Holiday Busyness

Well,

Not much been going on of late with all the holidays & family that have been in town and we are only half way through the holidays. I plan on trying to keep a once a week update going on my blog starting with the second week of January (1/4/09). So I have a few things already in the works just need to take a few pictures and get things rolling.

So Cursed Treasures will be quite until then (like it has for a few weeks anyway!) but will see 2009 with a ton of new things. Just to give you an idea of what I am planing, here are a few things that I will be doing on the old blog for 2009.

Building & painting an army from start to finish, much like I did with dwarf project. Some terrain "How to's" and Painting how to's as well. As well as battle reports & general thoughts about gaming. Also I will be covering Gathering in the Desert & Adepticon again this year.

So until then remember, "Dead men tell no Tales"

TK

Too Paint or Not - part 2

Okay,

While going through some of my favorite blogs, I ran across a Rant by a fellow gamer & Blogger John over at Plastic Legions http://plasticlegions.blogspot.com/ To par phrase John, he has issues with the GW Circuit events that are not staying strict with painting. It would seem that most events per the post are allowing unpainted models to be entered in the events. This goes against any sort of GW Grand Tournament in the past which required you to have all painted models.

Now I took some time to take a look at the events & John was correct, most of them state that you do not have to have a fully painted army, but it is highly encouraged. Now most events are using the guidelines found on the IndyGT website http://www.indygt.com/ which is a great site and they encourage people to play regardless of what the paint or model type is made from, hence the Indy GT rules. They are not as strict as the GW GT rules, which is fine and you see a ton of cool looking models with these rules.

Now my Beef along with fellow Blogger John is the paint part. I admit it, I am a paint snob! I like seeing painted models on the tabletop. I have been know to play with unpainted models at my house while trying out a new army. But if I go out in public to play, you will see painted armies from me on the table. Also if I was playing in a tournament that had loose rules for paint, I will still show up with painted stuff. Take for example my good friend Dean who organized a Lord of the Rings primer event this past November. Since it was a primer event, he kept the rules for painting very lax. The purpose was for folks to try out armies for the Gathering in the Desert event in February 2009. I spent the week before hand painting up a 350 point army and had it ready to go with two days to spare. Which I then built a display board for the army (Actually two boards were built. But all but one guy had fully painted armies at the event, so there must be a few people that think like me.

Now I am not saying that all the events should be the same, but my feeling is if this is a Grand Tournament than shouldn't the armies on the table look Grand? GW is moving towards more folks like myself running large events. Now if GW is allowing us to run these events in lue of them running GT's, than shouldn't we as organizers follow some of the guidelines that GW used to adhere too? Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that we need to run all the events just like the last or next one, but shouldn't painting be the same on all of the events? Painting is part of the Hobby of GW, heck most people have at least one or two bottles of GW paint on their paint tables.

I look at painting like a steak, when its raw, it is not very appetising looking, but once its cooked and plated up it looks astounding and you can't wait to eat it! Painted armies are the same way when I look at them. When I see someone playing with an unpainted army, it does nothing for me, but when I see a fully painted army, when I know the person put a ton of work into painting it than it inspires me. Heck it even makes me want to rush out and start another project! So why would anyone want to show up to a Grand Tournament with unpainted stuff.

Another thing, my local guys that I game with are harsh, like I mentioned above, they will give me crap if I showed up with unpainted stuff. This is not a bad thing, in fact for me it spures me onto finishing a project or army. Because of this I have a couple of fully painted WAB armies (Vikings & Normans) 3 Lord of the Rings armies (Dwarfs, Easterlings, and Orcs that can be for any army) there is also about 200+ WW2 28mm figs that I have painted and 2 40k armies (Sisters of Battle & Imperial Guard) and throw in a few other models (Pirates, Old West, Near Future, Pulp) you get the picture. All of these were do to wanting to play with my buddies with my own painted stuff.

So after a longish rant, there you go, I am a Paint snob and as long as I am running events than there will be a painting requirement...

A Year in Review

Okay,

I know that the year is not over yet, but I thought I would review just what I did this year, so here goes.The big thing in 2008 was Legends of the high Seas finally coming out from Warhammer Historical. After a lot of hard work the book landed in my hands on January 16th. It was fun & stressful all at the same time. So I started the year as an author of a Pirate book.

This year also more Pulp action on the table and the paint bench. I am along with a friend still looking for a good set of rules and we may use the Legends & Lord of the Rings rules to create our own, we will see, but 2009 will still have Pulp on the radar.

Speaking of Lord of the Rings, I also did alot of painting & playing of Lord of the Rings. I painted up 500 points of Easterlings, about 40 models. Then later on I painted up 350 points of Dwarfs which consisted of 31 models. Along with that I painted up a few Giant Spiders, a few Bats and a Spider Queen. I also painted up Sauron and about 5 Nazgul or ring wraiths. Also adding to this was a trade for paint of doing about 130 Uruk-Hai figures for a friend for the GT here in town.

To go along with the Lord of the Rings theme I organized with a friend of mine an Independent Grand Tournament called Gathering in the Desert. We had 15 local players and one player traveling all the way from Florida, and he just happened to be the 2007 Tournament Circuit winner! I also was able to play tons of games with some of my friends to get them ready for the GT. I was able to play in a primer event for the next Gathering in the Desert in February 2009, I placed about the middle of the pack.

Another highlight was the trip to Adepticon in Chicago to run a few Demo games of Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB), Legends of the High Seas and running of two WAB events. I will be going back to Adepticon in April 2009 to run the WAB events, a few Demos & a Legends of the High Seas multi player game. It was a blast and I met a ton of cool gamers and made some life time friends. I also attended GW's Games Days 2008 in Los Angeles as a Kommando running LotR Demo games, a fun but busy day!

I also did another paint for trade with another friend in painting 120 WW2 28mm Russians and 9 1/48 scale tanks. For myself I painted up about a dozen 28mm WW2 Germans, about 5 1/48 scale tanks. WW2 is an area that I am very interested in and I have been working with another friend to develop a set of WW2 rules using 40K & LotR together. This will be another area that I will be working on in 2009.

I have also been busy working on terrain for gaming, from painting up the 3 sets of GW "Creepy" trees and GWs new Hills, to building a Seeing Seat from the Fellowship of the Rings movie for LotR. I also constructed a 4'x4' board for a demo game of LotHS that can be used for Pulp games. I also constructed a Strip mall out of Masonite for a friend to match one I did about a year ago.

I know I have forgotten something, but these have been the highlights and I will be busy in 2009 with Gathering in the Desert, Adepticon, and a WW2 project based on Villers Bocage, so stay tuned!

TK

Happy Turkey Day

Well,

I hope all of you have a great Thanksgiving Day where ever you are! Be thank full for what you have, Family, Friends, Health, Miniatures and everything else. I will be spending this Thanksgiving with my Parents who are making the trip out to the Valley of the Sunstroke. Our son is in Missouri with his girlfriends family & I know he is surrounded by folks that care for him I wish he was home with us.

I also wanted to say Thanks to all our Friends, Family and strangers that are serving our country in the military all across the globe, Thank you for Serving our Country, may God Bless you where ever you are.

And with that, I will leave you with this picture my good friend Ben sent me for Thanksgiving,

Happy Thanksgiving!

TK

Things that go bump in the Night

Okay,

I have still been working on terrain for the GitD GT in February but this past Friday needed a break & Rob came over to play a few games. Well we played a 600 point game of LotR with me using the Army of the High King against Robs Angmar list. Since my figures were only primed, I did not take pictures (Yes I know primer is paint Mike!) I will be doing a few articles on painting this army for Adepticon in the next few weeks. Anyway the game was a draw because we used the wrong stat line for Strength 3 against Defense 5 guys thinking we needed a 6 to wound (Need a 5 to wound) and I ended up winning since Robs orcs couldn't kill my guys, and I got him to break point. So the lesson was to always look at the chart!


Anyhow, after our game we tried out an idea that Rob has been wanting to do, Zombies! So we put together a few lucky survivors and a ton of Zombies. The mission, for the survivors to make it off the board on foot. The game was a mix of rules from LotR & 40K. We used the LotR turn sequence with the 40K shooting & combat rules. The game worked well & it will be something we look at in the future. Here are some shots from the game (everything was painted).

The survivors bust out the back door.

As well as the front door to see the walking dead bearing down on them. Too bad the Hummer is out of gas & ammo!

The Zombies spot their first victim, Rocket boy!

Tech & Jones make their way around to the front of the house, after someone locked the back door as they left,

And barely make it to the front of the house!

Meanwhile the Sarg & shooter take aim at the approaching Zombies,

But all the shooting just brings more zombies, which shooter tries to fight off,

But more zombies are drawn to the fighting!

But while shooter fights off the zombies, Tech heads for a hill to get a better firing position

Meanwhile Jones trys to link up with Shooter but gets in a tangle with a few of the walking dead.

As more zombies stream around the other side of the house, carrying the remains of Rocket boy who was torn to bits.

Shooter takes aim at the approaching hoard!

And Tech is left alone to fight off the zombies from his elevated position.

Jones finally links up with Shooter and they fight side by side wondering where the Sarg is.

The Sarg decides that he needs to find some reinforcements & to warn the rest of the world!

All in all it was a great little game and worked very well, we will be looking at doing a few more Zombie games and talked about some cool ideas for Fast Zombies as well as other scary creatures.

TK

Amon Hen done

Well, I finished up the Amon Hen piece this weekend, only had to paint it up & add a base. So here are a few pictures of the completed project.



Well now I need to build the Amon Hen Hill to place this on, we shall see if I am that motivated.

TK

WIP Amon Hen

So,

Over the last few weeks I have been working on a simple terrain piece from the Fellowship of the Ring Journey book. Inside the book they have plans for Weathertop and Amon Hens Seeing Seat. Well I decided to tackle the Seeing Seat for a terrain piece for the Gathering in the Desert Indie GT in February. If you are not familiar with it, it was the scene in the movie where Boromir dies and Aragorn fights off the Uruk-hai. I plan on building Amon Hillas well for the event but first things first. So here are a few pictures of what I have now.

Here is the first shot of the piece. I used 1/4" PVC plastic for the seat, statues, top and sides. I also used 4 25mm GW bases, wooden Dowel & 4 1" pre-cut wooden blocks. The stairs are the only thing made from foam core.

In this picture you can see just how large this piece is. It stands about 6 1/2"tall to the top of the statues.

Here you see the back of the model that I covered with modeling paste to get the cracked look.

Anyhow now its time to paint this thing up. So there you go, the first terrain piece for Gathering in the Desert.

TK

More from the Primer

Well a friend over on Adeptus Windy City http://adeptuswindycity.com/forums/index.php on the LotR Forum wanted to see a few more pictures of my Dol Guldur army, so here you go Brent...

Here is my Orc Captain with shield

Here is a converted Orc that I was using for my Captain, he is made out of a 2 handed Orc from the plastic orcs, just changed up his arms & added an old school GW shield.

Here is another angle.

Here is the other Hero, the Spider Queen, which has had the legs repositioned from the original model.

And here are the spiders, notice that I repositioned their legs. I always thought that the stock position of the legs made the spiders look like they got stepped on.

Here is a general shot of the orcs in the army, you may notice that some of them have been converted as well. Nothing special, just minor things like Head swaps & arm swaps.

Here is a converted spear orc turned into a hand weapon & shield combination.
Here is another converted spear orc with a weapon swap (orc on right) which removed his hammer and replaced with a sword. Here are the two handed orcs with a hand weapon orc. The two handed (on the right)had the spike replaced with an axe head. I can't stand stock figures so I try to do some conversion work so I do not have doubles of things. It must be an OCD thing!
Next two shots are just plain orcs
I like this one for the face I put on the shield.

And this was when I lost the first game, the Spider Queen is 1" from the 12" zone to win. I got greedy going after these two bowmen that shot at me all game. They died a horrible death though!

Here is a few other shots from Howard Beam's new army that he is painting up for the GT in February. He loves elves and they are going to be painted in Reds & Oranges. They look nice & Howard won the Best painted category at the Last GT. He is painting this since his old Rivendall elves are not eligible to win again. And yes all his stuff looks this good!

TK