I'm Back, from Adepticon!

Well,

I am back from frigid Chicago and I am finally starting to warm up! Besides that, Adepticon was a blast and I had a good, but tiring time out there. So be warned, this will be a rather large post with a few pictures plus me rambling on about what I did and experienced.

So, my trip out started out a bit bumpy in regards to in that my flight was delayed due to mechanical issues. We were told that it would be an hour delay, but luckily we were only delayed 30 minutes. Which leads me to believe that the airlines build delay times into their flight times to make them look better with arrival times. The flight was uneventful except for the older woman that sat next to me that smelled like garlic and onions, that was fun!

Somewhere over New Mexico

Once I landed my buddy Jay picked me up and as I stepped outside I was greeted by 40 degree weather, which was a bit of a shock since I left high 80's! Anyway Jay dropped me off at the Westin and I got settled in. My plan was to help with set up, but once I checked in with Hank Eddley, everything was set already set up. So I got together with Kyle, Chris and Tim C for dinner at the Brickyard. Prior to us going to get something to eat we decided to pick up our swag bags that you get for attending Adepticon. Below is the this years haul. For the $30.00 badge, you get a a lot of cool stuff if your one of the first folks to sign up, its always nice to get this stuff.

Swag Bag!

So Thursday was spent wandering around Adepticon to see some of the games going on. One thing that I was a bit disappointed in was the vendor hall was not open on Thursday, it was only open Friday thru Sunday. The only events I signed up for was the Legends of the Old West tournament and a Gladiator ad Chariot racing game. The LotOW was scheduled for Thursday night, so I had time to catch up with old friends while wandering around.

LotOW Little Bighorn game.

40K room in full swing and smell!

Battletech ad other Demo games.

So after wandering around and helping my buddy Merle out with his LotOW game, I headed up to get my Posse for the LotOW tourney. Merle was running this event and we had 8 players signed up and he brought three tables worth of terrain, most of it being from 4Ground miniatures. Let me say this, I have to order me some of those buildings! They are amazing and I will be buying me a few in the near future.

The LotOW tourney was a 4 round game without us doing any sort of upgrades and it was a blast of a good time. Each person I played was great and everyone had an awesome attitude, it was very laid back and casual. In the end, I had two wins and two draws and ended up taking home the Best Sportsman award, which I got a set of cool laser cut counters, thanks Merle for running a great event. In fact I had such a great time, I will be rounding up the guys here for a few games of LotOW.

Merle aka Mother setting up!

 Friday morning started with me lending my help with the Lord of the Rings event for the paint judging. There were a few that were heads above most and I had to look at 6 of the top leaders. All in all it was awesome to be a judge and being able to sit and really look at the top contenders, in the end my buddy Jeremy squeaked it out, but it was very close (something like 1 point difference amongst the leaders).

Kyle Toth Game of Thornes

Jeremy's Orc leader

Jeremy's display board.

Besides helping with judging, I sat down with my buddy Merle for lunch and I asked him to show me the Gladiator game that he and Jon Cleaves of DGS games came up with. The rules are based off the Freeblades system from DGS games. I never had an urge to do Gladiator games, but I thought why not try it out. I had a blast and actually won a copy of the rules and it looks to be a great little system that I may be getting into.

Freeblade Arena

After the Gladiator game, I wandered around talking to folks and just taking in Adepticon. Friday night though was set for the Legends of the High Seas game and the Guns April. There was only one problem, both games were due to start around the same time! Since I promised my buddy John Humphrey I would help out with the LotHS game, I had to bow out of the Guns of April game.

We had 20 people show up for a huge Pirate game that John set up, and all I can say is that we were the loudest group in the room and everyone was having a blast. Oh and there was a lot of Rum going around to those that were of age.

Pirate Captains and Navy men gathering for the game!

Battle is joined and so is the rum!

So while Pirates were being Pirates, at the other end of the table the Gentleman of the Guns of April Crew were getting under way. First let me say, the buildings were gorgeous and they had that Egyptian feel to them. The painting was perfect on these and all the cool little details (pillows, planters, rugs, drapes) just put this table over the top for me. It had just enough detail to draw you in but not too much to make it cluttered.

A Beautiful table!

Details, details, details!

Here comes the cavalry! Sort of!

Turks on a shopping spree (pic from Dave Taylor)

Hey Whats over there? (Pic from Dave Taylor)

As you can see from the pictures above, my Turks were in action even though I was not. I loaned out my troops so another guy could play and I have to say, I was worried that my painting would not measure up to some of the folks there (Dave T, Jamie W, Dave P, Merle D and a few others). But Dave Taylor assured me that my painting was up to par with the rest of the guys. In fact, Merle loved my Turks so much, they went home with him, I did a swap for some Flames of War models.

Saturday came quickly since I was up until around two in the morning with the Pirate game and watching Vikings on TV when I got to the room. So I was scheduled to play a game of Chariot racing with Merle. This was another Freeblades game and it was fun even though I was the first one to wreck!

Wow, who was the first wreck? Me!

The rest of my Saturday was spent with Kyle and he offered to take me shooting. That was a nice change to get out of the hotel. We went out and threw out about 500 rounds and it was a blast. It was nice to shoot real weapons instead of rolling dice for weapons. Later that night Kyle, Jay, Suzi and I went to dinner at Harry Caray's thanks to my boss and work. A great time was had over dinner.

Sunday started early (6:00am) as I headed down to start setting up the Bolt Action tournament. I had 20 folks signed up so I needed to set up 10 tables. Good thing was that a few folks stepped up to supply terrain.

After an hour of stressing out, the players started to wander down and get checked in. One problem was that out of 20 players, we only had 12 show up! This was a bit of a disappointment but I rolled with it and made the best out of the low attendance. The players all seemed to have a good time and hopefully they will all be back next year.

Battle commences!

Terrain from GitD

Japanese on the move!

Jeremy's Airfield

John Humphrey Red Devils

John's armoured car!

After the event, we had the breakdown of the con and Aaron, Jamie and Myself started taking everything down. We spent about an hour and a half breaking everything down and getting it all put away. We then had the task of packing Jamies car with a ton of stuff.

Once we had finished, Merle and the DGS crew invited me to go see Captain America Winter Soldier at the 3D IMAX screen right next door. I then hung out with Merle, Chris and Jay until I headed off to my room to get packed up to head home. So that was pretty much my Adepticon trip in a nutshell. If you have never been to Adepticon, it is a must see. If your bold and strong enough, I would suggest stepping up to help out, they always need the help.

TK 

Leaving On A Jet Plane...

So,

Tomorrow I jump on a plane and head to Chicago's premier gaming event, Adepticon 2014. Its going to be an awesome weekend (or a week for me) considering how the past two weeks have been. Real life likes to throw wrench's into game plans I have found out. Two months ago, my boss at work informed me that we would be moving our 10000 sq foot warehouse into a 20000 sq foot warehouse and it would fall over Adepticon weekend. Well good thing I had put in for vacation time ahead of time. So we had to speed up the move since I would be gone, so last week we started the move and all I can say is I am beat! Thank God it wasn't summer here or it would have been terrible!

So tomorrow will be a travel day and a set up day for me. Once I get in and get my luggage stored, I will be helping with set up until the wee hours of the night I am sure. Then Thursday I will be playing in the Legends of the Old West tournament. I had wanted to do a cool display, but with work and limited luggage space, that idea went out the window.So I went with a cool army list. For each of my Posse members I made Wanted posters and inserted pictures of the models on them, so players can quickly identify which figure is which. So here are the member's of my Outlaw Posse, oh the names come from a card game called Bang!

So, stay tuned for Adepticon coverage...

TK

The Guns of Adepticon!

Well,

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


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

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

TK

Bolt Action Month Wrap Up

So,

It has been a pretty crazy month of Bolt Action madness around here and I think things will get back to normal here at the blog. As some know, I had been getting ready for Gathering in the Desert Operation Scorpion, a Bolt Action 2 day tournament. I had been building and repairing terrain leading up to the event as well as gathering prizes, printing out packets and preparing for the best event I could.

Well we had 14 players attend this first Bolt Action event and we had some great looking tables. Games were played, players rolled dice and all seemed to have a great time. Now we did have a few minor glitches, like the Battle points that Warlord came up with need to be adjusted (3 pts for a win, 1 pt for a draw and 0 for a loss). there were also a few other issues with the scenarios (which were the Top Secret and Demolition scenarios). But all in all, it was a great event.

One of the highlights was that the Store owner Darren Johnson of Imperial Outpost games had high praise for the event. In fact one of his employees was blown away on how organized and well run the event was and would love to see more events run this smoothly. That made my weekend hearing that, as well as hearing that same thing from many of the players. In fact the four guys that traveled from Chicago and only gotten in a few games of Bolt Action and were coming out based on previous GitD events. That means a lot as well and made the long days worth it.

Now this weekend (a week after GitD) saw another Bolt Action event held at Crusader Retreat. This one was run by the local Warlord employee and was the total opposite of GitD in how it was run. The guy did not communicate very well, was not prepared and did not put much thought into it. Granted this event was free, but it felt like he phoned in the event. The best part for me was the fact that the prize (a US Marine army) would have to be sent to the winner since he did not have one. Wow, that is priceless!!!So in my opinion it was a night and day difference in how each event was run.

So now I can get back to regular blog updates...

Oh one more thing, I will be attending Adepticon this year! Yes after years of riding the bench, I will be going back to Adepticon to play some games and run a few games, so stay tuned for some Adepticon updates...

TK

Ruins and another Pulp!

So,

I have been busy working on a few ruins for the up coming Gathering in the Desert event that I am running for Bolt Action. Over Christmas I picked up a set of Warlords Ruined Hamlet which includes three ruined buildings. I built up the ruins and mounted them to MDF and went to work painting them up. Now I have to say I wanted to go to town on these with more rubble. But what I have found is that it may look cooler with more debris, it usually doesn't lend itself for playability. So I kept these relative clear of debris going for playability over realism.

Well besides the ruins, I got another Pulp Miniature completed this week, it is Doctor Mathis from the University. Once again, this figure was a blast to paint up and had just the right amount of detail.

So there you go folks, another week down and another post. I will be doing a write up of the Flames of War event I attended this past weekend, so once I get all my thoughts down I will get it posted here, so stay tuned...

TK

Pulp Day. Part Duex!

So Guess what day it is??? Pulp Day!!!!

That's right folks, I have another figure completed and its another Pulp Miniature. Today we have Steven Tubner, a good fried of Chappie and a railroad mogul that fancies himself a archaeologist when not building rail empires.

As with the last figure, this one is inspired after another friend of mine from Disneyland (I'm starting to see a trend here!). Steven used to work with Don and I on the Mark Twain. Steven was also a model railroader and the three of us would talk model railroading all day long.

Anyway, another figure down and another one is on the way.

TK

Happy Pulp Day!

Okay

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

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

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

Pulp Miniature pack PHP 14 Rugged Archaeologists

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

Professor Chapman

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

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

TK

All Is Quiet On New Years Day

So,

The first post of 2014 and as the title mentions, it is all quiet here at SPL (aka my game room). In years past I have always had folks over for gaming on New Years day, but not this year since it falls in the middle of the week. So I guess I should lay out my plans for gaming and modeling this year, these are not in any particular order, so here goes.

X-Wing - So I got a pretty good haul of stuff this Christmas and Robert and I have talked about getting this game onto the table. Being old enough to remember when I saw Star Wars in the Movie theater during its first release, I always wanted to do some sort of miniature gaming with Tie Fighters and X-Wings. So now after many many moons, that will happen. In fact, Robert and I got in 4 games of it on New Years Eve and we had a blast. Sadly my record of Win/Loss was a 1 -3, but this will change as I read up on the rules and play more games.

Flames of War- Well this is one game I will be returning to in a big way. It was the most played game for me in 2013 and 2012 and I do not see that changing for 2014! In fact I am getting excited about doing another campaign with Robert and a few others. We are looking at an Operation Market Garden or Operation Overlord. So that means I will be building a few more armies for FoW. I will also be playing in Shifting Sands 2014 in a few weeks and I want to play in more local tournaments. I played in one tournament in 2012 and 2013, this year I want to play in more than one. I am also thinking of running my own FoW event in 2014, but we will see how that one goes.

Pulp Alley - I love these rules and I love anything "Pulpy". Last year I ran a group game for some friends using the LotR rules, it worked but still did not feel right. I think Pulp Alley has everything I want in a rule set. So my goal is to run not one, but at least four Pulp Alley games. So I have some painting to do as well as planning in order to get in more games of this. Nice thing is that I will be taking a demo game of Pulp Alley to Adepticon in April, so I hope to hook a bunch more folks into playing it.

Legends of the Old West - Like last year, I want to get this game back to the table. Nice thing is that I am playing in a small tournament of LotOW at Adepticon this year. I recently got about a dozen Gorgon Studios old west figures that I plan to get painted up for the event, as well as do a review of them. With doing Old West, I want to finely get more of my old west building painted so I can play said game. Last year I sold my buildings to the local game store hoping that would get me to paint up what I have, but all it did was keep it on the back burner. So I hope to be doing some old west gaming in 2014.

Bolt Action - Well I am running a Bolt Action tournament in about a month and a half, so I will be working on terrain and figures throughout 2014. I don't see any new armies in the future, just painting up what I have and playing some more games.

Empire of the Dead - Well I want to get at least two factions completed for the game so I can demo the game for folks. I only got in a few games with my buddy Dave but I am sure more folks would get interested in it if they saw it out on the table. So I plan to get out and play more of this in the local shops.

Saga - Well, I played one game of this last year, liked it, but did nothing else with it, so I want to get in at least two games of this. My WAB Viking army is wanting to get out of their storage box and I can use figures from that for Saga.

Adepticon - Well I am going back to Chicago for this awesome game event, I will be running a Bolt Action tournament, playing in the LotOW tournament, helping my buddy run a Legends of the High Seas event as well as play in a few Gladiator games using the LotR rules. I will also be playing in a the Sons of April game this year since it is using the LotHS rules.  I also plan to do my usual blog coverage of this event and I am looking forward to seeing some old friends. John & Jamie owe me a dinner!

Gathering in the Desert - Well as I mentioned, GitD is back on and this year it is Warlords Bolt Action. I want this event to stand out over the other Bolt Action events with the way it runs and looks. So I have my work cut out for me in the next month.

Black Powder - Well we are all planning on doing some Nappy games for BP and I want to get at least a brigade of French ready for the game. I also want to get my Confederate Brigade completed. Some tall orders since I have nothing painted or even assembled yet. But BP is a cool group game and I love playing it with folks.

So there you go folks, this years plan, I hope to due better than last year. My biggest goal is to stay focused on these goals and do not let myself get distracted. So it will be interesting to see just how well I do this year. Good Luck to me, because I will need it!

TK

A Look Back at 2013

Well,

The end of the year is almost upon us and it is that time to look back and see what we did here at Cursed Treasures, first a look at what the goals were for 2013.

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

So I did very well with Bolt Action this year, I got in a ton of games and had a lack luster game record of 4-6-4. The Paint Challenge for 2013 was to paint up 1000 points of my US Airborne and I ended up painting my whole force. The funny thing is that I had these particular figures for well over 5 years, but I finally got them all painted up. I also decided to to run another Gathering in the Desert event which will be for Bolt Action in 2014. So I have been trying to build the local community for the event and we will have another great event. So all in all, I would say I did very well with Bolt Action this year.

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

 So, we got in two large games of Black Powder ACW and my goal was to build a Confederate Brigade, well that did not happen. I picked up four boxes of Perry Miniatures to build my Brigade, but I only got four figures built and no painting done. So I would say I didn't do to well this year, but there is always next year.

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

I only got in one game of Hail Caesar this year over at a friends house. We did a large ancient game in 15mm, other than that, nothing else was ever done with HC. We are still talking about playing it, but it will depend on me getting the rules and doing something. So this goal was an epic fail!

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

Well other than playing Red Dead, there was no Old West gaming at all. I did get two of my Old West buildings painted, I just need to paint up about 15 more buildings and I will be good for terrain on the Old West Front. Now in 2014 I will be playing in a LotOW tourney at Adepticon, but nothing for 2013, so fail here.

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

So, Flames of War was huge this year, I had a great game record of 13-11-1, which is good since that was 25 games total for the year. That means that FoW was the most played game for me this year. I started a couple of new armies and finished up a few old armies. I played in my second FoW event and actually placed 4th out of 12 players, which is awesome. I also spent most of my hobby budget on FoW this year as well. So the FoW goal was a huge success and I can easily say that FoW was the game of the year.


So that was the goals of 2013, lets look at what else I did for 2013.

Pulp, I purchased a bunch of Pulp items this year, Pulp Alley rules, new Pulp Miniatures and I acquired some great buildings for pulp games. Pulp is one of those fall back periods that I really love and am always working on. In fact I think about Pulp gaming all the time, I know I will be continuing this trend into the new year.

Empire of the Dead, I did some work on figures for this game and got in a couple of games, but other than that, not much else happened. I know a few of my friends have the rules, but there has not been much interest in getting onto the table. I think it is because those that have the rules are busy playing something else and we are just all too busy to get this one to the table. But I will still work on figures from time to time since I like the idea of the game.

I had high hopes for this game and I purchased miniatures and the rulebook, but shortly after I bought the rulebook, they announced that they are going to do another rulebook with a new addition. That killed it for me, I will either sell off what I have, or at least paint up the minis. I am just burnt out with game companies changing their rules within a few years.

Hmm, another rule set and models that were purchased, but besides reading the rules and looking at models, nothing else happened. I did get in a game with a few guys and another friend actually got his stuff painted, but once again nothing else happened. The local scene has moved away from the game, which is strange, since there are a lot of players here in the valley.

So there you go, my 2013 year in review, what does 2014 hold, well that will be another post. You may be able to guess a few goals, but stay tuned...

TK

Christmas Goodies!

So,

I must have been a good boy this year because Santa brought my a good amount of stuff this year. There are a few things not in the picture in which include one PS3 game, Pirates of the Caribbean At Worlds End, 4 U2 CD's (Boy, October, War & Unforgettable Fire) and the Lone Ranger Movie.

So onto the game items, I got the new Armies of Italy and Axis book from Warlord and now all I need is the Allies book. Next up are two boxes of Victrix French Imperial Guard, this will be the start of our groups Nappy project.

The rest of the items are for X-wing, which includes another basic set because you really need a second set of templates. I also got another set of dice for the game which you can never have enough of. I also got the Tie Advanced Fighter and X Wing expansion which I forgot to take a picture of. I also got the A-Wing expansion and B-Wing expansion.But the one I really wanted was the Millennium Falcon expansion! I mean after all, what a hunk of junk!

Not a bad haul and a glimpse into what I will be doing for 2014. Now I need to get to thinking about what I did all this year.

TK

Shifting Sands 2014 Force!

So,

It seems that I will get in another army before the year is out and it is my SS14 Stug Batterie company. Shifting Sands is a local themed that the Desert Rats run here in Phoenix. For the past few years I have wanted to go and participate, but real life always got in the way or I just did not have a force for each years theme. But once I heard that it would be "Panthers, Tigers and Elephants, oh my! SS 14 Kursk" how could I not want to go! So if you remember over this summer I purchased all the models for the event while on vacation and I have been slowly working on getting everything together and painted. Well I did it before the end of the year, so here is my force.

First up is the main component for the Stug Batterie, Stug F/8Gs. Since Sands uses themed list, this Stug list was put together be the Desert Rats, So there is a single HQ Stug F/8G with Side Skirts for 180 points, then there are two platoons of two Stug F/8G with side skirts for 350 each.

The main Gun Batterie

Next up is a single platoon of two Stug F/8G at 340pts. I will use these guys as support or for reserves.

Hey why don't we get skirts???

Next up are two Sd Kfz 7/1 Quad 2cm guns that have been upgraded to armoured half tracks for 120pts. I know there will be planes and these guys will work as air support or close range infantry support.

Give me something to shot at!

 Last up are some Grenadier squads to hold an objective, I have three squads all mounted in trucks for 160pts. A bid thanks goes to Drunkensamurai for donating the trucks to the cause!

We have camo so they will not see us!

Hey Sergeant, why are we going with the tanks again?

So here is the whole 1500 point force in all of its glory ready for battle. I have yet to get in any games with the force and I understand it will be tough since I have a limited fire arc, but I feel pretty confident of the force since it has a mix of infantry and tanks.

SS14 Stug Batterie

So there you go, one of the last few posts for the year, next up will be my Christmas haul and what I got done for 2013 and what lays ahead for 2014.

TK