Pictures from the Las Vegas Open Heresy tournament!

Made it back from the LVO and one again realized that I really ought to take a monopod with me - I just don't have steady hands and a vast majority of the pics I'd snapped were blurry messes. There were a few worth salvaging though!

The Heresy event was a blast, ended up getting a chance to meet a number of the Heresy 30k forumites that I've gotten to know online over the last few years, as well as a few fellow bloggers. Good times! In between the first and second game, they had people lay out their armies, a selection of which may be found below:

Imperial Fists/Knights

Sons of Horus

Dark Mechanicus

Imperial Fists/Knights

Another Thousand Sons player!

Mechanicum

Night Lords

Word Bearers/Daemons

Knights

My first game was up against one of the Imperial Fists/Knights groups and due to a hysterical bout of poor saving throws and multiple deep strike mishaps, I was essentially tabled by turn two.

Second game was up against a lovely Raven Guard army (sadly the army shot I took was a blurred mess). Massive back and forth, he'd held a lot of his army in reserve and I had deployed almost everything so I'd mauled him pretty bad in the first half, but a pair of Venators and a Fire Raptor got their revenge in the back half of the game.

The center of the table ended up being a swirling melee that lasted for four turns, with units from his side and mine crashing in to reinforce the combat - my assault squad got bogged down in a twenty-man tac squad, who where then backed up by a second twenty man squad.

The Praetor just wouldn't die, buying the terminators enough time to then back him up. Very bloody!

Had an absolute blast, and will definitely be attending again next year!

Feast of Blades retrospective

Over the past weekend I had the pleasure of attending Feast of Blades 2014 in Denver, with the intention of participating in the Heresy tournament being put on. Got down there nice and early on Sunday (and totally not because I misunderstood the start time), and poked around a bit and chatted with some other earlybirds about how the weekend was going. Everyone really seemed to be having a good time!

Last year I went down to FoB to play in the huge apocalypse narrative event, and this year they really stepped up the game with a whole huge 'Floorhammer'-style cityscape for titans to really duke it out. Sadly the Heresy tournament very nearly didn't happen due to a couple of the players that were intending to participate ended up using their armies in the regular 40k tournament and did well enough to move on to the finals on Sunday. That being the case the guy that was running the tournament shared out his immense Iron Hands and World Eater armies to a couple people who were interested in learning more about 30k, which I thought was very cool of him. Since several of the players had never tried 30k before we all decided to just do a round-robin style series of games and just play for the fun of it (which was fine by me)!

 

My first game was against the Iron Hands and a fellow who was just making the switch from 40k to 30k so he was using a fair bit of unpainted and/or proxy models which was a bummer, nevertheless he was a very nice guy and we had a really fun time of it. Both me and my opponent were beset by truly abysmal dice rolling - I think we rolled a hundred ones between us! I didn't end up taking as many pictures as I should have, and I'd forgotten to turn off the macro settings on my camera so most were blurry messes. Doh! Final result, loss to the Thousand Sons by 3VP (pretty close for the fact that I was darn near tabled).

My second game was against a very cool Dusk Raiders army, was really jazzed to see someone go deep in the fluff and rock a full on pre-heresy army!

 

The mission and table setup meant that for the most part our armies were out of range of each other for 3/4th of the game. Both of our infantry more or less hunkered down (the VPs were based on killing infantry units), but the Dusk Raider contemptors and terminators sallied out and were met by the Thousand Sons predators and terminators, and engaged in an orgy of mutual destruction. When the dust cleared the Dusk Raiders pulled off a win by 3 VP (starting to become a trend). Another very fun game, we were laughing our butts off all through the game.

 

Finally another game against one of the Iron Hands armies that the organizer had shared out, and it was a hard core army, couple units of vets in Rhinos, a Sicaran with Castrmen Orth (one of the most lethal combos in the Heresy) and a Volkite squad in a bunker. This game was a major back-and-forth, with the predators annihilating the rhinos and vets, only to be hammered into scrap by the Sicaran. Another massive Terminator combat ensued in this game as well, which swung to the Iron Hands rather decisively, then an outflanking Javelin detonated the bunker in a single round of fire doing massive damage to the Volkite squad and Master of Signals. Once the game drew to a close we totted up the results and the Thousand Sons lost by... You guessed it, 3 VP. Another fun game though, this one was a real nail-biter.

Throughout the day, there was opportunity to earn Purity Seals (by accomplishing certain tertiary objectives), and I picked up a couple. Some of the organizers were wandering around handing out discretionary prize awards and drawings, and apparently the Thousand Sons were a big hit - I scored a fair bit of additional prizes throughout the day which was very surprising!

Speaking of loot, I'd snapped a quick pic while I was home for lunch today. Came away from the event with a staggering haul! I'd opted for the swag bag for the weekend, which had all sorts of stuff in it, including a Shaltari starter army for Dropzone Commander, a Malifaux box and all sorts of templates, dice, counters and some cool secret weapon testers. I scored some more Dropzone stuff (including a full rule box set and a set of both Scourge and UCM plastic starter armies) from wandering organizers, and on a lark I'd picked up a few raffle tickets as there was some really cool stuff up for giveaway at the end of the weekend. I ended up winning the raffle for a HUGE pile of Malifaux stuff, with the rulebook, cards and six boxes of gangs(? not sure of the terminology). No idea what I'm going to do with all of it though, wasn't really looking to get into a whole new game system (let alone two), but with most of it just dropping in my lap essentially free it's worth a try! I'll admit I've had my eye on Dropzone Commander since my early gaming history included a LOT of Epic way back in the day. The Malifaux models look to be pretty cool, though I've heard they're quite a bit bigger than warhammer stuff so their viability as conversion fodder are limited. Looks to be fun stuff to paint though! I know next nothing about the setting or the game system for either of these, going to read through the rulebooks and see how they grab me, I guess...

 

During the awards ceremony I was absolutely floored when they called me out for a best painted/best theme for the Heresy events - had no idea that they were doing such a thing. I was very honoured though - this marks my very first award for painting/modeling in my life! Overall the weekend was a complete blast!

Back from GenCon 2014!

I return unkilled from the trip to Indy for GenCon 2014! Had a really fun time catching up with some old friends, we played a bunch of Shadowrun games, ate some tremendous food and had more than my fair share of martinis. I had the pleasure of meeting up with Dave Taylor and Tim Toolen for lunch which was an absolute blast (and full of bacon), and though I wasn't able to get any good pics of their submissions to the painting contest I was thrilled to be able to see their work in person! Had some fun encounters over the weekend as well with various people staying in our hotel - Scott Kurtz from PvP was running a game in the lobby one evening, and I had a quick chat with the guys from Shut up and Sit Down as we were packing up to head out on Sunday. Matt Lees hair IS that gravity-defying in person! I did manage to get a good pic of an awesome Imperial Psyker guy who was staying at the Crowne Plaza as well:

I didn't spend a huge amount of time in the dealer's hall this year other than a few surgical strikes to the Fantasy Flight booth to look for any new 40KRPG books and to pick up the new Conquest card game, which appears to be pretty interesting. Had to tear myself away from the Star Wars: Armada game, as I knew if I started picking up boxes of that I wouldn't have any way to get them home in my luggage. Definitely tempting though once it hits general release! Of course, the next stop was the Forge World booth where I did get a few pics of the new Gal Vorbak models. I don't intend to do Word Bearers, but darned if I don't want a unit of these just to paint up!

  

Finally got to see the Vulkan model in person and I have to say it is very, very cool. I really liked the coal grey skin effect they achieved!

 

I scored their last pack of combi-weapons and a trio of event-only models - a Davinite priest, the DKoK commissar and another Navigator for my buddy Dave who was unfortunately unable to attend this year.

I was running low on Mk.II armor for the Thousand Sons, and I still have a few planned infantry units to go. Luckily they still had two sets of Mk.II Despoilers left, which I'll be using to mix-and-match up some more dynamic-looking units of Seekers and Veterans.

After seeing the awesome work that Eye of Error and Dave Taylor have put into their Thanatars, I went in to the booth knowing it was going to be a must-buy assuming they had any left (I wasn't able to hit the dealer hall until Friday afternoon), and was able to grab one. Definitely looking forward to adding it to the force!

...Then Forge World knocked me down and ran off with my wallet. I mentioned to the fellow who was pulling out all the resin goodies for me that I'd planned to use the upcoming Knight Castigator as a Baron for my knight household but figured I'd be safe as it's still a few weeks/months from release. With an evil gleam in his eye he pulled out a box from under the counter:

One sudden sharp stabbing sensation in the wallet later I realized I needed to flee the dealer hall immediately or I'd end up in the poorhouse. The weekend went by in a flash and I'm back to work tomorrow morning. Can't wait for next year!

GenCon Bound!

Heading out for the airport in a bit - off to GenCon 2014! It's a little bittersweet as my buddy Dave (who has gone out there with me for the last ten years) is missing the con this year for health reasons. He's been doing great with his recovery though, and we're going to celebrate his return to the geekfest next year!

There's generally not a whole lot of 40k going on at GenCon these days, so the group that I go out there to meet up with will be diving in to a weekend of playing the somewhat-newly-released Shadowrun. Means the amount of gaming gear I have to worry about transporting is fairly minimal, which is nice!

I'll be sure to take some pics at the con, if it's anything like last year (above) it's going to be packed. My one major concern is that Forge World will be in attendance again this year, much to the chagrin of my wallet - we'll see how that goes!

Going down to Memphis, Part 3 - A walk down memory lane

Third of four posts on the Memphis trip, this time around all the pics are concentrated on a pair of cabinets tucked away in the back hallway. It was a wonderful trip down the halls of memories for me for sure!

 

It was amusing to go through the case with by buddy Dave saying "Had that... Had that... Several of those.."

Battlefleet Gothic was a blast, but sadly my local group never really got into it. Still have an Imperial and an Eldar fleet banging around in the Closet of Doom.

These two really tripped my nostalgia trigger. Adeptus Titanicus was sadly missing from the display, but I had multiple copies  of both of these back in the day. How I wish I still did! Sadly the pic of the next shelf down didn't turn out, but it held my favorite Specialist Game of all time - Necromunda!

 

The original Space Hulk, DeathWing and Genestealer were played hundreds of times with the neighbor kids when I was growing up. Still have the yellow book, but neither Dave nor I had ever seen that "Space Marine Assault" box before. Was quite a shock!

Gorkamorka and Digganob were interesting, but I only ever played it one time. Loved the vehicle rules, but the setting didn't grab me as much as its big brother Necromunda did.

The old Horus Heresy boardgame! Never owned it myself, but played a friends copy several times. On the stack to the right, the Rogue Trader rulebook (sadly buried in the back, for some reason), the red Compendium (which holds the genesis of the Mordian 7th), and a 2nd ed Battle manual.

In the next cabinet was a bunch of old boxes of minis. Loved seeing the RT-era Devastators box again. Squat mole mortar, guard tarantula and a marine land speeder all in one set! ...For some reason.

Speaking of Squats, front and center in the middle of the cabinet. Bam! Still have half a box of these guys lurking in the CoD.

Back in the rear right is the first box I ever bought. Good old RTB001! I remember that day vividly, when I first saw the box and the Rogue Trader book in The Game Keeper, a store that no longer exists in a mall that has also been bulldozed and rebuilt (more than a decade ago, now). The late 80's came rushing back!

A selection of older and well not newer, but less older boxes. The old Predator box is lurking in the back there, really loved that old kit!

This shelf really made me remember the 'good old days'. Three Rhinos in a box for twenty bucks. ...And TWO Land Raiders for not much more!

While the original Rogue Trader rulebook was down in the bottom of one cabinet, they had a nice walk through time in the next one. 2nd Edition was mental, unbalanced, and a hell of a lot of fun. I think it's still my favorite edition, though I'll readily admit that's likely rose-colored glasses, as I haven't actually played a 2nd ed game in going on twenty years.

3rd Edition didn't really leave much of an impression on me. Couldn't tell you the difference between 3rd and 4th at this point, other than it felt rather watered down following the insane asylum that was 2nd. I do think that 5th and now 6th editions were much better systems, but when all is said and done Rogue Trader and 2nd Ed will always hold 1st and 2nd place on the podium for me!

One more post coming up with some pics from the games that Dave and I got into while we were there...