New Year and what I hope to do...

 Well Friends 2020 is behind us, about fricking time! Now I sit here wondering what the new year will bring for my hobby, lets place some ideas here:

Model Railroading - Well I want to continue working on my layout and getting my modules up and running for the club I am with. So far this is looking very good as of today I was working on a few rollingstock just today, so that's a plus already. At the end on 2020 I got all the track laid and now I am sourcing wire to get it all wired up, my plan is to have the NCE DCC system working by the end of February. Modules should be up sometime in March, I just finished paying my buddy for them so I now can actually start working on those.

FoW/TY/FoN - Well I would like to get back to Flames and need to get inspired to finish up a few units for the game for each of my armies that I have. I know Drunken Samurai will be happy to see this as he is usually the one I play the most.

Kill Team/ Necromunda - I really love these games, and want to get them back on the table in the new year. I had plans for building a Inquistor based Kill team, I may get back to that, we shall see.

FFoL - I love the Fistful of Lead games, at the end of October I purchased the Starfighters rules as well as a couple of token sets for the various games. I knoe Wiley games is going to be working on a Big Stompy Robot version as well as a Samurai game, both I am waiting on pins and needles for. So if these come out I will be picking up the rules and doing some of both!

Pulp - I yreally love the pulp gaming scene and love Pulp Alley and wanted to get this back on the table. I backed the 2nd edition rules and have them, I have models, I have terrain, just need to play some games.

Gaslands - I really miss playing GL, I have to date built 50 cars, when you only really need about three cars! I have built some terrain and really need to get this back on the table. I love the game and really do miss racing around the wasteland and hope that I can get it back onto the table this year.

Warlord of Erehwon - This was another late comer last year and I really love this game as well, it scratches the itch for fantasy. I would love to get it back onto the table this year.

Bolt Action - Well I only got in a few games of Bolt last year, I really love it and want to play it more often. I bought terrain for South Pacific buildings and want to make an effort to get in more Pacific games this year with Drunken.

Black Powder - Well I want to get this back on the table and as I write this I am thinking of the new Epic scale warlord is going to come out with and I may jump on getting into it. Still have not decided yet, but I am thinking about it.

Stargrave - So, Osprey announced a futuristic game called Staregrave from the same author of Frostgrave. I am very interested in seeing this and if its any good may go out on a limb and purchase it, really depends on the state of affairs with the world.

So there you go, some hopes for 2021, we shall see how this rolls out.

TK

The Sea Duck

Well, 

This took longer then I thought, but I got the Sea Duck completed last night. This is a Lindberg 1/48th Grumman Goose kit which I will use for Pulp gaming. if your old enough you will recognize this plane from the Tales of the Golden Monkey series that used to be on TV back in the 1980's.

1/48th scale kit

This kit is a fairly simple kit and the detail is not that great, but as a gaming piece, its perfect and the price is very reasonable, I think I paid $15.00 including shipping.

Built in only about an hour, that's how simple of a kit it is.

As I was going to be using this as a gaming piece, I assembled the entire kit in about an hour and even glued in the windows as I would paint over them. The kit has no detail inside, so that was a major reason I would paint over the windows.

All built and ready for the paint. 

I sprayed the entire model in a nice looking gray from Tamyia (actual IJN grey). I then waited a week for it to dry and then masked off the areas to be painted black and shot that color on. I wanted to use all rattle cans for this project. Once I let that dry, I cam back in and hand painted the cowls red with thin coats of Reaper Red. I then painted up the engine and washed it with strong tone wash.

At this point I realized that I sis not do a great job of masking off the aircraft and some of the black bleed through, no worries I thought, I would just touch up and color match the areas. Well that did not work and now I had different colors. I contemplated re shooting the plane and masking off the areas (cowlings) in the grey, but after thinking about it, I decided to use Reaper Blitzkrieg Grey (from the CAV line of paints) to repaint the aircraft to more of a white color by hand. Now being a gamer, I am used to that, but was worried about it as I use thin coats of paint and when I started on it I thought I messed it up even more. So I went to bed and hoped that the plave got lost in the Bermuda triangle or something.  

Looks much better!

Well after sleeping on it, I went back to the plane and started another coat of paint, this time it went much better as the first coat was not covering it completely but the second coat was. This gave me hope and I pressed on. I touched up the black areas that I had made a mess on and finished the windows. Now I am happy to say its completed and doesn't look to bad (still not perfect, but as a game piece it works).

Nice clean lines

So now all I had to do was come up with a name, which I decided that it would be called The Sea Duck (from a animated TV show) and came up with a back story for the pilot, Jonathan Harrington, dashing explorer, daring treasure hunter and all around good guy!

This was supposed to be a quick project, but it lasted longer then I had planned, but its nice to call it done and now I can move onto other projects.

TK 

2019 Fortune Cookie Goals

2019 Fortune Cookie Goals

Okay, so time to set down some goals for my hobby for this year, as always, it’s a great way for me to see what I did not do. Maybe it should be 2019 Fortune Cookie Goals. So here goes:

Fantasy – Well I plan to continue playing AoS and I have decided that I will focus on learning the rules better as well as understanding my army, the Flesh Eaters. And as of writing this, GW has announced that a new box set is coming out to feature Skaven and Flesh Eaters! Hopefully that will mean cards for units and a updated army book! The new box set looks like more of what I have already except for a new Abhorrent King model, but I am sure there will be cards included. I have already reached out to a local Skaven player about swapping out my skaven stuff for his Flesh eaters stuff.

I would still like to get Frostgrave onto the table, Robert & I really like the game, but not many of our other friends do, so I may have to come to terms that it will not hit the table, but I will still try to get it there.

Shadespire was bought and played last year and I purchased a few more expansions for it, so this will continue to be played in the new year.

Warhammer Quest will still be played this year, my goal of having almost all the models painted is almost there. And my local players are really digging playing this old school dungeon crawl game, especially when I supply it all.

I have been asked about Lord of the Rings and if I plan to get the new rules. The reality is that only Robert, my son & I still play or have stuff. The fact is I still have all my old books and a few armies left, if I do anything with it this year, it will be using the older rules in one of games here and there.

Sci Fi – Well at the end of last year I decided to get back into 40k and bought my first Space Marine army, the Blood Angels. I got as far as getting the start collecting box assembled as well as the Space Hulk terminators painted (which caused me to buy the start collecting box). So this year I want to get the game to the table, I know Robert is waiting for me to ask for a game, which may be within the next few weeks, so it looks like 40K is back.

Necromunda was another last year sleeper that took us all by storm, I see this being played more this year as well and GW announced so new models coming out as well as weapon packs for gangs. I also need to get my Death Ray Designs wall set painted, so that Robert & I can have a truly large set up for Necro and for Kill Team.

Robert for Christmas bought me the Kill Team rules, so the plan is to play that this year, I would like to use my Death Ray Designs walls for some games which fits with GWs announcement of kill Team Arena which looks like Kill team on a Necro board. So I may be buying that game when it comes out in the near future.

I also see Speed Freaks being played from time to time as Robert and I both have everything painted for it, I see this as more of a side line game or drinking game. In the same vein, I have Gaslands and would like to get this to the table this year as well. I just need to figure the rules out and start pushing it around the table.

I would also like to get more games of Space Hulk to the table, the terminators are all painted, and I need to start working on the Genestealers for the game. My problem is I need to decide on a paint scheme and stick with it, hopefully I can have a fully painted Space Hulk game by the end of 2019.

Modern – This covers stuff like Bolt Action and Flames, so with that being said there are a few things I want to get done this year. First being Bolt Action, I just finished painting my 1500 point IJA army and I want to get it to the table as well as add a few more items to the army. I also want to do some sort of campaign with Bolt Action. Robert and I just bought the Operation Market Garden book so we will be looking at doing that sometime this year.

For Flames, at the end of 2018 I purchased a Syrian force for Fate of the Nation, so I would like to get that to the table as well as get all my tanks painted for it. I also would like to include a few more items for the army as well.

I would like to get Flames of War to the table again, I really do miss pushing my tanks around my North Africa boards, so I will try to get that back to the table.

Historical – This covers just about anything not covered above. I want to get my ACW stuff back on the table for Black Powder, Robert & I both have tried BP with a brigade or two to a side and it was great fun. So, I would like to use what I have painted.

Fistful of Lead will be back on the table again this year, I will be running a few demo games at AZ Game Fair, so this should be easy to accomplish in the new year.

Cruel Seas was purchased at the end of last year, so I want to get it onto the table this year. I have the starter set, just need to assemble and paint and should be smooth sailing.

Pulp Alley is always on the list for doing, although its been missing for a few years, but I would like to get it back onto the table this year as well.

Purchasing – There are many items that I have my eye on and it looks like GW will be getting the most of it yet again, all I can say is I will try to stay focused on what I buy.  But as any gamer will tell you, its hard to stay focused with all the new shiny things coming out. But in the very near future will be items for AoS & 40K.

So there you go, my plans or Fortune Cookies for the new year, we shall see what happens…

TK

GW Strikes Back!

So, another year has come and gone, so it’s time for the yearly look back to see what I got done. So, let’s take a look at what the goals were for 2018:

CAV – So this year I went with Talon Games to Adepticon to run CAV games, I painted up a few CAVs and the only games I got in where at Adepticon, I did get a few more CAV’s painted up, but do to work infringing on hobby time, I had to pull back on my commitment to writing for Talon, I hate when real life interferes with Hobby time. The 28mm Dictator is still awaiting to be built and painted as well as a ton of CAV’s. I will work on them when in the mood. So overall, I barely passed with CAV this year but I did have some effort completed.

Bolt Action – So I wish I could say I got a lot of games in of Bolt, but I think I only got in about four games. Now Robert & I did finish up the Bocage terrain we were working on for the Point 213 game and we did get it on the table. The game was one sided and the Brits got the major win. It was nice to see a project that we have been working for about 10 years get completed. I also started working on a new army, IJA Japanese for plans to do some Pacific gaming. I got the models assembled and for most of the year they have sat in the box until about two weeks ago when I started painting them. This past weekend I was able to get 500 points of stuff painted and Robert & I played our first 2^nd Edition game! We have been apprehensive to doing the newer version, but after this past weekend, not much has really changed. So with only a few games and a very big project completed I would say that I passed for 2018.

Blood Bowl – Well I ran my first ever Blood Bowl event at the beginning of the year, the Taco Bowl! I did get a couple of teams painted and I had plans to attend the Grumble Bowl at IO but could not attend. I also have been keeping up on the Spike magazines and been picking up teams here and there. I love Blood Bowl, but I just don’t get that much time to play. So this was a passing year for Blood Bowl.

Warhammer Quest – So I continued to run games of Quest this year, painted up a ton of figures and created some cool scenarios for the players. I even got a chance to play the rerelease of the game that Robert picked up, I prefer the older version, but there were a few things I will port over to the older version from the newer one (pass through for one!). So, I have to say Quest was a huge success this year, so passed with flying colors!

 Space Hulk – Well the goal was to have a fully painted Hulk game, well I only got the Terminators painted up. I did get a few games in, but overall that was about it. Now because of Hulk though, I will be working on a brand new 40K army, Blood Angels, but that’s for another post! So I would say I failed on getting this completed this year. But I don’t feel too bad with what I did get completed.

Frostgrave – Well this is a huge fail this year. About the only thing I did was by the Spell cards that came out. I kept wanting to get it to the table, but other games took the spot. I love Frostgrave but there is only so much gaming time in a year.

Saga – Well we did get a new version, and I ordered it from my local shop back in the beginning of the year, well I just got my copy of the rules about a month ago, due to the supplier being out of stock. I also had ordered the Dark Age supplement with the new battle boards, but that has not come in. Because the lack of getting the rules, Saga fell of the table and did not get back onto it! So, this was an epic fail for this year.

Black Powder – Well this was a huge success; Robert & I played a couple of smaller WAB sized games of BP ACW and then we did our huge ACW game. While it did not hit the table much, it sure did hit the paint table, I painted up a whole brigade of Union troops this year for the big game. So once again while not played a lot, it was a huge pass on this one.

Other Games – This was not on the list, but there were a few games that hit the table this year that I had not planned for, one being Necromunda. I painted up three gangs (Van Saar, Escher & Genestealer Cult) and played in a campaign for about 6 sessions. I also purchased the Death Ray Designs hallway set for the game and picked up the core game, each Gang War and finally the two big rulebooks. For a game that was not on the radar, it got a lot of attention this year.

Age of Sigmar was also another game that was not on the radar and got a bunch of play time this year. I painted up a huge Flesh Eaters army that I game with and purchased the main rules and army book. I am still struggling with this game, I want to love it, but I am not doing well with it. I need to spend more time with the rules other than the few hours before I play a game.

Shadespire is a late entry to this year and I have gotten in a few games and will continue to move forward with it. I did the skirmish feel and small model count of this board/card game with minis.

Tanks also saw the table a bunch of times and I purchased and painted up a bunch of new vehicles for the game. It all was because I introduced my brother to the game and we played a few times. I also purchased the Modern Tanks game due to having a blast with the WW2 set.

I also got in a few games of Fistful of Lead this year which has quickly become my new favorite Old West game rules, its quick, fast and deadly. I also picked up a bunch of new old west figures for this game as well as a few other supplements.

So there you have it, what I did for 2018, overall I did very well, this was truly the Year GW Strikes back for me. Do I regret it, no, I have had a ton of fun gaming and working on new projects and playing all the games!  So, I look forward to 2019 and what that brings. Merry Christmas to you all, I will see you at the start of 2019!

TK

Point 213 in 28MM

So,

About ten years ago Drunkensamurai and I had this grand idea to play a historical scenario for the battle of Point 213 during the Normandy campaign. The Battle was the German 101. Schwere SS-Panzerabteilung of four Tiger 1's against the British 4th County of London Yeomanry with at least 17 tanks. The battle in a nutshell had the four Tigers ambushing the British that had stopped along a road in column to conference since they did not see any German activity all day. This however changed as the Tigers unleashed hell on them and surprised the British column virtually wiping them all out.

It didn't help that Battlefront put up a PDF of the battle for Flames of War with a nice map and detailing of the armored units that fought in the battle. So Drunken and I both agreed that this would be a cool game to do in 28mm on a 8'x8' table. At the time though, there were not many good WW2 vehicles on the market in 1/56th scale. So we decided on using Tamiya 1/48th scale tanks, they fit in better with the mostly Black Tree Design forces we had, so off we went buying tanks.

Tamiya 1/48th Firefly

Tamiya 1/48th Cromwell

I got as far as collecting the two tanks above, Drunken had a couple of more tanks then me, but right about the time we were buying these vehicles is when Japan had the serious earthquake and tsunami. This caused problems for distributors and it became tough to get Tamiya models at a good price. So we shelved the project for a later date and knew we would come back to this project. Well as these things happen, we never did anything with it and just kept the project shelved until earlier this year.

You see, earlier this year I decided that it was time to liquidate my 1/48th scale armor for more of the 1/56th scale plastic armor kits that companies like Rubicon and Warlord have out. It made it tough to mix 1/48th tanks with 1/56th tanks of the same type, so I sold off all my 1/48th scale stuff to a local friend. With the funds I decided to replace all my existing models I sold in the new scale along with a few other kits. That's when Drunken and I started talking about reviving the Point 213 game again. He committed to replacing his tanks to the new scale and we started talking about doing this project once more. But we were looking at least 23 vehicles and that was a bit steep in pricing for us when your talking $30.00 a tank. So we happened to be talking to another friend and he said he would help out with the game by purchasing some of the tanks for the game.

Drunkens British armor

  So now with another sucker lucky gamer joining us, we set out to acquire all the models needed for the game. Each one of us would build one build at least one British troop of tanks being one Sherman VC Firefly and three Cromwell tanks. Drunken and I purchased the Tigers and Drunken picked up a couple of other vehicles and tanks. All of the vehicles are Warlord kits, I had picked up a Rubicon and Warlord Tiger, but will be picking up one more Warlord Tiger to keep it all Warlord models.

Rubicon Tiger and Warlord Tiger

So with that goal in mind, my wife got me a belated birthday gift of one Warlord Firefly and three Warlord Cromwell's. They arrived last night and I jumped straight in to assembling the Firefly, which I have to say was a great little kit to put together.

Warlord Firefly!

So with that, we are only missing three tanks (Cromwell CS tanks) that Drunken will be picking up in the very near future. So last weekend we got out what tanks we had at the time and play tested the game in our local shop. The response we got to the play test game was amazing, people were blown away by the number of tanks (which was only half!) we had on the table. One Flames of War player thought we were playing Flames in 28mm and absolutely loved the look of the table and the idea.

8'x4' table!

Cromwells running away from the Tigers!

But one thing that we both realized after the play test game, we need terrain, lots and lots of terrain, specifically Bocage! We are estimating we will need at least 48 linear feet of bocage sections, each section will be 6" long, which means about 96 pieces of terrain! Luckily another friend of ours just did up a few bocage pieces for our local shop and we will be using his technique of using insulation foam, Woodland Scenic course ground foam and lots and lots of glue!

So there you have it, another big project lined up for 2017, so stay tuned...

TK
 

Pulp at Rincon

So,

It has been a few months here at Cursed Treasures, where did the time go? Well I am still here and still going strong with gaming. We have been busy moving my mother in law out of her old house and into her new one, so gaming has taken a back seat sort of.

So what have I been up to, well Mike (from Da Green skins blog) and I have been running a few games of Pulp Alley. In fact we are going to run a few games down in Tucson at Rincon 2015 and we will run two types of Pulp Games.

The first set of games will be my Over Due Book Hunt which I ran at Adepticon.

The second set of games are going to be Gothic horror/ Halloween game. Basic idea is that there are 4 leagues, Vampires, Werewolves, Mummies and Monsters. The good thing was I have all the figures and I only needed to paint four figures (or so I thought). I also had two Garden of Morr GW sets. So I set out to paint up everything. Good news is that I got it all painted up and now I just need to do some computer work for the games. So here is the board, excuse the lighting, I was trying to go for a creepy shadow effect with the light, didn't work out like I hoped.

Halloween board.

Another angle

Now here are the four leagues for the game, first up are the Mummies. These are all Westwind miniatures from their Gothic Horror line.

Mummies!

Next up are the Monsters, Which the Monsters and the Bride are all Westwind miniatures. The Doctor is from Pulp Figures from Bob Murch.

The Doctor and his creations.

Here are the Werewolves which are all from Westwind Gothic horror range, I also use them for Emire of the Dead.

Werewolves of London, wahoooo

 And lastly are the Vampires which are all Westwind miniatures, you may have figured out I like the Westwind figures, they have an almost cartoon sort of feel to them.

Vampires

So there you go, I hope to get back on the blog band wagon, although I have started using Twitter which my handle is @TimTJKulinski which is pretty quick to upload pictures.

TK

The Guns of Adepticon!

Well,

Forgive me for the pun of the title, this is for a reason. If you are not familiar with The Guns of April site, go take a look. It is a group of fellow gamers that have a passion for putting on some spectacular large games at Adepticon. This year I have been invited to participate in a series of skirmish games set in Alexandria (Egypt) in 1800-01. Based on tales of Napoleon's expedition to the Nile Delta, and the uncovering of the Rosetta Stone, we aim to have each member bring along a small warband (8-15 models) to take part in some wonderfully evocative battles. The game is inspired by a article by Steve Dake on the Rosetta Stone published in WI294 and the rules they are using are none other than Legends of the High Seas!


With that, I decided to do something a little different from the other guys, I decided I wanted to do some Ottoman Turks and Brigade Games had just the right models. So here are a few shots of my Ottoman Turks, I am still working on the flesh, but you get the idea.

There you go, my Ottoman Turks for The Guns of April game at Adepticon 2014. Oh and it just dawned on me that I have a month to go and I just realized that I need to paint up my LotOW gang for the LotOW tournament. Man this month is going to be busy!

TK

Happy Pulp Day!

Okay

So I forgot to post an idea that I was going to try for the new year, so I thought why not let folks in on it. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I love the Pulp theme/era and I am going to try to do a post once a week about something Pulp related. So that might be thoughts of games played, inspiration ideas, terrain projects, figures painted or whatever my Pulpy brain can think of. So I declare that Wednesdays will now be known here as "Pulpdays". Hopefully folks will enjoy it, I still plan to post about other projects so don't run away in terror just yet.

So to get this Pulpdays started, I have decided that for the next few months I will paint one Pulp figure I own. This should be inspiration for me to get Pulp Alley on the table and it will help with getting my backlog of figures painted. So without further ado here is the first of this crazy project I am about to undertake!

Now as I said in October of last year, my wife purchased six packs of the Pulp Miniatures for my birthday. Since I wanted to paint all of them, I did a very scientific method of picking the first model, I closed my eyes and reached into the box and grabbed the first one. Whichever figure I grabbed would dictate which pact that I would paint up over the next five weeks. Well the winner was pack# PHP14 Rugged Archaeologists!

Pulp Miniature pack PHP 14 Rugged Archaeologists

The lucky figure was the second one from the left, which his name will be Professor Chapman who is named after a friend of mine I used to work with back on the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland. This figure looks like my old friend Chappie and I could see him standing on the dock telling me to "Move it up skip" (a Disneyland term to move our Jungle Boats up to the load position). So here is the finished product!

Professor Chapman

Total paint  time on this figure was about three hours and was very nice and easy to paint. I really like how the figure turned out and had a lot of fun to painting it up. I highly recommend Pulp Miniatures, they have very little flash or mold lines and are very characterful.

So there you go, my first installment of Pulpdays, there will be more to come...

TK

A Strange Day

So,

Today was a strange day, you see Rob and I were going to throw down a game of Bolt Action today. He rolled over here around 10:00 this morning with his stuff and I had cleared the table off to play. But our discussion was not about Bolt Action, but of our up coming Black Powder ACW game. We talked for about an hour or so and it was all about the ACW game. I then told him that I wanted to play Bolt Action, but would rather be playing Black Powder.

It seems that the Bolt Action game is just.. well just okay. Both of us agree that it is a good game, but it has us both feeling like we are missing something from the game. I mean it just doesn't really have anything that sort of grabs you and wants to make you play. I don't know, I want to be excited about this game, but it is just not doing it. Now when I played Battelground, Arc of Fire and some others, those games made me want to play more games. But Bolt Action has me feeling like there should be more, sort of like drinking a flat soda, it taste the same, but is flat and therefore not the same.

So instead of playing a game, we did an early lunch and hit up two local shops, Crusaders Retreat and Imperial Outpost Games. Rob picked up a Wargames Factory box set of Vikings and I did not find anything even though I had money to spend.

Also tonight seems to be a bit strange as well, for the first time in a while I am able to work on a few things for myself instead of for others (the next commission was primed and drying). So I decided to work on a little surprise belated Christmas/Birthday gift for my brother. Way back when, I used to play AD&D and we had a nice small little group of players. Well as a prerequisite for our AD&D games, I had the players buy miniatures of the characters. Well that was a long time ago and I just recently (last year) found the old metal figures. So I decided last year that I would re-paint them up and give them to my brother as a gift. Well I got busy and it never happened.

But about a month ago I figured I should try again to get this little diorama completed for my brothers birthday on June 26th. So here is a little shot of what got done tonight as well as what I have planned. First up is the overall diorama, it is mounted on a Gailforce 9 60mm base and has five figures on it, representing four characters coming down a spiral staircase and one monster ready to pounce on them (as it always seemed to happen in games).

To Boldly Go

First up is the spiral stairway that my friend John over at Plastic Legions did up for me out of Hirst Arts castings. I e-mailed John the week before Adepticon to see if he had anything like this lying around. Luckily for me he did and he packed it up and sent it out to me, thanks John!!

Got to have stairs!

Next up is my buddy Don Gow's character, Dijion Boarhog, a fighter that seemed to carry everything he ever found with him on his character sheet. This model is an old Citadel miniature thief model from the mid 1980's. The model used to be mounted on a old Hex base and once I took it off the base, I noticed just how small the figure was next to the old Ral Partha models. So I cut his boots off at the knee and added to boots from an old Bretonnia archer and pinned them onto the Dijon here, could not have the fighter being smaller than the elves!

Dijon Boarhog with some new shoes!

Next up came my brothers character, Krrf Oakleaf who was a thief.(Krrf is the name of a drug from the story Thieves World). This is an old Ral Partha model from the mid 1980's as well. Krrf did not need anything but to be removed from his cast on metal base. Oh and you will notice that I have already stripped the models some what because the paint jobs were terrible. I should have taken pictures of them before I stripped them, but that was done last year, trust me, they were bad!

Krrf in all his glory

Next up is Pathos the Cleric, This was another character that my buddy Don ran along with Dijon. In the game, he was the healer and pack mule since that was how Don played him. Got extra stuff, give it to Pathos, he did not care, heck his deity was Boccob, known as the Uncaring. It was funny, when Don would ask me (the DM) by having Pathos pray to his god, I would always give him vague answers since he did not care! This model was from the Ral Partha 3 stage pack and I still have the other two figures from the pack.

Pathos, the great uncaring pack mule!

Lastly we have Blackmoor, a dark elf Fighter/Magic user played by my buddy Jeff Ott. This is another old Ral Partha figure and Jeff wanted to play something different, so he asked if he could play a dark elf. I think he started playing this character right before the Forgotten Realms books came out about Drizzt, I can't remember now. This is another one of the Ral Partha 3 stage models as well.

Blackmoor being all magical!

Last figure on this little diorama is an old Grenadier Beholder out of box 2012 Dwellers Below set. It is one of the first monster miniatures I used in a game and looks perfect hiding under the stairs, plus it fit under there as well. I picked this model up in the mid 1980's as well and it is an oldie but a goodie.

I see you!

So there you go, you get to see what I am working on for myself right now, stay tuned as I will be posting pictures up along the way of the painting and finished diorama. I just hope I can get it done by June 26th...

TK

Samaria Bound!

 So,

It looks like I will be headed for Samaria very soon! If you are not familiar with Samaria, well it is the setting for the Brom inspired game called Dark Age Apocalypse by the folks over at Cool Mini or Not. My buddy Dave over at Crusaders Retreat finally talked me into taking a look at this game. So yesterday after visiting with Dave, I came home with the main rulebook.  

 I have to mention the quality of the book, first it is a hard covered book, comes in at 96 pages and is full color all for $19.99, a certain Games company Workshop should take notice and learn from this! The rules are pretty straight forward and the main rulebook has just the rules, not much fluff, just the rules. This nice since you do not have to dig through fluff to find rules. So far, I am liking what I see, I have been wanting a new Sci Fi game, this looks good and could be it.

Besides the Core Rulebook, I also picked up the hefty Forclist book. This book, like the Main rules, is hard back, full color and is 356 pages of coolness!! This book has all the background and descriptions of all the first 5 factions that you can play. I am just digging into this book but I think I may have found the faction that I want to play, the Brood! Basically this faction is a genetically altered caste of humans that have been left to evolve into what they are now. The main reason I want to do this faction, is the cool looking art work and the cool miniatures.

Here are just two of the Brood models that sold me on the game! As a painter, I am really excited about painting these figures and putting my own spin on them.

Along with the minis, I am sure I will be inspired to do some cool terrain. It has been a long time since I felt excited about a game and I am looking forward to journeying to Samaria!

TK

DAK Reinforcements Arrive

Okay sports fan,

It's Supper Bowl Sunday and I could care less about the game today, so I decided to finish up a few tanks for my DAK army for Flames of War. So here is what I got done, first up a few Plastic Soldier Company Pz IV's, which is one of my favorite models. These guys are set up as Pz IV F2, a nice little unit for the DAK.

Plastic Soldier Company Pz IV's

 Next up, is my last PzIIf from Battlefront, this make 5 total tanks for my army. I also have a fondness for Panzer II's and these little guys are great in my DAK force when I am doing a straight up Africa list.

Battlefront Pz IIf

 Last but not least is the dreaded Panzer VI Tiger! You can see this model from my previous post here. I had the chance to play with a Tiger last weekend in a game of FoW, I only used one, but that was enough! I think this model had something like 6 kills in the game and it lasted the whole game. Now I see why FoW German players like this tank! Being a Historical nut, I will only have two in my DAK army collection and will not bust them out all that often, since there were only 6 Tigers in Tunisia. Still it is a cool looking model!

Plastic Soldier Company Pz VI Tiger

 Here is a group shot of all the tanks finished today, all but the the Tiger were half way painted, so really it was pretty quick to finish them up. I really enjoyed getting these units finished up and look forward to getting them onto the table.

Group Shot

 So yesterday DrunkenSamurai and I took the day off from gaming and decided to do a little shopping here in the Valley of the Sun. We hit Game Depot, were I scored a box company box of American Para troopers for 35% off retail price. Then we were off to Empire Games were we looked over there small amount of FoW products. After that we headed over to Crusaders Retreat since DS had never been there. We then ended the trip at Imperial Outpost games were I picked up a box of PSC M4A2 and a Sherman III Objective Marker. With the purchase of the PSC Sherman's, I now have enough vehicles for my British 8th Army Tank force I want to build.

The Next project, British Armour in the Desert!

So there you go, this is what I have/will be working on for this Super Bowl Sunday...

TK

2012 comes to an end, bring on the New Year!

Well,

It is that time of year again and it is time to look back at what was and how I did on the gaming front. So without further ado here what I wanted to do met up with how I actually did.

Terrain
Well I had grand plans to do some cool looking terrain for a couple of projects, WW2, Old West and a Caribbean town for Pirates. Well, this was an epic fail! Now I did help my buddy Robert work on some roads for WW 2 games and I did paint up two buildings for GitD and Pulp games, but other than that was it.

Games
First off I wanted to get Legends of the Old West back on the table this year, and once again this was an epic fail. Besides talking about playing, that is about as far as we got. A few friends did buy a couple of buildings, but nothing else happened. In fact my son and I were just talking about it how we both failed on this. Also I wanted to do a LotOW day, but that did not happen either.

One success has been Bolt Action from Warlord, I got the game in September and have gotten in 4 games, one of them today (I lost!) and this looks like the game for 2013, but more on that later.

Flames of War stayed on the table and Robert and I got in a ton of games as well as I played in my first Flames of War tournament. In fact I think FoW was the most played game for 2012. I completed my third army (American Infantry) and feel pretty comfortable with the game.

As some know, Last February saw the last Gathering in the Desert for Lord of the Rings. After 5 years of running this event I decided to hang up my hat of organizer for LotR. Some were sad to see it go away, others said it was time. There has been talk of running something else, but we will see.

Lord of the Rings went cold for me this year, after GitD, I was spent and disliked where GW was taking the game. Most recently GW released the Hobbit game, a revamp of the LotR game. But due to the crazy pricing, I can not justify spending the money on the game anymore, in fact GW has become way overpriced and I am done with them, on to better things.

I also wanted to get Empire of the Dead to the table, did get in two games of it, but that is about as far as that got. Did get a few Werewolves painted and a few henchmen built, but than it got put on a shelf and that was that. I had plans to Demo the game at our local convention in February but the convention has been canceled, so no big demo for Empire of the Dead for now.

Lastly my buddy Mike and I had ideas of grandeur of doing a Blood Bowl tournament. I started the year with a Blood Bowl day on new Years day and it was a hit, hence the idea for a BB tournament. Well, do to some local issues with BB players, this idea sort of petered out. So fail on this.

Blog Stuff
Well I got an online award for the blog, I was nominated 3 times for the Liebster Award! This award was given to me as a way to bring attention to smaller followed blogs and it is nice to get a nod from peers on what I am doing.

So there you go, now lets look at the plans for 2013...


 Well with my divorcing of GW, I have found a new game company that seems to be hitting it out of the park with their games.

Bolt Action will be getting a ton of play since it is now my favorite WW2 28mm. I will be doing a challenge with three other buddies starting on New Years day so stay tuned for that. I also plan on working on terrain to go along with the WW2 gaming.

A Black Powder American Civil War game that Robert got to the table this year has got me committed to building a brigade of Confederates for another game. 

There has been talk of doing Hail Caesar games and since I have a Mongol army and a viking army just sitting, this could become reality rather soon. Seeing how Bolt Action and Black Powder are great games, I am sure HC will be as well.

I am looking at still doing some Old West and the inspiration is coming from a PS3 game, Red Dead Redemption. I got this video game for Christmas and it is giving me the itch to do some old west gaming. I am going to be play testing a friends Old West game so this will be perfect for this year.

Flames of War will be back this year since just today my buddy Robert just got a cool scenic piece that looks like Anzio. So perhaps we will get our act together and finally play a campaign using the FoW rules. Regardless we will be getting back to 15mm WW2.

So that just about does it for 2013, I am going to keep the list short and sweet and we will see how it shakes out for the new year. Robert and I have a saying, once we write it down on our blogs, it usually dose not happen, so I am trying something new this year, short and sweet. Happy New Year folks, see you in 2013...

TK

Wow, That's A Lot Of Lead!

Okay,

It seems that it has been awhile since I last posted, I have been busy with real life and I have not had much to talk about on the gaming front. But tonight that changes, you see a week ago I ordered a very large order from Old Glory Miniatures, and below you can see what I got in tonight.

Here is a break down of the order, on the left you will see Seven bags of Command Decision Panzer 38t tanks, this is the start of my 7th Panzer Army for Early War in Flames of War. For those who do not know, this was Rommel's "Ghost Division" in France and he was equipped with 38t tanks. Seven bags gets me 21 38t tanks, that is a few more than I need for the army, but if Flames of War ever gets around to doing a Operation Barbarossa list, these tanks will work out for that as well.

The lone Command Decision bag is a bag of 50 American Rifle men for my Operation Torch force for Mid War games of Flames of War. I ordered a bunch of stuff about a year and a half ago but was short one more bad of infantry men, now I have enough to finish out that army.

Now the Top row of Blisters are from West Wind Vampire Wars line and are the Vampire Counts pack 1, 2, 3 and 5 (I did not like the figures in pack 4). and all of these will be used for games of Empire of the Dead that I talked about in the last post.

The Second row of blisters are more West Wind figures and they are from the Gothic Horror line. They are Acolyte Vampires, Werewolves, Giant Werewolf, Nosferatu #2 and London Thugs. All of these will be used in games of Empire of the Dead as well.

Now I am just waiting for the Empire of the Dead rulebook to get here and I will then start building a few groups to run my friends through some games of EotD.

So there you go, a ton of lead and what you are going to be seeing in the next few weeks...

TK

What Was, What Is and What Will Be!

So,

It is that time of the year again where we all take a look back on what we did in our hobby for the year. I always love to look back to see just what I did over the year, because to be honest, I can't remember just what I did! So this year, I will look at what I did, what I am working on and where I intend to go. So lets take a look back shall we?

Lord of the Rings
Well once again this game seemed to be at the fore front of things. Gathering in the Desert 2011 went off without a hitch (except for the Ear Infection I had at the event!). Once again it got rave reviews from all that attended and everyone had a great time.

I also got invited to attend Games Workshops Throne of Skulls in Las Vegas (as a special invite for all the work I do for LotR) The only good things about ToS was getting to hang out with friends in Vegas and the fact that I got all of my Uruk-hai models painted.

This year I also convinced a couple of buddies (Rob, Jerry & Mike) to do a little painting challenge (Tale of Four LotR Gamers) and it was a great success! We each got 700 point new armies painted. In fact I got ALL of my Goblin models painted, that being well over 100 models!

I had planned on giving away my Easterling army to a buddies son, but as most teenage boys, he found girls more appealing and moved onto to that as opposed to playing with toy soldiers!

So what does 2012 mean for LotR, Well GitD 2012 is coming and I have been thinking of adding another Evil army, we will see. but 2012 will have more LotR in it for sure!

Legends of the Old West
Well I had ideas of grandeur of doing a Wild Bunch project with Rob using the LotOW rules. Well I got about as far with the project as blogging about it here and that was it. In fact Rob asked me a few weeks ago what happened with this and I was like "What Old West Project?". Wow totally blew this one!

Well I did do something drastic for my Old West gaming this year, I sold my Cowtown collection of buildings to the local shop. The reasoning was that I have a huge collection of Resin Old West buildings that I have been wanting to use. But the only problem was I kept pulling out the Cowtown buildings to use. So by selling this set it will hopefully get me to build and paint up the resin buildings, we will see.

Legends of the High Seas
So I actually got to play a few games of my own game this year. Over the summer my son wanted to play a few games. My buddy Jance and my son started a little campaign and actually got another guy to play. So there were a bunch of games played over the summer. Jance loved the game so much that he bought and painted his own Crew and also jumped into LotR as well.

I also started working on my Wicked Wench ship model a few weeks ago and it is almost ready for paint. it will be making the trip to Chicago to be used in the LotHS campaign game! And since I will be going to Adepticon in 2012, I plan to build and paint up a new Pirate Crew for said event. So LotHS will be played again in 2012!

Warhammer 40Kmunda
Well, this project was sort of worked on. I got in a few games of 40Kmunda with Jerry and we both loved it. Other than that, not much happened on this project. In fact 40K was not played as much this year as in the past. It dose not mean that I am done with this project (or 40K), in fact I am hatching a plan to do a War of Da Teeff project using the old Gorka Morka Rules. I am thinking of doing another Tale of Four Gamers sort of thing, but more on that later.

Gothic Horror/Pulp
Well I did move forward on this project, in fact I got a ton of figures painted for this. I even did a practice game with Jerry this year that was a blast. I had wanted to get the rest of the guys over to play, but the time got away from me.

Well 2012 will see me and Mike running a Pulp game at a local convention (Vul-con). So we will be running two games ( or Chapters). I will be using a modified Legends set of rules and I will be posting pics and details next month. So at least I did something for the Pulp/Horror gaming.

Other Gaming
Well this was a wide range of gaming mostly focused on WW2. The surprise game this year was the rise of Flames of War interest. In fact I played a ton of games of FoW with the rest of the guys. I actually got two armies finished up. I finished up my US Light Tank army as well as got my DAK German army finished. I actually bought a bunch of Plastic Soldier vehicles (Shermans and Half tracks). So FoW was the second most played game this year.

As for other games, I dabbled in a few new games (Infinity, Heavy Gear) but not enough to really keep my interest. Also Blood bowl has crept back onto the table (in fact as I write this I played a game just two days ago!) and it looks like it may be back strong for 2012. In fact I am running a small Blood Bowl tourney for a few guys and my son on January 1st, so we will see where it goes for 2012.

So what lies ahead?
Well, as last year, I think the theme will be Skirmish games again. Being a gamer for many many moons, I have decided that smaller games are the way of the future. So it will be interesting to see what happens and what my buddies are doing. So drop me a line telling me what your doing for 2012.

TK

Sail on the Horizon

So,

As most followers of this blog know, I usually make the trip out to Adepticon in Chicago. In years past I have run a few Legends of the High Seas Demos as well as a multi-player games. Well this year I got together with my friend John over at Plastic Legions and threw out the idea about running a LotHS mini campaign. You see John ran a campaign day for his regular game group awhile ago and I thought he would be the perfect person to pair up with for an event at Adepticon.

Well unfortunately it seems that I will not be able to make it out to Adepticon this year. But I still will be supporting John and his event from afar, so all is not lost. Now last year I was able to acquire a (Thanks to another friend Merle Dellinger) a Old Glory Miniatures 25mm Pirate ship, the Pirate Hunter.

Now one idea that I had for the campaign was to use two of these cool Old Glory Ships for the Boarding Action scenario from LotHS. John is up for it and has access to another ship in Chicago, so that means that my ship will need to make the trip out to Adepticon without me. That means that I need to assemble my ship and get it painted before Adepticon in April.

So as I un-boxed the beast that is the Pirate Hunter I noticed that there were no instructions and I could only find a few pictures of the model. So I thought I would document building this beast and getting it painted. So over the next few weeks I will post up shots of this thing as it gets built and painted.

So first up is the un-boxing of this huge ship, which I shall call the Wicked Wench, named after the Pirate ship in the original Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. The ship is made out of a high density foam and it comes with a bag of white metal parts, which I will get to later.


This thing is huge and has plenty of room on the decks for figures to move around on. Here is a shot with a few Artizan 28mm figures on it.


This ship measures out to be about 28 1/2 inches long, which is definitely a large ship in LotHS terms as well as just being plain big on the table top.


She is also 7 inches wide at the mid-ship and as you can see there is a lot of room, even taking into account that there will be 8 cannons on this part of the deck alone.

Here is the white metal parts that are included, it has 16 full cannons and 36 partial cannons to go below decks. It also comes with one decorative railing, 3 smaller railings with belaying pins, a capsin, 4 deck ladders, 1 ornamental lamp for the back of the ship and 3 sets of parts for the main masts along with wooden dowel for the actual masts. It also comes with one Helmsman with 4 separate heads so you can create a unique helmsman.

My only issue with this is that there is no instructions for anything. It would be helpful for at least some description of where items have to go. But if you know ships, it is pretty easy to guess where items belong. But other than that this a great model and will be an awesome ship for Legends of the High Seas games.

Next post on this will be assemble and preparing for paint.

TK

Isengard Takes Shape!

So,

Yesterday I started working on the new terrain modules for Gathering in the Desert 2011 and being inspired by a few of the tables I saw at the Mayhem in the Mountains event I came home wanting to build a Isengard table. Here is the board that gave me the inspiration to build a table for GitD 2011.

One thing that I have noticed while being a gamer and a builder of terrain is that terrain gets beaten up pretty badly. In fact I built a few terrain boards years ago for Imperial Outpost Games and it is starting to show it's age from constant use (sorry no pictures, just go to Imperial Outpost and take a look). So they have to be repaired pretty regularly.

The other thing that I have noticed is with 2'x4' modules is that they tend to move around while on the table. Players may bump them and they separate and models may move. I noticed this up in Parker at MitM.

So I set out to try to combat both of these problems with these new boards. Also these would be test boards for my Pirate town that I want to build (yes it is still planned!) So on Friday I went out to Home Depot & Lowes and picked up the necessary materials (4, 2'x4' MDF boards, 8 sheets of Dow Blue foam 2'x8'x1" and 8, 2"x2"x8' sticks of lumber). All in all it cost about $60.00 in materials.

I enlisted my good friend Mike Papa to help assemble these boards. Mike is in the wood working industry doing high end woodworking and he is precis about any woodworking. So early Saturday morning I met him at his shop so we could start construction. The first thing Mike said to me was "You bought the wrong size lumber!" As soon as he said that I knew what he was talking about, you see I wanted the sides to be 2" tall since I wanted to be able to carve into the foam and I bought 2"x2" which are more like a 1 3/4" tall! So before we started anything we went back to Lowes to return the lumber and pick up 8, 2"x4"X8". Now Mike had a plan, that we would cut down the 2"x4"s into the right size that we needed.

Now the process of cutting down and milling down the 2"x4"s took us about an hour or so. Once we had the right size and straight lumber we got to assembly pretty quickly. Remember when I said that Mike is precis about his woodworking, well he treated this like a piece of high end furniture. We trimmed and did a rough sanding on the boards and they are dead on straight and level, it almost a shame that I am going to make a mess of these when I texture the boards!

Anyway, here is a completed shot of 2 of the boards done and awaiting blue foam. So now I have four 2'x4' terrain modules for use.


Now as Mike and I were assembling these, I told him about the issues of the boards moving and what would he suggest. Mike said we could do two things, first we could use biscuits to keep the boards from moving, so he pulled out a biscuit cutter and we cut two slots for biscuits. Nice thing is that these fit nice and snug and keep the boards from moving.


And the second thing was to attach a few hasps to lock all the boards together. With the combination of the biscuits and the hasps, these boards do not move at all.


One thing I was concerned about was the weight and these things only weigh about 4lbs each. Once the foam goes in and the groundwork I am guessing that these are going to come in at around 6lbs each, which is not too bad. The one thing that I would do different is to go with Mike's suggestion and use poplar wood instead of the fir 2"x4"s, it is a much harder wood and takes paint rather well.

So there you have it, Isengard is taking shape (sort of anyway) for GitD 2011, next up will be the laying down of the foam and the carving, so stay tuned.

TK