Saturday, January 29, 2011

Arcanacon 2011 Day 1 Report

Arcanacon was a blast, despite the eating of a credit card the moment we landed by an unlabelled ATM and a freezing cold overpriced room at Vic Hall. With over 24hours of Warmachine & Hordes under my belt from two days of gaming, I had a great time, so here's the Morrowan report. It's lifted pretty much straight from my Road to War blog on WargamerAU.com.

For some reason I'm having trouble adding more than 3 pics, so I'll includ more in another post.

Round 1
Facing off against 6th place finalist Rowan Leech's Terminus list, I went down in a hurry. Failing to deploy well on a semi-awkward table (pics to come later, but a dry riverbed and two raised bridges got a bit in my way) was my first mistake, the other was not noticing that Revenant Cannon Crew up the back. A strong lesson was learned - ALWAYS take a GOOD look at your opponents list, because after killing some random precursors the Cannon Crew threw a well placed Ghost Shot shell in front of eStryker, Terminus got a nice charge off and reminded me just how big his pimp hand is.

A good fun game though, I do love to see a nice theme list.

Round 2



This time taking on Erica Robinson's Menites, including the oft-maligned Deliverers (scattering AOE's taking precious clock time in SR), I was sad I hadn't worn my bazinga shirt as she was sporting one of ThinkGeek's Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock shirts. Outclassed in style, I did however manage to bring Kreoss far forward enough to teach him how to really knock things down - with an effing big hammer to the face! My first win ever with the Morrowguard, it was a great game full of laughs and nerdy references (and some vague insults against the guy on the table next to us), and Erica was almost my sports shoe in for the day, until round 4.

Round 3



Taking to the field against me in round three was Leigh Callahan's Siege. I can't remember a lot of his list, nor a lot of this game, but Ardent Touch reminded us both of the Powerful Attack a Charger can throw out there, bringing down the man who breached the walls of Sul, but fared not so well against the Shield Wall of the Morrowguard. I wish I could remember more of this game, I'm sorry Leigh, but it was in the middle of my very long day, hopefully you'll forgive my memory.

Edit: Having looked at the photos my memory has been jogged. I did try to get the objective marker moving, but ended up losing a lot of my forces on that flank. Between that and the general distaste everyone had for the mission (I liked it myself), I decided to go for the assassination.

Round 4



I had to search the TO report for this name, so forgive me if I got it wrong, but I do believe my last round was against Wayne Bracegirdle's Khador. With a model light list I was a little confident initially, but considering those models included the Behemoth, a Juggernaut and a Kodiak, eVlad, the Great Bears, some Demo Corps, and Yuri with a pair of Manhunters, yeah I got worried fast.

If memory serves, one of the Manhunters went down to a counter charge on my west, while on the east side the Great Bears got shot to pieces by Trencher CRA's and the Demo Corps took a pounding from Precursors. In the end of what was a very fun game (hopefully for both of us!) Wayne just didn't have a lot left (Rowdy scored himself a Juggernaut!). Despite the low model count he was very restricted in where he could move with three large walls taking most of the centre of the table, and I think that weighed heavily in the ranged damage I laid out and then the assassination run I got off. eStryker, after Madelyn triggered the melee reaction of eVlad trying to seducing a walking tin can, powered up with a great roll and took of the Dark Champion's head in a gorgeous, yet brutal swing.

Wayne got my sportsmans vote as not once did he complain about the walls, the scenario, or my high model count vs his low one, and I loved his army and attitude for the game. The sports vote was done saturday night, but I also ended up having a really fun game against his alternate list on the sunday with my Farrow. As with all my opponents, he was fantastic to play, and I hope to run into him again some time.

The real battle was yet to come however.

The Grudge Match
Finally, after 3 1/2 months of planning, it came down to Morrowans vs Thamarites. Ben's list had an incredible amount of nasty potential in it, but not only that it was completely stunning to look at. If you haven't yet seen it, take a look at his RtW thread and gape in awe at the detail on those jacks, beautiful solos, and terrifying ex-trenchers.

We used one of the funky rubber-mat terrain tables for our game, covered in some suspicious geology that we won't go into here (mostly because I'm not quite nerdy enough to get why stalactites and limestone don't go together) that was absolutely stunning to behold. From memory it was the table the final Arc Championship was played on, so what better a blood soaked arena to fight it out in the name of the twins?

With a feat thrown at me that was a complete cock block, I had little choice but to do some blocking of my own, and for the first time in history found out the fun of Trencher Smoke Bombs, holding him back for a whole round and saving my charges and nasty combos for when I'd feat myself. Unfortunately, Daniera Madise went down to an ensorcelled Mariner shot, which Ol Rowdy happily took revenge for, but when the dice were laid down (some 9 hours after we started, thanks to a break for the con to close) eStryker was on the ground, bleeding his life away, Fiona had stripped him down with her magic and then the few Kayazy he couldn't clear with lightning had shredded his fancy schmancy armour.

Couldn't have had a more fun weekend, really. In the end I took 10th place, with a gorgeous Best Cygnar General trophy to mount into the Morrowguard's scenic base that I've started to work on.

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