Aftermath of HMGS Historicon 2017

OK, so it has been a looong while.. too long to go without posting. In my defense.... I have been doing a LOT of deck building and playing of VTES..... I warned it was another wicked hobby.... My collections contains over 35,000 cards with very limited commons.. so yes... lots and lots of uncommon and rare cards!

So, Historicon 2017 was pretty awesome... the registration desk went smoothly while there was internet...

There was a crap ton of games from all eras and genera's.... plenty of historic and fantasy of all scales!

Not sure what started the trend, but there was a LOT of skirmish pirate type games... and they were beautiful!



The scenery on the skirmish board was damn near museum quality!





Bolt Action WW2 skirmish.

This awesome game was a bit about history and a bit about some serious Mummy and monster action!

Awesome WW2 naval game.

Some Age of Sail games!!!

Jim's Gnome castle!

I am simply amazed at the quality of the gaming scenery at the shows.... the GM's have really stepped up their game here... literally!

This ship game looked more like a diorama than a game! Again... more skirmish pirate games going on....

Some ACW action.....

Team Yankee!! Cold War Germany

Another AWESOME naval game!

This tee-shirt needed recognized!

This was a huge table layout for... you guessed it.... another huge pirate skirmish game.... I seriously  regret not getting into any of them!

More pirate skirmish games!

Napoleonic battles raged!

I got to play Spartacus with the guys back in the hotel room.... this game is nasty!!! If you think Diplomacy was full of backstabbing back room deals and assassinations.... it is time for it to move over and welcome in the new game to love and hate... Spartacus!!!! I got my arse handed to me!

 

This was a steam punk game... more like the "Wild, Wild West" or Victorian era.

The modeling was phenomenal!

One of my favorites... Circus Maximus.... who doesn't like chariot combat racing!

I have to say.. I was finally able to get into the beautiful Frostgrave game! It was good vs. evil.... and I, of course.... chose to play evil Skaven! Even thought the rules were exactly the same for all figures involved, playing the Skaven made me very happy. I had to comment on these pics and I realize it is pic heavy for this game, but now I know what it is to die happy.... never in my life have I ever been so hot on the dice!!! I incredibly, with the GM's own dice.... rolled no less than 15-20 NATURAL 20's!!!! I also failed quite miserably when casting some spells.. thus taking some damage to my caster and his apprentice, but when I really needed it, when the dice roll REALLY mattered.. a slight mouthing of praise to Khorne and the Great Horned Rat....  and BAM!!!! another nat 20!

Above and below... my rats.. and their stats.

Turn one.... ready to cast "quick foot" and race on into town!

The scenario we played was based off of the Lich Lord campaign.... In the following pictures, my Champion and apprentice leap up to be the first to challenge the Lich Queen and her minions.....

Some early loot... The unfortunate thing about the game, but something I love.... when you leave the  board with treasure, you don't come back...  you could however move it to the edge and then run it off later... "IF" you survived or someone else didn't come and take it!

I charged in and engaged the Lich Queen and her minions... rats are usually not so brave, but there was a lot of bling to be had.. AND... lots of delicious chocolate to be eaten if I could get the treasure off the edge of the board!!!

Of course, she summoned he skeletons to take me on... 5 to 1!!! 4 skellies and the lich queen... I miraculously won that combat!!!! Everyone was awestruck.. including myself!

Yes.. I won that combat and pushed the Lich Queen and her minions back!!!!

The 20's flowed forth form the blessing of the Great Horned One like water form a fountain!

Eventually my luck would run out and the Lich Queen did manage to kill my champion, but only after my allies were in place to join combat... will.. kill steal the Lich Queen who was down to 4 health!!!! My apprentice hides in the doorway casting spells to little effect.. but enough to draw her attention while my allies kill her!

I also managed to kill the large wandering monster which was the equivalent to a chaos rider on a great wooly rhino! The victory points were mounting for team evil!

The troll manages to finally come to my aid and strikes down the Lich Queen while she concentrates all of her spell power upon my apprentice!

Our gracious host and GM! I volunteered to bring the chocolate for his game at Fall-In! 2017.... gold coins form Romolo's chocolates in Erie PA!!! Simple the best!

As the climactic encounter for the game was defeated, I sent my rats to gather treasure to add to our VP's while the other war bands fought it out over street supremacy!

Another favorite of mine is the huge space hulk game that is put on Saturday nights... these guys are absolutely awesome... They also run X-Wing, Armada and a lot of other sci-fi games at the shows...they also manage the 40K based tournament games.... like Battlefleet Gothic and the 40K tourneys...

A special thanks to all they do! These guys absolutely rock! A friendly reminder to all that even though HMGS stands for Historical Miniature Gaming Society.. there is always plenty of other stuff going on! From board games of all types.. Euro and historic... to pulp adventure and pretty much everything else!

And thus closed another great show.... I literally have loads more pictures.... but these ones meant the most to me!

VTES makes a comeback!

Well, one of those distractions I was speaking about.... a group of my friends decided to dust off their Vampire the Eternal Struggle cards and start playing again... as if I don't have enough distractions already.... so, I was able to dig out my cards... marvel at how dusty they have gotten and then proceed to pack most of them up to go to my friends house and help him work on a new deck.... He went with Tremere.. something different for him....


While he made time going through my extras and his to put the deck together I spent some quality time sorting and putting away lots of cards I acquired a few years back and never officially sorted and put them in their place.


It is hard to believe that this game has been around since 1994!!! I still remember buying my first starter Jyhad deck.... Man, time has flown by! Here it is 2017.... 21 years later..... damn.... And, I might add... for a game that has officially been discontinued from White Wolf.... it has remained strong with a decent cult following, transcending a few generations and is actually getting very popular in Europe now! The Berlin tournament had over 400 participants....


I have to say... I am a CCG nut... my favorite 2 games have been LotR CCG by I.C.E. and VTES from White Wolf. I have played all of the others... yes, including Magic the Gathering.... when I sold off my Magic cards, it paid for one full semester of college.... and that isn't a cheap date... the really sad part though... had I kept my Magic cards, today, they could have paid for a year or more of school!!! Don't get me started on the value of dual lands!!!  I had, at one point.... 4 of each to play, plus one of each in my sets!!!


I digress...


Anyway, My interest in the VTES has never waned, but one cannot play by oneself... my play time has been limited to the waxing and waning interest of my friends.... I have to say.... I have acquired a huge amount of cards over the years and have even sold off many. My collection would not be what it is now were it not for a good friend who "gifted" me his whole collection on my 40th birthday.... I was speechless.... I in turn did gift out a lot of cards to share the wealth, but since then I have also picked up other friends collections and have made occasional orders from Rick's VTES shop online.....


So, years later and 25 expansions in, both official and fan made.... my collection has grown in value and sheer size. I can boast about having almost 30k cards and pretty much complete sets from each expansion...

The picture above is about 2/3 of my "extra" cards.... it doesn't include any of the sets, etc.... I am sure there will be more posts on them at some point too.


I currently have 7 ready made decks.... not necessarily my favorite clans, but what I have made now.... Someday I am hoping to create an actual playable True Brujah deck....


Last night saw me traveling into town to play my Followers of Set.... I want to thank the guys for calling their first game and starting another for me to jump into... if you play the game, you know how long it can take.... the one game we got in took up until the last few minutes before the hobby store closed... we were playing at Game Corps in Wesleyville, Erie PA.... The game was great fun! Originally I planned to play my Imbued... the DOA Hunters expansion for VTES.... as much as I love it... I am torn about what folks think about it.... more on that later at some point. Well.. I started looking at the cards and quickly realized.... I couldn't do it.. I had forgotten all of the special rules, etc.... so I asked the guys if I could switch and when they said yes, I decided upon the Followers of Set.

Above are a couple of shots during the game... as I mentioned.. it was a lot of fun. My deck is based upon corruption and corruption enhanced bleeds... with lots of combat ends... it is not a fight deck. I will make a Settite fight deck someday... The game went well enough, I was able to oust my prey.. a Gangrel player who, like me, was having a rough time getting the deck mechanics in motion.. once he did however, he was quickly becoming a force to reckon with... had he gotten another turn, he would have ousted his prey... My predator was playing Tczimice and I am not sure of his deck concept, but I was deathly afraid to get into combat with him.... my enemy's enemies were playing Tremere and a Catiff vote deck... both played well.... and I had forgotten how well the swarm Catiff vote deck worked... he was actually close to winning the game at one point. The Tremere wound up ousting him and then there were three.... I did my fair share to try and win... having a decent 6 blood bleed in my last turn, but bloated from the 6 pool win of ousting his prey, it didn't do enough to oust my new Tremere prey... he quickly regrouped... took out my Tczimice predator and then me....


I quickly re-learned the weaknesses of my deck and what it means to have a bad shuffle.... all in all.. it was fun and a good time was had by all. I look forward to doing it again soon... schedule allowing.

Very slow to muster the warriors of Minas Tirith!

I started working on the warriors of Minas Tirith and didn't get far....again, lots of other distractions in life....

I used the same color scheme as I did for the knights, with darker grey highlights to bring out the details on the black.


At this point, the other four have all of the flesh tones and steel painted... they will be a quick finish when I get back to them... this week has flown by. I am hoping to get them done by the weeks end!


So, for now... I will cheat and filter in a picture of a Mordor troll and dragon/drake I recently finished.... (just before I started the blog.... I'll have a riders of Rohan update too.... again, figures I finished not too long ago)

For the Mordor Troll I went with flat, medium brows and dry brush.... mostly GW paints. I used snakebite leather for the drybrush  and mainly the Ral Partha Steel.... man, I love that color, it has just enough tarnish to look realistic... I hate shiny armor! The clothes and leather were the typical black and grey with drybrush highlights in lighter shades of grey. As it is a Mordor Troll I also went with the grey ground and dead looking grass scenic effects from Army Painter to try and add some variance with the base.

For the drake... I used all GW colors... I think I want to go back and ink it to make some of the details pop, but I am unsure, so here it is as finished for now. It is painted and drybrushed in a coupel shades of red, while the claws, etc.. are all bleached bone with some white mixed in for highlights... the eyes are yellow (no iris yet.. ) and the base is just a couple shades of Ral Partha grey.


I hope to one day get these beasts into battle against my other forces of good.... in all due time I guess.