Warhammer 40k - Deathwing Terminators & Orktoberfest 2013

So my birthday came and went and I got a pleasant surprise from my sister (who happens to live on the other side of the country).  She was kind enough to send a box of Deathwing Terminators in her care package to our parents (who live in the same city as me) and I picked it up while having dinner at their place.

Haven't quite gotten a chance to open it up and start building but quite excited as I've been wanting them for a while now but between the price and GW's business practices have been totally put off.  Getting the box was also great as I had just gotten into talks with the folks who run NPC-Con and we decided to run both NPC-Con 2013 and Orktoberfest 2013 at the same venue.  This does a bunch of things for both parties.  We can share the cost of the venue, share sponsors and share players.  Win-win for everyone involved.  The only thing is I might have to cap the participants for Orktoberfest due to space limitations but that's ok as I've never hit the maximum of 32 in the past 3 years.  Always around 20-24 which is just right for the venue that NPC-Con is using.

Unfortunately though, with GW's recent behaviour towards Faeit212 and BoLS, not sure if I want to promote 40k as the system for Orktoberfest 2013.  Seriously considering switching to Warmachine/Hordes as there are a lot of those players in northern BC.  The only thing stopping me is that I don't play that system and I don't want to shell out a bunch of money to start playing that system.

Tournaments, MTG Cubing & D&D Next

Orctoberfest 2012 came and went and seemed to be a success again.  Had the biggest turnout this year, surprisingly I think Orctoberfest had more people show up than the annual Remembrance Day tournament that has been going on in the area for the last 15 years.  I suppose advertising helps? 

Hopefully the turnout for next year's Orktoberfest will be just as big.  I'm expecting so as next year will be a 40k year for the event and 40k should be more popular with more 6th edition books coming out between now and next October.  More details in the new year.

The only unfortunate thing about this year's Orctoberfest was that I didn't get any pictures.  We were in the middle of packing for a move which never occurred and I totally forgot to pack my camera or ask to borrow my dad's digital SLR.  Oh well, next year for sure I will have pictures.

Kinda bummed I missed out on this year's Remembrance Day Challenge but house hunting was more important.  The owners of Great White did mention they were going to be putting on a Warhammer Fantasy tournament in the spring so maybe I'll try to attend that one.  Just need a fantasy army.

As for other wargaming, not much has occurred.  I picked up the Dark Vengeance box.  Mostly for the rulebook but I did manage to trade the Chaos half for more Dark Angels.  The models in hindsight, while good looking and well detailed, were unnecessary as I have a complete army already.  It's been a few months since I got them and I've only put together two Tactical Squads and one Deathwing squad.  Still have the two Ravenwing squadrons and a Deathwing squad on sprue plus the commander and librarian and special edition chaplain.  Tempted to sell the non-Deathwing stuff I have as I read there are rumors of a Deathwing box being released with the new Dark Angels codex and I hardly ever play with anything other than a full Deathwing army nowadays.

So what have I been doing to keep my gaming self satisfied?  Got around to building an MTG cube with a bunch of MTG cards I had lying around plus some generous donations from my brother-in-law.  I had heard about the format before but never played.  After some reading about cubing, it sounded like fun so I put one together and played with some of my old high school friends.  Turns out they enjoyed the cube and wouldn't mind cubing again.

I wasn't happy with the original cube though so I scoured channelfireball.com for some cheap cards to make some of the themes and archetypes stand out a bit more.  Most of my friends haven't played MTG in years so aren't familiar with many of the newer mechanics or synergies so my cube is a pseudo-noob friendly cube.  Mostly basic mechanics and strategies with a few intermediate-advanced strategies and the cards I bought should make those strategies more obvious.  Just gotta wait a few days for the cards to arrive and then I can update my cube!

This brings up an amusing anecdote from the first run through of my cube.  I was mentioning that there was a lot of red burn being passed around in the first pack and after the draft had finished, one of my friends who had never played before beat me quite handily with a pure red burn deck.  He ended up picking every high damage burn spell and just burned me out both games.  Maybe I had too many burn spells but at least that is a noob friendly strategy.  Hoping to see what other strategies show up as we cube over the holiday season.

In addition to the construction of my MTG cube, I had my same high school friends make up D&D characters so we could play test D&D Next.  We ended up doing random race, class, background and specialty and a random wrestler name.  So the group (they decided would be called Outlaw Shizzle to honour the last group we had) is as follows:

• The Rage - Stout Halfling Cleric Guardian Noble
• Grudge Jr. - Hill Dwarf Warlock Bounty Hunter Healer
• Slater Jr. - Human Fighter Thief Acolyte
• Angel Ripper the Third - Wood Elf Sorcerer Thug Necromancer
• Pretty Boy Ray - Halfling Lightfoot Rogue Blacksmith Jack of all Trades (we were all disappointed that this guy turned out very archetypal)
• Anvil - High Elf Wizard Knight Lurker

You'll have to sign up for the play test to find out what all those terms mean but needless to say, the group makeup is quite interesting.  I think I will have them flesh out their backgrounds when we meet up next so we can have some idea of how this bizarre crew got together in the first place.  I think I will run the campaign like a serial action TV series similar to shows like The A-Team, MacGuyver and similar.  Less planning and no need for an overall story arc (though given my style of story telling I will probably put some recurring themes which will eventually fit into an overall story arc)

Looking forward to a nice holiday season of gaming with my friends.

Tournament News

Popped into one of the FLGS in town last week and found out they are planning on hosting small monthly tournaments in addition to their larger Remembrance Day Challenge and Spring Fantasy tournament.  It appears tournament attendance has been low so they are trying to get more interest in tournaments by hosting smaller and friendlier events.

I whole heartedly approve of this.  Mind you I only really care about this because the more people that are interested in tournaments means the more people who might be interested in attending Orctoberfest in October.

For my part I'm going to try and attend as many of these tournaments as possible so I can push Orctoberfest 2012 and hopefully get a few more people than I have the past two years.  I keep hearing that it is an absolute blast to play in and everyone would love to attend but the numbers just don't show it.  Mind you I think I picked a bad weekend for Orktoberfest 2011 (Canadian Thanksgiving weekend) and I changed the format from Fantasy in 2010 to 40k in 2011.  Orctoberfest 2012 will be Fantasy again so that might affect numbers.  Still, I am hoping that I get more fantasy players this year than in 2010.

First tournament is a 1500 point 40k tournament.  Although I did sell some of my Deathwing (the black reach half) I still have enough painted models to bring a decently competitive force.  I probably should hold back as the tournaments are meant to bring in new tournament players, but what good are new tourament players if they don't play to win or can't stomach losing?  Anyways, got about 2 weeks to think about the army I will bring to this first tournament.

In a galaxy far, far away...

Oh my it has been a while since I last posted anything.  Not much to say other than been busy with stuff outside of wargaming.

Some friends and I got into Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Reminded me of my old World of Warcraft days only back then I didn't play with any of my friends, but had a nice guild that kept me in until teacher school got too time consuming.  Never got back into the whole MMORPG since then.  Being a teacher takes up a lot of time outside of school surprisingly.

When Old Republic was released, things changed.  Being a fan of the Star Wars universe made it easy for me to decide to try it.  Thankfully my friends played and we now have regular gaming nights which is nice.  So that, I suppose, is where most of my free gaming time has gone.

For those curious I play on the Master Gnost-Dural server on both sides.  My friends and I started a guild on the Imperial side under the name Imperial Medical Service.  All the characters so far are doctors (mine is bounty hunter named Dr'akagi, cookie for those who know who I named her after, lol).  I have to wonder if anyone notices the connection.  Republic side we aren't nearly as organized my main is a Jedi Sentinel named Paro'cena.  I've got alts of all the classes as well but they are really just crafting bots for the most part.

On the tabletop gaming side of things, I haven't really done much.  I sold off some of my Deathwing (the black reach squads and the land raider) as I wanted to finance a new fantasy army a few months.  Unfortunately I haven't seen anything that I would like to play in Fantasy.  I have a bunch of miscellaneous fantasy models and I was thinking of building a Dogs of War army but they seem kind of underpowered.  That is until I saw the fan based 8th edition Dogs of War book (Regiments of Reknown here).  What surprised me about this book was that Adepticon adopted it for their tournament so it must be fairly well balanced.  I'm going to look at it over the next couple of weeks and see if I can make a competitive army with it without breaking the bank.

Oh yeah, one last thing before I sign out.  Orctoberfest 2012 will be Fantasy this year.  Hopefully I can get enough people to break even or make a profit (profit meaning more prizes for everyone!)

Orktoberfest 2011

Another year, another Orktoberfest.

Not as big a turnout as last year but fun nonetheless. Lots of prizes so everyone walked away with something. I will probably organize it again next year, but I'll need to do something to ensure I get more people attending. It would give me more money for prizes and will help grow the hobby more.

My new sportsmanship scoring worked better as I got a wider spread of scores this year. Also refined my Renaissance, Artistic, Honourable and Tactical rating formulas so the probability of a tie between the top players in each category should be practically non-existant.

Anyways pictures!

Orktoberfest 2011

Orktoberfest 2011 & Other news

New Event!
Orctoberfest was such a success last year that I decided to do it again this year. The difference is that I decided to change the format to 40k. It made the most sense and if I continue organizing this event I can change the format back and forth (or maybe even try for a 40k & Fantasy event to please both crowds).

Unfortunately it seems that most of the Fantasy players from last year won't be able to attend as they don't play/don't like 40k. That's ok though, I know there are a lot of 40k players in the area (Northern BC if anyone from there is reading) so hopefully word gets out soon.

Now the big thing is can I get enough sponsorship (i.e. will last year's sponsors provide the same amount of support) so I can actually provide prizes, lol. At the least the gamers are getting lunch on both days.

My Gaming
Haven't had much time to game much in the last few months. Between the new baby (born November) and year end school stuff my time allowed very little for gaming. Admittedly I did get back into Magic: The Gathering as that required less of time committment than Warhammer and with MTGO I can play whenever I have free time (no need to set up a table and what not).

With that said, I still have my Dark Angels and now have time to model some cyclones on my Deathwing terminators. Just have to dig up some of the old missile pods from the plethora of random mecha models I have. My next project after that is to try and get a box of Grey Knight Terminators so I can have a proper Deathwing command squad (and maybe a new Belial model)

I'm hoping to test the scenarios I came up with for Orktoberfest 2011 this summer so there should be more stuff up in the next 2 months regarding 40k, the Dark Angels and gaming.

Pictures from Orctoberfest

A week late, but I finally sorted through my pictures.

Orctoberfest 2010

Again thanks to everyone who came out! It was great to see everyone having a good time and playing some good games! I'm already planning for next year and hopefully more people come out. Lots of prizes this year and hopefully the same amount or more next year!

Orctoberfest Aftermath

My first tournament as an organizer is finally done. Being an organizer is so much different than being a player.

From the sounds of it everyone had a great time and would come back again next year. I certainly hope so as I do plan on doing it again next year but with some changes

Eve of Orctoberfest

So at last the Orctoberfest tournament has rolled around. My gosh does it ever take a lot to organize a tournament and so many things can and do go wrong. From making sure we have enough terrain to finding out we now have an odd number of players it certainly is quite an adventure organizing an event like this and it's not even that big!

Oh well, looks to be great and all the players are super excited to start bashing some heads come Saturday. I've still got some last minute things to print out (totally forgot to do it at my work place as they have a really fast photocopier) and still have to find someone to fill in the missing player. I'd do it myself but I kind of want to circulate and be the resident rules lawyer. We'll see what happens tomorrow morning.

Seeding in smaller Warhammer tournaments

Every tournament I've played in has always gone 6 rounds unless it's been a GW one (i.e. 'Ard Boyz) which goes for less (usually 3). This of course is usually enough to determine an undefeated player by the end (6 rounds is good for 33 - 64 people) but can cause problems for tournaments with 32 people or less.
That's because you could have multiple people with records of 5-1 and one person may not necessarily have an undefeated record. Only a problem if you don't have enough prize support and generally smaller tournaments don't.

So what is the solution?

Battle Foam Sponsors Orctoberfest 2010

I'd like to give a big shoutout to the folks at Battle Foam for agreeing to provide sponsorship to the Orctoberfest 2010 tournament up here in Prince George BC!

So if you guys are in need of a product to carry your army, go and check out their website as they carry quite a lot of cool stuff designed to make transporting your army easier and safer!

Orctoberfest Sponsors!

Orctoberfest 2010 now has sponsors! Both stores are gaming stores in Prince George BC and have helped to promote and nurture the wargaming hobby in this region of Canada. They have great staff and both stores offer open gaming at all hours. If anyone stops by in Prince George (i.e. on the way to Alaska) feel free to swing by one of these two establishments!

Armoury Toys & Hobbies

Great White Entertainment