Intergalactic Convention Report

 It's called intergalactic but it's held here on earth, just like the Ms. Universe contest.

Working for the Weekend

The Intergalactic convention recently took place; this is a small local convention in Sacramento Ca.  I like to throw my support (whether they want it or not) at these local conventions because I like having conventions that I don't have to travel far to get to or stay in a hotel.  

So I signed myself up to run 4 games over the weekend, basically in each of the major time blocks; one on Friday night, 2 on Saturday, and one Sunday morning.  It's kinda like community service except that I don't have to wear an orange vest.  While the con had a Sci-fy theme, any game genre was welcome.

Friday is Lord of the Rings

Friday night I brought my Lord of the Rings set up for a skirmish set in Osgiliath.  

Pics of the set up.
Needs more rubble piles.

The rules were Fistful of Lead: Might and Melee.  Which is basically a dark ages / medieval skirmish game so the only thing that makes this fanatasy is the setting; crazy stone buildings and one side being orcs.  

I explained the scenario as "Sauron turned his burning eye to his orcs and said something like "Hey my dudes.  I think I dropped like a necklace or something back in Osgiliath like a thousand years ago.  Kinda been on my mind lately, kinda want it back.  Go there and look for it will ya?  Great.  Super, you're the best. But go NOW."  

There are 3 ruined buildings that cross the center line of the board.  Each has to be searched for the missing trinket.  To count as searched the Orcs have to pass two normal task rolls within them.  Orcs cannot search if there is a unegaged enemy in the same ruins.   When a building is searched nothing is found.  The orcs win if they can search all 3 buildings, as they can report back that the search was complete.  The Good side only had to stop this.  To balance things out a little, the orcs had more orcs than men had men.  

To aid in game play, I once again made sure that every character had it's own Pokémon card.

Boromir's Pokémon, I mean CHARACTER card.
Everything the player needs to know in one spot.

I brought enough warbands for 6 players, had 3 sitting around when the game began, so played myself to make it even.  I love it when that happens.

if you look closely, you might spot where one the ruins got damaged on the ride over,
and I forgot to bring any glue.

Random game pic
I also labelled each of the miniatures for easy recognition.

Another random game pic

In the beginning, the orc players were really invested in ling up shots with the archers, while I kept saying that archery wasn't that reliable in this game.  First two orcs shots resulted in 2 dead men.  They never believed a word I said after.

Players seemed to have fun, I was having fun.  Game started at 5 and wrapped up at 9 PM.

Let's take a look at the other miniatures games going on Friday night:

don't see any?
That's because mine was the only one.

Saturday is Kidding Around

As mentioned previously on this blog; The Intergalactic Convention mentioned having a 'Young gamers' program and since I have young gamers I volunteered to run two games for the program on Saturday.  Later on it turns out I was the entirety of the 'kid friendly' games available.  In the morning there was the Wooden Wars game and in the afternoon I was hosting some kid friendly board games.

Let's take a look at ALL the children that came.

Just one, and I brought him.
My Son#2 (age 6).

Just proves the adage that wargamers are grumpy old men who can't be bothered with kids.  

And one day, I will be one of them.

Daughter#1 (age 10) was supposed to come, but she was invited to a birthday party that same day that was gonna have go kart racing.  She had enough good manners to at least sound conflicted when she said she'd rather go to that.  

Wooden wars set up

Portion of the French line

I have mixed emotions about this.  One the one hand I was fairly disappointed to have put all this effort into Wooden Wars and have no one show up.  I felt bad for my son too, as he didn't really get a great 'convention experience of playing with a bunch of people some cool games' but more just 'playing games with his dad' which he does at home.  On the other hand, I'm fully aware that this game is a nitch, buried in another nitch, covered by a nitch coating so wouldn't be a big draw, especially for an already small convention.  So on one foot I would NOT go through all this effort to put on such a game again, but on the other foot; I already have it, so it would be easy to do again.  

I'm sure that if I brought this to a bigger convention that probably already had a bunch of kids going, it would of been more successful.  

I will say though that everyone was nice to Son#2, and he did get a kick out of walking around and seeing the game tables.  And people let him touch stuff.  

In the vender hall, I told him that he could pick out 'one small thing' thinking there wouldn't really that much to tempt him.  The folks working at the GEG space knew they're business.  "hey" she said, "check out these dice, they're made from the same material as bouncy balls, so they bounce really well."  

Sure enough they did. It was a set of D&D dice (d20, D3, D10, etc..)

He played with those things for the rest of the day. just trying to get certain numbers to happen. 

hey lookit,
I DID finish that English cavalry.

He was able to play Wooden Wars for close to two hours.  After that we drove to a nearby McDonalds for needed junk food.  Ate it next to the Bolt Action tournament.  

In the afternoon we played some boardgames.  He got through one game of Forbidden Island before basically getting over the whole experience (got mentally tired, but not sleepy).  I did have two grandparents show up for 'boardgames with kids', looking for suggestions on what they could play with they're grand kids.  So I got to sound like an expert as I made recommendations.  

We left for home around 4 PM.

At the end Son#2 said it was "a good time" and "could we do it again next weekend?" Which I took as encouragement for my Father of the Year award.  Though later on when I told him he couldn't play Legos or whatever he wanted to play because we all had to take his mom to urgent care because she felt really sick he yelled "So I WASTED MY WHOLE DAY?!!!"  

Me:  "........"

Anyway, let's take a look at the other miniature games going on Saturday:

Don't see any?

just kidding, that's my fault.  Actually, there was a decent number of miniature games going on, but I failed to take any pictures.  I had a hyper active 6 year old high on cookies with me. 

Nice guy Mr. GM ran a really great looking Rank and File game that I was envious of not being able to pay in.  And Mr GM shared some snacks with Son#2.  There were some nice space ship games and etc..

There was a Bolt Action tournament with some really nice tables that I was also envious of not playing in.  There were 6 players and enough prize support for 10.  

Overall for Miniature games I would say there were scarce options, and I saw quite a number of cancellations as well.  The games I saw were good; just not a lot of them on offer or a lot of miniature players in attendance.  The good side of that is that none were overcrowded, and you could play in any game you wanted.  

The con was kinda spread out over the convention center, with activities in different rooms.  Which I like because it cuts down on noise and bumping butts, and I don't want to be mistaken for a roleplayer.  

Though when I did wander into the role playing and board game areas; those places were hopping busy.

There was a smile on everyone's face, except that one guy who just rolled a 1.

Sunday in Space

I returned on Sunday without the boy for some serious grown-up gaming.  Time for real Grown-up fun with little dolls.  I mean miniatures.  

My friend Mr. CG ran a game of Battle Tech Alpha Strike.

Stompy Robots do the stompy dance

My other friend Mr. DR ran a game of AT-43:

While I ran a game featuring the franchise BELOVED by millions, Star Trek.  

Using rules Starmada unity.

Serious Grown up wargaming.

All in all, it was a fun, laid back weekend.  The location was clean and nice, only about 40 mins from me.  I would definitely attend again and run some more games. 

Thanks for reading,

Double thanks for writing a comment.

Till next time.

Morannon Orcs Completed

Yay, I finally finished painting some miniatures...

Morannon Orcs

Morannon Orcs are made up by GW for their Lord of the Rings game.  I'm not sure if in the actual books there is a huge difference between Orcs from the Morannon and Orcs from elsewhere, maybe they have something like a southern drawl when they speak.  In game terms Morannon Orcs have slightly better stats and armor to satisfy the power gamers, and are supposed to represent the bad ass orcs that broke through the garrison in Osgiliath and sieged Minas Tirith.

I painted these guys for use in upcoming LOTR scenarios from the Gondor at War supplement.  It took me awhile to paint these 36 miniatures but what can you do?  I'm glad their done though, as these 36 figures (or some portion of them) are used in many of the scenarios, so the heavy lifting is done to get those scenarios playable.

These are GW plastic miniatures, a little less than 2 boxes worth that I got for cheap from a guy selling them on TMP. 

Where is all the flock Stew?
I'll tell ya.  These guys will mostly be fighting inside Osgiliath and  Minas Tirith, on my stone mat that doesn't have any grass on it, so they don't need no flocking flock.

Tried to Paint like Kuribo, and failed, by varnish

I also painted up these two special Morannon Orc characters; in the game they have special abilities and act as leaders for the rest of the mush for brains Morannon Orcs.    These miniatures are from Forgeworld and are resin.  They're also very detailed and more than anything else... expensive. 
Because of these traits, I decided that I wanted to put some extra effort into these two miniatures and try to paint them, you know, well.   with highlights and stuff, even used a magnifier to see the details.  Hot stuff. 

The Two characters are:
 'Guritz', the guy in the middle with the attractive skull on top of helmet which is probably
in no way unbalancing to have an 8 pound dead weight on top of your head and a bad idea in real life...
'Gothmog's Enforcer' is the orc on the left.  I guess no one could think of a cool orc-y name, maybe Mr. Piggles?

The guy on the right is a red shirt orc.  A  nobody

I summoned my inner Kuribo and set about the task.  Kuribo is one of my online best blogger buddies who paints his LOTR figures and terrain REALLY well.  You can find his LOTR themed blog HERE.  Check it out why not?  When I think of well painted LOTR figures, I think of Kuribo.


I've said before on this blog that in my core I am a 'paint to play' gamer, and I don't especially enjoy painting for it's own sake.  However, I enjoyed putting in the extra time and effort on these miniatures.  Maybe just because it was change of pace and using different skills, or more appropriately, using all my meager painting skills.  In any case, I was quite pleased on how they came out which was a good enough reward.  Other LOTR leaders will likely get the same treatment. 

That is I enjoyed it because it was all going so smoothly until I varnished them, which for some reason went a little cloudly.  I tried my tried and true solution of putting on a second coat of varnish and it helped aaaaaa liiiitle, but overall these did not come out as good as they first looked.
oh well, what are you gonna do?  luckily for me these are bad guys who obviously don't have parents who love them so no one really cares. 

Side Topic: Miniature photography is Hard.
taking pics of miniatures so that one can actually see the paint job is hard to get right.  I have yet to master it.  So instead of super close ups you get regular pics.  Even the regular pics are trash. 

Good enuff.  

does the red make my butt look like it kill everyone in Minas Tirith? 

38 and Clear!

With  36 Orcs + 2 Orc leaders for the LOTR project complete, the hobbydesk is now clear to focus on something else.  And I really gotta try and get some games on the table before the year turns. 

Hope to see you again soon. 

Completed Expected LOTR ruins.

I've finished painting up my latest LOTR ruins made from Hirst Arts for battles in Osgiliath and Minas Tirrith. 

but first, a little mini drama presented in 1 act to illustrate how this came to be:

Scene: Our hero (which is me) is driving home from work when his plans are cancelled due to reasons.  Knowing that the his wife and 2 surviving children also have plans tonight, he calls her to tell her that instead of doing what he was gonna do he can now go with the family to their thing.

Wife speaks: "That's OK, you don't have to come, it's all gonna be moms and kids anyway, and you deserve a break. Why don't you stay home and do some painting or whatever."

Our Hero (again, which is me) replies: "Oh it's alright I can come (brief pause), but since you mention it I could get some painting done so I will stay home but let me know if you change your mind."
Hang up.
Turn phone off.

End scene.


(No, I didn't really turn the phone off)
(and maybe the wife is really the hero of the story.  Maybe.)

So unexpectedly I was able to finish the expected ruins.
I expect you'll like to see some pics...

Dry Brushing is Quick and Easy

Painting formula:
Black primer spray paint.
Heavy dry brush dark grey
Medium dry brush grey
Super duper light dry brush white.

It’s so simple it’s Kinda hard to mess up but I still managed to do so in a few places.
However the terrain is very forgiving of small mistakes and overall; came out pretty darn alright if I do say so myself.

On to the pics!

All 3 items painted!
I really ought to get a nice place to photograph terrain besides the kitchen table.

The Statue House

with the statue inside, naturally.
That good old king what's his name.

I'm really please how this broken statue house came out.  It's the smooth brick patterns that really make it stand out I think. 

The pretty piece of wall

Just a low wall, forms a corner so it can stand up.  

Arches Arches Arches Everywhere.

the back is really nothing special.
shame to end on this pic really.

All of the these terrain pieces use a variety of bricks from a  minimum of 2 and some even 5 different molds and I think I'm starting to get a real knack of mixing and matching the bricks together to from unique terrain.  It also just goes to show what an awesome system the Hirst Arts molds really are. All of them have been well worth the investment. 

That's a Load Off My Hobby Table

My main concern for the up coming convention was getting these 3 terrain items done so it was a relief when they actually painted up really fast and easy, even somewhat ahead of schedule.  It's still 2 weeks till the convention.  Now I feel really prepared and all remaining things on the to-do list are pretty minor; like typing up the army lists and packing everything for transport.  

And now that the terrain is done and the terrain making urge is out of my system (for now), I feel like it's time to return to the roots and start painting some miniatures again.  Just have to decide what.  

Thanks for reading.  

Signs of Life, and Light at the End of the Tunnel (LOTR ruins)

A post in which, after 5 or 6 weeks (it was so long I can't remember clearly) of no hobby activity, hails my glorious return to the hobby desk.
5 or 6 weeks is not that much time away, in the big scope of things.  but it seemed like a long time to me, especially since my main form of relaxation is this wargaming hobby.
but house projects have been wrapped up to a 'good enough' state of completion, no more trips to southern CA. to get my fathers house sold.. and while life is still busier than I would have it, the happy day has arrived where there is time again to enjoy oneself quietly at the hobbydesk.

Good thing too,  because time was growing short...

Light at the End of the Tunnel Could Also be a Train

While there is time for hobbying in the late hours of the day, there are still enough obligations during daylight hours to prevent any gaming.  BOOO! 
But there is light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a small local convention near the end of July called Intergalactic Conquest.

I was officially able to attend the convention when the wife put it on her calendar, and so after being given the green light I signed up to run some games.  I might of gotten a little over enthusiastic thinking of how I was in a state of no gaming and that this might be the only convention I attend this year, so I volunteered to run 3 games, which is quite a commitment.  But the event list for the con is pretty sparse for miniatures and I like running games, so there it is.

you can check out the list of scheduled games here on the Event List.
See my name?

I'm running two LOTR games, one of Friday night and one late Sunday afternoon as per my original plan.  However, I just COULDN'T let a convention go by without an ACW game, because conventions without ACW are just a tragedy, So I'll put on the Barlow's Knoll scenario for Saturday night. 

Now the ACW scenario I've run a couple times before so that's easy.  But for the LOTR games I better get going on finishing some projects.  There's only a few weeks till the convention and there's still lots going on in the real life, so I'm slightly under the gun.

While I am looking forward to gaming again and happy about the light at the end of the tunnel, it also could be a train coming down the tracks as I rush to complete the LOTR projects.
Will I leap out of the tunnel at the last second like an action movie star or fall under the train and get smashed on the tracks?

Signs of Life at the Hobby Desk

Now where was I?  Oh yes, making some kick ass ruins for the LOTR table.
After some furious activity of gluing and occasional sanding to get the little blocks to fit right,
here are some WIP shots of the ruins I'm working on:

A 28mm Warrior of Minas Tirrith shows up to demonstrate the scale

Here we have the ruined wall section from the last post with some a little bit added to the top for extra prettiness.  This is completely assembled with ground texture added and ready for painting.
Next!

Now here we have a piece that I'll call the Statue House because you know, it's a building with a statue in it.  The name is nothing if not accurate.  This has higher door arches than necessary just to give it a little more height than other pieces and provide some variation.  It still needs some ground texture in places.  This is actually one of the more complicated pieces I've made since it uses pieces from several different HA molds.

And lastly, here yet another ruined wall section of a basic design.  There's no base on this one, so it's ready for painting.

All together they make a nice little cluster

So lots to do in the next few weeks but it's nice to spend some time back at the hobby desk.
Too bad I was all rusty, and not to mention my blogging skills had collected a little dust.


Hopefully it won't be too long to until the next update.
Thanks for reading!