Gathering of the Jersey Girls

At the end of January, the Jersey Girls ran their first event! We had been planning for months for this and invited everyone we knew from the Tri-State area to attend. To prepare, we wanted to create a few new boards. We were lucky that Mikey had created a bunch of boards for Garage Con in 2024 and had they safely stored away. He brought them all to the shop while we were building boards and realized we had plenty of boards to play on, but hey new boards are cool.

Mikey's sick vertical dungeon board

Mikey and Dellon focused on creating a castle board. There was endless brick cutting and brick laying paid off to create an awesome castle. There were many games of defending the castle on this board. I also appreciated the fact that the castle was not gray and had some nice greens and purples. Mike, owner of Sanctorium , painted up the board the week of the event! 

Castle Board

Anthony created a sick Graveyard board. Similarly full of color for a normally bleak place. Theres resin pools, plenty of flock, hand sculpted tree and even accessible tombs. This is a board I definitely want to play Necropolis on. 

The Graveyard

I had never made a full game board before. Only a few pieces of scatter terrain and some larger buildings but this was my chance to build one! The inspiration for my board was a Giant's graveyard that is being archaeologically excavated. To get between the bones and hill sides, lots of bridges were created. Each little platform had at least 2 ways to get to it. The larger forts were built for Garage Con but rather than having them mobile, I glued the pieces down and blended them into the board. Many coffee stir sticks were sacrificed to the creation. I'm very happy with how it turned out. Even got to play a game of Cauldron on it with my friend Sam. 

Now it was time for the event! I was unsure of how many people would show up. I was thinking like 12-15 people. The guys were confident more people would be there. And they were right! At the height of the event we had close to 30 people in the Game room playing games, hanging out or kitbashing.

As people rolled in, games of Cauldron started! Many people brought their own warbands from home. There were plenty of colorful miniatures and I regret not getting more pictures! Luckily lots of other people took photos. Thank you Frankie and Charlie! 

Charlie's warband of Froggy dudes

Frankie's colorful warriors

Jake's Cauldron Winning Troll
He kitbashed this model at the first hangout

Dellon's Cauldron Warband fighting a knight

We off course had many games going on! Cauldron, Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game, RAID, Ballad of Blades and Mordheim. Everyone was buzzing around from table to table. 

My first game back to MESBG after 15 years. My Goblins did not stand a chance against Mark's elves. Thanks for walking me through a game Mark! 

Mordheim in action!

So many games of Cauldron!

Preparing for the Ballad of Blades tournament

I started out my day kitbashing some miniatures with Sam and Jake while people strolled in. We had plenty of bits and glue to share. After people got settled, I jumped into a game of Middle Earth Strategy Battle game with Mark. Mark was a great teacher! He walked me through building my list and helping with rules. I managed to only take out 1 elf but I managed to kill more of my own goblins.. but hey I learned. After that I helped clarify some Cauldron rules while admiring people's miniatures. Quickly, I jumped into a game of Cauldron teaching Sam how to play. He kitbashed his warband that day and got them game ready! Like the rest of after his first game, he was hooked on playing Cauldron. It was nearly 5 and I hadn't eaten yet so a group of us went next store to grab some pizza. Next I played Cauldron on the castle board. My warband did not fair well against Jake's warband. Come on did you see the troll he made! Towards the end of the night, we prepared to plat Ballad of Blades. This is a game I've played a bunch of times, I was confident my warrior would fair well. I lost every single battle I had. But hey it took the most wounds so I kinda of won? Dellon and Jake faced off for the title of Champion. With the toadify spell and a bop on the head afterward, Dellon won the title. By this time it was nearly 10 and we packed it up for the night.

We learned alot running our first event. It went very well for the most part but learned signs and limiting the number of game systems we will be running will help for the next event. Don't worry we have another Gathering planed for the summer! Once we have the date locked it, we'll be posting! 

2026 Goals

Its been a while! I took some time off at the end of 2025 and for January while watching the US plumet into a post capitalist hell hole. 

There were a few reasons for a break but mostly so I could focus on finishing some projects before the first event hosted by the Jersey Girls. That included making my first board, which will be its own post once I get some nice photos taken. I'll also have a post about the event and how it went! 

But before all that, on January 1st I wrote down some goals in my hobby notebook. I tend to follow what ever my interest is at the time once a project is done. But sometimes I'm not sure what to work on or I have future games that I need to create something for. Having this all listed in my note book provides some rails while also providing flexibility.

Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game

As I have explained in a previous post. MESBG was one of my first war games and this year I want to keep painting more Middle Earth models. I've already painted a bunch of new models to include in my battles. So far I completed both Dwarf rangers and warriors and even more Moria Goblins. Next up I have to paint the Fellowship and other hero models. Some characters I even have different models in metal and plastic. This will be a good chance to try out some different color schemes that capture the essence of the character. 

Lobster Pot 28

Last year my friend Jake introduced me to Lobster Pot 28. After playing through a scenario, I knew I wanted to make my own warband. I plan for one of the next posts to go over the lore specifically but a brief breakdown for my idea was a group of descendants from the Knights Templar who brought relics to North America to combat the witches. But over time the relics began to corrupt and they started worshipping a new type of God. Kitbashing warbands is one of my favorite things to do, it allows for a theme to be explored on a small scale while spending time crafting a few unique characters. I literally just finished this warband last week before the Gathering of the Jersey Girls. While we didn't get the chance to play, I'll be ready! 

Chaos Giant Spearhead

I have literally never played Age of Sigmar and have zero idea of any of the rules. I hear spearhead is fun to play though! After being asked to play in a casual weekly game, I had to decide what faction to play. Originally I thought Goblins or Skaven, but after spending most of December batch painting I didn't want to have to paint 30 models. Thats when I remember I started a Giant spearhead a while back but never finished. This gave me the excuse to highly kitbash and sculpt three Giants inspired by the Chaos gods. So far I have 2 doneish and one in progress. My goal is to have these done in a few weeks and play my first game. My second goal is to confuse my opponents with models that look nothing like the miniatures on the box. 

Playtest Warband

After rolling on a custom table, I got my small warband list for a friends playtest. I have to make 1 witch, 3 centaurs and 6 skeletons. My idea is to use metal models as the base then kitbash the weapons and armor. I haven't really kitbashed many metal models but I got a great deal off Market Place for a bunch of models that I plan to use. My friend Ant was also selling old metal models where I was able to get some Centaurs and Skeletons. The goal is to get the warband all together by mid March for the first playtest.

Realm of Chaos Warband

I've wanted to make a custom Realm of Chaos warband by rolling each character up then kitbashing. We are finally going to do that this year! I got Nurgle and will be kitbashing a warband of gross little weirdos. After we make our warbands, we'll have a battle using Warhammer Fantasy 6th edition skirmish. I also want to make a small display with a monolith to display my miniatures on. That way when I bring the warband to a meet up, they'll look extra cool.

Those are all my plans so far! But we are only one month in and I'm sure more projects and ideas will pop up.