Epic Empires

We had a great time this year at Kubla Con! I stayed, along with Jason and Dave over a period of three days. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Friday

Friday we arrived somewhat late to take part in any activities, though we did get to attend the Kubla Con Flea Market.

Last year at the Flea Market, Jason and I spent a great deal of time going back and forth to our room with armloads of 40k loot. Unfortunately, this year wasn’t as profitabe for either of us. I ended up spending a grand total of about $17 there. There just wasn’t that much in the way of 40k stuff for sale this year, and I pretty much have everything I want/need for my Space Marines. The chances of some Plague Marines being up for sale wasn’t so great. At least I walked away with a new Chaos Marines Codex for $10.

Saturday

Saturday at 9AM I was scheduled to run my D&D Game.. Hoarfrost Peak. I had one person who had registered, fail to show but I had someone else waiting to crash - so that worked out quite well. The game was not as hard as I had thought it would be. I will have to rectify that next year! Everyone seemed to have a good time. Overall it was a great group of players to spend 8 hours with. Thanks for those that played! I had a good time running the game and truthfully the last half of the game just flew by for me!

Some of the players:

The final battle:

With my D&D Game over - I was exhausted. Eight hours of steady D&D play was a lot. I wandered into the dealer room a bit and finally we wound up where they were setting up the 40k Apocolypse game.

Good Lord - this was one of the coolest things I had seen at the con. Possibly 20 players squaring off in a Good vs. Evil Battle for the Bay Area. The setting was complete with a Golden Gate Bridge, Bay Bridge, Trans America Pyramid (Necron Objective naturally!), Alcatraz, and even a model of the SF Hyatt where the convention took place! We wandered in while they were setting up and giving instructions. I wish I had brought my Space Marines - but I was so tired if I had gotten involved I probably would have regretted it at that point.

Here is some of the set up - with me giving the “thumbs up”!

Dave, Jason and I bailed to grab some dinner at a nearby restaraunt, and when we returned… they were still in the deployment phase of the game!

After a bit more walking around looking at some of the fantastic miniatures battles going on. I blundered upon the Alien LAB. This was a live action game of Aliens vs. Colonial Marines! Most of the Aliens consisted of kids wearing T-Shirts with a picture of an alien on the front and a saying such as “Colonial Marines Taste Like Chicken!” on the back.

The objective for the marines was to get a grenade into the armored alien egg, while the aliens tried to stop them. Basically the Aliens could move 4 spaces and if they ended up in a space with a marine, they spun “The Wheel of Death” to find out how the marine died! The marines, could move 2 spaces, or fire a gun, throw a grenade, or shoot their flame thrower. The firing of a “gun” consisted of throwing a small bean bag into a small garbage can near the alien, if they were using a flame thrower, the can was moved slightly closer. A grenade, landing within one square of an alien would kill the alien - but they only had 12 grenades… and one of them had to end up in the egg!

It was apparantly the first time in three years that the Marines actually won a match! My daughter would have loved it! Maybe next year… Then it was off to bed!

Sunday

On Sunday Dave and I were in a Dark Heresy (40k RPG) game which was a lot of fun. While a bit slow off the ground, the people we were playing with were great fun, and the GM was a nice guy. I really wanted to play in this game to see the mechanics of the system in action. Playing in it has really inspired me to write my own Dark Heresy scenario, and I should be running that for my regular gaming group very soon! I was really impressed with the system itself and I am hoping Fantasy Flight Games does well with it now that they have taken it from Black Library.

We snuck down to see how Jason was doing in the 40k Tournament - he was getting beat up by some Ultramarines (however the Ultramarines player ended up taking 1st place in the tournament so that is an acceptable loss I suppose…)!

There were some really nicely painted armies at the tournament. Ultimatey Jason placed somewhere in the middle of the pack. He fought well. But I think even HE will agree now, that Tau Tanks are cheesy!

That was it - we packed up and head home. It was a great weekend and I will definately be doing it again next year. Though right now I have thoughts of running a Dark Heresy game at the next con…

Thirteen pages of photos from the con, including many spectacularly painted armies can be found here:

http://www.epicempires.com/home/images/kublaconpics/

Cheers!

Carl

Well Kubla Con starts tomorrow and I am really excited about it. At least three of us are going for several days and it is going to be a blast. My D&D Game, Hoarfrost Peak (running Sat @ 9AM), is nearly complete. I am putting the final touches on things this evening.

Of course all of this painting I have been doing on 40k stuff has derailed the painting of the figures I have provided for the game - but my buddy Kentaro is trying to help me out at the last minute with some of them. We will see how that works out!

Other than that - I am packed and ready to go! I took a vacation day today to wrap up some personal stuff and finish preparation. But yesterday at work just wouldn’t seem to end. Either way, tomorrow is going to start a load of fun!

Other than my D&D Game, I am hoping to get in on maybe another D&D Game, a Call of Cthulhu game, and most of all I would love to check out a Dark Heresy game. We will see what I can get into!

 I will be taking a ton of pictures and then publishing them here - so that’s something to look forward to as well.

Completed my squad of “shooty” terminators today. Overall I am pleased with how they came out however, I’ll readily admit they aren’t my best work to date. (The Jump Pack Chaplain so far is my best work.) However, with each set of models I am getting better and better. I still have to do the squad sergeant who is carrying a power sword.

I have a squad of assault terminators as well but since I don’t use them that often I plan to pop their arms off and magnetize the arms as well as some additional ranged weapon arms. I wish I had done that from the beginning with these guys - but I have invested too much work in them now to go back. 

 Not sure what I am going to work on next. Likely a couple vehicles I need to finish, then I will probably get to work on my second squad of Jump Pack Assault Marines. The progress I have made in a week of fevered painting is exciting though and I am glad that I will be able to field a nearly completely painted force at my next game!

More to come soon…

(Insert appropriate Schwarzenegger joke here).

It has been an incredibly productive week/weekend for me and painting my Space Marine Army. I finally got all of the Imperial Fist decals on my Tactical Squad Marines, got my chaplain painted, and I finished up Sunday working on my Terminator Squad. Here is the first result:

Again, I am really happy with the results. The rest of my Terminators are now prepped for all the detailing (except the squad seargent - who is just bone white at the moment!) and I expect to be done with them, provided work isn’t too hectic this week, by about Wed or Thurs.

I hate to say it again, but I am really pleased with the way my force is coming out in general. Once the Terminators are complete I will put out every model I have painted and put up a picture of it. I have several vehicles completed as well as a bunch of troops, elites.

Still so much to do…

So feeling inspired by my progress on my Tactical Marines I decided to try my hand at an Independant Character. Namely my jump pack chaplain! Overall I was thrilled with the results. This was my first attempt at a couple of techniques I had never used before and I think with some practice I would get the exact look I am going for.

That said - this is probably one of the most detailed figures I have ever painted, and I have painted quite a few fantasy figures for D&D. He should be a great centerpiece for my army for the time being.

I may go with my Terminator Librarian next…

I am no painting master but this weekend was spent painting a large portion of my Space Marines force for 40k.

 Saturday I spent puting the bone-white base coat on these guys. Sunday I spent putting the purple and cleaning up the basecoats, and fortunately I was off Monday which allowed me to finish up the detailing. I am determined that the next game I play in include almost no white-primered marines.

Overall I am pretty proud of the color scheme I chose. I decided not to go with a standard chapter and make my own. I feel just too constrained by specific color schemes and such - this allowed my creativity to come out a bit.

My next game is coming up soon, a three way battle between Necrons, Eldar and myself. Is there any doubt who the victor can be? I didn’t think so.

The picture doesn’t really do them justice and they still need the Imperial Fist decals added to their right shoulders as well as the terrain basing done. But overall I am really happy with the progress.

I’m pretty stoked. I received this today:

Your event has been selected for confirmation. We are scheduling our events a little different than previous years. This is being done to help minimize one event overlapping another. With this in mind we have broken the schedule into 3 blocks.

We are structuring it as such:

The first block in the morning is reserved for 6 hour games.
9am – 3pm, then a 30 minute break.

The second block in the afternoon is reserved for 4 hour games.
3:30pm – 7:30pm, then another 30 minute break

The third and final block is reserved for 8 hour plus games.
8:00pm – When your players pass out!

Obviously the schedule will be varied slightly for Friday & Monday.

Your event has been confirmed for Saturday at 9:00am for 8 hours.

Vern Roberts
RPG Coordinator
KublaCon…The Khan of Cons!!!

So even though my game is 8 hours long it was scheduled on Saturday morning. I sent Vern an email to confirm this since it seems to go counter to the scheduling plan - but I hope it stays there. That’s a primo spot for participation!

Edit: Just got an update from Vern Roberts. My game is definately at this scheduled timeslot - they have a few 8 hour slots on Sat morning for popular systems such as D&D. So this is the correct time slot!

So last Sunday I did a playtest of the con game with my regular D&D group and it ran pretty well. It was a bit on the long side and a bit more difficult than I had imagined but I am making some adjustments to the characters loadout of magic items as well as some storyline adjustments to try to speed up the game a bit. We ultimately didn’t make it to the end of the game during a 7 hour session, but an hour and a half of that was taken up goofing off early on and there is another hour at the end that will be scheduled at Kubla Con. So I think given another 2 hours of playing we would have finished the game.

For a peek, below are the characters the players came to the table with. I let them make some modifications to the characters that I will then use to update the characters before the con. All in all, I am glad I had them playtest these guys through the scenario - it helped a lot:

The Roster (in PDF format):

Aleneth Stormbreaker - Ranger
Alywyn - Bard
Dorim Soulshield - Cleric
Grimfold Stoneshield - Fighter
Jallorim Hardaxe - Barbarian
Lenaras - Wizard
Stormfront - Druid
Varin Dilthen - Rogue

Now I just have to paint all of the figures… I’ll post pictures of the figures that represent these characters in a couple days.

You would think filling 8 hours of gaming action would be a bit challenging. Turns out the opposite is true. It’s hard to write so few encounters, that tell a story in such a short amount of time. I’ve run con games before - but it has been awhile. Heck I think the last time I ran a con game was D&D 2nd Edition.

A lot has been accomplished in preparation for my game at Kubla-Con. The outline of the game is complete. A number of figures or stand-ins for figures have been purchased, and half the pre-generated PC’s have been created.

This coming Sunday I will be playtesting the game with my regular group and get their feedback and opinions. Here are the things left to do:

• Create remaining Pre-Gen PC’s
• Paint Figures for PC’s
• Assign all encounter stats and flesh out final details
• Run Playtest Session and get feedback
• Create terrain for significant encounters

Crap, there is still a lot to do before this coming Sunday!

When I played in a game at Dundracon, at the end of the game treasure was being awarded. Now, keep in mind I was playing a pre-generated character. At the end of the game, did I really care that my Full Plate Armor was being upgraded from +2 to +4? No, not really. In fact, it was so late by the time the game ended I gave back my character to the DM and told everyone they could have my share.

So this raises the point that treasure needs to be of value to the players during the course of the game. So I think that a significant amount of items and treasure will be handed out as the game progresses, with the assumption that it will be needed for the final encounter. Either way it should prove interesting as running a one-shot game gives you some freedom to introduce things you wouldn’t do in a long term campaign.

So I am currently writing my 8 hour D&D 3.5 game, titled “Hoarfrost Peak”. I will be updating this site with information about the game and such in the next few days. I have registered to run the game at the Kubla Con site, but it has sat in the pending stage for over a week now. I assume I have just registered a little early. If things aren’t updated there shortly I will write the event organizer for RPG Games.

Here is the general summary of the game:

The Kingdom of Aisir didn’t used to be this cold. Now the winter seems to go on without end. First the reports of attacks by Frost Giants, against dwarven trade caravans. Now we are hearing of attacks leaving frozen and destroyed villages in the Northern parts of the Kingdom. These raids are growing bolder, could the Town of Targholm be next?

Duke Galathor has requested the aid of the King and you are sent to answer his call. Can you stop the merciless attacks that threaten the very foundations of The Kingdom? And can you discover a way to stop this unnatural winter?

An ancient evil waits in Hoarfrost Peak…

A fairly generic write up if I ever saw one. I might work on that. Right now I am doing more of the GM-Provided PC Creation. I have a skeleton of the encounters created and I will be fleshing them out. My regular D&D Group will be playtesting the adventure with me on March 9th.

I have a lot to do between now and then!