Here are some photos of my army for OFCC this year. Including, a long awaited spread of the Battle Standard Bearer that I painted last year and then promised to get some photos of and then didn’t. 🙂
I’ll have a separate post for the completed Engine of the Gods tomorrow.
OFCC is a 5-game team tournament at 2800 points. 2012 they allowed Storm of Magic choices to be taken as rare, which was my inspiration for Iron Brush (I just noticed I never posted for my own tournament…>.<) but for this year you had to take only options from your own book which was sad. Not because I had anything I wanted to take, but because I like people being able to take all of their toys!
Unfortunately, I took no photos of the games. I was to busy!
The match-ups were created in a very interesting manner. The first 3 rounds of the tournament were determined by people challenging each other, with the last 2 games having the teams matched by how well they were doing. The team captains came together and brought a copy of each persons list on their team. They diced for who would “present” first. The winner presents a list, and the other captain chooses two lists from his own team for the presenter to choose. The chosen two play Warhammer together. They swap turns, with each captain presenting, until all players are matched. When presenting, the captains talk about what sort of player the person is and what sort of army they brought. In this way, you can get Pete playing someone really hard because he loves those games, and me playing someone a bit less challenging because I’m more of a hobbyist (although Pete has been corrupting me…)
My army:
I won’t post any photos in this, because it’s already massive, but I have a bunch of photos that I took before the tournament of my army to edit and we’ll get to those shortly.
I’m going to split these posts into “Games” and “Colour” to keep them from getting overly long. 🙂
I went down to OFCC to play Warhammer Fantasy in Vancouver, WA this weekend with 9 of my CHOP! club members. We drove down last year and had an absolute blast – met a bunch of new people, and they have a team tournament format which I really enjoy. There is only one award given to individuals – Best Joke – every other award is given to a team.
This year my club split into 2 teams – xXx and Boat Anchor. On xXx was Dale, Little Pat, Pete, Scott and myself. Boat Anchor was Jamie, Big Pat, Owen (Pip), Nick Klose and Kas, a fellow I’d only just met this weekend.
Click through photos to see the bigger versions!
Little Pat brought down 4 2x2s for a Mordheim board he’d made a few years ago. My Witchfate Tor and floating rocks, 5 awesome looking armies and you have a second place for painting!
Lots more to follow, but here’s a teaser image to get you started out. That’s 3 medals between two teams, in a tournament where you can only win one award…CHOP!
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For various reasons, I’ve been reading my old LiveJournal from 2004 onwards. Just came upon this gem of a post that belongs here:
The tournament this weekend was amazingly fun. As Colin said “It’s over. When’s the next one?” ;). Room filled with 100 nerds all rolling dice, yelling, scream, carrying on, etc. Across the room you hear someone yelling “Yess!” or “No!” or “I can’t believe that!” or anything that expresses their emotions over this simple little game. At the end, your voice is nearly done, you are exhausted from having put all of your focus into this one thing for a weekend, and you leave feeling good. I didn’t win Best Sportsman, but seeing as there was a 4-way tie for first in that one and I was one of the 4, I didn’t feel so bad. They gave it to the guy with the most General (win-loss-draw) points. The idea being that if you were kicking ass and people still thought you were a good guy, then you must be a good guy ;). I thought they should have given it to the bottom guy because if you’re losing and can still laugh and carry on, then you must be a good guy. I was in the middle, so either interpretation wouldn’t have mattered to me ;).
I won 1 game, drew 1 and lost 3. My best record yet :). The game I won was against one of the regulars down at PR. Good guy, but kinda quiet and I haven’t played him much. He had a largely cavalry based High Elf army which just got roasted up against my goblin fanatics (they go right through armour) and rock lobbas (they _also_ go right through armour). My draw was against a good friend of mine whom I haven’t seen in a long while. We had a good game where at one point I thought I was winning, then next turn he was winning and then the next I was winning again. Crazy game and I’m glad it was a draw. He gets a little pouty when he loses ;). My first loss was my first game against a GW worker from Calgary who played a common and night goblin mix. He was an excellent guy, and I voted this as my favourite game/opponent of the tournament. Goblins vs goblins leads to wacky adventures ;). My second loss was against Peter whom I also played regularly at GW. He has a goob-tastic Clan Eshin army which I told him that I’d never play again. Unfortunately, the tournament organizers didn’t agree with my thoughts and so I had to play him. I didn’t really “play”, as his army just runs around killing stuph and there isn’t much that you can do about it. Really lame game and I’m pissed off that he brought that army to the tournament. Thankfully another friend of mine werked him over in the last round with quick wit and good tactics, something I lack ;). My last loss was my last game and it was against a Dwarf who had a lot of infantry. This game went poorly simply because I was so tired I couldn’t focus on my guess range weapons and so killed very few dwarves with them. He drew out my fanatics with a sacrifice, and shot down my giant and after that there is nothing left that can hurt dwarves. Good guy, I was just too tired to really play anymore.
I stayed home today because when I woke up I felt kinda dizzy. Went back to bed for another 3 hours and woke up feeling sick, but not that sick. I think just putting all of that energy into the tournament drained me and when I finally relaxed my body said “No!”.
This is me writing about the January 22-23rd Conflict held in Richmond. Peter still bugs me about that game we played, since I was an absolute shit sportsman about it. 😛 The “friend who werked him over” is Dan Miner, with a massive Skaven army with a ton of block units. I remember complaining to Dan about Peter’s army, and him looking at it and saying “Oh, I know how to beat that” and then doing so next round!
Patrick and I slept in until 10ish and it was glorious. Dale had gotten up much earlier for a flight around 8am, but ours was at 12:40pm. A few things to take care of, back at the Westin for a bit we got to say goodbye to the Bad Dice guys and head on our way.
Our entire way home Patrick and I spent brainstorming about what we would do for the Fantasy Team tournament next year. When we first left, I hadn’t been convinced that I would come back. It was a lot of effort to get there, and if I added every convention I attended to my yearly schedule, I’d have to vacation time left, so I have to choose carefully. Since our frenzied idea planning, I think that if we can pull it off, it will be amazing. No spoilers here, but there’s a good chance that the modeling and painting of said army will be shown here.
I always leave these events feeling super jazzed about doing more with my hobby. I love building and converting things, I love that I’ve been pushing my painting for the last few years, I love traveling with my buddies and I love meeting and playing games against new and interesting people, I love that I have a gaming club that affords me the ability to organize bigger events and help support others enjoyment in the hobby.
I’m writing this on a plane to Hawai’i, and don’t get me wrong, but I wish I was painting my Dreadball rats, or finishing up the amazing Stegadon conversion I started earlier this year.
Big thanks to the CHOP boys, and in particular Patrick for traveling with me and paying for the hotel when my credit card was defrauded and canceled, walking with a huge heavy box full of booze, and convincing me to go back upstairs and play my damn game.
Thanks for reading everyone!
Went downstairs after saying bye to all of my Blood Bowl opponents and walked into the Fantasy tournament room. It was completely empty of people, except for a small gaggle of organizers playing a game of Guillotine. In stark contrast to the thriving, overflowing room that I’d seen for the few days beforehand. I must have seemed lost, because one of them asked if they could help me, and then directed me towards the main room where the awards ceremony was being held.
One giant event to cover all of the championships didn’t work out well with my group. When I walked in, there was some 40k award being given away and no one around me was paying attention. I couldn’t tell you any of the awards that were given away during the 40 minutes that I sat there because it was a bunch of events that we had no attachment to, we didn’t know the players nor the in-jokes that the MC made, nor any of the awesome things that they had done to win said award. If there was a Fantasy award in the mix somewhere, I couldn’t have told you.
One sweet thing – as I walked in someone pointed at my shirt and said CHOP! which I naturally turned around to. Turns out that I was being hailed by the hosts of the Deployment Zone, a west-coast podcast which I’ve never listened to. (I have ears only for Peter :P)
We hummed and hawed over food and who to eat with for a bit, before starvation and people forced us to go to McDonald’s…second time in 8 hours…
Back at the Westin, some folks were playing board games in a back room that once contained tournaments. I surveyed the game table and noted that there was only a single game on it that I had even heard of. Very, very strange. I play a lot of board games and to have Alien Frontiers be the only one I knew is shocking!
We pulled a random game out and I set about reading the rules when a fellow walked past and asked if he could play, and that he’d played once or twice. His name was Kevin, and he was a joy to speak with. I later described him as the sort of conversationalist that makes you feel good to talk with, and I’m very glad that even after our first game fell apart that he pulled out Pandemic and we found two more people and set about trying to save the world from biological disaster.
There was another table of board games to give away. Partway through the night someone from D6 Generation pulled a game out and gave the folks in the room a task – act out a Colonial Marine. I’ve attached Dale’s rendition for your enjoyment.
Hours go by before another game is given away, and he machine guns a whole slew of theatre-sports based competitions before deciding to raffle the rest. I won a game called Milestones in the raffle, and after having read the rules I think that it is a low-to-medium complexity game that might suit for my household. Looking forward to playing it!
Once again, sleep that night came very quickly after my head hit the pillow.
Felt a lot better this morning, had a decent sleep and no alcohol the day before. Still off by 2 hours, but not bad.
My first game was against another skaven player. He was pretty good, and had a good grasp of certain positional plays that helped him a lot. At one point he had “no way” of scoring a touchdown, but saw a push-surfing method of moving his ball carrier one extra square, and got the kick-off result that moved his guys one more square and pulled it off! Was very exciting to see, even as he pushed a solid win for me into a draw with it. Minutes later he had scored again, and I blame the fact that we were rushing to finish, since I didn’t have enough time to really protect the ballcarrier to create a draw.
After that game, I asked the primary organizer if models were going to be set up in the other room for paint judging, to which he replied that paint judging was only yesterday.
…
He apologized and I said it was ok, but I was crushed.
I went downstairs and stood at the base of the elevator wondering whether I wanted to quit the tournament or not. Randomly ran into Patrick and we went for food and I told him what had happened. After losing 4 games in a row, and then having my dreams broken, I kind of just wanted to do something else instead of losing another 2 games badly. Patrick told me he wanted me to go upstairs and yell CHOP and stand on a chair and win that tournament, but I didn’t have it in me.
I went back upstairs anyway, in the theory that I could still go play some demos during the last game and I could decide if it was worth continuing. My second game was against a Wood Elf player. He was ok at the game, but for the most part my dice continued to fail me. A hitting team that can’t take models off the table is really just a useless team – and I’d even replaced my dice the day before! Towards the end things picked up a bit – my continued perserverance in trying to take the S6 A10 treeman off the board paid off when my Mighty Blow Saurus casualtied him! Followed by no less than 3 skull/double-down rolls in a row for my opponent (who was out of re-rolls at this point) made me the victor of this game.
A win felt good, so I decided to stick with it. Last game was against an orc team, and finally I got to the kind of BB I remember playing – standing around hitting each other until someone won!! It helped that we rolled the rain again, so the ball was hard to pick up.
My opponent picked up the ball and made a standard orc cage. I put some saurus in front of it, put the skinks behind the saurus for block assists and then knocked off and/or stunned most of his models. I think my dice were feeling sorry for me, as at one turn I stunned all 4 of his Black Orcs. I won this game as well.
Lastly, I won the only award that team CHOP brought home from Adepticon — the Salter something award for most touchdowns scored in day 2. It came with a little certificate and my choice of models – I took home John Doe, the Faceless MVP from Dreadball. 🙂
Blood Bowl Impressions
I left that tournament thinking that Blood Bowl is actually not a good game, as modern games go. There are two sides to it. The amazingly tactical, positional side which is tons of fun and is a great game. You have to think hard about where to put your model, how best to support and push your opponents models around, and what risks to take in what order. This is a game worthy of being played by a large community 25 years later.
Then there is the game where if you can’t break armour, ever, you fail. Or when your opponent breaks your armor and kills 5 of you guys, such that you have no models to even try to succeed with. Or when you roll 3 double-skulls in a row and lose 3 full turns. This is a horrific game. When your opponent gets a streaky roll of failures, no one can feel good about that. When (as in my first game) your opponent gets a lucky roll, that allows him to make a deeply positional play that nets him a goal – that’s amazing. But when 2 dice consistently screw your game over, all you have left is “I’m sorry” and to keep playing and keep trying to smile. Blood Bowl is absolutely brutal and it hates you.
I’ll still play it, and I still have a beautiful team of models to use with it, but I think I want to try to squeeze some more of the first game out of Dreadball. It could have within it the same sort of tactical play, but the dice are much less brutal – you have to do some crazy things to lose your turn or fail a non-opposed roll.
James Wappel posted a photo of my skirmisher movement tray on his blog!
*swoon*
Glazing was a good class. I didn’t learn a whole lot, for reasons we’ll get into, but I left feeling energized, which was a feat considering the absolute exhaustion I went into the class with!
I can’t remember or Google the teacher’s name, but he was originally a student of Mathieu Fontaine, whom I’ve written about before. “Glazing”, it turns out, is a technique I’ve learned already. Start with a mid-tone and apply successive layers of darker mixes to the shaded portion of an area, layers of lighter mixes to the highlighted area. Nothing new there.
What was new, was that I’d played with a bunch of this stuff and looked into different ways of applying the methods Mathieu taught. So I asked a bunch of questions. I asked about how James Wappel does his stuff, I asked about using the artists matte medium as a pigment thinner and generally just had the confidence to have a conversation about this stuff.
The downside…they have no idea how Wappel does what he does, and they recommend against the matte medium.
One thing I really did re-learn, is that I really should figure out how to include a wet palette into my painting workflow. I learned it with Fontaine, but neglected it, and it’s really kind of useful to do. >.<
I think it was mostly invigorating because I felt like I was a part of the conversation. Like I could paint something, and potentially be able to speak knowledgeably about how and why I did what I did. Like I could put something together that would look decent in that competition shelving out front.
I’m still going to use the medium, because I’ve loved what I’ve done with it so far. 😛
Edit: I believe that the teacher was Alex Akers. He runs Battleroad Games and his (defunct) hobby blog is at http://akersminis.blogspot.ca/.