A few dealer shots from Cold Wars

Hey all!

Well, I wandered the dealer hall a bit to buy a few things... and thought I'd take some photos!

Tons of Team Yankee stuff.  Would LOVE to get a pack of A10s, but they aren't cheap...

Okay, I didn't catch the name of this vendor, but I loved the tiled wargames table.

Here is another shot.

Okay, I don't remember the manufacturer here (someone please help out!) but this guy had an absolute TON of 15mm Fantasy.  And I ADORED them.  Honestly, I thought they were the nicest damn fantasy figures I've EVER seen.  I mean, he had entire armies, and they were full of interesting units (but nothing stupid, you know?) and they were BEAUTIFUL sculpts.  Honestly, I would want a collection.

Some heroes from that range.

Battlefield Terrain Concepts; always tons of nice stuff!:)

Brigade Games was there, with their new Sharpe and Harper figures and rifles... LOVE them!

Some more stuff at Brigade.

And some more...

One of my favorite stops... Acheson Creations!  There is no better bargain in the entire damn place than that big bucket of cheap resin things.  I got a bunch for that box this year...

Okay, so there was this new game... Sergeant's Miniatures Game... I don't know much about it, but it looked cool as hell, and I LOVED that they sold little wooden boxes to hold the armies!

Scott W. is still going strong with Paper Terrain... now he has huge armies ready to go!

Ah!  I missed the name of the vendor, so if anyone can help, please do... but I LOVED the 25mm moderns!

The tiny scale guys are just SO beautiful.

If you are doing any naval stuff, then Sea Dog Game Studios is for you!  My buddy and I were joking that JUST the wrecked ships were enough to want to create a whole collection around them...

So many excellent figures, so little time...

A new sculpt from Footsore Miniatures... can't wait for this nasty looking Viking to be produced. Really beautiful figures.

Lots of assorted painted guys (all a bit grainy... sorry, had some camera issues!)

Of course I ran into Rick "The Flag Dude", and we talked flags a bit, and a little about babies, too!

Anyway, good stuff, and I'll post the game eye candy later tonight!:)

Cold Wars Eye Candy; Friday Night Edition!

Hey all!

Well, my buddy shot me a message about Cold Wars... and 24 hours later, were are here!:)  So nice to be back at a convention... I miss the toy soldiers!  Met some fellows from nearby Maplewood Hobby.  Had a few drinks with the Joes.  Got to watch some of the Duke game, and then discuss it with Chris.  Oh, and a few more drinks.  Overall a good first day.

So, as in Fall In style... let's get to the damn eye candy!  I have to say, the quality of tables was GREAT tonight.  Just great.  Best I've seen, I think.

This was a beautiful, a-historical game (maybe DBM?)... 28mm Samurai vs... Greeks?  Romans?  They were absolutely BEAUTIFUL figures.  The shot at the start of this entry was from that game.

More from that game.

And some more... cav, this time.

Facing the samurai were these... guys.  Sorry, REALLY not my era!:)

Beautiful, right?

Some of the command stands from the back of that game... notice the ninjas and the sitting daimyo.

A nearby game... Zulu going after some Irish-ish folks!  More just beautiful figures.

More ancients.  More beautiful toy soldiers!

And some more.

While I generally do not like games with this color ground cloth, this game looked great!

I wish I knew more about this era... French?  British?

Loved this machine gun crew!

Fantastic movement trays on this beautiful unit of cavalry from another ancients game.

Some more figures from that particular game.  Love the casualty markers behind each unit!

Dead Man's Hand.  Great looking game.  I'd LOVE to get to play a game with these fellows...

Now THAT is gaming in STYLE.  Hotdamn!

The Maplewood Guys game.  Such a beautiful table.

A "Red Dawn" style game, as North Korea invades the good old US of A!

A tank game running across the north African desert.

Ah, the beautiful Eylau table that was built by the fellows over on Xin's Lair.  Just perfection.

Some more of that one.

Another shot.  One of the big keys to the effective winter table?  Leafless trees.

Another shot from that table.

A pretty cool 15ishmm naval game.  Each set of ships had their own little control panel.

Great table... was used for a few games, and will be home of a Napoleonic peninsular game tomorrow.

Another from that game.

Some great 25mm AWI.  Love the bases.

Another shot of that game.

Spacehulk!  Nothing cooler than a huge hulk.  I had three sets as a kid, and used to make INSANE ones.

Love this table.  Every year.  Tiny scale ACW.

Another of that ACW game.

Ohhh, was looking forward to this one... the Frostgrave table from the guys at Xin's!  Even better looking in person.

A WWII game.

And here is the Dave and the Carnage and Glory crew!  I would have signed up for a game, but it was SO last minute that I came...

Another from a C&C game.

A nearby Napoleonic game.

Another shot from that game.

A team of modern fighters advances...

This was a great looking moderns table.

Another Frostgrave table.  Awesome; loved the broken bridge; felt very cinematic!

My son's game

Hey all!

So.  I am not sure I've posted about this before on this blog.

But I have been telling my son a fantasy story before bed for several years now.  It follows a boy named Liam and his adventures becoming a knight.  There is a new bit each night.  The story arcs are usually between 4 and 6 months long.  The cast has gotten HUGE... maybe a hundred characters all together, spread across a globe.  There are ogres and goblins and pirates and skeletons and all sorts of bad guys... and a TON of heroes spread across all of the lands, like Donegal and Taryn and Salvator and Ali and Caitlyn... and a million locations, like Alcatraz and the Greenwood and the Kingdom of Sand and the Great Ocean and Caira and so on and so forth.

My son adores the story, and knows the mythology of it like the back of his hand... "Daddy, if Simon is Sir Gareth's son, does that mean he would have trained with Sir Giles and Donegal, or would he have trained with Lord David?"  He knows them ALL, and has memorized every single detail of the world.

Now, because I am a dad, I have to do it better... and so, as each character is introduced in the story, I get my son a lego figure to match.  I've been buying them piece by piece from various online dealers to put them together exactly as they should look.  It is a bit of work, but it is worth it... when a new character is introduced, at the end of story that night, out comes the figure from some hiding place.  My son can play the story however he likes, and he often does make up his own versions of the story as he plays.

Well, I've hit another twist.  I figured I should make him a card game of the story.  So I've made up a really simple but INCREDIBLY elegant card game, with six decks... each one represents a different faction from a different story arc.  The game is a ton of fun, and has the added bonus of allowing you to have the bad guys from one story arc to fight the good guys from a different arc.  Characters who have never officially meet can square off.  My son has gotten good at the game, and all of the adults in the family have played with him now.  The game is REALLY good, maybe the best I've made in that it is super simple and yet has some serious strategy.

Anyway... so I had to laminate all of the cards, and here they are!  It looks pretty crazy when you see all of them... MAN, there are a lot of characters in this damn story!

Anyway... thought I would share.  If people are interested, I can share the game itself... super simple!:)

The Workbench...

Hey all!

Well, my Bloodbowl team is nearly complete... the tray is 85 percent done; just need to do the signage, scoreboard, and some other knick-knacks.  Overall I am pretty happy with how they look!  I'll get some real photos when I am done with them... still got some touching up to do!

And, when I was shutting it down for the night, I happened to be standing right here with the camera, and I liked the lighting and all that, so thought I would take a shot!  I DID add a new shelf to each cabinet recently... more on that soon!

Some more done for the Vikings...

Hey all!

Well, I "spruced" up the table a bit!

Well, my buddy from Echoes of Glory didn't need a bunch of his trees for his Old West setup, so he sent them over to me for a bit!

They REALLY help the table... it is amazing what a difference there is. It makes it look like the shoreline of some wild northern land, instead of just a somewhat empty table with a few trees on it, you know?