Gathering in the Desert Primer October 25, 2009

So the Primer has come and gone and everyone who attended had a great time, so here are a few pictures from the event. I would like to thank Darren from Imperial Outpost for the prizes and allowing us to play there. Unfortunately we only had six folks show up, four folks had other commitments and were unable to attend.

Tom O brought out what he called Osgilith Lite for the event as seen below, for anyone who was at GitD last year, that board will be coming back with a bit less terrain. This board was the opposite, it was pretty lite.

Round two shots, you will notice that Howard B & Jerry A are pictured now. Howard got a call from work and had to rush to work, but made it back by Round two. Jerry on the other hand had over slept and only got up once I called him at home, but he made it down by round two.

Here is a shot of Howard's new elves he is working on, he has gone with an autumn color scheme. So look for these at GitD in 2010.

I love this shot and how it came out, it has Mike G's Dwarf's fighting Jerry A Minas Tirith in a heavily wooded area. This shot too me says Lord of the Rings, call me weird but I like this shot out of all that I posted. Sometimes you get lucky with taking pictures!

So here are the final results and the breakdown of points:

Name - Overall - Total Battle - Sports - Appearance

Mike Gingold - 122.75 - 50 - 32.75 - 40
Tom Opalka 106.75 - 35 - 32.75 - 39

Howard Beam 98.50 - 35 - 21.50 - 42

Jerry Auteri 80.50 - 20 - 21.50 - 39

Rob Ehlers 78.50 - 35 - 31.50 - 12

Andree Cauley 52.50 - 20 - 32.50 - 0

So there you go, look forward to seeing you all in February for Gathering in the Desert 2010

TK

Another Big Terrain Push!

Big terrain update today, getting ready for the Gathering in the Desert Primer event on October 25th 2009, so here are a few pictures of whats been going on.

First up, the completed "Not Weathertop" from Castle Kits We received one for a prize and another one for terrain, but I ran out of time to get it together. Well it will be making it's appearance at the Primer & GitD2010. Painting was rather easy, just flat black followed by several different shades of Grey. Came out rather well, I look forward to getting a few more kits from Castle Kits in the future.

Next up are the Modular hills and regular gaming hills from GamesWorkshop and these were painted like the rest of the Realm of Battle boards in my previous post. Krylon Flat Brown, followed by a drybrush of Nutmeg Brown from Apple Barrel with another dry brush of Honey Brown from Americana. The rocks were painted Flat Black followed by a drybrush of Slate Grey from Americana. Added some GW Green Grass to them and they are ready for battle.

Now for GitD, I like to have themed tables with lots of terrain, last year I built a Mordor table which after GitD was shipped out to Brent & Jamie in Chicago who run the LotR events at Adepticon. When I was there, I told Jamie that he could keep the terrain as a gift from GitD. But that meant I needed to build another Mordor set of terrain. So I busted out two set of GW trees and kept the leaves off to give them that Creepy Mordor feeling to them. Here they are.

I also had a few trees let over from Woodland Scenic that I used last year, but these were individually based. I found that the trees kept getting moved during the game so I decided to do a few bases for these and use some sheet magnets to fold the trees to the bases. Here are three bases that I through together last night.

Here you can see the one tree of the base, I used PVC Plastic or the base, then took and cut out a round disc just large than the tree base out of sheet magnet. Nice thing with the sheet magnet, it has one side that has adhesive on it, so once cut I just stuck them to the PVC base. I then textured the base with Liqutex Stucco and let dry. Once the Stucco was dried just painted to match the base of the trees.

The magnets are fairly strong and will hold the trees (that are mounted on steel washers) pretty well. Nice thing is that folks can remove the trees with out moving the base.

Also for the Mordor table I needed a few rock sections, so these were dug out and touched up for the event. Nothing special, just Pink foam covered with Liqutex Stucco again and painted up.

The last piece of terrain is a tower section sitting atop a Temple of Skulls from GW. Storage is always a concern when building terrain and I knew if I mounted the GW Tower to the Temple model that it would be a pain in the Butt to store. So I decided that I wanted to remove the tower plus I wanted the tower not to move during game play.


So I added a Ruin Section from the LotR kit to the Temple. I glued it down so that it was just wide enough to slide the GW tower over the top of it.

So now I can have the tower on or off without a problem and I can store each easier than them being always together.

But as you can see, the tower is not done, so the Temple will be going as is in the picture below. I will finish it up by GitD. You may also notice that the large skulls have been covered up. Once again since its for LotR, I wanted it to fit better, so I cut/added more rubble to try & disguise the skulls. Since this is one of four kits, the next ones will have the skulls hidden better.

So there you have it, another busy week and now the packing begins for Sunday. Until then...

TK

If you paint it, they will come...

So,

Gathering in the Desert 2010 is only a few months away (Feb 20th & 21st, 2010) so I figured I needed to get started on all the terrain. So I started with a Realm of Battle board from GW, for those that don't know, these are hard grey plastic terrain boards. I have two of these and one set is being painted by Rob, while I paint the other.

So the first thing was to decide on a paint color and since Rob is also painting a set I wanted them to both match. We decided on these colors, Krylon Ultra Flat Brown ($4.44 Walmart) from their camouflage line, Apple Barrel Nutmeg Brown ($2.78 from Walmart) and Americana Honey Brown ($.79 from Michaels). Nice thing about the Krylon paint is that it's a fusion based paint, so it stick really really well to plastic, this would be the base coat. Another thing is that it gives you great coverage and I was able to spray all the 2'x2' boards with one can.


So last Saturday I sprayed all the boards and let them set for about an hour. Once set, I dry brushed on the Nutmeg brown on all of the boards. By the time I was finished with the last board I went back & dry brushed on the Honey Brown. I also painted the slate pavers on one board Slate Grey from Americana followed by a Black Wash as seen below.


One thing I did not get pictures of was the filling in of the Skull pits molded on the boards. Since I was using these for LotR, I opted not to have them since they felt out of place. I cut a few pieces of PVC plastic and glued them down and back filled the rest with Liqutex Stucco filler. Once I add static grass you will not even see these, but here are two shots of them below.



So the last thing is to add static grass to the boards and they will be ready for action. I would say they are about 85% done now.

Another project that I started this week was a Ruined Hirst Arts kit from Castle Kits, that Ian Martin sent us last year. I have been wanting to tackle this last year but ran out of time before the event, so I decided I needed this for the Weathertop board for the event. Here is a shot of some of the pre-cast bricks as well as a piece of Masonite that I cut & bevelled to mount the kit on.

I have to say that these pre-cast blocks are cool! They go together pretty quick and they are addictive to assemble. I built the whole kit in one night & took it out to prime it black without taking pictures of it! (Man, whats up with that??) So below are a few shots one it got primed and mounted to the Masonite, I started to texture the base with Liqutex Stucco and some rubble and started the base painting.

Now the inner wall, upper deck and the outer wall still need to be glued down and are only in there for the pictures.

This model will be attending GitD 2010 and will look awesome on the table once complete. So there you have it, some things I have been working on (While still looking for a real job).

TK

A Search for Our Souls

So this past weekend my Brother John came out for a short visit from Brunswick Georgia, besides taking a trip to Palm Springs to surprise our parents, my brother wanted to get in a few games while he was here. We had talked on the way out to Palm Springs about the "Old Days" of playing ADD&D with our old group and we were both looking for that sort of game to try to recapture some of the fun from our past. Well I have sold almost all of my old D&D stuff (Still have a ton of modules left thought) so this was not an option. But wait I told him, I still have another classic from the past, Warhammer Quest!

Now my brother, his wife, my wife and son as well as I had all played this pretty frequently about 14 years or so ago. The good thing was that I still had the game and all the tiles as well as the figures.

So it was settled, Warhammer Quest it would be then. But since Quest works well with at least 4 players I needed to talk my wife into playing as well as get another person to fill in so we could have 4 players. So I had asked my good friend Rob to come on over and we would show him a classic old school GW game. My wife was up for the challenge and wanted to know if her figure was still in the box (a converted Dark Elf Witch model as a wizard) and once I told her it was she was game.

So as soon as we got back from Palm Springs I told Rob to come on over & I would throw some meat on the BBQ and stock the fridge for some gaming. And with that Warhammer Quest hit the table again after many many years of hiding out in the closet. Here is a shot of the game just getting going.

Now one thing we did was run through a quick game to get us back in the mood and also to explain to Rob the rules. Needless to say, we died very quickly and we all had a good feeling for the mechanics for the game. So we decided to get a game going for real and we each took a character, my wife took the Wizard which she named Deidre, my brother took the Dwarf and named him Starky, I took the Barbarian and used an old name from our D&D days of Djon Boarhog (Don Gows famous character!) and Rob took the Elf and called him...Chuck! What the crap we all exclaimed!! A Elf named Chuck, that had to be one of the funniest names we heard and we all loved it!

For those that do not know, Warhammer Quest uses 14 Dungeon cards that you draw as you enter a new room. These could be rooms, hallways or the main objective room. But here's the catch, we you start setting up, you deal 6 Dungeon cards out, then shuffle in the Objective card into that deck of seven. Then you place seven more cards on top of that stack, so the objective card can either be the 8th card in the deck or it could be the 14th card, so you have to go through at least 7 cards before reaching the Objective room. Also each time you enter a room, you draw a Event card, which can be monsters , traps or just about anything else. This system allows the game to be run without a Gamemaster. Also to add a special quirk to the game, the Wizard must roll a D6 at the Beginning of each phase to see how much power they have that turn, if they roll a 1 on a D6, than you draw another Event card and resolve it. This usually means the wizard ends up bringing more baddies into the room your in and we like to call the power phase the "Don't Roll a 1 phase".

So the first card we draw is a collapsed passage way and once we all enter the room, I draw an Event Card, we get 2D6 Skaven which results in 8 of the little buggers to show up! Well only I can fight since it's a narrow passage and I slowly start to kill Skaven while losing some off my wounds. The very next phase my wife rolls a one and we get 6 Orcs along with 5 Night Goblin Archers! The monster start to line up outside of the room were in (which is the first room by the way) and I slowly start to die as well as kill a few things in front of me.

My wife than rolls another one and draws another Event card which is something to do with Snakes on the floor which than has us draw another Event card. We get Shifting sands and basically there is a chance for us to fall while we fight. Needless to say the Mighty Barbarian doesn't do so well and even manges to smack Chuck the Elf a few times while he is Berserk. This goes on or a few more rounds and I get down to 1 wound, which Chuck the Elf gives me a Potion to heal me back up to full points. But as luch would have it, my wife rolls another one in the Power Phase and we now get to deal with a Big Orc that Challenges me to a fight. So I take two turns to kill him and win a magical sword but my wife again rolls another 1 and we get a Minotaur to fight! We then also get a few Spiders (8 I think) as well as 7 Snotlings!

Here is a shot o my Barbarian getting man handled by the Minotaur which ends up killing me!

Needless to say, after I die, Mighty Chuck the Elf gets beaten down and we all start to die. This game lasted about an hour and a half and we all had a blast. The funnest thing was we never made it out of the first room! My brother could not believe it and told Rob that in the past we had completed many adventures and even had our Characters go up a few levels. All in all everyone had a great time and it looks like I might bust out Warhammer Quest again in the future.

So after Warhammer Quest, I busted out another old game, Formula De which is a race game.


Rob nor my brother had ever played this game & after a few instructional minutes of how to play we were ready to take on the Long Beach CA course. We all had fun racing around the track and I can't remember who won. It was about 11:45 by then & rob had to head out, but my brother, wife & I were ready to race again. So we choose Montreal for the track and each of us took 2 cars each. Well with it being late, we all got a little loopy and after my brother crashed we called it a night.

All in all we had a great night and my brother was sad that he had to leave the next day because he wanted to get in a few more games. Oh well there is always next visit kid, just don't wait so long...

TK