Arcanacon 2010

On the Australia Day weekend each yeah a group of dedicated individuals run the biggest Warhammer 40k tournament in the southern hemisphere, Arcanacon 40k. About six months ago a good friend of mine asked me to come to the event with him. We had been playing Warhammer together on and off since the late 90s and we also attended ][con in November. I had tentatively agreed and after the great time I had at ][con was quite eager and excited. So on the 23rd and 24th of January I attended Arcanacon along with two friends, Tristan and Lauren.

Although I didn’t win very many games I had a blast playing them. I was extremely lucky to face six, happy, fun and relaxed players who were all, just as I was, there to have a great time. It seems like the overall attitude at the event was a relaxed one, there certainly wasn’t any raised voices or angry discussions and everyone I spoke to was enjoying themselves immensely.

Of the six games I played I lost the first four and then won my last two. Although I feel that I played pretty well in my games I did lose several based on silly tactical errors. It seems that the highly heroic act of dumping Fire Warriors out of their transports in front of a dug in Space Wolf Long Fangs or Howling Banshees, a Farseer and a Wraithlord is not tactically sound, especially if it means your troops get wiped off the objective in the last turn of the game. There were plenty of cinematic moments though like forcing a draw in overtime (we handed in our results and then kept playing) with gun drones against a Dark Eldar player.

There were two star elements to my army, the biggest and best were my two broadsides who blew up (no to be confused with destroyed, I’m talking explosions and disappearing tanks here) 12 vehicles. In fact they were so good at blowing up troop transports on two occasions they took out a transport, killing occupants in the subsequent explosion, and when the occupants jumped into another transport they took it out again, once more killing several occupants. It was very pleasing to see lots of craters where my opponents vehicles should have been. The other star performers were my Pathfinders; in all bar one game they were able to consistently mark threats for other squads to easily take out.

From the three of us who attended Aracanacon together Lauren did the best by far, making it into the top hundred and winning the “WATS Choice” award for her Tyranid Army. WATS Choice goes to the best painted/modeled army as chosen by the committee who organize the event. Her army was very deserving of the award with every model converted or added to in some way, delicately painted and beautifully presented on a desert themed display board. Sadly Tristan didn’t fare so well, although his army was also wonderfully painted it seems to be a lot harder to stand out with a Space Marine army. Additionally it turned out he went a bit soft with his list and got a rough chunk of really bad luck on his dice results.

The overall standard of painting and modeling was very high, I saw many stunning armies with excellent themes, phenomenal painting and gorgeous presentation. Terrain tables were of a similar high caliber providing a wonderful scenic surface on which to play. I had spent a considerable amount of time building a terrain table to take to the event which paled in comparison to some of the amazing club tables.

As an event with 200 participants the organisers must have been pulling their hair out at times, but it never showed. Bar a slightly late start and an overly long awards ceremony everything ran close to on time. As I previously mentioned, I have played Warhammer for quite a while, but I have never enjoyed the games as much as I did at this event. Not only did I have an incredible time but I came home re motivated to improve the painting on my Tau army, re-paint all my Imperial Guard which made up my first army and build another table of terrain.

So thank you to Mark and his team of organisers and to the players for such a great experience and see you again next year (if not earlier)!


Images contributed by 'Waggerz' on wargamerau, Viv of The Battle Bunker and myself.

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