Building a railroad empire!

So,

Been a while since I got to work on my Model rail stuff, since the move, I had to disassemble my shelf layout, but I am still part of a Modular Model Railroad club. Since the move I have not been able to get back into working on anything, after 8 months though we are finally unpacked and now I have room to start working on stuff again.

So for the past two weekends, I have been going over to Roberts House to help him with constructing a corner for our club. We use a two piece curved corner and they are a challenge to assemble. 

Laminating wood to form the curved front. 

Since we have curved corners, you basically have to laminate this plywood to make the curved sections. It was a process and I like the look, but its a pain to build.  

Here is the two parts of the corner getting the end plates glued in.

And here is the corner up on its legs and clamped together.

So, about two years ago I purchased from my friend Rick, two 6' x 2' modules that he was not going to need anymore. Well once I picked them up. I noticed that the module frames were actually 5' 11.5" long and not a full 6'. Now the sub road bed he mounted was an actual 6' and over hung the frame. When I asked Rick about it, he could not remember why he had done that. Well I was slightly discouraged by this and just put the modules in my garage with plans to fix them.

Well the lack of club shows, didn't make me want to bust them out and work on them as I always had other stuff going on. Then the move happened and I brought these frames over to the new place, my wife and friend Darrin asking what I was doing moving these as I hadn't done anything with them. Well I would be getting to them, just had to get the garage completed.

Well the great news was after almost 8 months, the garage got finally unpacked and I could get to the modules that were buried in the back of the garage. So this past weekend I got them out and took them Down To Roberts place to do some work on them.

First up was getting the end plates on them which included lots of clamps and some hefty amounts of glue. 

Gluing on the end plates.

Once we got the end plates glued on, it was next to get some wood down on the deck, which by luck Robert had an extra thin plywood that we had bought the weekend before, he donated it for my modules as it was easier then taking it back to Home Depot. SO a few cuts later, we had decking for the frames, the only thing was Robert ran out of brads in his nail gun, so I have to glue the deck down at home.

We have tops now!

So sometime this week, I will get the tops glued and tacked down, then I can start to plan the track plan for these. As I told Robert yesterday, its good to be working on these and seeing progress makes me want to continue. So with any luck, I will have these two ready for the next train show we do.

TK

Welcome 2024, Get your motor runnin!

 Welcome to 2024 friends, 

The first game I got to play today was Gasland's with Mike. It was awesome to get to roll dice again and we were both surprised at how much we remembered the rules. It has been almost a year since we last played his vehicular carnage game!

Here are some pictures from today, we went out to Old World Games in Scottsdale, mainly to go to a Rudy's BBQ before we played.

 

The track for todays Race!

On the inside was my first car, Crazy 8, the Yellow car was my second car named Banana Peel. And right off the bat the Banana Peel slammed into the back of Mikes VW!

Here we see Crazy 8 wiped out, to be T - boned by Mikes VW, then the Banana Peel Slammed into him!

Another view from the first gate, cars were already getting into the action before the weapons became active!

Banana Peel dropped an oil slick as he took the lead all alone!

If you look just behind the Peel, you can see Mikes Erikstein in a far 2nd.

Banana Peel flying past the 2nd gate with no car in the world.

The Erikstein trying to catch up to the Peel!

Coming around the corner hunting for his prey! But the Banana Peel crossed the finish line first.

Just a close up shot, Mike did a very elaborate conversion on this model, which is two different cars meshed together. An ugly brute but a bad ass looking vehicle. 

And After we were done, I had to do some shopping at Walmart, and these two fell into my cart!

Once again, Mike and I had a blast, but we feel something is missing, we both think its a campaign element for the game. Now the author has a basic campaign system,  but we want something to keep track of the drivers. So who knows, maybe we will work something up and see if we can get it published for the game. We will see.

TK

The First models...

 So, last post you saw that I took the dive back into Epic...I mean Legions Imperious, well this past weekend I started working on a few models. Now I had seen folks in the hobby community complaining about how tiny these guys are, but to be honest, compared to the previous Epic models, these guys are huge! 

Size comparison from GW 

So I figured I would start off  with the Space Marines, I think I will be doing either Blood Angels or I may do Night Lords, I still have not decided yet. But I started with the predators.

Three Predators

Now, I will add to the drama, these models took about an hour to assemble which I thought I was assembling a much bigger model kit. These models are are just shrunken down versions of the large kits. The hardest part was making sure the parts didn't fly off the sprue when cutting them off. Once completed, these are beautiful models and look awesome!

2 sciaran tanks

Then I went on to build these two Sciaran tanks, these went a little faster to assemble and once again, beautiful models once put together. 

So now I need to decide on which faction I want, do I want Loyalist or Renegades? Really it comes down to paint either Red or Blue...

TK

So, its starts....

 Well, I did a bad thing!

So, one of my first GW games was Epic Space Marine, my brother and I would play this game into the wee hours of the morning and loving every minute of it. The scale was just so...Epic on the table. In fact this was what started me down the path to historical gaming, wanting to see epic battle on the table. 

Love this game!

Now GW has gone ahead and released basically Epic SM but with the back story of the Horus heresy! Which really focuses on the epic civil war amongst the Imperium. 

Nice full had cover set of Rules.

So, I expect you will be seeing much more of this game here very soon, a few friends here have picked it up and I know I will be getting a few more units for the game. So Stay tuned

TK

Rats, dirty stikin Rats!

 

So,

Finished up this classic Skaven Warband that my sone had run way back in the day. He never got around to painting them, so over the last week I got them painted up.

The Whole Warband, The Copperheads

The Leader, Copper Head himself.

A Skaven Warlock

A couple of Spear and Shield Skaven

A Flail and dual wielding sword rat

A few Slingers, rat with claws and throwing stars 

This was a fun project to bring to life, my son was over on Thanksgiving and knew as soon as he saw them and had a huge smile on his face, something in his eye told me he is itching to go back to the dammed city!

Happy Thanksgiving travelers.

TK

 

Welcome back fellow explores, 

Got the chance to work on the next Non GW warband for Mordheim. Ever since I played the game, I wanted to give the Possessed Cultist a spin. So without models, I took a look at what I can use and an obvious one was to use the Cultist box set for Frostgrave. So a quick trip to good old Amazon and a few days later viola, a new box of cultist arrived.

So first up was to build the Magister, I built him up with Light armor, Sword and dagger for 100 points. I like how is hand is up as if calling on some dark power!

Magister 100 points and nothing fancy/

Next up I built a Mutant with one mutation, Scorpion tail, I had some extra tails in my bits box and I liked the mutation. I gave him a sword and a shield for a total of 80 points.

Mutant with his tail!

Then it was time for a Possessed model, this one came from Reaper and I gave him Great Claw, which I re named Great Maw. I have always thought this model was creepy as heck, cant wait to get paint on him!

The Great Maw!

Next up I built three Brethren, two at 40 points and one at 35 points.

 

The Brethren!

So there you have it, 455 points and six models, small but deadly for sure. I am really looking forward to painting these guys up!

TK

Mordheim Project begins

So as I mentioned last post, I have been thinking about what new project to start as well as thinking what interests me in gaming. Over the last 6 months I have been on a bit of soul searching for my gaming mojo to return. Nothing like Moving your house of 23 years to make you really think about why we have so much stuff and why am I not playing with it more. 

In my soul searching, I was trying to identify what made me happy with my gaming. Now most of the games I played and collections I built I enjoyed very much and enjoyed the games I played with them. But the reality was I was not having as much fun with the one games like I once did. What I found was that I was craving more campaign style of games in which I really love. Most games I played were just one or two off games with no really reason to them except to play, once again was fun, but I felt like something was truly missing.

About this time of soul searching and packing for the move, I ran across my old AD&D stuff. I thumbed through it and started looking at the notes from when I ran games and was looking at the character sheets. I started to recall the games and even after all this time, I felt the thrill of excitement of running and playing in those games. 

Now I was not ready to ditch everything and go back to role playing, but then I ran across my notes from when I was writing Legends of the High Seas and my Mordheim book was there as well. I started going over those notes then picked up the Mordheim book and started going thru that. Then as I read thru the book, I started to recall the fun I had with the game, heck LotHS used lots from that book. And then it hit me, why am I not playing LotHS or Mordheim? They are both great games, lots of people played the games, and there seems to be a growing Mordheim resurgence happening. 

So I figured, why don't I start working on trying to build a small community here in Phoenix for it, my plan is to build up a few warbands, build a nice looking set of terrain for it and just get back to some cool campaign games with a few folks. I won't lie, I have seen some folks run a Mordheim themed weekend in Texas and would love to do something similar here, or go to an event.

So, with a new mindset and a new project, I went looking for miniatures in my collection, and remembered I had a few extra Mordheim Warbands I got from a friend as well as a Skaven band printed for me my another friend. One thing I was thinking of though would be how hard would it be for someone new to get into the game. The rules can be printed for free, but what to do about figures? Well there are lots of options, 3D print files, Reaper Minis, GW minis, other peoples Minis, but then I saw two boxes of Frostgrave troops I bought in my stack of shame. So I built a Reikland warband using nothing but Minis from the box set and a couple of the Metal Frostgrave models.

Reikland Warband using Frostgrave minis

My Captain with Heavy armor, shield and sword, dagger 125pts

Champion #1 metal Knight with bigger sword, Light armor, Double handed Sword, dagger, helmet 80pts

Champion #2 Light armor, Sword and dagger 65pts

Marksman #1 Long Bow and Dagger 40pts

Marksman #2 long bow, dagger 40

Marksman #3 Crossbow and dagger 50pts

Two young Bloods, one Sword, dagger and Buckler, while the other has Axe, dagger & buckler 55pts

Grizzled Warrior, sword and shield 40 pts

So total for the warband is 485 points which is a great place to start. I have a box of Cultist coming from Frostgrave and will be looking at doing a Chaos Cult warband, so stay tuned!

TK

25+ Year project complete!

So, Some followers may know, I have been working on completely painting up my original Warhammer Quest for years. I bought the original game back 1996, and started playing after I got it. It has been played many times throughout the years, with some painting happening every once in a while. My son's first tabletop minis game was Quest, in fact we told him once your able to read, you can play, he quickly learned how to read.

Well about 5 or 6 years ago, my brother came over to play (as he did years ago) and made the comment, Dude, you still have not finished painting this stuff???? He was right, with all the armies and projects, I had not finished this iconic game. That's all that it took to get me back to slowly painting it up again. Earlier this year I finished up the Skaven, all that I had left were the goblins. So this past week, I dove into getting the gobos painted up.

24 Goblin spears

Now the original game came with models in groups of 6, so there were 6 gobos with spear and 6 gobos with bow. Over the years I acquired another almost complete copy of the game and a few models along the way, hence there are more then usual  here. 

A few gobo bows

As I said above , I was able to track down a few older models, I had to get them to add them to the game, here are a few really old Gobos.

Some really old gobos

Now, that core is done, I have a few other models that I tracked down that will get painted up, but I can finally say Quest is painted! Now, the game will be getting more playtime as a buddy and I want to document a few games, sort of write an adventuring short story.

As for the next project, time to take a trip back to 1999 with a little Dammed city, Mordheim Project.

TK 

Halloween Time

 Okay, just in time for Halloween, I painted up a few Reaper models to be used with my Warhammer Quest games, or any sort of fantasy. Enjoy

Happy Halloween folks!

TK