Blogger: 0 Wordpress: 1

After using Blogger for about a week now, I've found it limiting in several things that I seem to need- additional pages for organization, file and image storage, and a more customizable interface as well as layout.

With that in mind, I've transferred all of my posts to Wordpress. You can find Pen and Lead here:
Pen and Lead @ Wordpress

With that in mind, this will be my last post here at Blogger. Hopefully if Blogger ever adds the built in capabilities that Wordpress supplies, I might be back.

See you on the new site!

Recruits! March 27-29, 2009 Lee's Summit, High School, Lee's Summit, MO

I had an opportunity to attend Recruits this past weekend, but didn’t quite make it as planned. Recruits Con is a tabletop war-gaming convention focused on getting the younger crowd and those who aren’t familiar with the hobby interested; hence the name, Recruits.

Recruits is held twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall. Traditionally, the dates are in late March or early April and late August or early September. Spring Recruits occurred on March 27-29^th, 2009 in, as always, the Lee’s Summit High School field house, in Lee’s Summit, MO. Duane Fleck, a teacher at LSHS, runs the Organization of Strategic Gamers, a game club at LSHS, and hosts the convention. Students of all ages get in free, while the admission fee for the rest of the population is only $5.

My role this year was to run the Warmachine and Hordes events on Saturday and Sunday in addition to the Steve Jackson Games demos on Friday. On Friday, I took a school van and three students with me. Two were new “recruits” while one was a veteran of the convention. Once there, I met and talked to a few people, demoed some SJ Games events, and participated in the guest of honor’s demo game, Ambush Alley, by Sean Carpenter. I had talked to Sean via email a few times about Gorilla Con, and he kindly donated four PDF copies of his rulebook for the charity auction. Since learning he was going to attend, I could not wait to meet him and play his Ambush Alley game. Also, Sean had Ambush Z, a new, stand alone supplement focusing on a zombie infestation across the US.

Sean Carpenter of Ambush Alley Games

Also that evening, I picked up several figures for Warmachine and Hordes at 50% off retail from a great dealer and LGS owner, Andy of Pulp Fiction Games and Comics in Lee’s Summit, MO.

We knew there was an impending snowstorm, which was to sweep across the Midwest, and as my kids and I packed up the van to head home, the misting rain turned to sleet. My original plan was to head home Friday (a two and a half hour trip), return on Saturday, run my events, stay the night, and play again on Sunday.

Saturday morning at 6am found me bleary eyed and tired. Reviewing the weather, I thought it best if I not make a multi-hour trip to the Kansas City area with a possibility of multiple inches of snow and ice. Having a family (wife and two kids) who depended on me for support swayed my decision to stay home instead of trooping across Kansas to get to Lee’s Summit. Plus, the sleet and rain from the previous night had coated the roadways with ice.

The Warmachine and Hordes events ran with Matt Kotovsky, another Press Ganger who was in attendance. He ran the scheduled 500 point SR 4 event, the 350 Mangled Metal Tooth and Claw, and the 350-500-750 escalating event on Sunday.

I played hooky from the con and waited patiently for Sunday to come around. Although I didn’t make it back early on Sunday, my wife wanted to go shopping, so we met her sister in Lee’s Summit, and I was able to pick up a few things from a friend and say hi to Sean Carpenter, Duane, and the rest of the Warmachine/Hordes crowd.

Recruits Purchases and Trades:

Rorsh and Brine- 50% off

Cryx Blighted Trollkin Bloodgorgers- 50% off

Revenant Cannon Crew- 50% off

Legion Cav Blister- 50% off

Uncharted Seas starer (Iron Dwarves)- Trade

Uncharted Seas rulebook – Trade

No Quarter # 23- retail

Metamorphosis- Trade

Ambush Alley print copy- retail

Ambush Z print copy- retail

I really look forward to trying out ambush Alley and Ambush Z on my own, now that I’ve had a chance to see the game and play in a demo. The great interruption and reaction mechanic is awesome. Look for a review in the near future after I run through a few games.

From Spring Recruits 2009

From Spring Recruits 2009

From Spring Recruits 2009

Pictures from Spring Recruits 2009

A picture of Ambush Alley during Recruits, a three day convention held at Lee's Summit High School aimed at getting new "recruits", or younger people, into the joys of gaming.

More pictures and descriptions to come.

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Get your own

Pulp City Tournament Scenarios

Morf of Pulp City has posted scenarios for tournaments as well as friendly games.
Scenarios include Hero VS Villain, Villain VS Villain, and Hero VS Hero. Morf wants people to check out the scenarios and post their opinions.

Click HERE for the Scenarios.

Please visit the Pulp City forums and website for more information.

Direct link to the scenario forum post: http://pulp-city.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=589

Next Painting Project(s)

My next project on my painting bench are the fancy bases for my Pulp City models. With several of the minis painted, they need something cool and awesome to stand on.

I've primed all of the bases and I've put a basecoat of brown and similar colors on them for dirt and ground cover.

I've got seven to go...

Also, I need to finish Apebot as he's covered in P3 Pig Iron, some highlights, a wash or two, and more highlights. I've got a fun plan for his base, as custom bases aren't available for him as of yet.

Hellsmith and Base Finished

So I spent the last several hours watching episodes 3-6 of Dollhouse, having good conversation with a friend, and listening to some music and I finally finished Hellsmith.

I'm not for sure if the pictures are good or not, but I'm happy with the results of my painting.

A couple of modifications I've made include moving Hellsmith's hammer from his left hand and transferring it to his right. The second modification I made was creating new horns for his helmet. I used Green Stuff, rolled them into little "rolls" of sausages, then shaped them. After curing, I glued them to his helmet in an appropriate spot. Finally, I took some leftover Green Stuff and shaped a wedge onto the front of Hellsmith's hammer. It doesn't look as good as the original, but it changes the shape of his weapon somewhat and makes him a little more unique than some other Hellsmiths out there.

In regards to paints, I used mostly P3s and a few Reaper Master Series paints. Hellsmith's base skin was Idrian flesh with highlights up from there. Some things I"m working on include blending and layering and have learned, but not mastered washes, inks, and glazes. In addition, I'd love to learn how to do NMM. As an example, Ape Bot for Pulp City would have looked great in NMM but I am painting him using metallics.

Link to the Pulp City Site:
Hellsmith, villain for Pulp City, by Pulp Monsters.

Left side view

Front view from a short distance

You can view more pictures by following "my picassa pics" in the links section.

Recruits! March 27-29, 2009 Lee's Summit, High School, Lee's Summit, MO

I'll be attending Recruits Con on March 27-29 as a Press Ganger and Steve Jackson Games MIB. While there, I'll be running some Munchkin as well as three Warmachine and Hordes mixed tournament events.

Recruits is a tabletop gaming convention (no RPGs) that is hosted by the Organization of Strategic Gamers ran by teacher Duane Fleck. The convention's goal is to get new people introduced to gaming and the hobby aspect of it.

This is one of my favorite conventions where I can meet old friends and new ones.

Visit http://www.recruits-con.com for more information.

Projects Abound

I'm fairly decent at starting ideas and projects. I'm fairly bad at finishing them. However, I'm going to go with the assumption that if I can start the information here, get a following that will keep harassing me, I'll start to do well with the follow through.

With that in mind, I'm going to list the projects that I'm currently involved with:

1. Pulp City- Pulp City by Pulp Monsters is a miniature game about super heroes and super villains called supremes. I helped edit the current rulebook, playtest the new models, and simply enjoy the game. I've got several miniaturest to paint up and display...Pics coming soon!
2. Warmachine and Hordes. I'm a Press Ganger for Privateer Press's ever popular fantasy miniatures games, and enjoy the game. I run events from Kansas City all the way down to Joplin. My base of operations is in Fort Scott, KS. I mostly play Cryx and Legion, but have a Khador and Troll force, with a smattering of mercs. Lots of models painted and lots not painted.
   
3. Dark Realm Miniatures. I recently purchased two starter sets from the Gorilla Con donations and look forward to my foray into 6mm sci-fi warfare. No models painted yet. However, Doug, the owner of DRM and I have discussed having me paint some models for him, so we'll see how that goes.
   
4. Terrain. You need good terrain to play your miniature games on, right? With that, I've been busy building various types of terrain for my hobby. You can see some of the pieces I've made by watching the slide-show on the top right of this page.
5. New RPG campaign. Now that Gorilla Con is over, I'd like to plan on starting a new RPG campaign with my local group of players. No word yet on what we want to play, but Shadowrun, Scion, and the IKRPG are all good ideas.
6. Uncharted Seas by Spartan Games. I'll be trading some SJ Games stuff for a starter set of Uncharted Seas Dwarves. I've had my eye on the game, and hopefully it'll be a good one.
7. Moderator of various sites: I'm the moderator or owner of various sites, namely the Southeast Kansas Gaming Guild at http://www.sekgg.net as well as Game Kansas City at http://www.gamekansascity.com

Data suggests that if we keep lists to a limit of seven, people will remember, so I'll stop there for now. As you can see I'm busy.

Let's Get the Ball Rolling!

I've never been good at keeping a periodic summary of ramblings and musings from the happenings in my life. However, though, I'll once again give it a shot. This will be my attempt to do so. Hopefully I can stay focused and keep an update on what's going on in the small sphere of my world.

The focus of this blog will be mostly on my hobby of adventure gaming, including, but not limited to role-playing games, miniature war-gaming, painting, writing, and boardgames. Here I'll be posting images of my painted models, thoughts on games, reviews, and other game related materials.

Because of this focus, I've decided to name my blog "Pen and Lead," which hopefully keeps me limited to my topics, my readers interested, and most important, me focused on the goals and objectives of what I intend to do with this blog site. The final iteration of Pen and Lead came after unsuccessfully trying to get the names "Pen and Brush," "Brush and Pen," and other similar names. Hopefully this one will stick. As the name implies, the blog will recount my projects and musings on things dealing with lead (miniatures) and the pen (paper RPGs).

With that, I'll end this short introduction and start blogging!