Archos Fianlly Done!

So back in August of 2009, I started working on some Arco-Flagellants but they fell by the wayside on the painting bench. Well this week I decided to bust them back out and get to painting them. So here they are in all of their painted glory!







Here is my Puritan Witchunter that I painted a while ago, but never got to taking pictures of him. I call him Inquisitor Bane and he has had a few adventures, the most recent being sent to drive out Ork looters.


Here is a shot of Lord Bane and his retinue which was also painted a while ago.


And the final shot is with the arcos being released onto some foul Witch cult!


Hope you enjoyed...

TK

Return of 40K to the table!

So, after a long break, 40K finally got back on the table today with Drunkensamurai and I playing not one, not two, but three linked games! We played a 200 point Kill team mission, than did a 400 point Combat patrol mission followed by a 1500 point battle.

Before I go on, let me tell you what I have been thinking about for 40K. You see as some may know, this year was to be the 40K year for me. I had planned on playing more games than in 2009 and even wanted to play in a local 40K tournament. But life has a funny way of getting in the way and other gaming interests always took the spotlight. Also this week Drunkensamurai and I were talking about how we just do not get to play as much as we like and 40K was one game that we wanted to see more of.

My interest in 40K this year was also going to be towards doing some sort of narrative campaign and another friend said he was working toward getting one together. But alas, nothing ever happened. So with talking with Drunkensamurai we decided to just get together and play 40K this weekend. I would take my Sisters of Battle, while Drunkensamurai would take his new Orks. So what follows are pictures from two out of the three games we played today.

First up. 200 point Kill Team mission. My force included 15 Sisters of Battle against 20 Orks. We set the town up as a small settlement and the story was that the Orks were raiding it for loot. My Sisters were to try to stop the vile orks from looting the storage containers.

The Orks swarmed into the town taking the Sisters by surprise. The orks brought a buggy to haul off some of the loot that they hoped to scavenge from the settlement.


The Sisters took up positions at the walls around the containers and tried to keep the orks out. Seeing how the Sisters were caught unawares, they scrambled to fend off the invaders.

Two Sisters made a break for the communications office to radio for assistance and to warn the surrounding area of the invaders.

The Sisters put up a valiant fight trying to defend the storage containers, but the orks were all over their positions and were over running them.

The two sisters that made it to the communications office held off the orks in a brutal hand to hand fight and the warning was able to get sent out, which was received by a local Sisters of Battle Patrol in the area. Needless to say, out of 15 Sisters, only 4 made it out alive and the orks began their looting of the containers.

Game two was a 400 point Combat patrol mission on the same table as the kill team game. This time the Sisters showed up with one Imolater with a Dominion squad inside and 15 more Battle Sisters. The Orks also reinforced their position by bring in 3 Killer Kans, two buggies and a truck with some boys in it.




The 15 Sisters took up defensive positions inside the central building while the Imolater swept to the left flank to try to stop the killer kans.


The Imolater was ineffective against the killer kans but the meltas in the Dominions squad blew two of the machines to pieces.

But a bitter fight broke out as the boys in the truck engaged the Sisters in the middle of town and beat them to a bloody pulp and sending them racing out of town. Needless to say, the Orks defended the settlement and beat back the Sisters.

Game three saw us playing a new scenario out of the missions book, Cut & Run. This scenario has the Orks trying to leave the table while trying not to lose too many kill points. This scenario fit perfectly for the third game as it seemed fit to have the Orks making off with the loot.

I wish I would have taken pictures but I was too caught up in the game to worry about pictures. Needless to say, the Sisters of Battle took their revenge on the orks doing a total of 9 Kill points vs them loosing only three. It seemed that the Sisters wanted the settlement back.

It was a great day of gaming even though I lost two of of the three games against Drunkensamurai. My mind is already spinning about the next time Drunken & I can play. I think it will be another Kill Team game with the Sisters trying to get back the stolen loot that the Orks took. So stay tuned...

TK

Gathering in the Desert Practice Event Results.

Well today we had the First Practice event for Gathering in the Desert 2011. Seven local players came out for the event (3 others had work and Family commitments) but seven was a good showing.

The players and their armies were:

Dominic Winton (new player) with Isengard Uruk-hai
Mike Wilster (new player) with Cirith Ungol Orcs
Howard Beam with High Elves
CJ Beam (new player) with Gondor
Robert Brightwell with Rohon
Tom Opalka with Isengard Scouts
Anthony Pigatti with Gladerhim Elves
Ringer army (me) Isengard Scouts

So here are a few shots from the event:









So here are the results from the event:
Best Overall - Robert Brightwell
Best Sportsmen - Mike Wilster
Best Appearance - Howard Beam

Name Battle Sports Paint Overall
Robert Brightwell 50 18 23 91
Howard Beam 27 18 44 89
Tom Opalka 37 16 27 80
Anthony Pigatti 45 16 17 78
CJ Beam 23 18 27 68
Mike Wilster 20 18 25 63
Dominic Winton 28 13 15 56
Ringer Army 28 15 0 43

A Big thank you to Darren Johnson of Imperial Outpost Games and to all the players that came out.

TK

Gathering in the Desert 2011 Practice Event

Well in one week from today, I am happy to announce the first Gathering in the Desert 2011 Practice event.

When: November 21th, 2010 (Sunday) Start time 10:00am

Where: Imperial Outpost Games (4920 W Thunderbird Rd # 121 Glendale, AZ 85306) Cost: $10.00 What: 600 Points, 3 games, Painted Models optional Maximum 600 Points
Forces must be chosen from one of the army lists from the Legions in Middle Earth supplement or from a valid army list in White Dwarf.

You may use un-painted models for this event since this is a practice event for the Grand Tournament in February.

WYSIWYG, Weapons, armor and upgrades chosen from the army list Must be shown on the models used. In other words What you see is what you get!

All army list must be turned into the organizers the day of the event, if you do not have a army list you may not play. If your army list does not match what you are playing anytime during the event, you will automatically be disqualified and have all your games reported as Major Loss' and you may be asked to leave the event without a refund.

Forces must follow all rules and restrictions on force selection detailed in "Mustering the Legions of Middle Earth" pages 4-8 in the Legions of Middle Earth supplement.

Named characters (Gandalf, Lurtz, the Witch King, Spider Queen, etc) can only be taken once.

A set of Errata and FAQ's for Lord of the Rings source books will be used and these are maintained on the Games Workshop website. We are aware that many issues may come up in a game that are not covered by the Erratas or FAQ's, If you ask for a rules clarification from the organizers their decision will be final on the situation.

Models with stat lines and point values included in the forces section of the following rulebooks, journey books, source books or any White Dwarfs will be used:

* The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game rules manual (aka The One Rulebook)
* The Fellowship of the Ring
* The Two Towers
* Return of the King
* A Shadow in the East
* The Fall of the Necromancer
* The Ruin of Arnor
* Khazad -Dum
* Gondor in Flames
* Harad
* Mordor
* Any White Dwarf Article lists (such as WD#354).

Evil Forces cannot include Gollum.

Good Forces cannot include Tom Bombadil or Goldberry.

Where the points value differ between a source book and the Legions of Middle Earth supplement, the points value in the source books takes precedence.

Special Rule - Good vs Evil!
The Lord of The Rings is a modern classic of the tale of Good against Evil. As such the Strategy Battle Game is designed for battles between two forces, one Good and one Evil. This causes
a few problems for a format like the GitD where your Evil army of Uruk-hai could conceivably face five other Evil armies over the course of the weekend.

While this may seem like it would not be an issue, there are some problems that arise with the wording of various Special Rules and the effects of various artifacts wielded by powerful Heroes. These rules are typically worded in terms of affecting Good or Evil forces, or affecting a particular race like Orcs or Goblins.

For the purposes of games at the GitD we ask that players determine reasonably who is affected by the rule or item. In almost all cases players can easily determine who is affected by substituting the words Friendly or Enemy models for Good or Evil and when it comes to rules that affect a particular race, that rule will only be applied to one side or the other.

Here are a couple of examples:
• Both players are fielding armies drawn from the Fiefdoms list,
both armies contain Knights of Dol Amroth, and Player A has
Prince Imrahil. While Player B’s Knights of Dol Amroth also
have the Dol Amroth for Gondor! special rule, they would be
unable to take advantage of it, as the Prince Imrahil on the
table is their “enemy” for the purposes of this game.

• Both players are fielding Evil armies. Player A has a
Ringwraith that has the Harbingers of Evil special rule. In
typical play this rule only affects Good models, reducing their
Courage value while the Ringwraith is nearby). For the
purposes of the GT, this rule would affect “enemy” models,
those fielded by Player B.

We know you guys are reasonable players, and we look to you to make the right decision in the myriad of situations this issue could arise. If you are unable to, please call over the Organizers to make the call for you.

***Also if you choose to use any of the new models as detailed in White Dwarf under the Reinforcements section, than you must provide a copy of the article for the event organizers (if they do not have a copy) and as well as your opponents. This is to make it fair for folks that may not be able to get these articles to be able to see the special rules that apply to these new models.***

Scoring for the event will be a combination of Battle Points, Sportsmanship and Paint scores for Overall placement. In order to be eligible for Best Painted, you must have painted the army yourself and you must disclose the fact that someone else painted your army.

Gathering in the Desert organizers will accept payment and sign ups for Gathering in the Desert in February if you are unable to pay via Paypal.

So here is your chance to try out that new army you have been thinking about or to try out LotR for the first time.

TK

Osgilith starts to Rise

First off, sorry for the lack of posts, been busy with work and life, but I have been pretty busy on the game front.

Secondly, thanks to all the folks that made comments on my What Does it Take post on LotR. Some very interesting thoughts and comments. I was going to answer all the negative points about the game, but really that would not help with changing peoples thoughts on LotR. The only way folks will change their minds is if they go out and play it. I will continue to blog about it here so have no fear and I will be doing more posts on Gathering in the Desert as well as other LotR events.

And now lastly onto what has been going on on the game side of things. Well I have been working on terrain for GitD 2011 and started working on the new Osgilith terrain. Now Tom O had donated his terrain for the last two years which has been great, but this year Tom was thinking of letting some of his stuff go for sale. So I decided that I would start to invest in some terrain to replace his. Well I ordered 8 of the new Osgilith terrain boxes from Gamesworkshop and this past weekend started to build some ruins.

Two kits went to Drunkensamurai to build while I worked on the other six kits. below is a shot of the table with seven out of the eight pieces of terrain that I knocked together.


The new kits are nice and with a few extra pieces from other kits (LotR terrain kits) they start to come to life. Now these are still missing the smaller texture but you get the idea.

You may notice some extra bricks that I made out of Masonite to add to the kit, these were cut from 1/4" thick by 1" long by 1/2" tall to match the brick pattern on the kits. All in all these are coming together nicely. So stay tuned for more shots of these and the other terrain projects that I am working on...

TK

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