California Here I Am

After a month and a half absence, I make my return from a brand new location.

If (or I should say, "When") I drive across the country again, I refuse to pack the car to the gills. Despite scheduling our move a couple days before the wedding, we still had a bunch of stuff show up in those last days, which, while awesome, meant the car was incredibly cramped. We also skipped taking I-40 for most of the drive, deciding instead to see some of the South. After doing Texas in a day, then stopping in Santa Fe, we said screw it and skipped everything else we planned and just drove until we got here. The sense of relief when we pulled into San Diego was palpable.

We've got the apartment mostly set up. We have a small room in the back and we've each got some space for our various hobbies/projects and storage. While the number of tables I get to set up has dropped, I feel like the quality has gone up. Since I don't have to pack all my books on one book shelf, I get to set up some of my games, my amp, and a drawer of some models as well. I think it looks nice alongside a neat table.You'll also notice the very nice glass case on the right side of the frame. That's courtesy of one of my good buddies back home. It's a very nice "Detolf" model glass case from Ikea that was given to me (I should say us) as a wedding gift. While I am very excited that I have nice way to display some of my models, it turns out my wife absolutely loves it. According to her, it's not just a nice piece of furniture, but it gives me a chance to show some of my work while not having the models be "out" which apparently reduces her stress level about clutter.After going through all the stuff from the move, the results are mixed. Of the models that went through the move, I am happy to report that there is almost no damage to my collection. A few lances came off, some metal weapons were bent, but nothing was broken. The flip side of that, and it is a big flip the other way, is that my compressor is gone. I got it as a birthday gift the week before the wedding from a couple good friends. It was still new in the box, never got to use it, and now we can't find it anywhere. We've filed a claim, but it really steams me.

My first foray out to a local FLGS was up and down. I went wandering and sorta scouted things out. The store itself feels similar to the Local back home, except they have a very current stock. I saw a lot of the hotness from Board Game Geek lining the shelves (and floors in front of the shelves) along with their expansions. The Warhammer stock seems pretty decent and all the out of date stuff is in a discount bin. It's neat, clean and well organized and the staff is very friendly.

However, I have my doubts about the gaming scene at the store. I made the trip out yesterday afternoon to try and get a game in. There were roughly eight other guys there hanging out. Over the course of two hours, two of them started a game, while the rest fiddled with their minis, talked to each other about starting a game, or stared at the new Necron codex. I tried to engage different people in conversation. I asked several people if they wanted to get a game in and made myself available. At one point, I heard someone say, "That guy is looking for a game," and the response, "No, I think I'm OK." I left without a game, incredibly frustrated.

If someone is new to your area, is generally friendly and socially competent(or even if he's awkward), and is looking for a game, please make him feel welcome. I don't care if you mercilessly stomp him, at least make sure he has a game with one of the more friendly members of your group. I don't think that's too much too ask.

And All is Quiet

My hobby progress has dropped off to exactly nil the past two weeks. This is due largely to the weight of events in real life. I'm getting married this weekend. Shortly thereafter, we have a move across the country to the San Diego area. I'm still looking for work out that direction as well. So saying there is a fair amount going on is certainly an understatement.

The move on this end actually went pretty smooth. I had most of my stuff in a pair of Battlefoam bags that I got as presents. Let me just say that I way underrated the utility of pluck foam. Not only did fit way more models in than I thought I could, but I fit in some odd shapes as well. Even better, all the foam I plucked out, I used on bigger models when I packed them away in another box.

There was one hiccup. All my orks and marines have magnetized bases. It's the standard washer glued to a base, but it works most of the time as an effective everyday transport solution... but not when one of the movers decides to upend the tray into a cardboard box. "Umm, hey bro, I'll go ahead an pack those myself."

Probably the only enjoyable part about not getting to go to my FLGS anymore was that I finally decided to cash in my loyalty points. The store is pretty notorious for having a backlog of product. We're talking about stuff from the previous decade and possibly earlier. They have not one, but two boxes of the original Golfag's Ogres from the discontinued Regiments of Renown. I started rooting around in the back of the Warhammer boxes. After coming up with 4 boxes of Pestigors, I finally found a box of Khorngors, which I wanted to use as Marauders coming in off a board edge with Wulfrik. It just so happened that the box had a bonus 11th model in it, so now I can just convert one for a counts-as Wulfrik.

Sorry, no pics. Everything is gone.

40K Tournament Review

Despite the premonitions of doom, I managed to run what I would consider to be a pretty successful tournament.

Initially, we had 10 sign-ups, but one dropped out. It’s honestly pretty good to get 5 tables filled up at the FLGS. Fantasy has a bit of a critical mass, so while we have a lot of people that enjoy playing 40K, it’s just easier to get Fantasy games. It was nice to see that when they got a chance to break out the round bases, the guys responded.

Things kicked off at the crack of 11 and managed to stay pretty much on time throughout the day. We had a pretty interesting distribution of armies. Players brought two Guard, one Blood Angel, one Ork, one Tyranid, one Chaos Marine, and three Daemon armies. I can’t say for certain, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what the metagame looks like at the uber-competitive events. It did make for some unique match-ups though.

Missions were intended to be fairly simple, with the primary win conditions being the same or similar to standard 5^th edition missions. Secondary win conditions were somewhat similar to old-school 3^rd edition missions, but with a more comparative element intended to break ties and ensure that even if a player was losing, they’d be scoring something. I think that was successful, as none of the 15 games had to go to victory points to determine a winner.

The missions can be summarized this way:

Round 1, Primary: 4 Objectives. Secondary: Get units to the opponents deployment zone

Round 2, Primary: Kill Points. Secondary: Rescue (I.e. find the secret number and carry it to your end)

Round 3, Primary: 2 major objectives, 4 minor objectives. Secondary: Victory points with bonuses

Because of the tournament length and the number of players, we had two players, one of the IG’s and the Nids player, go undefeated. The Nids managed to get the edge in battle points. Chaos Marines finished third.

As I said, we had nine players come to play. I had made a few inquiries about finding a ringer, but no one could commit to playing all day. I asked a couple other guys that came to hang out if they wanted to play a game, but no one brought an army. That meant that I ended up having to both play a game in the tournament and try to answer questions. Thankfully, my first two rounds were matches against guys that I’ve played before and have been playing the game for quite some time. On the other hand, I’m getting ready to move soon, so the only army I have available for play is my all Terminator army, which, while not the most competitive, is still difficult for some armies to handle, no matter how inefficiently it gets built.

There weren’t a lot of rules questions. Honestly the most frequently asked question was, “Is there random game length?” There was also confusion when scoring mission 3. People tended to not look at the bonuses and just score straight VP’s. Though it might just have been because it was the end of the day, I probably need to do a better job of outlining things like that in the packet. I also want to use scoresheets next time, which I think will help simplify things.

Other than that, I really think things went well, and honestly, I am looking forward to the opportunity to run something again.

Additionally, thanks are due to one of the local guys for taking all the pictures.

40K Tournament Prep

I'm running a tournament on Saturday. Things are pretty much set. I have all the missions written, I have objectives, and I have enough players. I'm still very nervous. This is gonna be the first time I try running something like this, and while I know the guys and plenty of them have experience running tournaments, I still imagine things going so badly that the building somehow burns down and it's my fault. Hopefully things go well, and if not, well, I'm headed across the country in a month.

I got in a game on Tuesday. I played a Meeting Engagement against a Beastmen Doombull bus with a big Minotaur unit. To say the game was going to lack subtlety is an understatement. We deployed a little over the 12" apart. He had 3 units, including the Minotaurs with a Doombull and 2 Gorebulls, plus two units of Gors and a level 4 Shaman. Essentially that amounts to about 1500 points in the big deathstar, meaning that if I get that unit, I win. He went after one of my units with his big scary one, smashed it, but didn't go far enough to get out of my counter-charge arcs. I hit his flanks with 10 knights, a Lord, and about 20 Halberdiers. I lost a lot of guys from the Warrior unit, but the knights cleaned up and with a ranked unit of heavy cav in the flank, he was disrupted, so he wasn't steadfast, and at that point, the game was pretty much over. I still don't understand the Deathstar philosophy. I really believe that you need enough units on the board to be able to exercise a measure of control over it. I can see the value of points denial, but I really think over the course of a game, it's not that hard to get the whole thing if you have the counter for it.