A Gathering of Gamers - Wrythcon

The weekend just past had me host 9 other gamers for a day of mayhem on the tables. This was dubbed Burcon...(thanks Mark), Nerdstock(Ryan) or Wrythcon as I tryed to encourage hopelessly.

After a frenzied finale to the big spring clean I had started mid week in the gaming room on Friday night, Leon W(Napier), Ali and I watched Conan the Barbarian(the new one) on bluray while I put together some more of the lovely models from Dark Vengeance - Whatever your opinion of the movie I thought it was ok as simple entertainment and Jason Momoa(Ronon Dex and Khal Drogo) gave me plenty of cheesy moves to pull while I play a Barbarian on Monday nights new fun Pathfinder game(time for a wee break from GMing).

Following this very late night I got up early and started setting up the tables. As Levin was suffering from the tempermental weather like most of the country I set up 4 tables in the garage and kitted out the gaming room one with terrain. Visitors from Wellington and Levin soon arrived and after introductions and some hugs where needed(thats for you Stu) the gaming started properly.

I played Joel's Orks in a 1500 point game of 40k with the Crusade scenario from the rulebook. I used an Eldar list with modifications from Call to Arms, dropping the second Wraithlord for a trio of Scatter Laser Warwalkers and the Avatar for a second Farseer to try out the new Divination powers alongside Eldrad's array of Codex powers. We got stuck in on a table depicting an Imperial base with Joel's green horde stacking mainly on my left. Joel will most likely post a very good battle rep from the Ork perspective with the many photos he took over the day on his blog so I wont go into detail. Suffice to say every round I cast a reroll to hit, 4+ invuln save and Fortune on the Warwalkers and blasted away, Fortune on the Wraithwall(yay dual power Eldrad) lobbed webs into his masses with the Nightspinner and killed anything that advanced close to my lines with the Wraithguards Wraithcannons. I won holding my objectives and having racked up Slay the Warlord and First Blood. In my opinion Joel was not aggressive enough with his large Boyz mobs but we talked about that after the game and I expect to see some new play styles from him soon. Also Joel killed only 2 models of mine each game turn bar one where he racked up the Pathfinders and a Jetbike squad, not really a good tally me thinks.

While we played Leon W and Conan(not the barbarian) had a pretty one sided game of 40k with Leon who has not played 40k in 10 or so years using Cody's Grey Knight army against Conan's Blood Angel hybrid list. Between Leon's amazing dice rolling - powers of Entropy apparently, and Conan's lack of dice skillz the Grey Knights pretty much tabled the Angels only losing a strike squad in return. They both seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves though with the dice results being blamed for everything including the GFC and Middle East situation Im sure.

Ryan with his bike heavy Marine army went against Stu's Necrons including his newly arrived trio of flyers. I'm sure Ryan will comment but seems he got his power armoured arse whooped by the dirty Tesla toting 'crons o doom only destroying a command barge for the cost of his whole army!

Leon C played Mark in a 2400 game of Fantasy. Leon brought his Lizards to play with a variety of units while Mark borrowed Joel's Empire army after like Leon W having not played in many years. With checks to the table it seemed one sided pretty quickly with Mark's Empire keeping Leon's Lizards in one corner of the table. Final result was a convincing win to Mark and Leon ready to get his Daemons back on the table again.

After a visit to the local K Fried which according to the visiting players has superior chicken to their own offering(who knew!?) we got to a team game of 40k. A simple split of armies had Leon W, Ryan and Conan being Team Imperial with Grey Knights, Space Marines and Blood Angels, Cody arrived after work and spent the game offering advice and cruel jeering for the Imperial team. Opposing these pillars of humanity were Joel, Stu and myself with Orks, Necrons and Eldar - what unholy alliance was this! Needless to say we ignored all allied rules from the rulebook and simply played that psychic powers and other army abilities could only be used on the players own army. Merging a couple tables we set up 5 objectives and a central relic which we would roll on the archeotech chart for a laugh to see what it did.

Dirty Team Xenos =D got first turn and set about causing as much trouble as we could. There was a lot going on the table so from my Eldar perspective I was happy over the game to kill both Vindicators with my Wraithlords Brightlance(finally did what it says on the box!), taking and holding the Relic(worth 2 extra VP) with Eldrads Wraithguard squad eliminating all the GK terminators heading in there direction, causing troubles for the Imperials with the good old Nightspinners web and the shuriken cannon from a jetbike squads stripping the last Hull point from Conan's hovering Stormraven!. Stu's Necron flyers went hard on a flank deaing fairly well with all who opposed him. Joel's boyz surged across the board harrasing the marines on their own objectives adn the funniest thing I thought was Joel's Lootas gunning down Conan's DC Dread before it got a chance to assault them. I wont deal with the Imperial opinion of these events leaving it to Ryan to spread his propaganda against the Xenos forces but after a long 4 turns we called it with little Imperial forces left on the table and many VP's in Xenos control - team Xenos wins.

After a tidy up of the garage and a dinner break we were set for the Star Wars rpg in the gaming room, this would be some players first ever rpg and as I will post soon it helps for everyone to work together right?