Battle of Salem Church prep

So,

In about two weeks, we will be doing another Huge ACW battle with Black Powder. Our group has been working on forces for about ten years now and we are just about done with everything. We will be at Imperial Outpost on March 3rd playing the Battle of Salem Church. It will be an all day affair as the table alone will be about 12'x8' with close to 1000+ models on the table! This will be the biggest battle we have done to date.

So since I usually play Rebels, I committed to building and painting at least three Large units of 40 figures each! So about two weeks ago I dove into painting the boys Union Federal Blue. The first unit ended up being 44 models, not sure why 44, I think my cats knocked a few models off my table one day and i had to assemble four more models. Regardless, I now have a large unit 44 men strong!

Getting ready for war!

My second unit is a 40 man regiment and funny thing that happened here is I glued down what I thought were 5 men to my paint sticks, I had four sticks so that would be 40 right? But for some reason I came up six models short! Once again I blame my two kittens that like to knock stuff of my paint table and play with them in the kitchen. I suspect that I will find various items under my refrigerator, including my missing troops!

40 men, but six went awol!

My last unit is a zouave unit which I based off the 10th New York. The have brown jackets and the light blue pants. Rob has two zouave units and I wanted a unique looking unit and these guys are it. This unit is only a 36 man regiment, no kitten issues here, I only had 36 of these to start with!

10th New York

 Seeing how I just painted 120 figures, I felt like painting a few guns for the game, now these are being finished later today, but the now I have a 4 gun regiment for my growing Union force.

Four Guns almost ready.

And after the guns, I figured I needed a few command models, so these guys got painted up and their basing will be completed later tonight as well.

Six out of Eight Commanders

So after all was said and done, I have painted up 156 models (Counting guns and horses) in about two weeks. I am pleased with my newest contributions to the game and look forward to seeing them on the table top.
.
TK

Arizona Game Fair Recap

Well Arizona Game Fair has come and gone and I have survived! This was my first time attending this event which is normally a all Board/Card convention, this year I was the first actual miniature game to be hosted (Yes X wing was there, but I look at that as more of a board game than miniature game), which was CAVSO. I also was brought in to run the Paint & Take for the event, which was sponsored by Talon Games. 

I ran about 20 people through the CAVSO demos, which all but one had never played a true miniature game. All that played this weekend had a blast and loved the game,  so I would say that it was a hit!

CAVSO Demo Table, thanks to Robert for lending the terrain!

A packed table for CAVSO!

Besides the demos, as I mentioned I ran three Paint & Takes with CAVSO models. Talon Games sent a bunch models to use as well as Reaper paints. My friend Richard who recruited me to AZGF, bought the brushes to use for the event.

CAVSO models on display to inspire painting!

Two full packed tables for the Paint & Take

Each session had 12 folks signed up and all but a few had never actually painted anything before. As I said before, this is primarily a board and card show, so not many painters there. Now with more board games having cool miniatures, more folks are looking to paint there miniatures in their board games. So this was a great excuse to pick up a brush and test out their skill with out having to invest in paints and brushes. Once again folks had a blast painting and for most, these were the first miniatures that they ever painted.

So how was the rest of the event? Well from what I saw of it in between my demos or classes, tit looked like it was pretty well handled. There were lots of board games and when I went over to the RPG room, it was packed! The vendor area had a good selection of shops, including Imperial Outpost. All of the shops present had good selections of items, although not to surprising, none of them had any miniatures. All the folks that played in the demos or went to the Paint & Take were asking me if they could buy any of this there, which sadly I had to point them to the Reaper website. I imagine that with more miniature games, the vendors will respond by bringing more minis next time.

And because of the success of the events I ran, it looks like i will be going back next year to host more games. In fact I will be running a few Fistful of Lead games next year at the event. How do I know that, well I went and did a bad thing the other day, I ordered two bundles of Sarissa Precision of Old West terrain!

So next year, we will have some Old West Action going on at Arizona game Fair. I am also meeting with Richard to discuss just what sort of miniature games should be show cased at future events. Now, I need to wait to get my new toys, so stay tuned for some new terrain.

TK

Arizona Game Fair

Well,

This up incoming weekend I will be out at Arizona Game Fair, running a few events. Now Arizona Game Fair is primarily a card and board game show, but they are trying to branch out to other games such as miniatures.

I will be running a few demos for CAV Strike Operations as well as running a paint & Take sponsored by Talon Games. The nice thing is that Talon Games has provided all the miniatures for the give away as well as a few books to give away for CAV Strike operations.

So why am I doing this? Well that's a great question! You see I sort of hung up my organizers hat a few years ago after I closed down Gathering in the Desert. It became a lot of work to put on the event and besides a few folks, I really didn't have much help. Now I always envisioned linking GitD to a bigger event, but for the longest time we had no such events in the valley of the sun.

Also about a month ago a few folks approached me asking what did it take to put on an event. I told them they were nuts from starting from scratch and that they should join up with another established game event. Well that got me thinking, if we ever wanted to have a miniature based con here in the valley, then we would have to grow it with another event.

So hence when my friend Richard approached me about Arizona Game Fair, I thought I better put my words were my mouth was. So I made a few calls and figured out what I wanted to do. Funny thing is, about two weeks ago I organized the Taco Bowl Blood Bowl day, I had another organizer approach me to run a few more miniature games at another local con, CritHit . So it looks like the events are starting to happen, so it seems I will be busy rather soon.

So if your are available, come on out to mesa to play a few games...

TK

Fistful of Lead Reloaded!

So,

A while back, I stumbled onto a Fistful of Lead Reloaded rules on another blog I follow, Wargames and Railroads which is a great blog by the way. Anyway, Kris the blog owner did a review of a few Old West rule sets and honestly, I was not looking for another set of rules since I was happy with Legends of the Old West. But the problem with LotOW is that it is out of print and it is hard to get new players to play as most want the rule book. So after reading Kris reviews on the different rule sets, I found myself looking at the Fistful of Lead Reloaded by Wiley Games run by Jaye Wiley.

Now I have been stopping by Jayes blog for years from time to time and never put two and two together that he wrote FfoL. But after reading the review I picked up the rules and gave them a try with my buddy Robert. We were both happy with how simple and fun the rules were and it was not too long of a game. We both said we will need to get this back on the table.

Well about a two months ago, I ran another demo for my friend Richard and once again, I used the FfoL rules. It proved too be a very fun game once again and it took very little explanation to get Richard up to speed with the game, in fact it took about 5 minutes to explain everything.

Set up at Games U for Richard

 One nice thing with these rules is that they are very simple and very fun to play. The reference sheet has all you need to play on it and pretty much tells you how to play without looking at the rules. I have always said, if you can figure out a game by just looking at the reference sheet, it is a solid game.

The Good Guys from Gorgon Studios

 The game I ran for Richard brought a lot of folks around the table and the use of the playing cards for activation, just made everyone get into the mindset of Old West gaming. So with a nice looking table and a quick fast playing rule set, how can this not be a crowd favorite.

The Bad guys from Artizan Designs 

So after thinking about the games I ran and played in, I went over to Jayes site and ordered a few more items from him. I picked up For a Fistful More book, which is a nice scenario book for the game. I also ordered his laser cut tokens since it seemed wrong to use the LotOW counters. I also picked up his special playing cards, these have all the special rules on them, you can use regular playing cards, but heck, why not have these cards.

Even more scenarios!

I also order Viva la Revolucion for doing the Mexican revolution, can you say Wild bunch??? And I also picked up his Horse and musket rule book as well for my buddy Robert. I am curious to take a look at it for some Pirate action! So i see many games of FfoL in the very near future, in fact I may be taking running a few games of FfoL at a local con in July, still working out details.

So if your looking for an affordable fast and fun Old West game, Fistful of lead Reloaded is right up your alley, I highly recommend it.

TK