AWC Tournament #5 and Random 40K and Wreck-Age Photos and Goodness

Wreck-Age Stitchman (Stitch Woman technically) from their Demo Day at Brainstorm Comics.

This last week was a big week for gaming and hobby activity so this post is sort of long. I started out the week painting Warden Bikes for the tournament I was planning to attend Saturday and I was simultaneously working on a Step By Step article that I will hopefully post later this week. While I was cranking away on painting and prepping for the tournament I took a time out to run over to my friend Matt Sears' place to get a demo of Wreck-Age. It was a good time and you hopefully saw my last post hyping their game and Kickstarter. I talked a lot with Matt that Wednesday about the game and their plans for the rest of the 2012 and going into 2013. The next day I went to a Wreck-Age Demo Day they did at Brainstorm Comics here in Chicago. It was a rainy night and foot traffic was low so I managed to play the demo again and chat more with Matt and co-designer Anton Zaleski. After a lot of discussion there's a chance I'll get to help them out a bit more. I'm really intrigued by the game, its factions are interesting and game play is fast and furious. My only disappointment with the demo night was I was looking forward to meeting Brian from Gentleman's Ones who is the only designer on the project I haven't formally met yet. His Killzone boards at the last 2 years of Adepticon were absolutely gorgeous and as I am a huge hobby snob who appreciates the level of detail he puts into things, he just seems like a guy I'd want to game with sometime.

On Friday I feverishly painted that silly Warden Biker all day, worked on the aforementioned Step By Step some more and made my army list for the AWC Tournament.

Biker bitz in process. Slow and steady wins the race right?

Saturday morning Brian Parisi picked me up in Humboldt Park and I was wound up. I had to apologize before we even got down my block and out onto a major street because I had already blurted out 5 minutes of conversation in the span of 2. My mouth was working overtime and he seemed too tired for my level of energy. I reigned myself in and we made the 40 minute drive to the Battle Bunker at a more casual conversational pace.

Some of Brian Parisi's Daemons

We arrived and I was antsy to get started. Alan was waiting for more people to show up I think and I was wandering about checking out the armies. After a bit we finally got rolling and I was paired up with a gent named Tyler, aka Chubs. He was fielding a Space Wolves army and brought along an Achilles Land Raider, a gnarly Forgeworld construct that has a Thunderfire Cannon and sponson twin linked Multi-Meltas. Despite some terrifying use of the Thunderfire Cannon and the Prescience from his Librarian type dude, (Rune Priest?) he struggled at first as I made an astounding 23 out of 24 saves in his first Thunderfire Salvo. My luck couldn't possibly persist at that level of course, but that was an impressive moment. It was a fun and rowdy game and it really set the tone for the day for me. He was an absolute joy to play against. Despite amazing saves early on he managed to hold me off of the main objective and scored better on the secondary ones and I lost the game. It was a great game though because it never felt so lopsided that I was rolling dice for zero effect in the game and pulling off scores of my models every turn like I did in my first game last month. Anyway, Tyler is a guy I look forward to playing against again.

The beast - the Land Raider Achilles. That Thunderfire Cannon was making me make 20-30 saves per turn. 

Sharp looking Terminator Squad. I killed ALMOST all of them. Almost. In an unfluffy move they had Shrike attached. You know a guy is fun to play against when I can laugh and have a fantastic game while he's got Shrike in a Terminator squad. The hobby snob in me is looking back at that in head shaking disappointment. Chubs, how could you?!

This model was the best looking model in Chubs' force. What a gorgeous paint job? And he was humble enough to admit that it wasn't just his work - it was a tag team effort with a friend. Regardless, they make a good team. Beautiful.

My second game was against a Blood Angels army run by a guy named Greg that was all Jump Troops. He played them old school (Jump then Charge instead of Walk then Charge feet first by Jumping into combat) and thus, never took advantage of the new Hammer of Wrath ability. His Death Company came at the fore with waves of Assault Marines behind and then he used Deep Strike to land his Sanguinary Guard or whatever they are called behind my lines. I fought hard and it was a close game but ultimately I couldn't clear either of his killer units - the Death Company and Sanguinary Guard ,and even though I made a good show of it he parked Dante and his Guard on an objective last turn and took the game. It was a good game. Alas, I didn't take any pics.

Finally, we went onto game 3. I felt bad because Alan knew I was anxious to get rolling because I wanted to catch The Descendants at Riot Fest and they were scheduled to go on at 7:45. He fast tracked my game even though there was still one 2nd Round game going on. I played Greg Swanson and his Grey Knights. The game started off light hearted with Mysterious Forests affecting my squads with Brain Leaves and Razorwing attacks. As the game got moving though it became the most tense and competitive game of the day. I felt like we were more evenly matched and I was playing smarter. Well, sort of, you know except for having 1/3 of my army affected by Mysterious Forests. Regardless it was a fun game and I was doing pretty well around turns 3 and 4 and then everything went to hell in a hand basket. It was a fun game and by the end I was soundly out played. Somehow we got in 6 full turns before the dice told us we couldn't play anymore. He's another opponent I'd really like to play again. Also, he has a really sharp looking Grey Knights army and I regret not snapping a photo or two.

At the end of the day awards were handed out and Tyler got the Sportsmanship Award which I think he well deserved and I pulled Best Painted. Starting with this tournament they split off the Gift Cards from the Awards to spread the love around more and my ride, Brian, scored a GC at random. I was stoked for him. I also found out that I can't earn Best Painted Army twice in a season for the same army so part of me wants to drag out the Redemptors of Golinar or Gorgog Smashskull's Ork Klan to keep me excited about hitting the AWC Tournaments. My game play is so awful I face inevitable defeat against these hard core tournament guys so painting is all I have to cling to! The next tournament is 2000 points, so if I attend there is no way the Orks or Redemptors are coming with though. I have less than 1000 points of each painted at the moment and it would take me a year to get either of them to tournament ready in my opinion.

The question everyone who has seen this plaque has asked me, "Who's Ben Komets?" Well he appears to be a Golden Daemon Winner from Germany. I had no idea.

This is a picture of Ben Komets' work. The award title is flattering but WOW! I can't touch this level of hobby skill.

Right now I have an eclectic pile of Space Marine bitz on my table that I want to finish so that I can get some more squads complete. My Assault Squad has had 2 unfinished guys kicking around forever and I'd really like to get my 6 Devastators up to 10. Most importantly, I want to make some serious progress on my Wardens (Ravenwing) this month and do some touch up work on my existing models. Yesterday I filled out paperwork to hopefully get me more hours at the moving company I was just working as an independent contract with so that will slow down my painting but that's a good thing. Paying rent is more important.

Its a hodgepodge of bitz on the painting table but hopefully some completed models will come of it.

Before I end this epic length blog post I wanted to say that I talked to 2ndCityWarzone cohorts Eric Brose and Scott Kroll this weekend and Eric just picked up Dark Vengeance and Scott has been working on getting a home gaming table up and running. Maybe if we're lucky we'll hear from them again soon in blog form. We can hope!

-Nick