What does it take???

So I have been wondering about a few things lately and figured I would post them here.

Now as most of you folks know, I love Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game by Games Workshop. I love it so much that for the last three years I have run Gathering in the Desert, an Independent Grand Tournament for LotRSBG. What I am wondering is what does it take to get more folks into this game?

LotRSBG was considered one of Games Workshops "Big Three" core games while the movies were out. Now that the movies have come and gone, there does not seem to be much buzz about this game anymore. In fact even GW is lack luster in promoting it themselves, this is of course has to do with sales of the game I am sure. So we really can't blame GW for the reason why sales are down or their lack of support.

So what is it? I have been wondering this since 2001 when the game came out. I have been a cheerleader for this game since day one here in the valley. Heck Drunkensamurai and I were both screaming it from the mountain tops about this game. But no one seemed to be listening. Sure there are a few people that heard us, but I would say out here in Phoenix we may only have about 16 players that play LotR.


It is even so bad that the folks that travel from outside of the state out number the locals. Out of the 24 people last year at GitD, we had only seven local players! And it doesn't seem to be any better anywhere else in the country. My good friend Brent Sinclair has to travel at least two hours to find anyone to play and he lives in the Chicago area!

So what is it? Is it the rules? I have heard people locally say that LotR is about rolling 6's. Well hell, isn't that any game that uses a six sided dice? Most people that I teach the game to fall in love with it. As I like to say, it is a easy game to learn, but hard to master. It is after all a skirmish game and is fairly complex in what it can do, so what is it with the rules??

Is it the miniatures? Hell most of them are sculpted by the Perry Twins and if you have to ask who they are then you do not play GW games. To boot the minis are mostly in plastic and compared to GW's other games, you get more figures for the buck! Also LotRSBG has a model cap of about 75 figures for most games. So that means you could buy three box sets and nearly have all the figures you need. And once again they are cheaper than other GW ranges.

Could it be the playing surface or area needed to play? Well hell, most games are fought on a 4'x4' table or smaller. Take a look at the LotR Journey books and some of the scenarios take place on a 18"x24" board! Maybe it is the amount of terrain needed as this is a skirmish game. And that's another thing, most people I see that do play LotR play on wide open tables like WHFB. Come on folks, load the tables up and have some fun.

Is it the cost? As I mentioned above, LotRSBG is the cheapest game that GW puts out. Now I do know that their has been price increases, but overall it is cheaper to play LotRSBG than it is to play 40K or WHFB.

So what is it and what does it take for people to notice this game? I fear that when GW discontinues this game, many people will be crying out for it to come back like Space Hulk, Blood Bowl and countless other games that have gone away.

So what am I trying to say here? Well it should be pretty simple, why don't you try playing LotRSBG. And if you had and liked it, than get out there and play it some more. Hell this Sunday I am headed out to my local store (Imperial Outpost Games here in Phoenix) to throw down a few games...

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

"Meats back on the Menu Boys!"

Okay,

Here is my winning Diorama from Mayhem in the Mountains, "Meats back on the Menu boys!"

As I posted previously, I was the only entry, so it was a sort of a shallow victory, hopefully next year there will be more entries.

Now the inspiration for this came from a few places, first up it came from the Two Towers LotR movie and books. It also came from a friend Frank Brown. You see Frank made a comment on the Mayhem in the mountains forum stating that Meat was back on the Menu since he and a few of us "Ringers" were coming to Parker for the event.

Now the other thing about this diorama is that I used a few left over figures from my collection. I had two scouts left and a extra Uruk-hai Captain left, so I used them for Ugluk and his boys. The orcs were just left overs and the headless orc came from the new Ent Plastic model.


I also tried something new for blood, I used Liqutex Matte Medium mixed with red and brown ink for the blood. It came out pretty well, in fact my wife asked if I had cut myself by accident!

All in all I think it came out pretty well.

TK

Slow Dancer at Mayhem in the Mountains

So,

I am finally recovered from the long road trip this past weekend to attend Mayhem in the Mountains with DrunkenSamurai. Our trip started at 4:13 am on Friday, with Drunken's car loaded with terrain and a whole pantry full of food (packed by Mrs. DrunkenSamurai) we headed out to the song of Slow Dancer by Robert Plant. The trip was pretty uneventful and we arrived in Parker Colorado around 6:00pm Colorado time.

First up was to check in with my friends, the Goodmans & Carr's and them Drunken and I headed for Collectormania in Parker. We met up with Tim McKnight & Aaron Hunt to hand off the events shirts and then Drunken and I headed back to crash for the night.

Saturday saw us up at the shop to set terrain up and I snapped few pictures of the tables. I brought the Amon Hen & Mirkwood table from GitD and the rest of the tables were built by the local LotR group in the last few weeks.

First up my Amon Hen table from GitD.

Next was a table put together by Aaron Hunt to represent the town of Bree.

Here we have a Mordor table built by Russ Brown, this was one tough table to fight on!

Here is a Isengard table, this table gave me inspiration to build one for GitD 2011.

Next up we have the Shire by Tim McKnight.

Here is the Mirkwood table I brought from GitD.

So with that we got our table assignments and who we would play for the first round. I got Russ Brown on the Shire table. The First scenario was called The Foothills of Khazad Dum and was a modified Ill Met By Moonlight scenario.
Russ was playing a Minas Morgul army with two Nazgul's (one generic and the Undying) Russ was a great person to play against and I voted for him as my Favorite player in the event.
Unfortunately Russ deployed his weaker troops (Orcs!) up on the center line with his tougher troops 3" back from his baseline. Needless to say my Spiders deployed right up front and I was all over him in the first turn. Russ played a good game but by the time the Nazgul got up close to support the game was pretty much over, although he did kill the Spider Queen! So I got a Major Win and Russ actually got 3 bonus points for doing more wounds with his Hero.


My second game was against John Hess from the Chicago area, one of the other "Ringers" that traveled to the event to play. John was playing a Dol Guldur force that had nothing but Easterlings and a few Black Guard Orcs. The scenario was Reinforcements which was a modified Clash of Piquets scenario. The only chance I had was the fact I was on my Mirkwood table and I knew I had to use the terrain to my advantage.

Needless to say, I was a bit brash and rushed my Spiders up to quickly without the support of the goblins and I ended up loosing pretty bad which meant I got a Major Loss!


My third game was against Aaron Hunt and his Gondor army. Well as luck would have it my camera batteries died so I did not get a picture of Aaron or his army. We played a modified Domination scenario with three objectives. Well the game ended up as a Draw due to the fact that Aaron forgot to move his troops up to take a objective on his side of the board. Most of his army killed all but 6 Goblins in my army and he outnumbered me in the middle and I held one objective on my side. So when I rolled for the game to end it looked like Aaron won, but since he forgot to move his troops he had only one objective in the center while I had mine. So it was a Draw and I only had 6 Goblins left out of 48 models!! What a cool game!

At this point my son made it to the store and changed out my batteries and than he took a few pictures while the event was going on, here is DrunkenSamurai (In Orange Shirt & Green Hat!) playing against Will's "Ice Dwarf's".

Russ Brown & Tim McKnight fighting it out on the Amon Hen table.

Here is Rob Farallo & Downtown Frank Brown doing battle.

Chris Langland Easterlings vs Aaron Hunt's Gondor force.

Not sure who's Isengard force fighting against Corey O'Brian's Goblin hoard.

Corey (On the Left!) smiling while his Goblins kill something!

Here I am (on the left) not liking what is happening, must have been getting beaten up!

DrunkenSamurai trying to figure out how to deal with the Mordor table.

Well after three rounds I was 1 Major Win, 1 Major Loss & a Draw, not to bad, not great, but not bad. After the three games all of us went to Old Chicago for Pizza & Beers. Can't tell you what we talked about (and I was not drinking!) but it was a great time. And Keith did not fall asleep at all during dinner, way to go Keith the Hobbit!

Sunday came and we were back at the shop for game 4, The Artifact, which is a modified Seize the Prize scenario that GitD introduced 3 years ago. I got Rob Farallo and his Easterling force. Having played this scenario many times (I mean many times in three years) I had this scenario figured out. To make things even better, we played this on the Isengard table which meant that the artifact was in between the two large pits, so I knew where the fight would happen.
Rob was a great guy and he had a tough army, but since I played this scenario many times I knew what I had to do. Needless to say I flanked his army with a few spiders and proceeded to take apart his force.
Rob had a few Kataphrakt's and that's what I decided had to die first so that he could not get off the table with the artifact.
I also liked that Rob painted his army vary similar to the movie Easterlings which was also the same way I painted mine.

Well after the dust settled, I walked away with a Major Win and was feeling pretty good about how the army was doing. But than I realized that I was sitting pretty far at the top of the rankings which meant I could draw Chris L or Frank Brown in the last round.

Well as luck would have it I got Chris Langland and his Easterling force on the wide open Mordor table! Now Chris has been out to the GitD a couple of times but i never got to play against him. So with that we squared of in a Kill them all scenario called Red Horn Pass.
It was a tough game and I ended up making a few errors that lead to Chris winning the game with a Major Win while I took a Major Loss! Good Game Chris.
So after the game came the awards presentation and the announcement of the Durin's Axe painting competition which I entered 3 entries, a Goblin Shaman, a Morannon Orc Captain and the Meats Back on the Menu diorama.

Now I have one negative thing about this event and it was the two tools that were judging the painting for the armies and the paint competition. First off they did not really look at any models in the armies and from what I heard they graded everyone low. Secondly the choice's for the Durin's Axe was a little wonky. I did not make the cut and was beaten by Chris Langlands Gandalf that was okay, Drunken Samurai Saurmon took 2nd and a Undying model that looked like a 6 year old dry brushed it! Clearly these "judges" had no frickin clue and I would love to see some of there models! Hell I think they may need glass's!

Anyhow I ended up winning the Diorama since I was the only one that entered! it felt like a hollow victory since no one else entered.

Now Keith got to the main announcements and I was surprised to see that I won Best Appearance for my army. I also came in second in the Sportsmenship and I was 4th overall! The results can be seen here. DrunkenSamurai took 8th overall. So not too bad for the Arizonians, although I know DrunkenSamurai wish's he did better.

So to celebrate Drunken & I went to dinner at the Chill's in Parker that has some very interesting looking Chill's out front. We than headed back to crash for the night so we could get up early on Monday, which we did at 4:00am again. This time the Road Trip song was Rush, Finding my way Home! Not too much to say about the return trip, we both just wanted to get home.

So to wrap it up, it was a great trip and a great run event, I look forward to going again next year.

TK

Back from Mayhem in the Mountains

Well back from Mayhem in the Mountains in Parker Colorado, had a great time! I came in 4th overall and got Best Appearance with my army. Also won the Durin's Axe for my Diorama.

Will post more details in a few days, tired and need to eat and crash, so stay tuned for pictures and a full report. By the way, thanks to Robert Brightwell, he and I drove his car up to Parker and back.

TK

Mayhem in the Mountains

So,

Next weekend Drunkensamurai and I are headed up to Colorado to play in Mayhem in the Mountains, a Lord of the Rings tourney that my buddy Keith is running. You see I talked Keith into setting up a LotR event much like Gathering in the Desert while at Adepticon this year. Really it was an easy thing to do when Keith had a few beers in him!

Anyway, I also talked Drunkensamurai into driving up and playing in the event. So next Friday we load up his car and head up to Parker Colorado for some LotR action. Nice thing about this event is that besides the locals and Drunken & I, Frank Brown and a few other "Ringers" are coming into town for this event.

So with myself committed to going to the event, the next thing was what to take to play? Well I could go ultra competitive or I could go with fun. So I went with something sort of both, the list is called Denizens of Mirkwood and is shown below.

I thought I would keep the army list under wraps, but heck, I am just going to have some fun and I am curious on how well the army will do. I have played a few games with it so far and I have to Major Wins under my belt. One was against Tom O's Gondor force and the other was against Jerry's Corsairs list. I think it will be a fun set of games.


Besides the LotR tourney, Keith is running the Durins Axe painting competition, which is much like the Red Dragons we run at GitD. Below are two out of the three entries that I plan on entering. First up a Goblin Shaman.


The other is a Morannon Orc Captain that was going to be part of the above force but I dropped him from the list.

My other entry is still being worked on and it is for the Diorama entry and it is called "Meats back on the Menu Boys!". Once it is done I will post a few pictures.

Anyhow, I will have full coverage of the trip and the event next week after I get back, so stay tuned...

TK

Old Glory M3A1 Stuart assembly.

So,

In my last post, I mentioned that I went crazy and started a new Flames of War army. I went with Old Glory Miniatures for my tanks and unfortunately their site had no pictures of the tanks, so I was taking a chance on ordering them. A few years ago I assembled and painted a few Old Glory German tanks for my buddy Tom, and I was not impressed with these models. They all looked like they had been stepped on and smashed. They just did not look right to me, but with Battlefront Miniatures getting ready to raise prices, I took a chance on Old Glory and hoped my previous encounter with the models was a fluke.

Now below is a picture of what the real M3A1 Stuart looks like.


And here is a shot of what you get from Old Glory, notice there is no instructions in the bag.


So when I got the minis I did what most people do, I went to the Internet to see if there was some sort of instructions for assembly. Guess what? There wasn't, so I decided to do one here on my blog. I also know a buddy of mine (Jerry) purchased these same models and will need help with them.

So lets take a look at what is in the bag, below is a shot with everything laid out, you get three vehicles per bag and most parts are pretty clear as to what and where they go. But there is a few pieces that I had no clue of what they were for.

Here are some of the pieces that were unclear, on the top right are some sort of barrels, on the top left are some sort of storage box and the center are the hatch's for the turret.


First up was gluing the tracks to the hull, this was pretty easy since they only go on one way. I used thick super glue and clamped the tracks to the hull while the glue set up. There was very little flash on the hull and some minor flash on the tracks that was easy to clean up.

Next up came the turret assembly with the main gun. The turret front has a hole for the gun & mantel to line up, although I did have to trim the mounting pin on the mantel down as well as file some of the front of the turret down to get a flush fit.

Here is a shot of the Hatch's and turret, you will notice that there are 6 hatch's, 2 for each turret. The hatch's on the left are for the left hatch and the 3 hatch's on the right go on the the right side.


Now next up is mounting the machine gun on the turret, you will notice on the right is the MG and you have to carefully cut it off the sprue. I also used a 1/32" drill to make a small hole for the MG to mount to. I had to look at real pictures on the M3A1 to find out where it has mounted. Come to find out it mounts to the back of the turret. The Drill bit is pointing at the spot.
Here you can see it better, it is the tube stuck on the back of the turret behind the right hatch.

Here is how it looks once mounted on the turret. I am not sure about the piece sticking off the bottom so I left it on.

After the MG was mounted I secured the gun mantle to the front. Something I had to look at real pictures was how the gun mounts. Did the MG on the mantle go on the right or left? Well it goes on the left side, also the gun mantle has a very unique front that is larger on the top than the bottom, if you mount it the other way it looks like it is too big on the bottom and to small on the top. It's hard to see in these pictures, so just mount it with the MG on the left if your looking at it from the front end.



So here is what you should have at this time, looks pretty much done, but wait there is more!

What are these parts and where do they go? Well it seems that the barrel looking things on the left are extra fuel barrels. Most pictures you do not see them on the tank, but early non war pictures and other scale models show them on the vehicles. On the right are extra storage bins that go towards the rear which I will show you.

First up the fuel barrels, I painted the areas where these mount too.
Here is what they look like mounted in place.

Next up the extra storage bins, well once again looking at real pictures, these mount to the rear on both sides in the area painted red.
So here is a shot from the rear showing you how they mount. You will notice that the storage box has a slant that should be facing towards the rear of the tank.
And here is a side shot with them in place towards the rear deck of the tank.

So there you have it, a quick lesson on how to assemble the Old Glory M3A1 Stuart Tank.


I have to say, that these Old Glory models did not have any of the same issues like the ones I did for Tom. In fact I like these better than the Battlefront minis M3A1's, I am very happy that I purchased these vehicles.

Next up will be the assembly on the M3 Lee tanks I purchased from Old Glory, so stay tuned...

TK