scouts
Anthony Pigatti with Gladerhim Elves
Ringer army (me) Isengard Scouts

So here are a few shots from the event:









So here are the results from the event:
Best Overall - Robert Brightwell
Best Sportsmen - Mike Wilster
Best Appearance - Howard Beam

Name Battle Sports Paint Overall
Robert Brightwell 50 18 23 91
Howard Beam 27 18 44 89
Tom Opalka 37 16 27 80
Anthony Pigatti 45 16 17 78
CJ Beam 23 18 27 68
Mike Wilster 20 18 25 63
Dominic Winton 28 13 15 56
Ringer Army 28 15 0 43

A Big thank you to Darren Johnson of Imperial Outpost Games and to all the players that came out.

TK

Gathering in the Desert 2011 Practice Event

Well in one week from today, I am happy to announce the first Gathering in the Desert 2011 Practice event.

When: November 21th, 2010 (Sunday) Start time 10:00am

Where: Imperial Outpost Games (4920 W Thunderbird Rd # 121 Glendale, AZ 85306) Cost: $10.00 What: 600 Points, 3 games, Painted Models optional Maximum 600 Points
Forces must be chosen from one of the army lists from the Legions in Middle Earth supplement or from a valid army list in White Dwarf.

You may use un-painted models for this event since this is a practice event for the Grand Tournament in February.

WYSIWYG, Weapons, armor and upgrades chosen from the army list Must be shown on the models used. In other words What you see is what you get!

All army list must be turned into the organizers the day of the event, if you do not have a army list you may not play. If your army list does not match what you are playing anytime during the event, you will automatically be disqualified and have all your games reported as Major Loss' and you may be asked to leave the event without a refund.

Forces must follow all rules and restrictions on force selection detailed in "Mustering the Legions of Middle Earth" pages 4-8 in the Legions of Middle Earth supplement.

Named characters (Gandalf, Lurtz, the Witch King, Spider Queen, etc) can only be taken once.

A set of Errata and FAQ's for Lord of the Rings source books will be used and these are maintained on the Games Workshop website. We are aware that many issues may come up in a game that are not covered by the Erratas or FAQ's, If you ask for a rules clarification from the organizers their decision will be final on the situation.

Models with stat lines and point values included in the forces section of the following rulebooks, journey books, source books or any White Dwarfs will be used:

* The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game rules manual (aka The One Rulebook)
* The Fellowship of the Ring
* The Two Towers
* Return of the King
* A Shadow in the East
* The Fall of the Necromancer
* The Ruin of Arnor
* Khazad -Dum
* Gondor in Flames
* Harad
* Mordor
* Any White Dwarf Article lists (such as WD#354).

Evil Forces cannot include Gollum.

Good Forces cannot include Tom Bombadil or Goldberry.

Where the points value differ between a source book and the Legions of Middle Earth supplement, the points value in the source books takes precedence.

Special Rule - Good vs Evil!
The Lord of The Rings is a modern classic of the tale of Good against Evil. As such the Strategy Battle Game is designed for battles between two forces, one Good and one Evil. This causes
a few problems for a format like the GitD where your Evil army of Uruk-hai could conceivably face five other Evil armies over the course of the weekend.

While this may seem like it would not be an issue, there are some problems that arise with the wording of various Special Rules and the effects of various artifacts wielded by powerful Heroes. These rules are typically worded in terms of affecting Good or Evil forces, or affecting a particular race like Orcs or Goblins.

For the purposes of games at the GitD we ask that players determine reasonably who is affected by the rule or item. In almost all cases players can easily determine who is affected by substituting the words Friendly or Enemy models for Good or Evil and when it comes to rules that affect a particular race, that rule will only be applied to one side or the other.

Here are a couple of examples:
• Both players are fielding armies drawn from the Fiefdoms list,
both armies contain Knights of Dol Amroth, and Player A has
Prince Imrahil. While Player B’s Knights of Dol Amroth also
have the Dol Amroth for Gondor! special rule, they would be
unable to take advantage of it, as the Prince Imrahil on the
table is their “enemy” for the purposes of this game.

• Both players are fielding Evil armies. Player A has a
Ringwraith that has the Harbingers of Evil special rule. In
typical play this rule only affects Good models, reducing their
Courage value while the Ringwraith is nearby). For the
purposes of the GT, this rule would affect “enemy” models,
those fielded by Player B.

We know you guys are reasonable players, and we look to you to make the right decision in the myriad of situations this issue could arise. If you are unable to, please call over the Organizers to make the call for you.

***Also if you choose to use any of the new models as detailed in White Dwarf under the Reinforcements section, than you must provide a copy of the article for the event organizers (if they do not have a copy) and as well as your opponents. This is to make it fair for folks that may not be able to get these articles to be able to see the special rules that apply to these new models.***

Scoring for the event will be a combination of Battle Points, Sportsmanship and Paint scores for Overall placement. In order to be eligible for Best Painted, you must have painted the army yourself and you must disclose the fact that someone else painted your army.

Gathering in the Desert organizers will accept payment and sign ups for Gathering in the Desert in February if you are unable to pay via Paypal.

So here is your chance to try out that new army you have been thinking about or to try out LotR for the first time.

TK

Osgilith starts to Rise

First off, sorry for the lack of posts, been busy with work and life, but I have been pretty busy on the game front.

Secondly, thanks to all the folks that made comments on my What Does it Take post on LotR. Some very interesting thoughts and comments. I was going to answer all the negative points about the game, but really that would not help with changing peoples thoughts on LotR. The only way folks will change their minds is if they go out and play it. I will continue to blog about it here so have no fear and I will be doing more posts on Gathering in the Desert as well as other LotR events.

And now lastly onto what has been going on on the game side of things. Well I have been working on terrain for GitD 2011 and started working on the new Osgilith terrain. Now Tom O had donated his terrain for the last two years which has been great, but this year Tom was thinking of letting some of his stuff go for sale. So I decided that I would start to invest in some terrain to replace his. Well I ordered 8 of the new Osgilith terrain boxes from Gamesworkshop and this past weekend started to build some ruins.

Two kits went to Drunkensamurai to build while I worked on the other six kits. below is a shot of the table with seven out of the eight pieces of terrain that I knocked together.


The new kits are nice and with a few extra pieces from other kits (LotR terrain kits) they start to come to life. Now these are still missing the smaller texture but you get the idea.

You may notice some extra bricks that I made out of Masonite to add to the kit, these were cut from 1/4" thick by 1" long by 1/2" tall to match the brick pattern on the kits. All in all these are coming together nicely. So stay tuned for more shots of these and the other terrain projects that I am working on...

TK

What does it take???

So I have been wondering about a few things lately and figured I would post them here.

Now as most of you folks know, I love Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game by Games Workshop. I love it so much that for the last three years I have run Gathering in the Desert, an Independent Grand Tournament for LotRSBG. What I am wondering is what does it take to get more folks into this game?

LotRSBG was considered one of Games Workshops "Big Three" core games while the movies were out. Now that the movies have come and gone, there does not seem to be much buzz about this game anymore. In fact even GW is lack luster in promoting it themselves, this is of course has to do with sales of the game I am sure. So we really can't blame GW for the reason why sales are down or their lack of support.

So what is it? I have been wondering this since 2001 when the game came out. I have been a cheerleader for this game since day one here in the valley. Heck Drunkensamurai and I were both screaming it from the mountain tops about this game. But no one seemed to be listening. Sure there are a few people that heard us, but I would say out here in Phoenix we may only have about 16 players that play LotR.


It is even so bad that the folks that travel from outside of the state out number the locals. Out of the 24 people last year at GitD, we had only seven local players! And it doesn't seem to be any better anywhere else in the country. My good friend Brent Sinclair has to travel at least two hours to find anyone to play and he lives in the Chicago area!

So what is it? Is it the rules? I have heard people locally say that LotR is about rolling 6's. Well hell, isn't that any game that uses a six sided dice? Most people that I teach the game to fall in love with it. As I like to say, it is a easy game to learn, but hard to master. It is after all a skirmish game and is fairly complex in what it can do, so what is it with the rules??

Is it the miniatures? Hell most of them are sculpted by the Perry Twins and if you have to ask who they are then you do not play GW games. To boot the minis are mostly in plastic and compared to GW's other games, you get more figures for the buck! Also LotRSBG has a model cap of about 75 figures for most games. So that means you could buy three box sets and nearly have all the figures you need. And once again they are cheaper than other GW ranges.

Could it be the playing surface or area needed to play? Well hell, most games are fought on a 4'x4' table or smaller. Take a look at the LotR Journey books and some of the scenarios take place on a 18"x24" board! Maybe it is the amount of terrain needed as this is a skirmish game. And that's another thing, most people I see that do play LotR play on wide open tables like WHFB. Come on folks, load the tables up and have some fun.

Is it the cost? As I mentioned above, LotRSBG is the cheapest game that GW puts out. Now I do know that their has been price increases, but overall it is cheaper to play LotRSBG than it is to play 40K or WHFB.

So what is it and what does it take for people to notice this game? I fear that when GW discontinues this game, many people will be crying out for it to come back like Space Hulk, Blood Bowl and countless other games that have gone away.

So what am I trying to say here? Well it should be pretty simple, why don't you try playing LotRSBG. And if you had and liked it, than get out there and play it some more. Hell this Sunday I am headed out to my local store (Imperial Outpost Games here in Phoenix) to throw down a few games...

TK