Chicago Games Day 2009

I went out to Games Day earlier today at the Stephens Convention Center, I couldn't make it last year and it was in a larger ballroom than 2006...which was totally unnecessary, basically an airplane hanger. The room is way to big for the event and makes the event look sparsely crowded (Exception the Forge World store which had a 100 person line when I got there at about 10:20am, more on that in sec) All the usual stuff was there, Speed Painting, Conversions, the Big Game(one for 40K, one for WFB) the Golden Daemons, Golden Daemon painters lounge , Armies on Parade, there was a history of the Space Marines exhibit, a bunch of club run game tables and then plenty of really nice tables for open gaming. That's all she wrote.

I have pretty mixed feelings about Games Day, It was sorely hurt by the lack of tournaments...they make the event much more of what most people expect...given the current cutbacks and some of the issues with past GD tourneys I dont blame them for being on hold or hiatus for the time being, however the tourney's did bring alot of Vet's out and without them if you aren't there for Golden Daemons or to buy Forge World..you just don't have a hell of alot to do, welcome to my world.

Most of my pals wont touch Games Day with a 10 foot pole, they've been there- done that and GD is clearly aimed at kids and 40K kids in particular. I go because I know some folks that work for GW, I get to see people from out of town or just people I dont see that often but I know they will be there. I always want to see the Golden Daemons, and this year I wanted to see the Armies on Parade, which I seriously thought about but didnt feel like lugging my stuff out there all day not to mention the required display area for you army was just way to small...I could never fit my massive Empire Army on an 18 X 18 board and have it look good as it be too jammed together. Anyway despite hearing that all the slots for Armies on Parade were full, I got there and there were 4 armies on Display. Ok I am early I thought...I check back an hour later there were 6....by the time I left there were maybe a dozen a far cry from the 40 slots they had out...Armies on Parade was a 75% NO SHOW...I don't know what the hell was up with that.

The Golden Daemons were/are the high point of Games Day, great stuff all around I went thru once and got some pics of the 1st things that caught my eye, and planned on the second trip but the line got too long. so I never got back. The GD painters table had lots of notables chatting and giving tips to folks..I spent some time checking out one the guys using a wet pallette and moved on.

The whole Forge World/ GW store thing is/was kind of a debacle..I thought the GW store was pretty good in 2006, tons of rare stuff, tons of blisters..and last year they were unloading all those brown army boxes at crazy discounts...nothing like that this year. Tons of boxes at full price, barely any blisters, nothing special tiny selection of Specialist stuff. They did have most of the Blood Bowl army boxes and the only swag I got was a free CD with the current rules for all the Specialist Games on it. (pretty cool, but no swag at the door? nothing come on, there even out of laminate hangers for your ticket when I got there at 10:20am?).

Forge World is always a trainwreck...100's of people crawling over there own mothers to buy stuff in order to avoid overseas shipping and FW's notorious shipping F-ups. Well they did it again and apparently barely any of the new releases made it Chicago in time. I was told there was a shipping error and the new product didn't arrive in time So even if I wanted that new swanky Khorne Daemon Prince and Herald..nope not there, Blight Drones, Death Korp Mounted Commissar...they had like a 1/2 Dozen...they were out of tons of popular items. How these guys stay in business despite themselves is more impressive than their products.

The biggest drag is the food choices..you have an Airplane hangar with 2500 people in it and you have one Concession stand? of course the line was stupid long..there was another food court area setup but there were two other conventions going on so that was stupid crowded too..I wanted to grab a cup of coffee and some water and couldn't do so without waiting in line for a half and hour. Not cool, I am just too old for that garbage, that contributed to me leaving early.

They seriously need to move Games Day to a hotel like the one Adepticon was at last year that would improve things considerably..Lots of services and food choices and there wouldn't be anything else going on..being mixed in with two different "self empowerment" conventions
definitely didn't help the "Games Day Vibe"

Overall, nothing special this year..." The Mystery Box" everyone's talking about is the new Space Hulk game..there was a product presentation at 1pm..I was going to go to..but after thinking about the crap presentation I saw at Adepticon..I decided I didn't need to hear about what I am going to see in the August White Dwarf and decide to go find some lunch somewhere. Unfortunately that meant getting in the truck and leaving the parking garage...I drove down to the nearest McDonalds and the line of conventioneers was around the block, for Mcdonalds? I just kept on driving.




Jon Cash, Dogs of War/Empire Army.. See my Adepticon 09 posts for more photos. Jonny should have won hands this hands down but I left long before I found out. The protection glass is a neccessary evil..made it very hard to take photos here and of the Golden Daemons..but you got to have it.



Horde of Stompas and Tanks from the 40K big game




Here are some Golden Daemon photos..I tried to grab all the 1st cut Fantasy Stuff I could but I was being rushed through the line and with the protection glass getting good photos was very difficult...I was lucky to get what I got..at least half of what I shot didnt come out.

Chicago Games Day 2007

So I made the trek out to Chicago Games Day today, The first one I'd been to and overall a decent experience. I am glad I made the last minute decision to play in the 400 pt Combat Patrol although 9:30 am was a bit too early as I'll explain later. Getting there was breeze for me as the Rosemont Convention Center is about a quick 20-25 min drive with zero traffic on a Saturday morning

I arrived quite early- about 30 mins before my event started and a hour before they let everyone else who wasn't staff or playing combat patrol in. Grand Tournament folk had already started in a separate section by that point and were well under way. I had a few moments to take some pics before the crowds arrived, so I'll go over some them next. my photos aren't up to my usual standard, but hey -it was early.

One of the several Apocalypse Battlefields they had set up GW was pushing Apoc BIG TIME, it looks pretty cool although the massive amount of models needed is certain going to put off all the but most hardcore players. They are releasing several huge sets, cases and extras all to go with the Apocalypse release.

New Baneblades, nuff said...Warseers pics from yesterday are alot better.



The new Chaos models rule, I wish I had pic of the sprues, or the painted
parts diagram..but those pics didnt come out.

An awesome Chaos heavy flyer on an Apocalypse board, obviously some flyers made the Apoc rules cut. I also saw the 40K scale A.I, planes which are plenty cool. I wonder if they were made for Apoc because I dont see the interest if not, the demo I saw looked like guys playing a wargame with planes in a parking lot, weird.


Apocalypse Demo, run by none other than Jeff Walichs from the Oak Park GW. One of the cool rules I noticed was a fixed deployment followed by a fast deployment which lets reposition a number units anywhere on the Battlefield after the deployment of initial forces. The templates seen elsewhere are awesome especially the clover template for orbital bombardment and Thunderhawk Gunships..the damage output from the clover template is sick.

The IG trenchsystem...


Some Might Empires Tiles, There wasnt much new fantasy
stuff about, New Wizards, Flagellants, being the exception.


COMBAT PATROL

So I was pretty beat this morning when I arrived for the event, reason being my 8 month old daughter decided last night was a "great" night to stay up all night, so I was on like 3 hours sleep. When I showed and signed in for the tourney, I popped open my figure case I present the required copy of my Army list. After which I managed to somehow not snap closed the lid to my figure case properly, as I walked away from the table, all my models spilled out onto the concrete floors, sending arms, guns and bits flying...about 7 of my 19 models were pretty busted up. Pissed -I scooped my stuff up and spent about 20 mins re-gluing parts leaving less time to get around an photograph..I can only chalk this up to carelessness and lack of sleep, lesson learned. Once the tourney started I put it out of my mind and moved on-

Scenarios where based on winning battle points earned from strategic objectives.

My army List, HQ- Captain- PW, Plasma Pistol,- Troop- 2 Squads of 6, each with Plasma and Missile Launcher, 1 squad of 6 with bolters.

Game 1- Capture the Flag VS Tyranids (Dan)

Dan's list was mean 3 Warriors with lots of upgrades,10 Genestealers, 8 gargolyes. With his speed I new I facing an uphill fight. Again, early not reading the rules properly I stupidly placed my flag too far away from my own guys, which was bad. He used his Gargoyles to grab his own flag and move it to where I couldn't get it. leaving two of my squads to exchange fire with the Warriors and thier twin linked weapons, While my other headed toward my flag along with his Stealers. While I got a couple of lucky missile hits-My squad with my HQ ended up falling back over difficult terrain putting them out of the action..I took down 4 or 5 Stealers before getting ripped to shreds in CC and they 3rd squad went down to Warrior fire...Killed 4 or 5 Stealers and put 1 wound on one of the warriors, while took over 10 causalities game over...Battle Point earned 1






Game 2- "Poker" VS Space Wolves ( John)
Space Wolves were 2 squads one with 10, one with 6, lots of upgrades, power weapons and a Razorback w/ TL las Cannon.

This was the coolest of the three scenarios. we picked poker chips before the game each with number underneath you kept secret. Deploying the chips like flags on the map. We each tried to grab either our own chip or our opponents in order to get the most points. Both my chips were "0" points so I went after my opponents...He immediately went after one of his own so I knew it had to be decent while I feinted going after one of mine. Typical stuff here Marines shooting at each other..I did get shredded when I got in to CC with The Space Wolves, they can pack alot of power weapons in one squad and have 3+ attacks each..ouch. after turn 4, We needed to roll to see if the game continued passed the 4th turn, since my opponent john was rolling hot and I wanted the game to continue, I suggest he roll. He said "sure" and rolls a "2" Doh!, the only continued on a 4,5,or 6 so game over. My opponents scoring chip was worth 4 points while his second chip ( that my second squad was about to grab turn 5) "-2" As it turned out I was lucky I didn't actually get it as I would have put me a -2 Battle Point for the tourney. As it turned out I got one Battlepoint for number models left on the table, Overall causalities between sides where close..I lost one full squad in the Close Combat but I shot up but his ten man squad good. End result- Space Wolves win!



Game 3 Vs Space Marines ( Alex)

Alex was a young guy (12-14 or something) I think he was there with his dad who was also playing. Alex had a Tornado Speeder, an Assault Squad and 2 Squads of Marines. He had alot of Illegal models in the WYSIWYG depart for his list ( some guys were "space wolves", some were"dark angels, etc) But all units were playing as vanilla marines like myself... example- lots of his guys had a Bolter in one hand and Pistol in the other which doesn't fly with a vanilla list, even with the "true grit" trait I believe that only works for Close Combat. Any way I just let him play the way he wanted which was fine. This scenario was wacked, The premise was you had to make a leadership check (9) before every phase before you acted and if you failed you lost your turn from that phase onward. IF you failed the check got harder each time (8,7,6, etc). The fluff behind this was you were hearing voices on a "ghost planet" and your guys freaked out easily. Bad scenario.

Anyway, this poor kid was not making the leadership rolls and the scenario was creaming him. He wanted to have a shoot out with me but had heavy bolters in two squads and he kept moving so that he barely got to use them. Basically I blew up the Speeder and shot it out with him, I gave him alot of extra shots (with his wacky WYSIWYG) but I was scoring lots of missile and plasma hits. I lost 4 guys, he had 4 guys left...I picked up 4 Battle points here so I finished with 6 battle points beating a young kid in a wacky scenario..lame. I finished in the bottom three...I needed to really pick up points in scenario # 2- I just drew crappy chips worth "0" points, the luck of the draw.

Conclusions-

This is was pretty cool, I will definitely play in this again if they run at Adepticon and I can fit it in. This would be a great tourney to run with friends in a casual environment. couple of notes- Vehicles where about useless with the tight terrain, except for bikes, the guy who won went 3-0 with Orks and had a bunch of bikes. Speed was key, my move "6" Marines with "move or fire" weapons was not the way to go.I should have brought my 200 pt squad of Assault Marines. Fast, mobile units rule. IF i did this again casually I'd proxy all my Ultramarines with a Blood Angels list...so my Troops could be Assault Marines and bring a Dev Squad-that would rock. One thing in retrospect that kind of sucked was not having information on the Scenarios ahead of time was a major drag..as there was too much information to process in the 1or 2 mins before the game started. Every scenario had multiple conditions, objects and Terrain on each table a different rules. As a result we screwed up alot, example in my 1st game it was supposed to be "Night Fight" rules which would have help tremendous vs his 36" Vemon cannon's range.
Anyway my sugggestion would be posting 6 scenarios online and then using three on site. That would have at least given us an opportunity to study what we were in for, while still maintaining a surprise element.

Final Thoughts-

Despite the gallery wide screams of "Waaaaaaagh" before every turn of the mega battle..this was pretty interesting..I do it again..I just have to say however that FORGE WORLD deserves the big middle finger for not bringing enough product. They were also really understaffed for an event like this, which is pathetic. I waited in line for Forge World for close to an HOUR. complete bullshit -on top of that..they had no stipulations on how many of an item anyone could buy, AND they opened the store privately to GT people the day before. So all the exclusive games days minis where sold out by like 10:30 am (well the Imperial T-bolt pilot anyway) because they were allowing people to buy mass quantities...( I heard people where buying 7-10) anyway that sucked. SO I waited in line...(you could not find out what was sold out until you waited in line because the three people working were too busy to answer any questions) when I finally was able to order 3 of the 5 things I wanted were sold out. My buy list was 2 Sets of Rhino Armor, the Imperial Thunderbolt Pilot and 2 Empire Cannon emplacements. They only had the Rhino armor. I ask the guy "Ok -I get the pilot- but you're sold out of the empire cannon emplacement??, how freaking popular is that????,"" Well we only bought 12, and when we opened the store for the GT people ,two guys bought them all" he tells me "well you can pay for it now and we will ship it for free when we get back"...yeah right!!! they are writing down mail orders on little scraps of paper at Games Day, like thats not going to get screwed up, both times I have bought stuff from Forge World through normal channels there was a problem both times... No thanks, at least I got my armor.

PS- I forgot about Swag-

I did get some good swag- 3 metal models- an IG commissar, a direct only space marine captain and a cool orc with the $45 ticket..other costs- $11 to park...I still put down about $120 bucks total with the FW stuff but the swag models are worth a few bucks so I figure I got out of there at around $100 out the door..not too bad.