Oldhammer in the New World Event Recap Day 2

After the epically long gaming session on Friday night I woke on Saturday and shuffled off to breakfast in a daze.  The water eggs and weak coffee did little to improve my mood...but by sheer force of will I was back down in the event venue by 9:30am...

...and the sight that great me gave me enough energy to carry on through the rest of the day!

After we had all stumbled off too bed, the intrepid Brian K. had stayed up to set up the enormous New Alamo Table that he had built over the previous couple of months.  This amazing set up was front and center in the room and was bound to be the center of attention for the entire day....at least for me.

In the morning and early afternoon....which I only vague recall due to lack of sleep and coffee, there were a number of other games that took place as well.  For one the Green skin horde of Sean S. took on a combined force of Chaos (provided by ABG) and Dark Elves (provided by Adyer).  This game took place on the excellent table provided by Rusty and proved a fun and lively game...unless you were the orcs...in which case there was also a lot of dieing and Running away...

Sadly I failed to capture even a single picture of this game...so I will have to refer you to the excellent report posted by Sean that covers the action in some detail.  It can be found HERE. 

I believe there were also some other gaming going on...maybe Heroquest...?  Maybe BattleMasters...? Like I said its all kind of a blur at this point.  

What I do recall clearly is the siege of the New Alamo!  Brian K. really pulled something special together with this game.  Its sheer size was impressive and the fact that it ran so smoothly for such a long time is testament to the amount of work and forethought that he put into it.  The action was fast and furious with the momentum of battle swinging from one force to the other with shocking regularity...Lets look at some pics!

For Awhile it seemed as though the Orks would obviously prevail...but with stubborn resistance by forces like the Penal Legion seen above and the pesky Space Marines that wouldn't die the battle seesawed back and forth.  At one point Santa Orka Himself mounted the walls and entered the enclosure...only to be jumped by an Imperial Assassin and a Murder bot.

But in the end the Imperial forces were able to maintain control of the central landing platform that was the goal of the attacking forces.

Suffice to say that great fun was had by all and this will go down in my gaming history as one of the best games that I have had the privilege to participate in.

In addition to the Big Alamo game, Saturday also saw the Event painting contest.  There were many fun entries for all the categories and a great number of very well painted figures involved.  Again I apparently forgot to take any pictures of these goings-on and so will have to refer you to ABGs excellent Blog post about the contest.  You can find that HERE. 

The overall winner of the painting contest was Mike C.  Who entered an amazing RT halfling cook model that was head and shoulders above the rest despite it diminutive size.  As a prize Mike received a large Warhammer as a Trophy.  Being the gracious guy that he is, Mike decided to leave the hammer with us to pass along as the award for the next contest as well...but not before leaving his mark on it for posterity.

The fun didn't wrap up until well after Midnight...and driven out of the room by the thumping bass of the Nigerian Baby Shower that was (inexplicably) still going on next door I scooted up to my room and quickly passed out with visions of burning Drew-bots and imperial murder-bots filling my dreams.

Cheers for now!

Blue

Oldhammer in the New World 2015. Event Recap Day 1

As you have seen by the flurry of other blog posts and FB posts the Oldhammer in the New World event is done and dusted.  It was an epic weekend full of laughs, hard fought battles, bleary eyed warriors...and yes...last minute paint jobs.  

But I digress...lets start from the beginning.

If you will recall from my last post...I spent Thursday night enjoying life with my wife and children at the local fair.  It was perfect night with lots of fun, and unhealthy food, for all.  

Upon returning home around 10pm I set about filling my miniatures case and packing my books and all the sundry things needed for a weekend of dice rolling and miniature talk.  It took way longer than expected and I didn't lay my weary head down to rest until well after midnight.

...this made the 6:30am alarm very unwelcome...but this turned out to be one of the better nights sleep that I would have for the whole weekend.

I was out the door and on the road by 8:30am heading south to Pennsylvania.  The first leg of my trip took me down familiar roads toward Albany NY, passing along the southern reaches of Lake Champlain, Lake George and the upper portions of the Hudson River.  Around Albany I picked up a college radio station that was playing a long uninterrupted set of Grateful Dead tunes and as I listened gleefully to "Sugar Magnolia" and "Box of Rain" I finally started to relax into what was bound to be an epic weekend.

As my journey carried me down along the Lower Hudson River the Grateful Dead started to break up and I switched my listening to my favorite Pandora Station: Cream!  With the thumping bass of Jack Bruce and the driving drums of Ginger Baker Blasting through my exceptionally hot car I cruised down past the Big Apple and into New Jersey.  At this point I turned my car westward and entered Pennsylvania itself.  

A constant stream of encouraging texts and messages from the crew that was already in Allentown propelled me forward and as I drew closer my excitement level continued to build.  As I exited the highway and began to pick my way through the bustling metropolis of Allentown...one of my all time favorite (and seemingly appropriate) classic rock and roll tunes helped me push through the heavy traffic and finally arrive at the event venue.

After a quick stop to relieve the incredible pressure in my bladder I strolled casually into the Magnolia Ball room (flash back to Grateful Dead tune) and found the lucky few that had arrived early already rolling dice and having fun. The Advance team had done a superb job of setting up the space and getting things kicked off as soon as possible.

In fact I found most folks engaged in the first play through of Brian's amazing Bretonnian Frog Hunt Game.  There was much laughter and many terrible jokes to flow out of this incredible game.

Watch out for that MASSIVE crab!!!

 

After meeting and greeting everyone who was in attendance Dustin and I quickly pulled together an RT 40k game...something we had been discussing for months...obviously neither of us could wait.  We took over half of Rusty's amazing table that he had provided and Dustin dressed it up with some scatter terrain that he had brought.  This game found my imperials facing off against Dustin's Orks in a struggle to recover the Transport Homing beacon that had been recently eaten (along with its owner) by a rampaging T-rex and unceremoniously "deposited" (some hours later) somewhere on an inhospitable planet.  And to make things even more interesting the T-rex was still in the neighborhood and protecting his "turf."

We had a great time with this game...it was quick and dirty with may feats of bravery and plenty of silliness as well....lets just say that the T-rex ate at least 30% of my forces...

As the afternoon turned into the evening we took a quick break for dinner and then returned to get Bulldog Lopez's RT Demo Game kicked off.  I merely observed this one as I was still frantically trying to get some painting done on my Bret Knights but suffice to say to was a well run and impressive looking 4-way game that continued until well after midnight.

At this point you may be thinking: "well...that sounds like a full day! I'm sure that was enough for day 1!"

Well...you'd be WRONG!

After much convincing and cajoling I was pressed into a late night round of the frog hunt game...and I'm glad of it.  Once again the constant frog leg jokes and attacks by random, and vicious, wandering monsters made this game a real joy to play.

My warband performed admirably...though I ended up losing by a single frog.

Bleary eyed and sore from laughing we all shuffled off to bed a little after 3am and collapsed onto our beds to dream of the excitement to come on Day 2!!!

Cheers for now,

Blue

Oldhammer in the New World Prep Part 3

Alright...lets get this out of the way...

Yes...this is another Prep post...

and...Yes the Event is already over...

So what...?

I'm gonna milk this event for all the Bloggy goodness it has to offer...so that means you have to suffer through another "Prep" post while I download and process photos from the actual event.

...you'll be ok I promise...:)

So here goes...

I spent last Wednesday night touching up details on all the horses and riders.  I also selected shields and started to get the base colors on those.  This last task led to a long stroll through my shields box trying to select just the right shields for these guys...this took away from painting time but was alot of fun. 

I have a lot of shields.

Anyway...here is the status at the end of Wednesday Night.

Group shot

And here are the individual shots so you can see the shield selections a little better.

And lastly here are the shields that I'm working on for the Knights that are already finished.

Looking good right? 

Blue might actually pull this off right?

Yeah...ummm...no...

So...this is where my plan went a little off the rails...I had been underestimating the amount of time it would take me to pack for the event...and in the end Thursday night turned into a night out with my wife at kids to the fair (Yay!  Fried dough!) and packing.

...no painting was accomplished...sigh.

In other words this is the way the knights were goning to be when I pulled into the event on Friday.

...My only hope is to work on them whenever I could on Friday and Saturday in order to have them on the table by Sunday.

Not ideal to say the least...but I'm finally enjoying painting this unit....even on figures as large as these mounted ones its the details that really bring them to life....it feel good to finally be at that point.

Cheers for now.

Blue

Oldhammer in the New World 2015 Prep Part 2

Greetings all,

Work on the horses and riders is progressing and I managed to get all the barding on the mounts completed last night.  This is a major milestone due to the sheer amount of cloth on each of these horses.  There are still lots of details to finish up but in some ways it's down hill from here.

So this is a quick up date to show you the progress on the mounts. Here you go.

I wasn't excited by these plastic 5th edition horses when I started on this unit...but due to size I felt they were the only option for these Knights.  But I must admit that the variety of heads (both plastic and metal) really add a nice variety of poses and the sculpting on the cloth is quite good...so they are growing on me.

Tonight I delved into finishing up the details on the horses and getting started on the shields.  I'll put together an update on that in the morning.

Cheers for now.

Blue

Oldhammer in the New World 2015 Prep...Part 1

Well....what a crazy summer it has been to this point.  As you could probably tell from my lack of Blog output I have been extremely busy with RL concerns the past few months.  Work and family are very demanding on my time during the warmer months...

...but one thing has been keeping my spirits up...and that is thinking about the Oldhammer in the New World Event that is now just a few days away!  

So here is a brief run down of what I'm trying to get accomplished Hobby-wise in the last few days before I head out the door.  As I knew that my time would be very limited this season I have also kept my goals fairly limited...and hopefully achievable...:)

First off I'm very excited to finally get my Bretonnian army onto the table for a game.  Long time followers of this blog have seen this force build slowly over the last two years and it has been mostly completed except for the hard hitting part of any Bret army,....the Knights.  So my principal for this years event has been to complete a unit of 10 mounted knights...plus a hero

Progress on these has been sporadic for more than a year but I have really been focusing on them for the last couple of weeks.  Painting horses is one of my least favorite parts of this hobby but I have been pushing through.  I have five knights pretty much done at this point and six more nearing completion.  Here are some pics...First some close up of the riders very much WIP