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.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Arcanacon 2010
Friday, November 27, 2009
][con Team Tournament
Over the weekend I participated in a Warhammer 40k doubles tournament, Icon, held by the Ringwood Wargaming Club. I was invited to participate by a long time friend of mine who I have been playing Warhammer (and other games) on and off with for close to 13 years. Initially I was hesitant, I’m not the best tactician and I haven’t really been to any tournaments. However based on the assumption that as a team event it would probably be closer to the “Beer and Pretzels” end of wargaming and further from the “Hardcore Cheese Fest” of serious gamers I decided to go. Then came the grueling weeks of trying to make an army that was nicely balanced, effective and painted. But it was all worth the effort as I had a very enjoyable time.
Across the day we played four games, two individually and two as a team. Round one I fought a Space Marine player and so did Tristan. My game went very well mostly thanks to some really good luck on my part and my opponents inability to roll a hit on the scatter die. I took out his scout squad and Land Speeder Squadron taking almost no causalities in return. Tristan wasn’t so lucky losing to his opponent who was a tournament veteran with excellent luck.
My second game was against a Demon Hunters / Imperial Guard player. My stupidity turned what should have been a convincing victory into a draw. On turn five I had Crisis suits within easy range of the second unguarded objective. My opponent at this point had five models left on the table, 4 members of his platoon command squad and a Vindicare assassin. The platoon command was a good distance away and I didn’t want my commander, who had a single wound left, taken out by the Vindicare so I jumped back behind cover. Well the platoon command moved, used their “Move move move” order and ran landing themselves firmly on the objective. As luck would have it the game ended right then. Tristan fought a Space Wolf player and again didn’t fare so well, but with a clever maneuver he did manage to pull out a draw with his last few remaining models.
Our first team game was against a Space Marine and Chaos Daemons team. Our final result was a win but it could have go either way at one point. Thankfully the Chaos Daemons appeared one or two units at a time and we were able to take them out before they could cause too much damage. We could have improved our performance with a better deployment, but dice luck was average for both sides.
The final game of the day was against a Chaos Space Marine and Dark Eldar team. Another convincing victory, with perhaps a small chance of defeat, as we left our advance onto the objective a little too late. My small Firewarrior squad were defiantly the standouts in that round surviving not only a horrific volume of fire from Dark Eldar warriors and a chaos sorcerer but beating a Dark Eldar champion on a jet bike in hand to hand combat.
Overall we came 13th out of 42 teams which in my opinion was an excellent result. The two stand out things in my army were firstly my marker lights, they really made a big difference when used well. Also my Broadsides performed very well with most of my opponents underestimating the fire power they provided not viewing them with the same threat level as they would a tank.
There were a few detractors from the event, the hall was too small and had poor ventilation. They ran horribly behind time which was annoying, especially as they started 45 minutes late. On a positive note I thought it was an excellent idea to distribute the prizes across the whole field, even if we didn't get anything. Following this I will defiantly attend Icon again next year and will also try to get into some other tournaments in the interim.
Images were taken by myslef on the day and feature my own army and the amazing paint work Tristan completed on his Imperial Fist Captain.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Small and Fragile
Dryad - Photo and painting by yours truely
So when I was younger I played lots of miniture, card and other nerd games. For many years these games kinda sat on the side lines. I never got rid of my Imperial Guard army, my Escher gang, Battle Tech deck or Hero Clix. Recently I have had a resurgence of gaming desire. This has come in the form of starting to paint a Wood Elf Warhammer Fantasy Army and participating in a Dungeon's and Dragons game.
My intention is to try and post more pictures as Alassiel and I paint our way through the Wood Elf army and the characters my friends and I are using to play D&D. You can follow along with our D&D game at Ianis World.
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Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Making Progress (Not Bacon)
This week we made some great progress into Ulduar downing Leviathan, Razorscale, Deconstructor, Ignis and Kulgan. We also made a couple of attempts at the Iron Council where I discovered I can still get one shot under the right circumstances. Five bosses is a good start and I think the Iron council will fall eventually, especially when I stop letting him stand in runes of DOOM!
A primarily guild group did get this far a few weeks back but I was off in an alternate (and distinctly more nerdy) fantasy world so much of this was new for me. If I may say so myself Alassiel and I made an excellent team taking out the adds on Ignis with the help of some great healing by Farex, Ianthe and Nums. It was also very rewarding to down Ignis after failing last week and several times this week.
The end of CoS as we know it
It is with a mixture of sadness and excitement that I announce to you the disbanding of the Children of Stormwind. With the guild master due to become a father and the guild growing beyond control into something far less organized and close knit than we had planned the leadership group unanimously voted to disband COS and form a new smaller guild, Focus. Saturday night was the curtain call with many members new and old gathering in Stormwind for the final group photo. Some celebrated with Champaign, others spammed trade with “OMG my guild disbanded LF Guild!” But I believe our new guild ‘Focus’ will be a fantastic step forward, the intention is to keep the numbers down and work towards making some progression through raids. We are off to a great start with three Ulduar bosses falling on the Sunday evening! Beyond that I see at least two more as achievable so we should start to see some solid movement.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Moving foward
Many of you may have noticed my blog has been some what lacking again, additionally I haven’t giving Michelle over at Warcraft Outsiders for a couple of weeks. Firstly if you are an avid reader who checks this blog compulsively every day I apologise for disappointing you. There are a couple of reasons as to why my blog has lessened somewhat recently, mostly this is because I am moving jobs. A couple of weeks back a put in an application with another company and was very happy when it was successful. But aside from the turmoil involved in leaving one company and joining another I have found my enthusiasm for Warcraft somewhat lessened. Sure I have enjoyed logging on to do heroics and raids here and there but overall I am playing a lot less.
On a more positive note I have been thoroughly enjoying showing Ianthe (a friend of mine who just reached 80) through heroics and hopefully soon raids. We also finished off our 200 rate arena matches last night just in time for the cut off on Tuesday.
I think I will probably continue on this lessened play schedule until 3.1 comes out then it will be full steam ahead into Uldar!
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