Well here I am after having a long weekend of Warhammer fun. I’m going to take the opportunity to go over the list and the games I played, etc… The usual things you’d expect to read from this kind of post. Towards the bottom I’ll of course link the audio and video that I cobbled together whilst I was at the tournament and without further ado.
My list:
Greyseer – Earthing Rod, Talisman of Edurance
Chiefan – BSB, Shield, Storm Banner
Warlock Engineer – Level 1, Doom Rocket
Warlock Engineer – Brass Orb
Plague Priest – Plague Furnace, Flail, Ironcurse Icon, Dispel Scroll
3 units of 5 Giant Rats – 1 Packmaster
2 units of 40 Slaves – Shields, Musician
35 Stormvermin – FC, Banner of The Underempire, Shields, Warpfire Thrower
30 Plague Monks – Standard, Musician, Plague Banner
2 units of 5 Gutter Runners – Slings, Poison Attacks
2 Warp Lightning Cannons
Abomination – Warpstone Spikes
So the list… It is a dirty list, though not nearly as dirty as it could’ve been. I took Champ in Slaves to make up points and same with the Champ in the Stormvermin as well as the Warpfire Thrower. I literally struggled to get the 600 required for the core choice at 2,400. I could have turned a unit into Clanrats, but ended up going Stormvermin and gave it a whirl.
Game 1 – Joe Gero (Warriors of Chaos)
Joe had some Khorne Knights, Khorne Warriors, a unit of Nurgle Warriors, and characters. His army was pretty much designed to get up on you and kill you in combat which isn’t unusual for Warriors at all, especially when you go Khorne. The game really was I think going his way, both my Slave units had disappeared, Abom was dead, Plague Monks had been killed along with the furnace and the Stormvermin had literally been backed into a corner, but through some magic I had his army down to 2 Khorne warriors in 1 unit and 9 plus his BSB and Lord in another. Final turn I charged my Stormvermin at the 2 certain they would win and although I felt dirty afterwards for it I used the 13th spell and rolled just what was needed to take off his other unit with his Lord and BSB in it securing me a victory by tabling for a 20-0 win. Joe is a great opponent and it was a super fun game.
Game 2 – Mike Ballard (Demons of Chaos)
Mikes list had some single Fiends, and then 1 of each Bloodletters, Horrors and Demonettes, a Great Unclean One and other such Demonic things. I concentrated all my shooting and magic onto his Bloodletters who did eventually disappear. The GUO ended up in a Slave unit which steadfasted their way through the rest of the game even getting him down to 1 wound a number of times, but as Mike was running Lore of Life he kept bringing him back up and I never quite finished him off. The Abomination and another Slave unit fought and killed the Demonettes and the rest of the game was very stand-offish. At the very end of the game I threw 13th at the Horrors and Dimensional Cascaeded. This turns out to be one of my biggest regrets of the touranment. BiTS was running a Bingo card for prizes which you would get if you marked things off of your card and 1 of the boxes was cascade yourself. I was so excited to tick off the box I didn’t think about re-rolling the result with the Earthing Rod. This not only gave Mike the win in the game but also the bonus points for breaking my own fortitude. After I realized this an hour or so later I was just gutted and really cursing myself for suffering the 11-9 loss. Had I not given him the 300 point Greyseer I would have either won or we would’ve drawn, I’m not 100 sure, but I know I wouldn’t have lost.
Game 3 – Brad Schwandt (Skaven)
I figured I’d end up fighting another Skaven at some point, I just wish it hadn’t been Brad’s. I make no excuses for my list not being dirty, but Brad’s was dirtier in my opinion. I think it was roughly 120 Slaves, 2 Greyseer’s, Abom, 2 Cannons and 30 poison Gutter Runners. The Gutter Runners made short work of my Furnace and the Cannons mostly did nill for either of us. The game really ended when Brad got Plague off and literally took off about 60-70 models out of my army. It was horrifying and there was nothing I could do about it. Once the Abomination went down on the bottom of turn 3 I called it as I’d lost basically everything at that point and didn’t feel like dealing with the futility of the continued beating.
Game 4 – Dave Witek (Vampire Counts)
Excitement was high coming into this game as I got to play Dave from Garagehammer whom I consider a good friend, and since we’ve never played we were both pretty excited. Although Dave did quite a bit of moaning about Skaven filth. Dave ran what turned out (I don’t think it as intended this way) to be a nice points denial list. Most of his points were wrapped up in the Coven Throne and his Black Knights/Hex-wraiths. I held back in a corner to avoid combat with things that could easily kill me and sent the Abomination after the Crypt Horrors. It took a couple turns but I did eventually magic missile the Hex-wraiths to death. Dave and I were both groggy and tired with nasty head colds and Dave forgot to charge his Black Knights two turns in a row which I took advantage of to drop the Warpfire Thrower on them knocking them down to only 3 models left before eventually killing them off. The Abom somehow over 5 turns never killed the Crypt Horrors (he totally should have) and I missed his coven throne with my Plague furnace charge by an inch. Dave did a fantastic job all things considered of holding me to a small victory 11-9 in my favor. Game 5 – Rock Uebler (Ogre Kingdoms)
I knew at some point I’d face these too. With 9 Ogres and 9 Dark Elves being the most numerous armies represented it was nearly a given. Rick was running what is basically the standard list, 2 Mournefang, Ironblaster, Iron Guts, Slaughter, Butcher, BSB, and the big difference is he had a Thundertusk instead of 2nd Ironblaster. He actually out-deployed me with his chaff of Saber’s and 10 man Gnoblar units. This resulted in his heavy hitters being on my flank. He managed to accidentally knock my Brass Orb engineer off the table on turn 1 through lucky panic checks from a rock that deviated off its intended target and really putting me on the back food as I’d planned on the Orb handling at least 1 unit of Mournfang. Once he got to combat with me things just disappeared quickly. I managed to Cracks Call the Thundertusk off and the Cannons did do a significant amount of damage. Sadly I lost 16-4 which had my Stormvermin not failed 3 rally checks to run off the table probably would’ve been closer to a 12-8, but a loss regardless.
Overall:
So, my takeaway thoughts on the tournament. First the tournament was a blast. It was super fun, and that’s really what Grant, Chris and Steve are looking to do. The hotel was very nice and the rooms spacious and clean. The tournament was big enough it had to be in two conference rooms, but that also gave the tournament more space so that there was a comfortable amount of room between tables, no bumping into the other players. It was definitely a great tournament.
My list while it had the teeth didn’t perform as well as I would’ve liked. I think generally most of my games were screw ups on my part. If I hadn’t let my Seer kill himself in game 2 I may have won or gotten a draw. Against Brad I’m not sure what in the world to do, there are really no good options when ½ of your army literally disappears because of a single magic phase. My loss in the last round to Ogres I definitely could have positioned better. Even having been out-deployed I chose to move the Plague Monks forward and into the charge range of the Mournefang. The worst part of the tournament is I have to learn to remember things. I only threw the Brass Orb twice in the tournament as I kept forgetting it and I forgot to use the Stormbanner and Under Empire banner almost every game! Especially against Brad the Stormbanner could have made a massive difference in keeping the furnace alive. I can see places to change things but this was an important learning experience, but I’d also like to change some units about and experiment more as well, so while I came out of the tournament with a losing record I think it really boils down to inexperience with army.
I ended up coming 54th of 77 which means I didn’t even make the top 50% of players, but I won’t let that discourage me though and I plan on sticking with the Skaven through the year for tournaments. I failed in my usual goal of more wins than losses, but that’s okay. The tournament gave out a boatload of awards including a certificate for each Best in Race as well as the usual Overall, General, Appearance, Sports but they also had awards for Best Terrain piece and then the Hoodoo Voodoo award which was for the player encompassing the spirit of ‘fun’ for the weekend. I’ll proudly say I won this award, and while it obviously wasn’t the most sought after award I’m quite happy with it and the accoutrements that came with my station.
With all this done and said let’s get to the last bit of my post here. Below you’ll find pictures of other armies and the hall that I took as well as videos and audio that I recorded during the tournament. The first video is the best in race certificates while the 2nd is the actual awards ceremony. Apologies about the audio quality. I was as close as I could get and still have a table for the camera to sit on. Finally the recording is just bits and pieces of interviews I got over the weekend from other players including a number of other podcasters out there, so I hope you enjoy the content.
So now that Adepticon is done and over with its time to put together all the coverage I managed to get hold of while I was there. I've got some pictures (not many) which I'll have jammed throughout this post. I'll have some video of some awards ceremonies at the end of the post and at the very bottom for those who want to download it I'll have the recordings that I managed to get while I was there. As the show was shut down I wasn't nearly as diligent about getting content as I was last year, but as an excuse I was also 3 sheets to the wind most of the time I was there as well. Still, here's what I have and I hope you all enjoy the read/watch/listen of it.
Thursday Night: I arrived late Thursday night hoping against hope that I might manage to snag one of the 500 free Battlefoam bags. Alas apparently 9pm was too late of an arrival time for this to happen. I did however meet up with Andy, Jake and Mark from Ohiohammer and go out for Sushi. We then went back to the room where we proceeded to drink and basically just while the hours away talking hobby, podcasting, and everything under the sun until around 1:30am. I think we recorded a little bit too. As I haven't edited the recordings at the time of typing this I guess we'll all find out later when we get to that point.
Friday: On Friday I participated in both of the Fantasy 1,000 point 'It's How You Use It' events. There is a morning and evening event for which you must play different armies. You also don't have to play both but as I was going to be playing Blood Bowl on Saturday and Sunday I thought I ought to so that I could say I played a ton of Fantasy, which I did.
Morning Event: For the morning event I played with my Dwarfs. I'll go over a quick rundown of the list and then hit up some small battle reports.
List: Runesmith - Master Rune of Challenge, Rune of Brotherhood, Rune of Spellbreaking Thane - BSB, Master Rune of Gromril, Rune of Brotherhood 38 Warriors - Full Command, Rangers, Great Weapons, Shields, Throwing Axes Bolt Thrower Bolt Thrower - Engineer, Rune of Burning Organ Gun Total:999 Points
Round 1:Skaven
Game went well, I feel I outplayed him. The Dwarf list I had was a 1 trick pony that scouts a 40 man Warrior unit in your face. Then when you think, "well at least I'll get one round of shooting" I pull the Master Rune of Challenge on you. The Skaven were not prepared for it, and with a big deep unit containing his Lord he couldn't flee so he charged. This kept his shooting off of me. After the Stormvermin with Lord crumbled I overran into his Plague Censer Bearers, WLC, Jezzails. My 2 Bolt Throwers and Organ Gun smashed his Slave unit with BSB apart and he conceded at the bottom of 3. Win.
Round 2:Warriors of Chaos
I felt I should have had this game. He set up really bad for going against my list. A unit of 18 Tzeench Warriors on far left, 18 Khorne in middle and his Sorcerer on a Disc far right. I stepped up to the Sorcerer as this was B&G (Kill him then I only need to knock off 1 unit to win). Challenge Rune went off he charged because odds were clearly against him staying on table if he fled. I sadly did not kill him, won combat he fled, stayed on table I did not catch. My turn 1 I charge him, he flee's, stays on table and I still do not catch. Had he died in combat I would've probably won as I'd have been able to reform. Instead on his turn 2 his Khorn made a 16" charge into my flank and the Sorcerer rallied. The Warriors proceeded to eat me and the game was over. Loss.
Round 3:Dark Elves
Another game that I felt I should have won. I started with his Sorcerer and RPX Crossbows fleeing from the Challenge. My shooting killed his army except the Hydra. I literally had everything going for me until turn 4 when with his remaining Sorcerer and 2 Crossbows who managed to double 1 stay on the board threw 10 dice at Purple Sun and destroyed my General, BSB and about 19 of the 30 remaining warriors. The Hydra then got into me and murdered 6 of the remaining 11. I called it at this point. Loss.
Afternoon Event: Again I'll go over the list and then some reports.
Tanya Scheibe drew me and while she's a great player I took a dirty filthy rat list with a Greyseer and an Abomination. She could not contend. The Abomination carried this game far and away and basically did all the dirty work. Damn thing is crazy. Win.
Round 2:Dark Elves
My opponent was plagued by some seriously bad die rolls. 10 Poison shots from my Gutters took out 4 of his 5 Cold One Knights. The Abomination scarfed all the Corsairs and Dark Elf Warriors and then him and the Hydra met. I won but with only a single wound remaining. The Doom Rocket blew up his Sorcerers with Crossbows and when they fled the Gutters shot them down. Win. Round 3:Demons
Its a fact that when Skaven fail, they fail hard. My dice that had been pretty hot abandoned me this game. Worst of all is I was on Table 3. I could literally see the winners circle. Doomrocket missed. Couldn't get a spell off to save my life and he had 2 units of Flamers which completely smoked the Abomination. The Gutters took 3 rounds of shooting at a lone Herald of Tzeench and it always seems like Demon players never fail a ward save. I played it out but it was a lost cause when the Bloodletters got to me and KB'd all my characters. Loss. Overall: A great set of tournaments. I'm disappointed in the Dwarf list. I knew it was a match-up dependent win but I felt the 2nd game should've been mine and thus would have likely had a different 3rd round opponent. The Skaven just fell apart which thy are want to do so I can't really complain. I got to table 3 which was way higher than I expected to make it at an Adepticon event.
Saturday and Sunday: I played in the Stuporbowl V (Blood Bowl) event. I took the Dwarf Team again this year same as last, but with the tournament you get to pick Skill Packs so that you have some players who have different abilities to try and work a strategy of some kind. Last year I took mostly Guard on them so that I would have a stout reliable team; which the Dwarfs start as anyway, but Guard makes it even harder. Last year I lucked my way into the 'Most Casualties Inflicted' award and this year (planning on not winning overall as I'm not that great) I built the team to for that award specifically. The team consisted of 6 Lineman (1 with Guard), 2 Blitzers, 2 Trollslayers (all with Mighty Blow), 1 Runner and a Star Player (Flint Churnblade) who has a Chainsaw to cut through armor. Saturday: Round 1:Skaven
The Skaven are the fastest team without question in the game. They start with players who can run 9, and when you add 'Go For It' they can often make 2 turn touchdowns, or 1 turn if they are a skilled player. No matter how fast they score though, they cannot win a game when they are only able to put 5 men on the field and after inflicting so many casualties, I won 3-2. Round 2:Dwarfs
Another Dwarf team, but built for sturdiness, not casualties. A 1-1 draw seemed immanent until my dice went on fire and I took 5 Dwarfs out in string during the second half with all my Mighty Blow and the Chainsaw. Win 2-1. Round3:Dark Elves
Top table for the day I played a Dark Elf. I managed only 2 casualties here. He is an extremely good player and quite frankly far better at the game then me. We both played our best and in the end I managed to hold him to a 1-1 draw. Day 1 End: The BBowl tournament has single day as well as 2 day awards. I didn't get anything on the Day 1 side. Someone else fought a Goblin team and inflicted casualties on most of their opponents guys netting them the Day 1 casualty award and pushing me to have to try hard for the day 2. Sunday: Round 1:Wood Elves This is the friend of the guy I played in Round 3 on day 1. Again, a much better player than myself playing a team renowned as being the absolute best team int he game. He played better than me, no question. I managed to hold him to a 2-1 loss which I had to content myself with. Round 2:Dwarfs
You'll see a theme here... This player was the same as the other I faced, having built for sturdiness, but also fielding a very good star player. Dwarfs is always a rough match-up because its the old 'Immovable object - Unstoppable force' issue. Dwarf armor is high and hard to break. I had to again content myself with a 1-1 draw.
Round 3:Chaos Dwarfs A shocking turn of events and one of the reasons I love Blood Bowl is that you can make things with Draws. I managed to make the top tables in the play offs which are the top tournament points leaders after 5 games. The Wood Elf and Dark Elf guys I both played earlier were playing for 1st and 2nd while I played Chaos Dwarfs for 3rd and 4th. See above about immovable and unstoppable. Yet another 1-1 draw was in the works here, I did however manage to kill his Minotaur with a chainsaw which was a moral victory for me.
Overall: With a record of 2-1-3 W-L-D and the massive amount of casualties I inflicted (19 over the course of 6 games) giving me bonus tournament points I managed to get 3rd overall. Prizes awaited me and I got a great looking Beastmen team made of Rhino's, Elephants, Hippo's, Bison, etc... about a $70 team from an alternate manufacturer in Europe. I also won the Most Casulaties Inflicted award which was my goal and I'm super happy that I achieved it. Nothing makes you feel some self satisfaction like getting what you go for. The tournament was super fun and while I don't plan on doing it next year in favor of getting back into the Champs or the TT I may still do 1 of the two days. We'll have to wait and see. Aftermath: Having completed all my miniature gaming for the weekend I went to the D6G Board Game night which runs alongside the ACon Poker Tournament and After Con Mixer. I played board games from about 6pm - 2am. I won 2 board games in some contests they were having (probably about 80$ worth and had a blast. I then drove about halfway home before pulling into a rest stop to sleep for 3-4 hours and then driving the rest of the way. I then immediately went to bed and passed out. Acon was a blast. Thanks to all my opponents (who though probably aren't on this board) were great. I had a lot of fun and can't wait for next year.
Photo's: Finally, here's some other photo's I took. Frankly I'm disappointed I didn't take more, but the weekend just seemed to go by so fast and it seemed like I never had the time to. Even when I had time it seemed like I was always running somewhere to get something; be that dinner, models, vendor halls, etc...
Video's:
Audio Recording: *Please note, that there is swearing in this recording so it may not be child friendly. Also it ends rather abruptly. Just a warning. Length : 36 Minutes 17 Seconds
So Core Competency 2011 has come and gone and with it plenty of little bits of coverage. As I don't produce a full featured show anymore you can't expect a ton from me; but I did do some video recording and audio while I was there and here it is collected. Any pictures I took you can find on the Twitter account, although I've taken the two best pictures and put them int his post with everything else. So I hope you enjoy what I've got here for you.
The first picture here is Joe Rodgers 3 Treeman eating my unit of Dwarf Warriors with Great Weapons and Shields. They died in a bloody heap, along with most of the rest of my army. I threw everything I could and as you can see by the wound counters I did some damage; but nay it wasn't enough.
This second picture is of the Best Appearance winner Brian McMillan's Orcs & Goblins Army. Azhag The Slaughterer which he's using as a Black Orc Warlord and I found to be just so beautifully painted I had to take a picture. It was a wondeful paint job on a model that costs so much I wouldn't buy it just on the basis that I couldn't do it justice in the painting.
Below here are the two video's which are compilations of many clips I took on my Flip camera throughout the weekend. Pieces of Battle Reports, some talk with other people and a recording of the Awards being handed out. Enjoy.
Finally we come to the audio recordings that I compiled over the weekend. After having sold my equipment I found a great recording program for my iPhone that enables me to jack in a 1/4 3.55mm Microphone into the iPhone and honestly it records almost as well as a XLR Microphone does professionally. Being thus impressed I decided to use this set up and then promptly forgot the Microphone at home so there is a fair chunk of background noise throughout there recordings as the input was just the phone itself. Still, it didn't turn out too bad and I hope you all enjoy listening to it. Please let me know if you enjoyed this type of coverage and anything you'd like to see change a bit in the future! Thanks again!
We start our episode out as normal covering our wonderful sponsors. We then delve into our fairly... well into Chucks fairly heavy week as he attended a tournament 'Invasion Kenosha 3' while I only just managed to get a single game in since our last episode. Its good to hear that Chuck and the others did well and The Waaagh Cast! won the Club Award at the tournament. We get out of our weeks and into some extensive news/rumors segments.
Warhammer Forge released a character riding their latest beast, the Carmine Dragon. We then get into all the new Vampire Counts things being put up on advance order. We cut through our thoughts on them as well as a little bit of rules rumors for them that are reported to be in the newest edition of White Dwarf magazine. We also disccuss an erata that is rumored to be in White Dwarf as well which is very interesting and really gets us kind of excited. We finally cover some Ogre Kingdoms rumors from Warseer before plugging Core Competency again and then get into our main segment that you'll just have to listen to!
Warhammer Forge: Elspeth Von Draken on Carmine Dragon
Please if you enjoy the show leave comments on the blog; if you have I-Tunes please leave I-Tunes Reviews. Any questions, comments, suggestions e-mail us at joe@waaaghcast.net. As always Thanks for listening!!!!
We as always throw out our wonderful Sponsors first, Gryfalia's and CCG as well as our singular sponsor Paul. We just want to let you know how much we appreciate all our listeners and sponsors. We cover a pretty quick hit of our weeks in Warhammer which weren't completely eventful. We do cover my first game of Storm of Magic with the Dwarf's Vs. Brettonians. Decidedly SoM is a very interesting expansion to Warhammer. We push through the News/Rumors covering a couple of Black Library Novels, the new Dread Quake Mortar from Forge World, strange scuttlebutt about Blood Bowl a quick note about the latest F.A.Q.'s and finally a lengthy interview with Alex Gonzalez the tournament organizer of Core Competency.
For our feature segment we delve into the Storm of Magic expansion for Warhammer. We cover most of the ground rules for what is involved with the game and the basic SoM scenario. We go through the new special miscast table for SoM. We also take a touch on a number of the magic items and discuss a bit of our thoughts on the Bestiary section and why exactly it excites us to play this game.
Black Library Novels: Nagash Immortal Hour of Shadow
Core Competency GT Information: September 24th and 25th; Core Comp. is a 2400 Point's, Special Characters are allowed. You must bring an 'Ambassador' model on no larger than a 40mm base. The theme for this year is 'Real Gamers Wear Pink' in support of Breast Cancer Awareness. Your Ambassador should be wearing a Pink Ribbon or some kind of Pink should be on the model. You should bring 7 copies of your list, 1 for each opponent, yourself and the T.O. Registration is $35 before Sept. 1st and $40 afterwards. You can pre-register by using PayPal at e-mail: Locasion is: 1524 Butterfield Rd. Suite A Downers Grove, IL. 60515
Please if you enjoy the show leave comments on the blog; if you have I-Tunes please leave I-Tunes Reviews. Any questions, comments, suggestions e-mail us at joe@waaaghcast.net. As always Thanks for listening!!!!
