June LotR Update

Wow,

Where has June gone?? It seems that I am the last one again to try to get my next installment up for our little contest. Well I thought I could sneak in some painted stuff already done, but I have been warned that I will be ridiculed beyond belief. So I dove into my LotR box for my additions.

So first up is 50 points of archers, that means 10 goblin bowmen & Yes Jerry, I will be able to Volley fire on your precious elves! So here are the boys in bare metal.

Next up I needed a heavy hitter, so time to bust out a Cave Troll, yes, he has a cave troll! I have two models one with hammer and this one with spear, so I choose the spear armed model and that means he is 81 points.


Now one more addition was to add a Shaman to the force, but they only problem is he was already painted. So this is the only painted model that will be introduced into the army. I did add more highlights to the figure so I did put some paint on him.


So here is the motley crew in all of their glory, now to get them painted before the end of the month.
TK

Throne of Skulls Recap

So,

I am back for the Throne of Skulls and here are a few pictures from the event, first up my army list that I entered. Since I was taking the Uruk-hai from the White Hand list, I came up with a unique army list. I wanted my list to be a piece of skin, as if the Uruk-hai had cut it of of one of their victims. So I contacted my good friend Eric in CA, who used to do make up effects for a certain movie studio and asked him to make me up a latex "skin"army list. This is what it looks like front and back. The funny thing is he used his wife's own back for the mold and he used cold water to get her skin to raise so he could get that goose bump look. Creepy but cool!

By the way, everyone that saw my list loved it and I think they were a bit creeped out by it, which means Eric did an awesome job!

Now on to my army, the Uruk-hai, which was very themed but not over the top (which would be an issue at this event). The list had:

1 Uruk-hai Captain
1 Uruk-hai Shaman
22 Uruk-hai warriors
10 Uruk-hai pikemen
10 Uruk-hai scouts
10 Orcs
1 Isengard Troll

55 models and a very themed list. I also built a custom display board that would make the army look like it was marching out of the pits of Isengard. I carved all the rock work out of blue foam and spent at least a day building and painting it. I think it turned out pretty good and I had a bunch of people take pictures of it.


The event was held at the Tropicana Hotel and the room for the event was large and spacious. The tables had plenty of room between them and each table was made out of Games Workshop Realm of Battle and current GW terrain. Now most followers here at Cursed Treasures know that I love terrain and I love a ton of terrain on my LotR tables. When I walked into the venue and saw the terrain for the LotR tables my heart sank, here is what all the tables looked like for LotR.

Not what I expected but at least they were all the same on each board. The 40K and Fantasy Battle tables were pretty much the same. I understand that John Scaffer did all the work on all the tables and while I was in Memphis I saw much of this stuff being built. John did a great job but I would have liked more terrain as well as other folks in the other games.

I got in on Friday with Tom O and his wife around noon, we did lunch and got checked in at the Excalibur, across the street from the Tropicana. I headed over around 5:30 to hang out and get registered for the weekend. I also hung out with Kyle, Chris, John, Brent and a few others, did dinner and then participated in the conversion building contest. Built a shoulder pad chaos marine and that was about it. Then headed back to my hotel to crash for the night.

Saturday morning saw me up and ready to play, headed out to the Tropicana and started looking for food and my first opponent. After a decent breakfast, I headed over to the postings and was glad to see that I got Chris Thomas as my first game. I met Chris this year at GitD and he is an awesome guy, plus he loves Big Bang Theory, Bazinga!

First game was Clash of Piquets against Chris and his wood elf's with Treebeard. Chris noticed that I had the Troll so we decided to charge the Troll up against Treebeard to see who would win, we agreed not to use any other models or to shoot at the large monsters and sent them charging towards each other. Needless to say I lost and the troll died after two rounds of fighting.

Well not to bore you, but the Fighting Uruk-hai lost and Chris got the win. This was the best game of the whole event and Chris is an awesome guy to play, he had a very balanced list and it was well themed.

My second game was against Marc R's Mordor list that was rather interesting. The scenario was Storm the camp and I felt pretty good about going into this game. Now Marc's list had a ton of Black guard orcs as well as regular orcs and Black Numenorians. It also had a a ring wraith or two as well as a captain. The thing that made this game tough is that the whole army was painted the same! I mean everything was painted in the same colors, the same way, Blue and black. It did look cool, but you could not tell what was what. The game was okay, but there were a few issues with movement in this game. Needless to say I lost, but was glad to have the game over with. Here is a blury shot of the army.

Game three was against Tom Keegan and his 21 model all mounted Dol Amoroth army with Gandalf the Grey leading the way. To make matters tough for Tom, we were playing Domination, which I thought I had in the bag. Tom's army was awesome looking, it is a wonder why he did not win a best painted award.

Tom is a great guy to play and he made me laugh the whole game. I need to make it down to Florida for his event. Tom thought I had the game, but then the unthinkable happened. My cheating dice (Adepticon Dice that everyone has coined Cheating Dice) decided that it was time to roll 1's and 2's the rest of the game. So once again I took a loss to a 21 model army but I had a blast, not the most fun (since Tom Kicked my butt, thanks Tom!) but it was a close second.

Well I was now 0 & 3 with the day ending, I noticed that I was feeling wiped out again and decided to skip the Pub quiz and crash in my hotel room. I was wrangled into hanging out with Tom Keegan and a few others to play an interesting game of Prostitute or No Prostitute while watching folks pass by. But after an hour of laughing I finally headed back to my room.

Sunday started and I forgot my camera in my room so no other pictures from here on out. game 4 was against John Adams from Florida playing Seize the Prize. Needless to say, this was the worst game I played all weekend. I will not go into it here and just leave it at that. I lost this game by just one model but that is all that it took.

Game 5 was against the ringer army being Lead by Don, a GW staffer from Memphis. This game was a blast but my dice were still being mean to me (or the Dice Karma finally caught up to me) and I lost the game. Great game but still a loss.

So out of 5 games, I had three great games, one okay game and one game that I wish I could forget. But all in all not a bad weekend.

Os there you go, my adventures in Vegas. Now that ToS is over, I can get to planning GitD 2012 and get working on my June installment for Tale of Four LotR gamers.

TK

So,

In just a few days the Throne of Skulls event run by Games Workshop will be happening in Las Vegas. As many know, this is the first "National" event that GW is running for all the winners that qualified on the 2010 - 2011 tournament for Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Warhammer 40000 and Lord of the Rings.

Well about a month ago I got an invite from Games Workshop asking if I would (as well as other Tournament organizers) would be interested in playing and attending. Well after talking to the wife, I shoot back a email stating I would be there. Since I run Gathering in the Desert, I usually do not get to play since I am running the event. And since there are no other LotR events, that means I don't get to play much LotR in tourneys.

Well with the decision to go cleared with the boss, it was time for me to decide what army to take. Well I would love to tell you what I am taking (and in fact a few close people know) but I will not reveal what I am taking until after the event. Yeah yeah, I know, but I want it to be a surprise for some of the players. I will tell you that I have never played this army before and that I have not showed here before. The other clue or hint is that I am playing an evil army!

So when will I show off what I am taking, well after the event. I plan to cover the event and have full coverage for all you cursed treasures followers. So wish me luck and I will see you all Monday with coverage from the event. So stay tuned folks...

TK

Results for April of ToFLOTR Gamers

As some may have read here and on a few other Blogs, we are running a Tale of Four Lord of the Rings Gamers.Well June first was the first deadline for the four of us to get our first batch of 175 point models done.

Just to recap, if you got your models completed by June 1st, you got 5 points. If they were submitted after the June 1st deadline then you got 3 points and if you did not paint anything, you got 0 points.

So how did we do?

Well I got 5 points for my Goblin Mob

Rob got 5 points for his dwarf's.

Mike got 5 points for his Uruk-hai

And Jerry also got 5 points for his elf's.

Now we also got in at least one game this month (some of us more) and we would be adding the points from painting to the points won during games. Now for each game there would be a set number of points handed out and I used the scoring method from Gathering in the Desert and was broken down as follows:

Major Win 20 points
Minor Win 15 points
Draw 10 points
Minor Loss 7 points
Major Loss 5 points.

So last week Rob's Dwarf's faced off against Jerry's Elf's in a High Ground game. Rob and his Dwarf's walked away with a Major win while Jerry got the Major Loss. Tonight Mike and I got in a game (due to Mike having life issues last week) and we played Seize the Prize, well the Uruk-hai beat the Goblins and Mike got a Minor victory while I took a Minor Loss.

So here is how the Battle points shook out:

Rob's Dwarf's 20 points
Mike Uruk-hai 15 points
Tim's Goblins 7 points
Jerry's Elf's 5 points

So for April this is how it stands:

Rob has 25 points
Mike has 20 points
Tim has 13 points
Jerry has 10 points

So there you go, that is the first month totals. We are going to try to get everyone together before next weekend to play a doubles game with the two good players (Jerry & Rob) vs the two Evil players (Myself & Mike) to throw in some bonus points. So stay tuned for that and the next few updates to our armies.

TK

Goblins Galore!

Well,

It is almost June 1st and that is the deadline for the four of us competing in this challenge. So far Mike over at Da Green Skins has his first models ready. Jerry at Jerry's Big Picture has his models finished, that leaves me and Rob of Drunken Samurai painting Blog to get our acts in gear to be finished by the 1st.

Well I am happy to report that I have finished up my first 175 points this weekend and with out further ado here is my Goblin army!

First up Durburz, the Goblin King!

Next up is the Goblin Kings bodyguard, 8 Prowlers with two handed weapons. I had a chance last week to pick up another 8 Prowlers while I was down in Memphis, but I passed, now I wish I had!
Next we have 6 Goblins with hand weapons and shields, these guys will be the core of the army, so that means there is going to be a ton of them to paint!

Lastly our 5 spear armed Goblins, like the hand weapons goblins, these guys will make up the bulk of the army as well.
So here is the gang all together, all 20 of them ready to unleash terror on the world of Middle Earth!
My next 175 points will see me adding some bowmen as well as more troops, or perhaps a Goblin Shaman to add some magic to the list.

So stay tuned, next up will be the points for this month, we are now waiting for Rob to get his Dwarfs done, than we can play some games while we work on our next increase.

TK

18 Miles To Memphis!!!

Well,

As some folks may know, last week I made a pilgrimage to Games Workshop Headquarters in Memphis to do a week of training for the on call program.

While I would have loved to been able to talk about what I saw while inside of GW HQ, I am not at liberty to discuss it. I would have also loved to have been able to take pictures while inside, but alas, could not do that either.

But I did get some shots of the Games Workshop Memphis Battle Bunker and the outside of the GW HQ. As seen below, you can't miss the building, it has a huge Imperial Eagle on the front as well as a seven foot tall Space Marine statue out front! The main entrance to the HQ is on the left while the Bunker is on the right.

Inside you find a small but well stocked GW store that had most products (what they did not have they could order from the warehouse in the other part of the building). They also had a few tables set up for painting as well as vending machines. But adjacent to the store was the bunker with all the tables. Here is a shot of the overall set up from the store.

All of the tables were GW's Realm of Battle tables with stock GW terrain on them. Now I was a little disappointed in the quality of the tables. They were good, don't get me wrong, but they all looked the same with a few exceptions. Take for example this awesome Epic table that had a ton of the old buildings on it. I know Mike from the Da Green Skins blog would have loved this table!


Also there was the cool table from Gamesday a few years ago as well as an other Space Marine statue.
Along the front of the bunker were display cabinets with just about every army that is currently out, from 40K, WHFB and LotR/WotR. I tried getting some pictures but the glare from the outside kept washing out the pictures.

Now one thing that did catch my attention was these 3 huge campaign maps that were hanging from the wall. They had three of them (40K, WHFB & LotR) and they used the Mighty Empire tiles. Just to give you scale, each board was at least 8'x4' in size, so just imagine how many tiles it took to build these! man it must be nice to run to the back to get whatever you need!

All in all it was nice to visit and get to see the Bunker as well as GW HQ. My training went well and now I just wait for the Emperor to call, which will probably be for Gamesday in Chicago.

Wish I could talk more about what I did, but unfortunately being a sort of employee means some things you just can't talk about. Sorry folks.

On a side note, I will be making another update for the Tale of Four LotR Gamers in a day or two, my 175 points are done and ready, just need to take pictures...

TK

AWI & GW

Well,

Thought I would let you folks in on a few updates here at Cursed Treasures, so here we go!

Last weekend Rob and I went driving around the Valley of the Sun looking to buy some models. Recently Rob has taken interest into the Napoleon era and has been thinking about jumping into doing Napoleonic Wars in 28mm. With companies like the Perry Miniatures and Victrix it is hard not to get into gaming this period. But I have to tell you, the Napoleonic Wars just do not do anything for me. In fact I was going to buy some Victrix models but Rob talked me out of it since I was only buying them to have something to use against Rob.

Well anyway, on the ride back, we talked about what period do I really like, well I have always had an interest in the Revolutionary War (or American War of Independence). So Rob suggested that instead of Napoleonic Wars, why not do what I have an interest in and do AWI. Wow, sometimes I can be so blind, I did not see it even though it was right there in front of me. Suddenly I knew what I had to do, it was time to start looking to do an AWI army or two!

So once I got home I did what most people would do, is head to the internet to see what sort of problem I could get into with this new venture. Well first up was rules, after talking to Rob that day, he finally sold me on the Warlord Games rules called Black Powder!

I have borrowed Robs copy of the rules, but could not read them due to all the cool pictures in it. In fact, I refer to the Black Powder rule book as either Lead Crack or Lead Porn! I may have wanted to read the rules, but the pictures in the book just kept calling to me! So a trip to old Amazon and I had the rules ordered. (Will be here in the next few days).

My next stop was Old Glory Miniatures to take a look at their range and it seems that OG has AWI figures in the Old Glory Second Edition line as well as their original line. Also saw that the Perrys have a nice range and they are going to be releasing plastics! So while I wish I could tell you that I bought some new minis, I didn't. I am waiting to see what the Perry's come out with. Plus I want to read the rules first. So stay tuned for more AWI goodness soon.

The other small bit of news is that as of May 16th, I will be working for Games Workshop! That's right, you heard right, I will be going to work for GW. It seems that GW is going to open a new store here in the Valley of the Sun this summer and they need folks to run the store. Well I wish I could tell you I am the guy, but alas I am not. GW offered me an interesting program called the On-Call program.

The Program is to help with coverage of the store and with events for GW. Basically if the manager has to take a day off or needs to go out of town, GW will give me a call. If it does not interfere with my regular job, than I will go in. The nice thing is that I will be paid and I am considered a GW employee. So that means that in the next few weeks GW will be flying me down to Memphis TN for training just like a regular manager. Now I wish I could go into more, but that's all I can really say for now, if you want the whole story you are just going to have to talk to me in person.

So there you go...

TK

So, since my last post was detailing the rules, I thought I would start assembling my Moria Army and give you some thoughts.

Well as I said, this army will be based off of the Moria army list and since I only have 175 points to spend, I thought why not go with the Durburz, the Goblin King of Moria.

(Sorry for the blurry picture, but my cameras batteries died after taking these pictures!)

At 60 points, that took my points down to 115 points to spend. So what better way than to take some elite Goblins, so I opted for 8 Goblin Prowler at 7 points a piece. Prowlers fit the fluff since Goblin kings take these guys since they are loyal and the fact that they have two-handed weapons was a plus. Add the Backstabber rule which gives them a +1 to wound added on top of the +1 for having two handed weapons, and you have some scary goblins that can dish out damage. So eight of these guys come in at 56 points, leaving me with 59 points to spend.


So I spent 30 points to pick up 6 Goblins with shields for 30 points. Now these goblins have left over shields from other kits, I figured that I wanted some variety in my goblin force and these guys sure add that.
So that left me with 29 points out of the 175, so I went with 5 Goblins with spear leaving me with 4 points left over. I decided that I wanted to go with spear over bows since at this lower level game, there would not be too many bows (although with Jerry Playing Elves that could be a problem!).

So there you go, 171 points spent, that leaves me with an extra 4 points to add to next months points. (Yes guys, if you don't spend all your points you can bank them until next month!) So now with the army picked, now to get painting!

TK

A Tale of Four Lord of the Rings Gamers

So, well over 13 years ago, Games Workshop had an article in White Dwarf called "A Tale of Four Gamers" that focused on four Staff members while they built 4 separate Warhammer Fantasy armies. The article was a huge success and it even caused White Dwarf to re-run the article but with four staffers that would build four Warhammer 40K armies, which once again was a huge success.

Well that got me thinking, hey why not do one for Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. Well that's what I am going to do, so in the next few months you will see a few articles that are going to follow me building a LotR army. Now in order for this to work, I needed three other folks to join me on this little crazy quest. So who did I con..I mean convince, well here are the other three suckers that will be joining me.

DrunkenSamurai (aka Robert) from Drunken Samurai Painting Blog. It is no surprise that Robert would be one of the folks I invited, he has been itching to start on a Dwarf force, but I will let him talk about that.

Next up is Jerry of Jerry's Big Picture. Jerry is a great guy and had been hounding me for about a year to buy my Elf army from me, so about a month ago I broke down sold it to him. So that should be his army.

We also have Mike from Da Green Skins. Mike has been a recent addition to our little game group and has jumped in to the LotR gaming all the way. His army was outstanding at GitD this year and he is planning on building a Uruk-hai army.

Now as for me, well I have decided to build a Moria Goblin army. I figure I have about 100+ goblins waiting to get painted and it is about time that they see some paint.

So with that here are the rules that are self imposed.

This little quest will last for the next 4 months and we will start out with 175 points and each month we will increase it by 175 points to a grand total of 700 points.

Each person will be responsible for getting an update out of there progress by the first of the next month. So the May month will be posted June 1st and so on with the final update being on September 1st. Each person can do more updates but they must have one showing what they got done for that month.

We will also be using the point system that was in the 2008 White Dwarf article of the following:

Models painted on time +5pts
Models painted late +3pts
Models Not painted +0pts.

So, you may be asking what is the winner going to get? What are the stakes? Well the losers will have to take the winner out to dinner at his favorite eatery and they will have to pick up the tab for him.

So stay tuned to this and the other blogs as we do brief introductions and what we are planning on doing...

TK

Adepticon 2011 or bust...Well bust for me!

No this is not a rant or prediction of Adepticon 2011, it is a post about how I will not be able to attend this awesome event this year. For those regular viewers here at Cursed Treasures, you know that I have attended Adepticon for the past 3 years and have posted coverage about my travels to the Windy City.

But alas, this year I will have to sit on the sidelines and watch get my Adepticon fix like many people from other folks. You see, it has been a rather tough 2 years for me (out of work for almost that entire time) and the "play budget" for traveling has been used for more important things that real life throws at you (like keeping my house and paying my bills!). So I had too make a rather easy decision and tell my good friend Hank, that I would not be able to attend this year.

Well as luck would have it, I found a new job (yeah!!!) but do not have the time saved up for any sort of vacation trip to the Windy City. As a side note, my good friend Hank, kept sending me e-mails about cheap airfares that he found on some airlines even days before this event. But it still comes back to being responsible and doing the grown up thing and pay my bills. You see there are a few reasons why I am depressed that I do not get to go this year.

First up, as some know, I was the guy that helped get the Warhammer Ancient Battles tournament (Singles and Doubles) event off the ground in Chicago. The guys playing WAB are some of the nicest guys and the event is growing. When I had to bow out, I turned over the event to Rich Nelson of the Chicago Terrain Factory blog. Last year Rich and I (well Rich really) launched a successful WAB Campaign at the event for the singles event. Well Last year after years of belly aching, I got them to do a Dark Age Campaign (my favorite era) for this year. So the year I can't make it, there will be more than a few players playing Dark Age Armies!

Secondly, my other good friend John over at Plastic Legions is running a Legends of the High Seas Campaign event at Adepticon this year!

(Picture from Plastic Legions Blog)

John ran a successful Legends of the High Seas Campaign a few years ago for his local gaming buddies. Last year while John and I had down time in between events, I talked him into co-running a LotHS event for this year. But once again the bad economy laid to waste my plans to attend. I had hoped to support John by painting up my Old Glory ship and shipping it out to him to use for the Boarding action scenario. But once again best made plans sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Time and an issue with my Old Glory ship kept me from sending the model to him to use. So another cool event that I will not get to participate in.

Thirdly, I will be missing the awesome Lord of the Rings event run By Jamie from the Blog of Five Armies Jamie is one of the reasons why Gathering in the Desert happened 4 years ago. It was because of his love for Lord of the Rings game that inspired me to run my event. So once again I am going to miss one of the coolest LotR events in the country!

And lastly and probably the biggest one really, is I will miss out on hanging out with all the friends that I have made over the years while attending Adepticon. The main reason why I play games is for the social aspect of it. And Adepticon is the peek of social gaming, yes there are hard core gamers there doing the tourney thing, but a lot of guys go year after year because of the same reason I go, to hang out with friends once a year. So I will not get to hang out with some great friends.

So there you go, as I stated above, I will be like everyone else that can't make Adepticon this year and following all the coverage from other folks that got to go to one of the coolest game events on the planet!

TK

Hello...Anyone Home?

Well,

What have I been up to since Gathering in the Desert you might be asking (or maybe not)? Well I have been pretty busy. Saguaro Painting Services is keeping me very busy, which is a good thing. Only down side is that I do not have time for my own models!

Also, for those who have not heard, I got an invite to the Throne of Skulls Games Workshop Event in June. It seems that they kept a few places open for Tournament Organizers as a way to say thanks for all the hard work we do. Well the wife and I will be going, I will be playing with toy soldiers, while she will be playing the slots!

As for the army I am taking, well it was a toss up and I actually lost sleep over it. I finally decided that I would take a 62 figure Mirkwood Wood Elf list. The only issue is I have to paint them and God knows when I will have time!

Also been busy tinkering around with 40K and had a few friends over last Friday for some Combat Patrol action. It looks like I will be planning a Combat Patrol event in September with a buddy of mine.

Also this weekend I am suppose to make a trip out to another friends place for some LotOW. I will have a small write up after this weekend.

The only problem with being so busy, is that I don't have time to write it up here. And to bust out the camera is a chore! I will need to step it up from here out, so stay tuned...

TK

State of Lord of the Rings Game in Phoenix

So,

If you have not guessed yet I have been a bit busy this month, hence the lack of posts.

So lets see, if you have not heard, Gathering in the Desert 2011 happened last weekend. We had 22 players signed up this year with only 2 not being able to make it and it was a blast. Gathering in the Desert is a Lord of the Rings Independent Grand Tournament that is on the Games Workshop Circuit.

As readers of this blog know, I am a big fan and champion of this game and have been running this GT for the last 4 years. Wow, 4 years now and I am pleased to announce that Gathering in the Desert will be back next year in 2012.

And that fact got me thinking about the local tournament scene here in Phoenix AZ. A friend pointed out that this is in his recollection, the longest running tournament and to boot it is the Lord of the Rings game! Now granted, I am not sure if this is the longest running tournament here in the valley, but ever since I have been here in the valley, it is. I could be wrong and if you know of another event here in Phoenix let me know. I know for sure that this is the longest running LotR tournament here in the valley (in fact the only one!).

So I was wondering why is that? Maybe it is because LotR is such a small part of the GW family. I know that most folks either play Warhammer Fantasy Battle or Warhammer 40K but it has been hard to find LotR players here in the valley. This year at GitD, we had a equal split of players being local and from out of state. It seems that Phoenix is not much different from other parts of the country in the fact that there is not a lot of LotR players. That is why most folks travel all over the country to play LotR. I am hopefully that the Hobbit movies will breath a new breath of life into the LotR game, in fact Games Workshop signed a 6 year deal to produce miniatures for the game, which is a great sign for the game.

So with that being said, it is time for the LotRSBG community to start to stepping it up. If we want more players to play this awesome game, we need to get out there and start playing the game. I will admit that I have been bad at this. In fact I have not really done a very good job of promoting LotR SBG in Phoenix. My good buddy Drunkensamurai and I were talking about this just today. We need to do a better job at this and if I want to see LotR grow (as well as GitD) I need to do more. Hell I even did a post on this, but I have not really done anything except run a practice event as well as GitD.

Now I heard that there was a LotR league being run out of Empire Games, but sadly the person running it has lost interest in LotR. From what I have heard, there was something like 14 players in the league and most lived in the east side of the valley. So it seems that there are more LotR players here in the valley, it just means that someone needs to rally them all together.

So I guess that means I need to get off of my butt and start doing more things for LotR here in the valley. I have tried (and failed miserably) at running a map based campaign (don't remind me Howard!). I have also talked about doing something with the Battle Companies stuff that GW put out for LotR, but once again it was nothing but talk.

So where does this leave me? Well it means I need to step up and do more for the game I love. So my plan is to try to get something going like my buddy Keith is doing up in Colorado. He is running a quarterly series of mini one day events that will track the best player and eventually will crown one person as the Champion of the series. So I am planning to get this going within the next few weeks, with GitD being the one for the first quarter with three others happening throughout the year.

So there you have it, stay tuned for more info on the Phoenix LotR Championship...

TK

Moria Table Done!

So,

Khazad - Dum, 'the Dwarrowdelf or Mines of Moria, this is the second new board for Gathering in the Desert 2011. Here is an overall shot of the new board.


It may seem that the board is pretty open and lite on terrain, but it is rather a tough board to play on. First up is the main road that runs down the middle of the board. It has no few than 12 pillars running down each side of the road, giving you 24 total pillars. Were this may seem like a no big deal, if you try to get line of sight for shooting it starts to become a mess. Also would like to thank Mike from Da Green Skins blog for helping me lay all the tiles on the road and gluing down the pillars.


I also include this hallway that has dwarven doors on both ends of it, which once again creates either a great place to hide or chock points to defend. Nice things is that I it is removable and I can use it for other projects.


On the other side of the board is Balins Tomb, which I followed the plans loosely from the Fellowship of the Rings Journey book. The pillars have enough room for a single 25mm based figure to hid behind (from a troll perhaps?) as well as having a ledge that runs around the inside of the tomb. The only thing that is different came from Drunkensamurai, that there is no back door to get out. In the journey book there is a collapsed exit that you can leave from. But in the movie I swore that the Fellowship leaves from the main door! Anyway, this will make an interesting feature on the board with only one way in. Do you hold up and defend or pass it by, hmm the decisions.


Also on the board are a few rock castings from a Woodland Scenic mold set that I have. Once again Mike from Da Green Skins stepped up to help me cast these bad boys. The are made with dental plaster castings and blue foam for the backing. Than they are mounted on Masonite and painted, so that means they have a pretty good weight to them.


I also made them to go in he corners and the edge of the table. This was done to give the feeling of being in an underground environment like in the movie.


So there you have it, another board for GitD 2011, if you are in town, stop by to see these in person...

TK