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