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So… The Gaming Con I go to every year came and went this past weekend. There was much gaming to be had and it was a lot of fun. I’ll just go ahead and stick this here instead of in one of the specific forums because it deals with both 40K and WM. The high point though for me was finally walking out with a trophy.

Friday

Friday night was Warmachine. It was 500 points in the steamroller 4 format. I took a Menoth list with Amon as the caster. The first game against Magnus agenda was back and forth for a while but my opponent got the upper hand on his feat turn and managed to drop the jacks getting a clean shot to Amon and ended the game on a caster kill.

The second game that night was against Old Witch Khador. This was a lot of maneuvering for a while with each of us trying to get into position and also controlling the middle ground. He finally got to pop his feat and managed to get scrap jack into my backfield. It had slaughter on it and munched through an entire Choir trying but not succeeding to get to Amon. It came up short though. My turn rolls around… unfortunately I still had the effects of the feat on me so I couldn’t use any special attacks so I had to do it the hard way. I sat there and pounded the thing into dust with way too many attacks from Amon. I was hitting all day and whiffing on the damage rolls. Even with Synergy up. Seemed like the higher Synergy was going the lower I was rolling on damage, but I finally managed to take the thing down on the last swing. Turn rolls back around to him and he teleports old witch to the forest near Amon and charges with Old witch. Karma was with me though because his damage rolls went just as badly as mine and he only managed to put ten damage on Amon. My turn comes back and I immediately go into meditative stance and pound her into the dirt.

There should have been a third game but the guy running it set the round times too long. He also thought we could get another hour and a half over the block the event was allotted, but Con staff nixed that idea. Needless to say we weren’t too happy about this but well… what can you do. While packing up though there was some talk about tomorrows tournament and I found out at the last minute there were limitations on list construction that I had not noticed when looking at the event. gak… revision time as soon as I get home. So… I made 2 new lists. One with stuff I had Available, and another with a second Crusader if I could get my hands on one tomorrow morning.

Saturday

Saturday morning, me and the GF were scheduled to play Ninja Burger in the early slot. As seems to be tradition now we over slept and missed it. I think we have now decided to just forgo The early morning slots on the morning that is not the RTT because we always miss them. In the mean time I use said time to call a couple of stores to try and find a Crusader. I decide to go ahead and get a Fire Of Salvation instead and just use it as a Crusader. It costs a lot more money wise but well… might as well get it now while I really need one of that chassis. I call up one game store and they aren’t answering. I call up a second store and the guy there starts giving me some sob story about how he is the only one there and it will take him a while to walk the 10 feet to where the warmachine stuff is from his counter and if I can call back in an hour or so he can maybe tell me, to which I replied… I’m sorry but your incompetence just cost you a $52.00 sale and I will go to someplace else. I try the first store back and they answer this time. They had one and I told them to stick it behind the counter to which they tagged it for me and even knew who I was without me saying. Funny how they can do that and have only been open for about 2 months when the other place I have been going to for over 15 years doesn’t even know my name on sight. Yeah… they will be getting my money from here on out now, not that there was a question on that since the first time I walked into their place… really good store. So I get said Jack and stick it together there at the store and we head out to the con.

Afternoon slot was Settlers of Catan. This is a game I have wanted to try for a while now. It seems pretty cool. I was Mr. Irrelevant through most of the game so I did my best to try and make it harder for others. It was pretty fun and me and the GF are thinking about getting a copy. It would also probably help since we were not able to read the rules. The copy that was being used was a German edition.

Night slot rolls around and it is Warmachine again. This time it is 750 points and just a Warcaster and all Jacks… nothing else. This was a bit of a pisser since I had spent the last two and a half weeks speed painting up sixteen Exemplar Errants for this event… oh well… read the event description better next time. First game was against the merc player again. It was a close fight but I managed to get the caster kill on Magnus. Second game was against Kharchev led Khador. Man he can make some jacks move!. It turned into a big dog pile in the middle of the table real fast. He was using typical Khador brute force and I was getting Synergy up high and scrapping his jacks. There were two times I had Kharchev dead to rights for a caster kill from a jack and activated it last to get as much Synergy bonus as possible going but both times my dice failed me and would not roll high on any of the 8 swings I took at him. It also came to time and he pulled it out with a few more VP than me. Third game was against Cygnar with Darius. The Avatar really shocked my opponent because it does not leave wreck markers if it takes out a jack. When he saw that he made it a priority to take it out. It turned into a huge melee in the center. On my feat turn I managed to destroy all of his jacks just to have Darius pop his feat and make em all stand back up. Sigh… From there he managed to put the hurt on me in return. Time got called though and I Lost since the ones I did kill did not count towards VP.

All in all though it was a lot of fun there and the people there got some new respect for Amon all things considered since he is considered to be relatively weak as far as warcasters go.

Sunday

40K RTT… the big one… the reason I go each year. I was going to take a pure GK army this year but thanks to the hurricane, having to move, unpacking and all that I lost so much time that should have gone to modeling and painting that I decided to take Tau again. I also procrastinated so my list was really thrown together. I made the conscious decision this year since someone else was running the tourney to go with one not completed model as far as painting would go. I did not know if they would be judging on a painting category like the previous years. I show up… late as usual… though only 5 minutes this time. They didn’t even know I was supposed to be there even though I had signed up, and were very happy that I was there because I evened out the number of people.

First game up was against Marines. It was a drop pod heavy assault force. Yay… I get all the fun of Tau in close combat, and none of the shooting them as they come across the table. This will be one loss to start the day off. I managed to get a few good shots in here and there and surprisingly his guys weren’t wiping me out without breaking a sweat. I even managed to pick where his assault termies teleported in thanks to a bad roll on the mishap table. So… I stuck them as far as possible on the corner on his side. The high point of the game though was when my Broadsides managed to beat some marines in HtH and make them run. It was still a sound beating though, and even more so because I managed to rack up all the negative point modifiers, while he got all the positives. Battle points were 18 to 3.

Game two was against another Tau player. Our lists were really similar. We pretty much lined up and held as much as possible in reserve. I managed to seize the initiative and go first which in a way really was not a good thing for me. I did manage to get my rail guns off first and pop one of his broadsides and hammerheads. I also made a mistake and didn’t place a squad where they should have been, and yet still in my deployment zone so I ran them on that turn. His turn rolls around and he opens fire back. He kills enough in the misplaced squad to force a break check and they run off the table. Deep strikers and infiltrators start arriving as well. It pretty much turned into a game of some of my stuff would show up, cause some damage and then his stuff would show up right behind mine and nearly wipe my stuff out. It went back and forth like that through the whole game. The really annoying thing about this game though is the objectives had a chance of moving, which both of them did… right out of my control and into his. Then Time was called… NOOOOOO! Yay… another lost.

During the break between round 2 and 3 they did the paint walk through. I kind of wish I had known that there would be an appearance category but oh well… got to go with what I have. I arranged me stuff in a nice presentation trying not to draw too much attention to the one Devilfish that is base coated in all the right places, but has none of the detailing done on it. It had a few lines of the camo started but it was very obvious that it was nowhere near as complete in comparison to the rest of the army. While they were going around grading armies I was getting my back worked on by the therapeutic massage lady there in the dealers room but could hear them conferring with each other. When they got to my army, they spent a lot of time there with it. They then go out to discuss their decision, and I hear things like “going to be a hard choice” and “will need to get someone else” in to look at things. Damn… I finally get taken into real consideration on appearance and I’m running an incomplete model. If this isn’t indicative of my luck then nothing is.

Round three pairings come up and one person had dropped. I got stuck with a bye, so I had no chance to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Yeah… I think I really do suck that bad at the game. You think I would have picked up something after 15+ years but oh well… it’s about fun… right? So… I pack my stuff up since there wasn’t anyone there to get a pick up with and just wander around the con. While I am in the sandwich shop getting a drink, one of the judges tells me that It might be worth my while to stick around to the awards ceremony. Ok… so I have a good chance at something. Awards ceremony comes around and they run off their categories, Best general, best appearance, and best sportsman. I pulled out a win on the best sportsman category. A deamonhunter/marine army done in LotD took best appearance, and a nid player who was flat out stomping everyone took best general. The LotD looked really nice and I did not have any qualms about them taking the appearance category unlike the last 2 years. I did go up to the judges afterwards and asked about how painting would have gone if that fish had been painted. I asked because well… I’ll be honest … I’m never going to get general, so I might as well work to my strengths and I want to improve. They pretty much said that I would have had it if the fist had been painted. The three they had to deliberate on came down to looking at flaws instead of the paint job and the incomplete fish pushed me from first place to third.

I’m happy that I walked out with the spiffy glass plaque but at the same time… I’m a little disappointed at myself for shooting myself in the foot and taking the lesser category. As inspiration for next year, I have the plaque sitting up on my bookcase with the unfinished fish behind it showing thru as a reminder. I have already started work on the army for a year from now and I am going to be putting in as much work into it as possible. I have a sportsman trophy… now I want painting.

here are a few bad pics of parts of the army...















There has been a little more work put into them and a few details added since these were taken. I need to get some new pics but these give a good idea.

Where do you play normally at Fallen?

Where the usual suspects there?

I like the way you did the Tau. In particular I think the Firewarriors are pretty well done.

Too bad about having such a rough tourney, in particular missing your last round. That's a bummer. I'm not an Amon fan, but you seem to have done quite well with him. I hope you get your Grey Knights ready for the next tourney you hit.

A Frazzled... I usually play at GW Rice Village, and usually translates into about 3 or 4 times a year. I am also trying to get out to Asgard Games some. The two main things that keep this from happening are I work graveyard shift , so when I am awake, they are closed, and... I don't drive. Getting there by Bus takes about an hour even though it isn't all too far when you consider the size of our city. Just more the yness of our transit system. I also used to play a lot out at Alpha Centauri before they closed and I lived on that side of town.

As for usual's... the only one I recognized there was Piper if that rings any bells. Sean Riggs hasn't been to the past two. Then again his dad died right around this time last year, and I have heard he ed his leg up pretty good in a work accident.

@40KEnthusiast... Thanks... A lot of people seem to like them but they never seem to get the nod... until this year. I think I should have gone Farsight again... it couldn't have been any worse and I could have gone full painted. Besides... the sight of 8 crisis suits with 14 shield drones is something to behold. Amon can work in a few circumstances. This happened to the the one. He is a fun caster to use and to work around his limitations, but he is by no means top tier. The model is also just damned sweet when his mace is wrapped right. The GK's will deffinately be ready for next year and hopefully sooner so I can get some games going with them.

Oh, do tell the name of the store with the oh so overworked staffer so I can avoid overworking some minimum-wage slave.

Nice report.

I haven't been attending Owlcon the past 3 years but once everything is squared away I should be attending again.

He's probably talking about Nan's, but I could be wrong. I don't recall any other game store in Houston that's been around for more than 15 years besides Nan's.

What's your Amon list? I've tried running him and find it kind of hard.

The store in question is indeed Nan's. This isnt the first time either I have had lesss than stellar customer service. I went in there about three weeks after Superiority came out for warmachine looking for a copy. I didn't see one there. I knew it was out because I had flipped through a friends copy that he had picked up from one of the far northern stores in the city. So... I ask the guy behind the counter if they had any or how long it would take to get one, and got this speech about he doubts it is out and "never trust these fly by night game companies with their pie in the sky release schedules." So... yes folks... you heard it here first... Privateer is fly by night. I just told him thanks... I'll hit eBay... I can get it for a third to half off instead... I just wanted it tonight but thank you for reminding me I should save some money and walked out.

As for the guy who could not be bothered to look if the had the item... it is that short old guy with the white beard.

Third Planet has been around a hell of a long time too (somewhere in the 80's) but Nan's has been around since the 70's. The place has gone down hill though since about 98 or so when Frank, the original owner sold the place due to health reasons. Coincidentally enough, Lou Zoochi (a true old school gamer will know how that is) was at the Owlcon supposedly to be auctioning off Frank's game collection but I can find no mention of said auction now.

I really can't say it enough now that if you are in that area and need games, go to Asgard. They are on Kirby headed south from 59 about 2 blocks down on the left across from the giant mirrored armadillo. They are still very new so their stock is a little sparse on harder to find stuff but they are more than happy to order stuff in.

Amon List...

Amon
Crusader x2
Revender x2
Devout
Gaurdian
Avatar

Run all you can the first turn, get Synergy up the second turn and keep it up. Find a good spot where you think you will never have to move Amon from again and stay there. Meditate from there for more focus. Hake sure you can do a halla lota of damage to the opponent or win the game on his feat turn because if you can't seal the deal you will be a sitting duck.

I would agree, Asgard is a nice place. I ran into Matt (the owner of good old alpha centauri) at Asgard the other day and his group tries to get down there on the weekends for FoW or Warmachine.

I never speak to the people at Nan's.
That store is in no way a FLGS by my definition. It is a comic and game shop, where you buy and leave like Walmart.
Game tables & chairs = Gaming Store (the chairs exclude GW stores where there is no room to sit.)
But I digress.

Sounds like I should have gone to Owl con after all.

Yeah... i have ran into Matt a few times. I used to work with Him at Book Browser back when they used to be big in the Magic scene way too many years ago.

Nan's just sucks now. They used to be cool, if only a place to buy stuff but have really gone down hill. Now... I pertty much only go there if I have to.