2025: Year in Review

2025 is nearly over! It has been a year of many firsts for me.

Beep the Troll, leader of the Beeps of Jimbus warband for Cauldron

First year working full time in the board game and miniatures industry. First time meeting a huge amount of my online friends in person. First year of being a home owner. First time solo traveling and first time designing my own miniatures game. And so many new tattoos. I didn't think I would be experiencing so many new things as a 34 year old. There are so many things that happened, its honestly hard to remember everything.

The Art Goblins

I got to meet so many of my online friends this year and they became real life friends. Some traveled through NJ and we got to meet up for a game. Others I flew to Milwaukee to meet and others I got to meet up with on the east coast at CT. All of them were just as kind in real life as they are online. So many of them inspired me to keep creating in all aspects of my practice. Adepticon was one of the highlights! A bunch of my friends traveled from abroad and we got to kit bash in person. A bunch of them even had their own games to play! I played Fiver's Snak28, Clay's Threnodessy and Steven's Bloodwork. I spent hours kitbashing and chatting with everyone around the Grim Dark alley. I even kitbashed my first Missile Toad that led to the creation of the game. I also got to meet up with Gage a few times to play some Games of Forbidden Psalm. At Pax U, I played against Ben in Cauldron (my warband was way to overpowered). In between all the events, I played games with my local crew of Dellon, Mikey and Ant. I also attended Under the Dice Fest in CT. Alot of the people I met at Adpeticon were at this event too. I watched the Mordheim open while walking the floor to visit the vendors and check out the Rusted Demon entries. Also hung out at the HiveScum studio while Trent casted up some miniatures. Played some games of Cauldron, Ballad of Blades and introduced Missile Toads to new players. 

Forbidden Psalm with Mikey and Gage

The founding of the Jersey Girls has been one of the best things about this year. It originally started with 3, grew to 4 and now the group has 15 members all over New Jersey. It has been great to bring players from all over the state together to connect and play indie games. We also get to support our friend's shop Sanctorium Games where we have plenty of room to spread out and purchase all the miniatures, paints and supplies we need! 

Anthony hacked Cauldron to run an RPG. I of course played Beep 

The year in Numbers: 

Game Days: 25

Different Games Played: 17

Most Played Game: Cauldron

Miniatures Kitbashed: 110

Miniatures Painted: 290 (so many Skaven and LoTR Rohan army)

Conventions attended: 3 (Adepticon, Under the Dice Fest, and Pax Unplugged)

Events participated in: 4 (Ent Moot, Monster Bash, Festival Rumpus, Kijune Kitbash)

Missile Toad Game at the First Jersey Girl Hangout

Next year I hope to do more traveling, work collaboratively on projects with more friends and spend lots of time playing games. We already have out first event for the Jersey Girls next month! If your in the tri-State area, drop by and play some games. I also want to release the final zine of Missile Toads. There are a few changes to make to the game and layout before printing. Once that is done, I'll have the printed zines available through my web store. Other Goals for 2026 is painting all my Middle Earth miniatures, finishing my Age of Sigmar spear head of Chaos Giants and my Lobster Pot 28 warband. Work on more Tyranids for my fully kitbashed army, I'm sure this list will grow quickly!

As we go into the new year, I hope we can all show more kindness to other's and ourselves. This hobby is about uplifting each other. If you are alienating people because they might be a little awkward or weird, GTFO! We got all types of people in this hobby, it's what makes us one of the best communities out there. Intimidation, gaslighting and harassment has no place at my table. If you ever feel uncomfortable at an event, come chill with me. 

Have a happy and safe New Year! 

Dragon Rampant

After many months of talking about Dragon Rampant with the core crew, I finally got the chance to give it a go. Dellon had given us a brief over view of the game during the early Fall to explain how it was different from other rank and flank games we played. I was excited to play Dragon Rampant which led me to kitbashing an army of Goblins, Trolls and Orcs. I had the option to use my Skaven for this game but I really wanted a project that would connect my Cauldron warband with a larger force.

Using the Dragon Rampant Second Edition rule book, Dellon helped me put together my first army list for our game. What I really enjoyed about Dragon Rampant was how flexible assigning a stat block is to a unit. There isn't just a Troll state block to use, you can choose how you want to run them. They can be elite units, they can be brutes, they could just be a rank and file melee unit. Then after a stat block is selected, you can choose a key word to add special abilities to the units. Most of the time this increases the cost of the unit, but some reduce the unit by penalizing an ability. 

The Shellborn Knights

The first unit we stated out was the Snail Knights. Even though they are snails, they move quickly as a calvary unit. To reduce the cost of the unit, they received the Slowness ability to reduce the speed by 1 inch. Additionally,  they are Venomous (Which I forgot to use during the game). 

The BogTooth Bashers

Next the Trolls were added. These are the brutes of the army with high strength and courage. They had way more abilities than my other units. They had Ranger, Wildchange, Counter Charge on Foot, Fleet Footed and Cannibalistic. 

The Blackfen Quiver 

Since the game was going to be focussing on one army storming the castle of another, I need to add more range units. A hoard of goblins with bows was selected to help protect the walls of the castle. They simply had the Sharp Shooter ability which did come in handy during the game. 

The Bog Breath Wyrm

I bought this awesome metal Reaper cannon to add to this army. I really liked the dragon design and what goblins don''t love explosions. Having a cannon to defend a castle is a must. Turned out the Cannon was over powered for the point value we were playing for our armies, but hey it was fun to use. 

I plan to do a future blog post to go into the lore of the army that I wrote for each unit. Stay tuned for that in 2026!

The Game

To get started,  Dellon and I placed the models on our side of the board. I was defending the castle while Dellon was invading. Turned out we did not add too many line of sight blockers for Dellon's army to hide behind and my cannon blasted through a unit of warriors. After a few rounds, the game play loop was easy to learn. I did forget to use most of my special abilities, but it helped to learn the game loop and add the abilities in for the next game. 

My poor Shellborn Knights did not stand a chance against the giant. They were quickly smashed to bits after charging out of the castle to defend their territory. My Trolls also didn't last long against the archers across the table. I did not have good luck with my melee warriors as they were quickly destroyed by Dellon's army. My range units faired much better! The cannon knocked out a unit of warriors in a few turns as they marched towards the castle walls. Once units actually got into the range of my archers, they managed to take some warriors out too. In the end, Dellon's elite unit did make it through the gates of the castle. Quickly they slaughtered my archers and only the cannon remained. Luckily, the cannon blasted the away the last enemy and the castle remained in the hands of the Drowned Maw Marauders. 

After my first game, I definitely want to play more! Looking forward to my next game using more of my custom kit bashed units.   

Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game

Over the past year and a half, I've played in a few campaigns and one day narrative events ranging from Warhammer Fantasy to Forbidden Psalm and most recently Cauldron. While I have hosted and game mastered many RPGs, I've never run a campaign for a miniature wargame. 

A few weeks ago, I was cleaning my studio and organizing my miniatures. During that process, I found my case of all my Lord of the Rings miniatures from college. Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game was one of my first wargames along with Warhammer Fantasy. As an elementary student I was introduced to the world of Tolkien. His name kept popping up with association with CS Lewis as I was reading the Narnia books. Then the movies released! I remember watching Fellowship of the Ring at my neighbor's house and being completely inthralled in the story. From there I beg my Mom to buy me a copy of Fellowship of the Ring, which was way higher then my 6th grade reading level. It took me all of middle school but I finished it. Luckily, I had the aportunity to do a book report on the Hobbit in between reading the first book. In High School, I read the other The Two Towers and Return of the King along with all the other stories of Middle Earth. When I got to college, I finally had the chance to play some wargames that I had seen growing up. A friend wanted to play Middle Earth Strategy Battle game and that provided me the opportunity to start collecting. I picked up a few different factions but mostly collected Rohan. Back then all the Hero characters were metal and cost less then 15 bucks! Those days are long behind us with miniature prices. I remember playing many matches on the floor of my first apartment with my sister, Rohan VS Gondor since neither of us collected evil. 

But after college, I packed up my miniatures for the most part. Sometimes I would break out my Rohan soldiers and paint them a bit when I was feeling low. But with out regular games, I lost steam on painting miniatures all together. After all, I was trying to build my illustration career and also working full time. It didn't leave me a lot of time to play games. But I still kept my miniatures, shuffling them from college, back to my parents then to my first apartment post college. While I worked on an unfinished space orc army and other warbands, my Lord of the Rings model sat in the corner. After clearing out my Middle Earth case recently, I was determined to 1. Finish painting my Rohan army and 2. run a mini campaign for my friends.

The army was not the crazy colors I paint now, it was much more in line with the box art. Originally I was determined to paint my army to fit into the Middle Earth color story. After painting one foot soldier, I was not happy with the result. I felt like I was fighting my natural instinct and went back to my usual painting style. Over the past week, I painted my entire Rohan army, I have still have more minis to go but I am happy to have completed my second army this year.

With the idea of a campaign swirling in my head, I began to jot down ideas of when and where the battles will happen. I decided to start out with Battle Companies to allow players in the campaign time to paint armies. This also will help introduce the rule set to the players and if they don't enjoy the system, it was only a few miniatures and a smaller time commitment compared to an army. Over 4 games of Battle Companies, a narrative will build to a full army battle. This campaign first and foremost will be about the narrative. Each match will be good vs evil, with the winner and loser affecting how the narrative will play out. It will change who a more advantageous position in the next match. I already have plans for creating a campaign packet with the general rules everyone will need to reference along with a lore for why the scenario is is playing out. My hope is that the last match of the game will involve all the players running a small army in a giant battle to capture the grand battles in the Lord of the Rings. 

My plan is to start in January at the first Jersey Girls meet up. We'll sit down and plan our Battle companies and maybe get in a practice match for players new to the system. While I personally remember the general rules, I'm sure there are many changes from the first time I played 15 years ago. Over the next 6 to 8 months, I'll be starting narrative battle reports. Meanwhile, I have lots of terrain to paint along with an army of goblins and small collection of Heroes who may or may not show up to aid the players. With Howard Shore's soundtrack blasting, I'm going to have lots of fun creating for Middle Earth.