Cowboys Assembled

Well, I spent the last two nights assembling all 48 cowboys and got them done. Painting them will be a different story. With AdeptiCon coming up the first weekend in April, I still have alot to get ready for that. I need to make sure my sons armies are done for LotR and W40K. I need to make sure my Fantasy army is ready for the Team Tourney, and I just found out yesterday I may be playing in the LotR Team Tourney that Saturday. If I end up playing on Saturday, I may have to paint up some more LotR to add to my army.

So the cowboys will probably wait till after AdeptiCon before they see any paint (then WotR will also be coming out......)

I'll still play with the cowboys unpainted until then, but probably just at home. Playing at a store with unpainted mini's is something I really dont like to do.

So come back tomorrow for a write up of our first LotOW game.

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Back in the Saddle

Well I'm back in the saddle after a great weekend at Gatering in the Desert 2009. You can read more about how the weekend went at my co-organizers site Cursed Treasures, I can say it went really well.

The entire weekend was a blast for myself. Here is a quick breakdown of events.

Friday:
3:00 AM Limo came and picked my cousin (helping me drive back) and myself up and we headed for O'Hare airport.

We got to O'Hare pretty early (3:30 AM) and the flight wasnt till 5:00 AM. But thats OK, better safe than sorry.

I still had status with U.S. Airways from all my travels with them for work, so we both had First Class all the way to the desert, it was nice and relaxing.

We landed close to 8:00 AM (local time) and my parents picked us up and we headed out.

After a quick cup of coffee and a smoke, my cousin and I decided to head out to Old Tucson Studios. This is the Hollywood for Arizona, where films like Young Guns 2 and Tombstone were filmed. My cousin is a Cowboy at heart (horse/sixguns and all) so he really enjoys visiting places like this, as do I. We spent the entire afternoon there and around 3:30 PM headed back for Phoenix.

I was suppose to be playing my buddy Tim K in an LoTOW game that night, but we had just missed each other.

Saturday:
Saturday was the start of GitD 2009. Like I stated it was blast. As a "Ringer" I got to play in Game 2 "Light the Beacons" against Keith H from Colorodo. What a fun game.......

Saturday night a group of us from GitD all went to BJ's for some microbrew and sandwiches. The dinner was great, and it was nice to be able to relax with the players who attended.

Sunday:
This was Day 2 of GitD, and again I got to play in Game 5 "The Last Alliance" against Kyle K (owner of Empire Games). Another great game as I saw my Spider Queen run off the table.

GitD was over around 4:30 PM and we started to pack things up.

Later that evening, my cousin and I decided to visit Rawhide. Its a 1880's Wild West town in Phoenix. They have a saloon and plenty of stores to pickup gifts. We walked the town while drinking our Root Beers. I ended up getting a t-shirt and a cactus to bring home.

Monday:
Time to make the "road trip" back home. My plan was to have a 5:00 AM start, but that turned into a 6:30 AM start. That was OK, since we were heading West through the city of Globe, traffic was not going to be a problem. We wanted to do some sight seeing on the way home so we cut the corner of the state of Arizona to get to New Mexico instead of going on the Interstate. It was a very scenic drive.

As we are driving through New Mexico we decided to make a pit stop and veer off the interstate and head towards Fort Sumner. In case you do not know, Fort Sumner is where Billy the Kid is buried. We toured the Billy the Kid Musuem and took photos at the gravesite. Perfect timing, as we finished up the photos, the sun decided then to set.

Tuesday:
After driving straight through from Phoenix, at 4:00 PM I walked in through the door and crashed on my bed for a nap.

It was a very fun packed weekend and I had a blast.
Now its time to start building my models.....

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I'm so excited!

The doorbell rings....... I had a feeling it was the Old West building that I ordered. I go and answer the door. The mailman is holding a large box, yep its my buildings. "What's this" I ask myself seeing a smaller box on top. Black Scorpion Minatures... oh yea, my Old West mini's came in at the same time. That's pretty quick considering they came from England.

When I get back this weekend from the GitD 2009, I'll take some pics of the buildings.

It's gonna be busy when I get back.... cleaning/paintingg buildings, building the mini's, and I'm gonna work on building an Old West table.

So stay tuned.....

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Gathering in the Desert 2009

Gathering in the Desert 2009 is fast approaching this weekend February 21st-22nd, 2009. All that is left to do is "dot the i's and cross the t's".

So what is GitD2009. Its the annual The Lord of the Rings SBG Indy GT that my good friend Tim K (author of LoTHS) and myself run down in Phoenix, AZ.

The forces of good and evil are gathering in the desert once more, and you have been called to serve and fight. Will you answer the call? Come fight for the forces of good or the forces of evil in the Valley of the Sun, Phoenix AZ for the second annual The Lord of the Rings Independent Grand Tournament February 21st & 22nd 2009. Enjoy 5 exciting games over 2 days testing your strengths against some of the best players in the country.

This weekend's event will be the second annual Indy GT. In 2008 we held the event over the Fourth of July weekend, and summer time in Phoenix is a no-no. So for 2009 we moved the event to February so all the out-of-towners can enjoy the beautiful weather at that time of year.

Also in 2009, GitD will be part of the Games Workshop Tournament Circuit. We will be the first event for LotR of the year.

Alot of hard work is being done to make this event very successful and I want to THANK everyone that was involved. Obviously Tim and myself, but also to those that helped with making Themed tables, T-Shirt designs and Empire Games for hosting our event. They are a top-notch indepedent retailer in Mesa, AZ. Thank You.

Now that is left to do is board the plane on Friday morning and have a fun weekend.

For more information on GitD 2009, please visit Adeptus Arizona.

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Old West Terrain

So you cant play with Old West miniatures unless you have some Old West terrain. Again, it took awhile researching on the web to find some that I like and that was cost effective. There is a manufacturer here in the states that does make 28mm terrain, but they are currently in the process of selling to another manufacturer. So their new site was not ready yet, so I had to look elsewhere.

I ended up finding a company called Frontline Wargaming. Frontline Wargaming has a distributor here in the states RLBPS based in Rockford, IL. This was great. Seeing that I just moved back to Chicago, IL the shipping will be really quick. RLBPS was also currently selling alot of their Old West buildings for 25% off, so I had to snatch some up. For now I ordered around 8 buildings, again enough to get me started with a small town.

If it turns out that I like their buildings, I'll probably go ahead and order some more. Plus I'll also start to scratch build some buildings when I have time.

Here are some pics of the buildings that I purchased. They shipped out yesterday, so hopefully I'll have them soon and paint them up.

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Black Scorpion Miniatures

So the other day I made my first investment into Legends of The Old West. After spending quite a few hours researching all the different miniatures for Old West out there, I decided to go with Black Scorpion Miniatures. They have a very nice line called Tombstone and enough variety for me to get started. My other option would have been Wargames Foundry. They also have a very large collection for Old West and I still may mix-n-match with them to add some more flavor.

To start out with, I went with the following:

Billy The Kid (x1)Pat Garrett (x1)
Sheriff (x1)

Tombstone 1 (x2)

Tombstone 2 (x2)

Tombstone 3 (x2)

Tombstone 4 (x2)

Tombstone 7 (x1)

This should be enough models for me to get started with my son. I eventually plan to add some of their Outlaw, Mexicans and Apache models once I expand into the LoTOW Supplements.

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Welcome!

Welcome to The Old West Chronicle. The blog for Miniature Gaming set in the Old West. I will use this blog to detail and keep track of my progress with my gaming and miniatures from the Old West era. I also have miniatures from The Lord of the Rings and Legends of The High Seas that I will also be posting here. The miniature scale that I use is considered to be 25-28mm.

The main ruleset that I will be playing with for Old West is "Legends of The Old West" by Warhammer Historical. This is a "skirmish" style of game play where each posse has a maximum of 12-15 miniatures (not including "Hired Guns"). LoTOW gameplay is very similiar to the other two games mentioned above, LotR and LoTHS. These smaller style skirmish games is what I enjoy playing most now, and the low model count helps in getting them painted.

Well sit back and relax and I hope you enjoy the wagon ride out west.

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