Adepticon 2018 Recap

So,

I survived Adepticon 2018 and it was an interesting show to say the least. I flew out the Wednesday before everything started to help set up the CAV Strike Ops booth with the Talon Crew (Jon, Nate Luke and Myself). Jon of Talon Games had built a new booth for this show and it looked awesome! It was big, bright and full of all kinds of CAV Strike Ops love, what more could a CAV player want!

Another view of our Awesome Looking Booth!

Our goal was to make a splash with the booth and Jon and Nate would operate the booth while Luke and myself would run the big CAV Strike Ops game throughout the weekend. But do to some miscommunication with the Adepticon crew, they had scheduled the big game for a solid 6 hour block. We wanted it to be set up so that players could cycle into the game every two hours, that way folks could play in other games or attend classes. But with it showing for a 6 hour block, no one wanted to sign up for a 6 hour game. So instead we ran folks through demos of the game and kept score of the folks that did the most kills.

Large board for the Big Game/demos

As for Adepticon itself, it had a strange vibe to it this year, I really can't put my finger on it as to what felt different though. Maybe it was because I was in a different role this time as a vendor, maybe its been a few years since I last attended. But I did meet up with a bunch of friends that I have made throughout the years and it was also very good to catch up. I have always stated that Adepticon is a great place to build new friendships over our hobby.

Some of my haul this year!

Now, with being a vendor this time around, I had early access to the vendor haul, so once we got our booth set up, I started wandering around looking at all the cool vendors. Fantasy Flight was there in Force with all the Star Wars games including Legions that released while I was there. Two of the companies that I knew i would spend money with was Pulp Figures (which I did spend about $85.00 with!) and Knuckleduster Miniatures which I bought about $80.00 in minis from them. I also picked up a few Blood Eagle models from Footsore miniatures for myself and a few friends. I also picked up a few terrain items from Death Ray Designs for Drunkensaumari.

Chicago Deep Dish Pizza!

As mentioned above, I did get a chance to make the rounds and see a few games that were being hosted at the event. One in particular was the new Fallout miniature game. I couldn't get any good pictures due to the amount of folks around the table. It did look pretty cool, but I noticed that it uses specialty dice much like Fantasy Flight games for Star Wars. This seems to be a trend I am noticing in the game world. I also got to see the new Blood Red Skies WW2 game from Warlord, it looks interesting but with so many new games coming out, I really can't seem to get to excited about buying. There is just only so many games one can actually get to the table in a year and I am not sure I am ready to jump into a new game right now.

One last thing, Jon Walker of Talon Games and his two boys, Nate & Luke were awesome to be around all weekend. Jon seems to know most of the vendors and I got to meet and hang out with a few of them, especially Ed from Reaper (who owns the company). So it was rather interesting to hear how other vendors deal with this hobby of ours and I got to see behind the current of the game industry.

So overall, the show was good, not great like it had been in years past, but overall it was good. I do believe that Adepticon is changing as more big game companies come on board with Adepticon. It seems that this con is now looking to expand into the realms of Gencon status as it grows larger every year. So if you have never been to Adepticon, go, it is an experiance, but as a long time traveler to Adepticon, I may not be back for sometime. It really depends if Talon Games goes back and they need me for the trip to help out again. But I think my days of going as a gamer are just about done, it was still an expensive trip for me even with the help of Talon Games.

TK

Heading back to Chicago!

So, in just about 9 days I will be boarding a flight and heading back to Adepticon 2018 in Chicago. But this time I will be going as an actual vendor this time with Talon Games for CAV Strike Operations.

I will bet there running demos, working the booth and running the large game that we will be putting on for the event. It will be nice to see some of my Chicago friends again as it has been about two or three years since I was last out. So if you are a fan of this blog, stop by and say Hi or better yet get in a demo of CAV Strike Operations with me!

I of course will be taking tons of pictures of all the fun and of course will be doing some shopping while there as the list of vendors is pretty large. So stay tuned for more updates here.

TK

Were Back!!!!

So,

I'm back from Adepticon and I think I am all caught up on my sleep, it was a great week of games and friends. So what did I do?, Well thanks for asking. My Adepticon trip started on Wednesday the 18th at 5:00am, that's when I had to head to the airport. Let me say that traveling with your figures is always interesting and you do get a lot of interesting questions about them.

Needless to say I got into Chicago around 3:00pm and once I got my luggage stowed, I headed down to help out where needed. I ran into my buddy Jamie and joined him stuffing bags for the event. We caught up with what was going on in our lives and what we had been doing hobby wise. After about two hours of stuffing we traded out with a few other luck volunteers and headed over to set up the Historical rooms. Once we got the Historical rooms set up it was time for me and my buddy Merle to find some dinner, which we ate at Sam & Harry's for a expensive Ribeye steak, it was awesome but pricey.

Thursday morning saw me up early at 6:30 to start setting up the Legends of the Old West game that Merle and I were running all day. We ran the Little Big Horn game in the morning and then set up for the two games of Battle at Tandywine Gultch, which was another two games of LotOW. Everyone that played had a blast and I even got to meet up with a good friend "Evil Kevin" who used to game with us in Phoenix. Needless to say I was busy from early in the AM until later in the night. Day one completed.

Tandywine Gultch LotOW action

Day Two of Adepticon saw me playing in the Bolt Action team event. Now as some of you may know, two days before I left for Adepticon I decided to paint up a new 800 point force for just this event. I painted 41 models in less than two days and had them ready for the event, in fact as soon as I opened up my figure case, the familiar smell of Testor Dullcoate greeted me. (Maybe this is why TSA wanted to know what was in box? Hmm) Well the night before the guy that I was to team up with canceled and I was left with no one to team up with. Good thing we had odd number of teams because that meant the the tournament organizer, Jeremy  and I would team up together. I played three great games two against friends that I know in the Chicago area.

Terrain for the Team Event

All in all it was a great time, John and Aaron, our first game was a blast and this was the second time I got to play John from Plastic Legions.Since Jeremy and I were playing as the ringers, there was no pressure to win. It was actually nice to just be able to enjoy the game and not worry about running the event.

John of Plastic Legion and Fellow Pirate!

Lee Marvin leads the charge for the Bridge

After the team event I wondered around and took in the vendor hall and watched a few other games and demos. I also met up with more friends and went to dinner with Jay, Suzi and Justin at a local micro brewery called the Ram (I think). Day two completed.

Day three started much like the other days, early. Merle and I headed out to find breakfast and ended up at a Doughnut shop that doesn't seem to make doughnuts. Saturday was basically a free day until 1:00 when I ran a Pulp Alley demo game. So I headed over to the huge pirate game and wandered around the vendor hall again.

A Huge Pirate game in 28mm!

So today was the day for the Pulp Alley game and I wrote up a scenario called Over due book Hunt. The basic concept of the game was to find the Book of the Dead and up to four players could play. I provided everything for the game and had a nice little table set up for the game. In fact I had a bunch of folks come by and watch the game and take pictures of the table. Just FYI I shipped the terrain all out to Chicago from Phoenix.

Pulp Alley Table

I had four people scheduled for the game and only three showed up, but as I said a lot of folks stopped by to watch and ask questions about the rules. The nice thing about Pulp Alley is that once the players played a couple of turns they had it down and I could talk to folks about the game. It was a success and will take the game back to Adepticon next year.

Where is the book?

Saturday came to a close and I was invited out to the bar with John, Aaron, Eric and a few others. needless to say it was another late night of spending time with friends.

Sunday came early and Merle and I headed out to Breakfast with Mark and Orge. It was awesome doing breakfast with these fine gentlemen and once again it is another reason I enjoy going to Adepticon, the friends. Once back from breakfast I got pulled into a Free blades demo game with John at DGS games. Played a great game and then bought a few figures for DGS to run some demos of Freeblades here in Phoenix. I then met up with Rich, Merle and Mark to play a game of Hail Caesar with Rich's Crusader army and Saracens. 

Once this game finished up I head back out to the vendor hall and then started to start breaking stuff down since the con ended at 4:00. Once we got a few rooms broken down I headed up to my room for a quick nap. Sleep would not come so I watched the snow fall outside my window. I then headed down to the bar/restaurant to hang out with the DGS crew (John, Matt, Merle, Ogre, Madlin, Chris and a few others. It was another long night and I headed up to my room to pack and get ready to head back home the next day.

When I awoke Monday morning, it was still snowing and there was at least 5" of fresh loose snow on the ground. Merle drove me to the airport and a short drive of 23 minutes took over an hour. It seems the folks in Chicago don't know how to drive in the snow! My flight was scheduled to leave at 10:55am but we didn't leave until noon thanks to the weather delays. I finally touched down in Phoenix at 2:00pm and was thankful to be home in warm weather again.

So my trip was a huge success and I got to spend time with a lot of friends, I highly recommend that if your thinking about making the trip that you go. I had thought after I got home that this would be the last time to make the trip, but after thinking about it, I will go back. It wasn't the games, it is the friends that I have made over the years that keeps me going back. And next year will see me participating in a large, cool, awesome game and because of this one game I will have to go back.

TK 

Well it almost time!

Well,

By this time next week I will be in The Windy City for Adepticon, one of the best gaming events in the country. I will once again be attending this awesome event and I am running a few games with friends and taking I all that there is of Adepticon.

For the last few weeks I have been painting like a mad man to get ready for the Legends of the Old West game as well as the Pulp Alley game. I will also be floating around taking pictures of the event for all those that can't make it.

So stay tuned for Adepticon coverage.

Tk

Where did the time go????

Wow,

It has been a full two frickin months since I posted, what the hell?? Well, just because I have not posted doesn't mean I have been lazy on the game front, I have been very busy. So what have I been up to, well for one thing, January 2nd I sent in my manuscript to Winged Hussar Publishing to publish HEROIC, a generic historical skirmish game. Right now I am waiting to hear back from the publisher for re-writes and additions to the manuscript. So yes folks, there is going to be another set of rules published by Tim Kulinski, fans of my previous work will appreciate the rules and I plan to be supported and release updates for said game. Once I have the working copy I will post more on this. I also have another set of rules that I am working on with a partner for the same publisher that will be an Air Combat game with a working title of either ACES or Legends of the Sky. So you may see some updates here about that as well as some play testing here, so stay tuned.Now I am also working with the fine folks at Pulp Alley for a possible supplement for a very "Scary" book. I will not go into much more detail than that, so stay tuned. So I have been busy writing a few things.

Now I am also getting ready to make the trip to Adepticon in a few short weeks, and I have been painting up models for the Legends of the Old West game I am assisting with my good friend Merle, aka Mother". Here are a few pics of stuff I have done for this game, these are for "Mother" and all of them are Foundry figures.

In addition to the above figures, I have also been working on figures to supply for folks to use, all of these are Gorgon Studios figures that I got last year from my buddy Hank who runs Gorgon. There are a few figures that have yet to be released yet.

From a certain true Grit movie remake!

Some of the Magnificent Seven that are not released yet

The rest of the Seven with a certain Rifleman!

Besides the Old West game, I am running a Pulp Alley game and have had to paint up a couple of Leagues for the game I am running. Here they are:

French Foreign Legion, a mix of Artizan and Old Glory. 

The only figure I painted up is the German Officer which is a Pulp Figure.

And lastly I have gotten back into another hobby, Model Railroading after a 17 year absent. I was going to jump into N scale but after pricing items, I just went back into HO. I am finally building my layout inside of the house like I originally planned 15+ years ago. It will be in the game room along with my 4'x6' game table and paint desk. It is a  L shaped shelf layout that is 8'x15" wide by 7'x6" long. It will be based on the Southern Pacific Railroad in the mid 1990's and based off the Anaheim Branch line that I used to haunt all those years ago.

After negotiating the space I contacted my good friend Bill Meyer in CA to construct the modules and after a trip out to CA to pick up said modules (and operate on Bills Layout) I had the beginnings of my layout. It will be a long term project that I will document here on the blog. So here is the beginnings of the layout.

The 8'x15" main section

The 7'x6" section

 So there you go folks, I have been very busy but I will be making more regular updates here in the future.

TK

Road to Adepticon 2015

Road to Adepticon 2015

 So,

They say " It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your front door. You step onto the road and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." Well, that is me for next year at Adepticon, somehow I have been talked into running a few more games. But honestly I enjoy helping this great event out. So once again I will be traveling from the Valley of the Sunstroke to head to the Windy City once more.

So what will I be doing next year? Well I have two major things I will be running, one with a good friend and the other on my own. First up is a large multi player game of Legends of the Old West called, Showdown at Tandywine Gulch. The other will be demonstration games of Pulp Alley.

 So the LotOW game Showdown at the Tandywine Gulch is going to be run twice and Merle Delinger and I will be providing everything for the game. That means we will both be contributing at least 10 posses (5 each), so that means Merle and I will be doing some painting. Terrain will be provided by Merle and is mostly all 4Ground old west buildings. I am planning on doing a mine as well as a cemetery. So I will be showing the work here on the models and the terrain for the game, so stay tuned.

 The other game I will be running is Pulp Alley, this is a Pulp adventure game that I wanted to get to Adepticon this year but time ran out. But next year I will have either a multi player demo game using the newest supplement, Vice Alley or I will be doing a scenario from the Perilous Island supplement. I will have some special cards to hand out at the game that you will not be able to get anywhere else. So if you love Indiana Jones, come take a look at the game. Once again I will be showcasing models and terrain here on the blog.

Also while at Adepticon I will be helping out in the Historical room and lending a hand wherever it is needed. So there you go, a look at things to come, I of course will be posting up other projects, so stay tuned.

TK

I'm Back, from Adepticon!

Well,

I am back from frigid Chicago and I am finally starting to warm up! Besides that, Adepticon was a blast and I had a good, but tiring time out there. So be warned, this will be a rather large post with a few pictures plus me rambling on about what I did and experienced.

So, my trip out started out a bit bumpy in regards to in that my flight was delayed due to mechanical issues. We were told that it would be an hour delay, but luckily we were only delayed 30 minutes. Which leads me to believe that the airlines build delay times into their flight times to make them look better with arrival times. The flight was uneventful except for the older woman that sat next to me that smelled like garlic and onions, that was fun!

Somewhere over New Mexico

Once I landed my buddy Jay picked me up and as I stepped outside I was greeted by 40 degree weather, which was a bit of a shock since I left high 80's! Anyway Jay dropped me off at the Westin and I got settled in. My plan was to help with set up, but once I checked in with Hank Eddley, everything was set already set up. So I got together with Kyle, Chris and Tim C for dinner at the Brickyard. Prior to us going to get something to eat we decided to pick up our swag bags that you get for attending Adepticon. Below is the this years haul. For the $30.00 badge, you get a a lot of cool stuff if your one of the first folks to sign up, its always nice to get this stuff.

Swag Bag!

So Thursday was spent wandering around Adepticon to see some of the games going on. One thing that I was a bit disappointed in was the vendor hall was not open on Thursday, it was only open Friday thru Sunday. The only events I signed up for was the Legends of the Old West tournament and a Gladiator ad Chariot racing game. The LotOW was scheduled for Thursday night, so I had time to catch up with old friends while wandering around.

LotOW Little Bighorn game.

40K room in full swing and smell!

Battletech ad other Demo games.

So after wandering around and helping my buddy Merle out with his LotOW game, I headed up to get my Posse for the LotOW tourney. Merle was running this event and we had 8 players signed up and he brought three tables worth of terrain, most of it being from 4Ground miniatures. Let me say this, I have to order me some of those buildings! They are amazing and I will be buying me a few in the near future.

The LotOW tourney was a 4 round game without us doing any sort of upgrades and it was a blast of a good time. Each person I played was great and everyone had an awesome attitude, it was very laid back and casual. In the end, I had two wins and two draws and ended up taking home the Best Sportsman award, which I got a set of cool laser cut counters, thanks Merle for running a great event. In fact I had such a great time, I will be rounding up the guys here for a few games of LotOW.

Merle aka Mother setting up!

 Friday morning started with me lending my help with the Lord of the Rings event for the paint judging. There were a few that were heads above most and I had to look at 6 of the top leaders. All in all it was awesome to be a judge and being able to sit and really look at the top contenders, in the end my buddy Jeremy squeaked it out, but it was very close (something like 1 point difference amongst the leaders).

Kyle Toth Game of Thornes

Jeremy's Orc leader

Jeremy's display board.

Besides helping with judging, I sat down with my buddy Merle for lunch and I asked him to show me the Gladiator game that he and Jon Cleaves of DGS games came up with. The rules are based off the Freeblades system from DGS games. I never had an urge to do Gladiator games, but I thought why not try it out. I had a blast and actually won a copy of the rules and it looks to be a great little system that I may be getting into.

Freeblade Arena

After the Gladiator game, I wandered around talking to folks and just taking in Adepticon. Friday night though was set for the Legends of the High Seas game and the Guns April. There was only one problem, both games were due to start around the same time! Since I promised my buddy John Humphrey I would help out with the LotHS game, I had to bow out of the Guns of April game.

We had 20 people show up for a huge Pirate game that John set up, and all I can say is that we were the loudest group in the room and everyone was having a blast. Oh and there was a lot of Rum going around to those that were of age.

Pirate Captains and Navy men gathering for the game!

Battle is joined and so is the rum!

So while Pirates were being Pirates, at the other end of the table the Gentleman of the Guns of April Crew were getting under way. First let me say, the buildings were gorgeous and they had that Egyptian feel to them. The painting was perfect on these and all the cool little details (pillows, planters, rugs, drapes) just put this table over the top for me. It had just enough detail to draw you in but not too much to make it cluttered.

A Beautiful table!

Details, details, details!

Here comes the cavalry! Sort of!

Turks on a shopping spree (pic from Dave Taylor)

Hey Whats over there? (Pic from Dave Taylor)

As you can see from the pictures above, my Turks were in action even though I was not. I loaned out my troops so another guy could play and I have to say, I was worried that my painting would not measure up to some of the folks there (Dave T, Jamie W, Dave P, Merle D and a few others). But Dave Taylor assured me that my painting was up to par with the rest of the guys. In fact, Merle loved my Turks so much, they went home with him, I did a swap for some Flames of War models.

Saturday came quickly since I was up until around two in the morning with the Pirate game and watching Vikings on TV when I got to the room. So I was scheduled to play a game of Chariot racing with Merle. This was another Freeblades game and it was fun even though I was the first one to wreck!

Wow, who was the first wreck? Me!

The rest of my Saturday was spent with Kyle and he offered to take me shooting. That was a nice change to get out of the hotel. We went out and threw out about 500 rounds and it was a blast. It was nice to shoot real weapons instead of rolling dice for weapons. Later that night Kyle, Jay, Suzi and I went to dinner at Harry Caray's thanks to my boss and work. A great time was had over dinner.

Sunday started early (6:00am) as I headed down to start setting up the Bolt Action tournament. I had 20 folks signed up so I needed to set up 10 tables. Good thing was that a few folks stepped up to supply terrain.

After an hour of stressing out, the players started to wander down and get checked in. One problem was that out of 20 players, we only had 12 show up! This was a bit of a disappointment but I rolled with it and made the best out of the low attendance. The players all seemed to have a good time and hopefully they will all be back next year.

Battle commences!

Terrain from GitD

Japanese on the move!

Jeremy's Airfield

John Humphrey Red Devils

John's armoured car!

After the event, we had the breakdown of the con and Aaron, Jamie and Myself started taking everything down. We spent about an hour and a half breaking everything down and getting it all put away. We then had the task of packing Jamies car with a ton of stuff.

Once we had finished, Merle and the DGS crew invited me to go see Captain America Winter Soldier at the 3D IMAX screen right next door. I then hung out with Merle, Chris and Jay until I headed off to my room to get packed up to head home. So that was pretty much my Adepticon trip in a nutshell. If you have never been to Adepticon, it is a must see. If your bold and strong enough, I would suggest stepping up to help out, they always need the help.

TK