ToFLotR Gamers 3rd Installment

So here is my next installment for the Tale of Four Lord of the Rings Gamers Series. The deadline for this month is August 1st and since last month I was late, I figured I better get my rear end in gear.


So Monday I will post up the standings to date. We did get together and play a few games last Friday and we had some interesting battles, but I will cover that on Monday.

TK

A Return To LotHS of Sorts.

So,

As some know my son is home from college and is working at our church on the weekends. Well this gives him time all during the week to lounge around and usually means he is bored. This has been the same thing for the last few years while he has been home, but this year it is different.

You see this year he has wanted to play some miniature games (Yes!) and the first game he wanted to play was his fathers game, Legends of the High Seas! So first thing I told him was that he had to pick a Captain figure from all my Pirates and start creating a Crew. Well that was not good enough for him and he wanted to paint his own miniatures! (Yes Score Again!)

So I said go for it and he started looking at my unpainted miniatures. So along with my son wanting to play, another Friend of mine & my son wanted to play as well and he is not a minis gamer. So a few weeks ago my buddy was over and along with my Son I did a mini painting clinic. I showed them how to dry brush, use washes, block paint and how to "Dip paint" figures.

Well here is my son's first miniature that he painted in well over 10 years, it is a Black Scorpion Rogue figure. He did an awesome job and this is an awesome figure. By the way he is playing a Privateer Crew.

His second paint job is his First Mate which is another Black Scorpion figure. My only comment for him was his color selection. In my opinion he used to colors (Blue and Green) which are to similar and the figure just looks washed out and has no "Pop".

His Third Figure is a Foundry Swashbuckler which he is using as his Proctor for his Crew. Once again he did a great job.

Now the rest of the pictures are the figures primed than dry brushed with an off white color. Here are two Mercenaries with Flintlocks that are from Black Scorpion.


Here is another Cutthroat from Black Scorpion.


The next batch of figures are from Privateer Press and are the Press Gangers. Now my son wanted me to convert the figures to add swords to them (They have belaying pins on the stock models). So he had some help from his old dad for these.







So there you go, my sons LotHS Crew and a post about LotHS. As he finishes up the Crew I will post more shots.

TK

Better Late than Never!

So my last update was back on June 24th and I only had a few days to get my next installment of 175 points four our little competition. Well as luck would have it, Life got in the way and I missed getting my troops painted by 7/1 by only one figure.

You see the one model happened to be the Cave Troll, for some reason I hate painting cave trolls. No other model in the LotR range gives me more issues other than the Cave Troll. I don't know what it is, it is not a hard paint scheme, I just have built up this weird mental painters block for the Cave troll.

Anyway, on to my 175 points, first up are the 10 Goblin archers. I needed some long range fire support and these little guys are it.


After that comes the Shaman, although as I admitted in the last post, this model was already painted. In fact this little guy was part of my Dwellers Below list that one best painted in the Mayhem in the Mountains in 2010. but since I have only one Shaman, I was not going to strip him and re-paint him for our little challenge.

Last but not least is the one model that held me up, yep it is the Cave Troll! I went with the Spear armed model just because I liked how it looked and I hope to stick some Elves ad Dwarves with it!

So here is the whole army all 32models (346 points) all together. So far the army is looking pretty good on the table and these little guys have been waiting forever to get painted!


Now just to clarify, since the Cave Troll gave me so much issues, I also decided to paint my last Cave Troll along with this one. Now here is a shot of all three of my Cave Trolls. The model on the right was painted about 5 years ago, the center one is this months and the one on the left was an added bonus so I would not have to paint him later on. Now all my Cave Trolls are painted!


So what next you ask? Well first up are 36 points of Goblins with Shields. This will add a few more goblins to the army and these are the last of the few I used converted shields on.

Next up is a Goblin Drum for 100 points! What you say? Why is he taking this you ask? Well part of the reason why I choose Goblins for this little challenge was to get the army painted. I bought the Goblin Drum some time ago and heck, I just thought it looked cool, so there you go!

So I am up to 136 points spent out of 178 (3 points left from last month) so I purchased a Goblin Captain with shield for 40 points.

So for this month that gives us this break down as follows

Rob has 30 points
Mike has 25 points
I have 16 points
Jerry has 15 points

So stay tuned for more action...

TK

June LotR Update

Wow,

Where has June gone?? It seems that I am the last one again to try to get my next installment up for our little contest. Well I thought I could sneak in some painted stuff already done, but I have been warned that I will be ridiculed beyond belief. So I dove into my LotR box for my additions.

So first up is 50 points of archers, that means 10 goblin bowmen & Yes Jerry, I will be able to Volley fire on your precious elves! So here are the boys in bare metal.

Next up I needed a heavy hitter, so time to bust out a Cave Troll, yes, he has a cave troll! I have two models one with hammer and this one with spear, so I choose the spear armed model and that means he is 81 points.


Now one more addition was to add a Shaman to the force, but they only problem is he was already painted. So this is the only painted model that will be introduced into the army. I did add more highlights to the figure so I did put some paint on him.


So here is the motley crew in all of their glory, now to get them painted before the end of the month.
TK

Throne of Skulls Recap

So,

I am back for the Throne of Skulls and here are a few pictures from the event, first up my army list that I entered. Since I was taking the Uruk-hai from the White Hand list, I came up with a unique army list. I wanted my list to be a piece of skin, as if the Uruk-hai had cut it of of one of their victims. So I contacted my good friend Eric in CA, who used to do make up effects for a certain movie studio and asked him to make me up a latex "skin"army list. This is what it looks like front and back. The funny thing is he used his wife's own back for the mold and he used cold water to get her skin to raise so he could get that goose bump look. Creepy but cool!

By the way, everyone that saw my list loved it and I think they were a bit creeped out by it, which means Eric did an awesome job!

Now on to my army, the Uruk-hai, which was very themed but not over the top (which would be an issue at this event). The list had:

1 Uruk-hai Captain
1 Uruk-hai Shaman
22 Uruk-hai warriors
10 Uruk-hai pikemen
10 Uruk-hai scouts
10 Orcs
1 Isengard Troll

55 models and a very themed list. I also built a custom display board that would make the army look like it was marching out of the pits of Isengard. I carved all the rock work out of blue foam and spent at least a day building and painting it. I think it turned out pretty good and I had a bunch of people take pictures of it.


The event was held at the Tropicana Hotel and the room for the event was large and spacious. The tables had plenty of room between them and each table was made out of Games Workshop Realm of Battle and current GW terrain. Now most followers here at Cursed Treasures know that I love terrain and I love a ton of terrain on my LotR tables. When I walked into the venue and saw the terrain for the LotR tables my heart sank, here is what all the tables looked like for LotR.

Not what I expected but at least they were all the same on each board. The 40K and Fantasy Battle tables were pretty much the same. I understand that John Scaffer did all the work on all the tables and while I was in Memphis I saw much of this stuff being built. John did a great job but I would have liked more terrain as well as other folks in the other games.

I got in on Friday with Tom O and his wife around noon, we did lunch and got checked in at the Excalibur, across the street from the Tropicana. I headed over around 5:30 to hang out and get registered for the weekend. I also hung out with Kyle, Chris, John, Brent and a few others, did dinner and then participated in the conversion building contest. Built a shoulder pad chaos marine and that was about it. Then headed back to my hotel to crash for the night.

Saturday morning saw me up and ready to play, headed out to the Tropicana and started looking for food and my first opponent. After a decent breakfast, I headed over to the postings and was glad to see that I got Chris Thomas as my first game. I met Chris this year at GitD and he is an awesome guy, plus he loves Big Bang Theory, Bazinga!

First game was Clash of Piquets against Chris and his wood elf's with Treebeard. Chris noticed that I had the Troll so we decided to charge the Troll up against Treebeard to see who would win, we agreed not to use any other models or to shoot at the large monsters and sent them charging towards each other. Needless to say I lost and the troll died after two rounds of fighting.

Well not to bore you, but the Fighting Uruk-hai lost and Chris got the win. This was the best game of the whole event and Chris is an awesome guy to play, he had a very balanced list and it was well themed.

My second game was against Marc R's Mordor list that was rather interesting. The scenario was Storm the camp and I felt pretty good about going into this game. Now Marc's list had a ton of Black guard orcs as well as regular orcs and Black Numenorians. It also had a a ring wraith or two as well as a captain. The thing that made this game tough is that the whole army was painted the same! I mean everything was painted in the same colors, the same way, Blue and black. It did look cool, but you could not tell what was what. The game was okay, but there were a few issues with movement in this game. Needless to say I lost, but was glad to have the game over with. Here is a blury shot of the army.

Game three was against Tom Keegan and his 21 model all mounted Dol Amoroth army with Gandalf the Grey leading the way. To make matters tough for Tom, we were playing Domination, which I thought I had in the bag. Tom's army was awesome looking, it is a wonder why he did not win a best painted award.

Tom is a great guy to play and he made me laugh the whole game. I need to make it down to Florida for his event. Tom thought I had the game, but then the unthinkable happened. My cheating dice (Adepticon Dice that everyone has coined Cheating Dice) decided that it was time to roll 1's and 2's the rest of the game. So once again I took a loss to a 21 model army but I had a blast, not the most fun (since Tom Kicked my butt, thanks Tom!) but it was a close second.

Well I was now 0 & 3 with the day ending, I noticed that I was feeling wiped out again and decided to skip the Pub quiz and crash in my hotel room. I was wrangled into hanging out with Tom Keegan and a few others to play an interesting game of Prostitute or No Prostitute while watching folks pass by. But after an hour of laughing I finally headed back to my room.

Sunday started and I forgot my camera in my room so no other pictures from here on out. game 4 was against John Adams from Florida playing Seize the Prize. Needless to say, this was the worst game I played all weekend. I will not go into it here and just leave it at that. I lost this game by just one model but that is all that it took.

Game 5 was against the ringer army being Lead by Don, a GW staffer from Memphis. This game was a blast but my dice were still being mean to me (or the Dice Karma finally caught up to me) and I lost the game. Great game but still a loss.

So out of 5 games, I had three great games, one okay game and one game that I wish I could forget. But all in all not a bad weekend.

Os there you go, my adventures in Vegas. Now that ToS is over, I can get to planning GitD 2012 and get working on my June installment for Tale of Four LotR gamers.

TK

So,

In just a few days the Throne of Skulls event run by Games Workshop will be happening in Las Vegas. As many know, this is the first "National" event that GW is running for all the winners that qualified on the 2010 - 2011 tournament for Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Warhammer 40000 and Lord of the Rings.

Well about a month ago I got an invite from Games Workshop asking if I would (as well as other Tournament organizers) would be interested in playing and attending. Well after talking to the wife, I shoot back a email stating I would be there. Since I run Gathering in the Desert, I usually do not get to play since I am running the event. And since there are no other LotR events, that means I don't get to play much LotR in tourneys.

Well with the decision to go cleared with the boss, it was time for me to decide what army to take. Well I would love to tell you what I am taking (and in fact a few close people know) but I will not reveal what I am taking until after the event. Yeah yeah, I know, but I want it to be a surprise for some of the players. I will tell you that I have never played this army before and that I have not showed here before. The other clue or hint is that I am playing an evil army!

So when will I show off what I am taking, well after the event. I plan to cover the event and have full coverage for all you cursed treasures followers. So wish me luck and I will see you all Monday with coverage from the event. So stay tuned folks...

TK

Results for April of ToFLOTR Gamers

As some may have read here and on a few other Blogs, we are running a Tale of Four Lord of the Rings Gamers.Well June first was the first deadline for the four of us to get our first batch of 175 point models done.

Just to recap, if you got your models completed by June 1st, you got 5 points. If they were submitted after the June 1st deadline then you got 3 points and if you did not paint anything, you got 0 points.

So how did we do?

Well I got 5 points for my Goblin Mob

Rob got 5 points for his dwarf's.

Mike got 5 points for his Uruk-hai

And Jerry also got 5 points for his elf's.

Now we also got in at least one game this month (some of us more) and we would be adding the points from painting to the points won during games. Now for each game there would be a set number of points handed out and I used the scoring method from Gathering in the Desert and was broken down as follows:

Major Win 20 points
Minor Win 15 points
Draw 10 points
Minor Loss 7 points
Major Loss 5 points.

So last week Rob's Dwarf's faced off against Jerry's Elf's in a High Ground game. Rob and his Dwarf's walked away with a Major win while Jerry got the Major Loss. Tonight Mike and I got in a game (due to Mike having life issues last week) and we played Seize the Prize, well the Uruk-hai beat the Goblins and Mike got a Minor victory while I took a Minor Loss.

So here is how the Battle points shook out:

Rob's Dwarf's 20 points
Mike Uruk-hai 15 points
Tim's Goblins 7 points
Jerry's Elf's 5 points

So for April this is how it stands:

Rob has 25 points
Mike has 20 points
Tim has 13 points
Jerry has 10 points

So there you go, that is the first month totals. We are going to try to get everyone together before next weekend to play a doubles game with the two good players (Jerry & Rob) vs the two Evil players (Myself & Mike) to throw in some bonus points. So stay tuned for that and the next few updates to our armies.

TK

Goblins Galore!

Well,

It is almost June 1st and that is the deadline for the four of us competing in this challenge. So far Mike over at Da Green Skins has his first models ready. Jerry at Jerry's Big Picture has his models finished, that leaves me and Rob of Drunken Samurai painting Blog to get our acts in gear to be finished by the 1st.

Well I am happy to report that I have finished up my first 175 points this weekend and with out further ado here is my Goblin army!

First up Durburz, the Goblin King!

Next up is the Goblin Kings bodyguard, 8 Prowlers with two handed weapons. I had a chance last week to pick up another 8 Prowlers while I was down in Memphis, but I passed, now I wish I had!
Next we have 6 Goblins with hand weapons and shields, these guys will be the core of the army, so that means there is going to be a ton of them to paint!

Lastly our 5 spear armed Goblins, like the hand weapons goblins, these guys will make up the bulk of the army as well.
So here is the gang all together, all 20 of them ready to unleash terror on the world of Middle Earth!
My next 175 points will see me adding some bowmen as well as more troops, or perhaps a Goblin Shaman to add some magic to the list.

So stay tuned, next up will be the points for this month, we are now waiting for Rob to get his Dwarfs done, than we can play some games while we work on our next increase.

TK