EndZone paint night and IKRPG start

Well, after a bit of a break for the end of summer activities that always seem to zap everyone's time, we were able to get together and have another very enjoyable paint night.
Lots of painting going on of course, but a lot of people were there to get help on setting up a character for an Iron Kingdoms RPG session that will start early next month.
As of right now, I will be playing a Dwarven Ranger/Arcane mechanic.
That could change as I get more familiar with the rules though. Really just going for what sounds cool at the moment. My good buddy grim will be playing a Dwarven Military officer(retired)/bounty hunter.
Our Dwarves will be brothers that were booted out of the Rhulic military for some unknown reason, and moved to Northern Khador to open up a mechanics shop.
My dwarf does the work in the shop and Grims dwarf hunts down those that don't pay up.
That's how our back-story sits as of right now anyway.  More as things progress over the next few weeks!
I really only ended up painting for a small portion of the night, but I did get some good progress done on the Extreme Black Ivan I'm working on. as soon as I get some decent pics snapped, you'll be able to see him in all of his beat up, rusted glory. :)

 The table where most of the paint was happening.

 And, the character building table.

First Tournament at gamers Asylum

Well, we had the very first Warmachine/Hordes  tournament at the Gamers Asylum.
Was a fairly tame tournament for a lot of the newer players with a 25 point limit and no reinforcements.
Up for grabs were the colossal coins but that didn't mean the Hordes players armies didn't arrive in force! I think it was split nearly 50/50 between the two systems. Surprisingly, Cryx, Cygnar, Skorne and Trollbloods were not represented, but we had Menoth and Khador coming out our ears! There were 16 people that showed, which was a great turn out for a new store!

First place went to a Menoth Harbinger player, second to Legion with Saeryn and third was an eKaya Circle list. Was a well run and fun tournament. 

More Silos and a full day of games

Finished up a couple more silos since I was so pleased with the look of the first one. They were then used in a game of Dark Age and I think they really helped set a cool atmosphere for the board. I'm excited to get working on  few more factory style pieces so I can theme an entire board.
I'm going to have to make some that look suitably Cryxian to help tie in the whole set for our Warmahordes games. 

Also snapped a few pics of Yesterdays gaming goodness. For some reason the cosmos must have aligned just so, and a few of us got passes to go game for the ENTIRE day!
At noon, we started with a game of Warhammer Fantasy,  with some Warmachine and Hordes taking place as well.  Unfortunately , Warhammer games are few and far between these days as seems to be the case all over from what I see on the interwebs.
This was my first game of eighth, and really my first game since the very earliest days of 7th edition so we kept the game small(1500pts) 
I took an infantry heavy Dwarf army and was met on the field by a pretty standard High Elf army.
The game was really a lot of fun, and was surprisingly close until a rather volatile magic phase saw the demise of my entire block of Ironbreakers! The MVP for the game had to be my Gyrocopter. He buzzed around, harassing and steaming Elves with reckless abandon. 2nd turn saw him blasting a 14 man unit of Swordmasters, killing most of them , and then watching them panic off the field, which I must say I was very glad for as I really did not want to see them in combat.
By the end of the game, I had a Demon slayer and Gyrocopter left to his bolt thrower. Lion chariot, and very heavily depleted unit of Spearmen who held that blasted level 4 Mage.

After the Warhammer was at an end we had a planned Super Dungeon Explore Demo to jump right into. I only got pics from the very outset of the game because we all became so engrossed after that, that I totally spaced taking any more pics of the action.
We had the max number of heroes playing in the demo, so the game took quite some time. It was also slowed a bit by having a bunch of headstrong nerds arguing amongst themselves the whole time on the best course of action for every round.
If you have not had the opportunity to try this game out I would highly recommend you try to get involved in a demo. The demo we played  was a blast and the game in general is simple enough that my 6 year old could understand it but engaging enough to keep an entire game store full of grown men hanging on every dice roll.
Props to my Buddy Grim for running a great demo and weathering a hail of verbal abuse throughout.

After the SDE demo we all ran for grub and then finished the day off with our usual, monthly paint night which had a great turnout this month. What an awesome day!
 May have to make it a quarterly tradition..........

Gamers Asylum Paint night

Once a month we plan an evening at the local game shop for everyone to get together, BS, paint and have a good 'ol time.
With summer in full swing the attendance is a little lacking, which is really to be expected. We have a great time though,no matter the turnout. I went ahead and snapped a few pics of the figs everyone was working on. There were a few other people there earlier, but I had forgotten to get out the camera before they were long gone(these things tend to last until 1 or 2 AM after all.).
The greatest part about these painting parties is seeing all of the different things that people are working on, and getting feedback from all sorts of different perspectives.

If this is something your local crowd does not do, I would highly recommend coordinating one and making it a tradition. 

New Badlands Terrain

So the new local game store has started to see quite a bit of miniature gamers traffic recently.
While that is an awesome thing, and I only hope it continues to grow, the terrain available to play on has left much to be desired. Not that it is such awful terrain per say, but most of it was built in the mid 90's and has really seen better days.
So, I decided to go ahead and start building terrain that would match the new 12'x4' board we finished for the shop.
I wanted it to cross genre very easily, so I tried not to do anything to it that would tie it to one game system specifically
Here are the first 8 pieces I came up with, which should soon be followed by more of a similar style.
I went ahead and displayed my Dark Age figs on them because that was the game we just  happened to be playing.
The main bulk of the pieces is just hard Styrofoam covered with uneven smatterings of wall joint compound(Spackle) to give them more of an uneven look and help strengthen the Styro.
Random bits of junk, sand, paint and static grass finished them off.

Arcane Ruins set

So, the local game shop got this GW terrain set in, as kind of a promo I guess. Somebody else had assembled them, but they had yet to see any paint or other hobby attention, so I told the owner I'd take em home and turn them into something usable for the shop.


As you can tell,I didn't spend a ton of time dolling them up, but at least made them match main gaming board at the store.
They should work rather well for all the various skirmish games that are gaining steam around here.
Its actually a surprisingly nice little set, and at around 25$USD, its not too terribly priced. I may have to pick one up for myself, and make it suitably jungley for my home table.

Dark Age rumble

Well, Wednesday has turned into our official Dark Age day at the local game shop. I hadnt initially thought to take any pics, but it struck me about mid game that it might be kinda cool.
We had an odd number of players there, so we decided for a 3 person battle. We also decide to go for scenarios, since a 3 person free for all, inevitably sees one person getting crushed between the other two armies.
In Dark age, for those who aren't in the know, you roll for individual random scenarios. So, you basically have your very own agenda throughout the game. Each player places 3 objective markers in the "no mans land" area of the board(center strip), and then your scenario tells you what you have to do with the objective markers. Whether it will be running to a friendly objective to gather supplies and then retreat, or stealing something from an enemy objective,and so on.
You have to try and find a balance between disrupting your opponents conditions, and completing your own.
 I played a St Mark Forsaken force
My objective was a weapons grab. I had to make it to a random enemy objective(determined before game start) steal a weapon, and take it back off the field through an opponents deployment area. Yikes! The kicker is that this weapon is so heavy or cumbersome to the bearer that it slows them down substantially.

Grim, playing Ice caste Dragyri, had an objective to kill half of his opponents force. Since it was a 3 person event we just let him spread that across both armies.

The Wyrm, playing Air caste Dragyri, had to have three troops pick up supplies from his own objective marker and get them back to his  deployment area.

I ran my small Strike squad out early game, since they were one of the few units in my army that could heft the weapon and still be fast enough to move at all.
My Warwind and lone Junker headed over to Grims ice caste force to be a pain in his side. I had a squad of three banes on the table before this, but a lightning strike spell from Wyrms, Yovanka made sure they were exiting the battle early. 

 St mark and his Medic escort stare down Yovanka and her oncoming horde of Guard slaves.
In typical fashion, Marks gun Malfunctioned once, causing himself a wound. My medic had done a little healing, but these two were really inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

 Grims insane armor rolls made sure that most of his ice caste slaves survived the onslaught of the Warwind and Junker. They did drop a Frostbite trueborn on the way down though. (consolation I guess)

 Grims force prepares to assault the Wyrms ranks with the Deaths Device trueborn warrior. With some more astounding armor saves and  a brutal assault on the elementals, the Wyrms other flank was pretty decimated.

By this point, Grim had more than completed his objective. My Snails pace strike squad was cut down in hand to hand combat by Yovanka herself, dropping their precious cargo to the ground, and the Wyrm was trying to make a mad dash back to his deployment zone. With mine and the wyrms objective not completed after the hour and a half time limit, we called the game in Grims favor.

There were a lot more things going on obviously,  but these were some of the highlights of the battle.

Really was a fun game. I find myself enjoying Dark Age more and more, each time I play.
You guys out there may want to give it a try, you wont regret it.

Late night WarmaHordes Tournament.

Well, the local PressGanger decided it was high time we had a night time Warmahordes Tourney at our local shop. It was a basically a standard 35 point SR2011, using the death clock variant.  I usually avoid tourneys but this one sounded to be good fun, which indeed it was! There was a great turnout from all over the state, and even a few from just out of state. (24 total) Cryx, Legion and Protectorate rounded out the top 3 spots respectively, with myself coming in at 17th with my Cryx................yeah, Im that bad. :)

A small selection of the tourney photos

Thundercliff peaks Painting competition

Well, our local WarmaHordes league officially ended this last Thursday, and we finished things off with a paint contest from those who played league games. It was really nice to see turn out for the competition and I hope they get bigger and more competitive each time.

The pics I was able to snag of each piece basically kinda suck but you ought to get the idea anyway.  Two of my good gamer buddies took First and second with  Moshar and Skaldi Respectively, and I snuck into third with Cassius. Hopefully I can snap some better quality photos of him in a day or so.

Shown in no particular order.