Feast of Blades 2012 recap

Before I get started I want to point you over to my friend Dave's blog - he's continued his excellent series of posts on making 3D bases that's chock full of cool pics and great ideas. Check it out!

I went down to Denver to check out the Feast of Blades tournament over this past weekend, and it was a great deal of fun! While I didn't participate in the tourney itself, as an outside observer it was a beautiful spectacle. Unfortunately I didn't get any good pictures of the tourney in progress, I snapped a few, but I didn't want to interfere with the games in progress so none of them really turned out.

Outside the main hall however, they were setting up an immense Apocalypse battlefield that I did get some decent shots of! I was really impressed by the Warlords - they were really well done!

  

  

The main reason for going was to meet up with Miniature Tim and throw some dice during the open gaming time following the rounds on Saturday. The idea was to drive the Leviathan across the table in an attempt to get it into his deployment zone, while his job was to stop it. Really though it was all about having a good conversation over a beer and a laugh. Mission success!

 

Feeling cocky, I suggested we play lengthwise - a foolish decision as I found out shortly. The GK had moral superiority on their side as well, as we all know painted models fight better. Tim's grey knights were beautifully painted, too!

 

One of the best parts about the Leviathan is the Doomsday Cannon's ability to flatten terrain. The first turn it remained stationary to clear up that pesky ruin in the way, and a few turns later another ruin (as well as some defense line and a slow-moving dreadnought) were also well squashed.

 

My ability to damage things that weren't static pieces of the environment was a bit more limited. Despite firing battlecannon shots into Draigo and his Terminator squad for the entire game, I don't think they took more than a single casualty. Four ones to wound from a battlecannon?! That was worth a picture...

As I mentioned earlier, playing lengthwise was a bit of a silly thing to do. By the time the Leviathan was destroyed, it had only moved a grand total of 9 inches. The rifleman dreads stripped it of its void shields handily every turn, and an early Drive Damaged result, plus several turns ineffectually attempting to repair meant it didn't get very far before the Vindicare smashed it apart with his Turbo Penetrator rounds. Despite that, the game was an absolute blast and Tim was a hoot to play against - I'm definitely looking forward to attending FoB next year!