Sorsha and Karchev go to NATCON

Over the past weekend we had the New Zealand National Wargaming Convention in sunny Hamilton (and for once I am not being facetious about the sunny part). I had an absolute blast and played about 12 games, many of which were real nail biters. Whilst there was way too much fun to remember everything I actually felt like some of the games were close (i.e. a couple of different dice rolls would have resulted in a reversal), some were completely at the other end of the spectrum, but overall I look back and think that if I made a couple of better decisions I would have done a little better.

Couple of highlights:
eMorghoul running into Karchev and a Juggernaut and hitting Flashing Blade a bunch of times. With 19 and 20 armour respectively you would expect that both Karchev and his friend would get equally damaged... no... the Juggernaut took a total of 2 points whilst the big man himself took around 20 (bear in mind he was not boosting ANY of the damage rolls).

A lone Man O War Demo Corp surviving attacks from a Shredder, Harrier and a ranged attack from an Angelius to contest a scoring zone and give me a scenario win. I actually asked my opponent why he was tying to kill the DC figure as I could not understand his strategy - once he explained it to me I almost apoligised for winning as I never saw his plan coming and if it was not for a string of bad dice he would have probably won.

Couple of lowlights:
Wading through a pile of Fennblades and Warriors to get my hands on eMadrak, only to fall 4 points short of killing him - thats after knocking off a couple of free transfers to nearby warrior models and a pile of transfers to beasts. Given that I was about to lose on the scenario it was my only play but still... sooooo close!

Forgetting to pop Sorsha's feat in my last game.... this was a real lowlight for me. Up against Xerxis and his Cataphract friends I felt like it was going to be a hard matchup for me - then I forgot to pop the feat in turn two and it went from being a bad match up to one where I had no chance. This was one of the few games I have ever played where I was seriously annoyed at myself.

Bottom line:
Did not come last in either of the events, won more games than any previous tournament... thats a great result as far as I am concerned. Had some great games, caught up with some good people and painted some more figures. Speaking of which, here they are!

Iron Fang Uhlans

Kovnik Markov

Guardcon Day 2

Day two of Guardcon started off well. Since we were playing a Battlebox event and got through 6 rounds on day one, we had a late start (which was a new thing to me... a nice cooked breakfast and a sleep in whilst friends playing Warhammer and Flames of War had a much earlier start!) and a relaxed morning.

I played Gorton, Madrak and Gorton. Each of the games were great fun, but I was putting myself under some pressure as I was floating near the top at the start of the day. In the first game I made a couple of reasonably crucial mistakes resulting in three Gunners turning Sorsha into a fine mist. Against Madrak it was a more even contest (although Chris B did have to point out that we had misread the mission).... Madrak found himself on the end of a Wind Rushing Sorsha who put him down with her last attack. The last game of the day was against my old nemesis Victor who had already mentioned that his weekend would be complete if he could beat me! We had a fantastic game where once again Chris needed to point some obvious parts of the scenario... This time Sorsha made her Wind Rush but fell 1 point short of killing Gorton (that will teach me for leaving my dice at home and borrowing Victors!). Gorton tried to put Sorsha down and failed, however a lone Gunner casually wandered over to the flag and scored the final point required for a scenario win!

In the final wash up though I managed a very respectable third which was significantly higher than my placings in the previous four events I'd played.... mind you top half would have been significantly higher too!

Check out ThrallBlacks for more photos.

Sorsha Wind Rushing fake Sorsha on Day 1 (thanks to Chris B for the photo)

Guardcon Day 1... and the People of Southreach

Its been a great day at Guardcon with Sorsha and her two friends coming out with more wins than losses! Thats a new experience for me at a tournament... With one loss to Lylith, but wins against Sorsha (obviously not the real one), Kaya, Stryker and Gorton (thanks to some tips from Victor who is also running Gorton this weekend).

On an unrelated note, we had a great DnD session this week with our characters taking a short break since James is off in Australia (hopefully winning a Golden Daemon), instead taking over a group of people in the town of Southreach during a zombie attack. Barman Humphrey was particularly adept with a frying pan!

Sean (our DM) also has a cool online comic where he showed off our characters this week.... (check it out... its pretty awesome!)