The Painting Bunkerc y

Hello Everyone,

About that rather long title…  So much win to report.  So what was accomplished over the weekend?  The most important thing, lots of hardcore hobby & wargaming action and over $10,000 raised by ADFWGA for Legacy.  This is a massive achievement!  I really tip my hat of to Ty C. & Dave H. for making this happen.  Its also a huge improvement on last years effort too, where $4,000-ish was raised.

It was also BY FAR the best tournament I’ve every played in.  In terms of thoroughness of organisation, venue, quality of tables & scenery, quality of presentation of the armies competing, quality of opponent, prize pool, extra curricular activities that were fun and helped raise funds for Legacy and just overall awesomeness.  Any metric that you can think of to determine the success of a wargaming tournament, the ADFWGA Championships exceeded them all.  As far as I’m concerned this tournament is the one that all others are now judged from.  Its the yardstick.

Friday afternoon and all the tables are ready to go

The massive amount of awards that were up for grabs across the three wargames on offer over the weekend.  40k, WHFB & Flames of War.

A nice touch.  A measuring template and commemorative coin that were available for participants at the Championships

Some of the prizes that were donated for auction to raise funds for Legacy.

Some of the small details that add up to greater than the sum of their parts and contributed to a great weekend of wargaming.  Each table had useful sections of the 40k rule book reproduced so to facilitate smoother running games.

Each table also had the tables terrain defined, along with references in the rule book and a very hand sequence of events.  Nice

Lets break the weekend down blow by blow.

Friday

So our group arrived from Brisbane at Townsville a short while after lunch on Friday.  My main concern was running the painting tutorial for the 10 hobbyist who’d signed up and delivering value and good quality practical and technical advice.  Having never taught anyone how to paint something before this was a new venture for me, however I did try and plan for a much as I could.  If you’d read my previous post, you’d know that the aim of this tutorial was to take the participants step-by-step through how to paint a Leman Russ tank side.  Although we all painted the same thing, what I was wanting to impart was principals and techniques that could be taken away and applied to their own armies at a later date.  The tutorial went much long that I expected, going for over 6hrs…  however to everyones credit, the enthusiasm showed and we motored on after dinner to finish the project.  Everyone that participated was thrilled with their efforts and I’m sure in the next few months we are going to see some fantastic looking armies emerge.   Thanks again to Battle Station Ipswich and Hobbyrama for their assistance in putting this together

Right at the start of the tutorial.

A few of the guys talking smack during the painting tutorial.

Overall, I was really pleased with the success of the painting tutorial, not only did we raise $400 for Legacy, but we’ve also raised the standard of hobby by imparting new skills that the participants can use to better their armies.  Awesome.

So… the games

Saturday went like this

1st game.  Carcharodon’s V Tryanids.

I have to say from the start that this tournament didn’t allow Imperial Armour at all (thats now been fixed for future events, score one for common sense)  So my Carcharodon’s were actually a Space Wolf army in disguise.  Space Wolf Sharks?  Nevermind.  The Tyranid army was really well painted, and had quite a few monstrous creatures (funny that) but thanks to my Ruin Priest and Jaws of the World Wolf psychic power (what a jack!) I managed to dispatch this army with little to no causalities.  It would be remiss of me though not to include some pictures of this Army as its really well painted, has a strong 2nd Ed vibe to it…

My next game was against a Blood Angel Army.

This is the game that I should have won, and have been reprimanding myself ever since.   I made a few very small, but tactically costly mistakes that meant I lost by the narrowest of margins.  The final move of the game that made me want to scream was my “Wolf Lord”, Ruin Priest and a squad of “Grey Hunters” charging a squad of tactical marines for victory.  I needed a 6″ roll to get into close combat.  I made the roll.  The tactical marines with a plasma gun overwatch fired.  The plasma gunner rolled two sixes and two wound rolls.  Smoking two of my grey hunters and thus turning a 6″ charge into a 7″ charge.  Fail.  Face Palm.  Angry face.  Good game though, probably the most challenging game over the weekend actually.

My third game for day one was against a Dark Angel Death Wing army.

Unfortunately for my opponent the dice just were not on his side this day, and despite him having massive amounts of terminator armour, the amount of 1’s he rolled was greater.  He kept good humour about it though which we all know can be difficult to do when the dice just don’t want to cooperate.

At the end of the first day we had the Charity auction, where I picked up all of the 40k rule books except for 1st Ed and 6th ed (I already have both of these) and a Drop Ship Commander Army starter.  Raised $450 for Legacy so its all good.

Day two, game 1.  Carcharodon’s V Space Wolves

I have to admit, I was worried about this game.  Space Wolves are a potent army and my opponents force looked strong.  What made it worse too was he stole the initiative! ouch.  In this game my Wolf Lord really shone.  It was a VP mission, and my Wolf Lord accounted for over half the final tally.  He just kept on single handedly killing things.

So by the last game of the last day, having won 3 games and lost 1, I knew my final opponent was going to be strong.  To my despair it was a Drago lead, Grey Knights Army where upto 5 objectives had to be captured.  So it was Drago with his Paladin posse including an Apothecary out front with 3, 10 man squads of Purifiers and 2 Twin linked autocannon wielding dreadnoughts in support.  Ouch.  Knowing they had to move on me, I decided to sit back and let that happen until I could break their momentum (read kill Drago) then begin my own offensive.  Turns out this plan worked (except for the killing Drago part) when fortune smiled on me.  Enter Jaws of the World Wolf.  Remarkably, and I mean remarkably I managed to kill Drago with this, but also 2 of his Paladin retinue.  Amazing.  After that it was pretty much down hill with my Wolf Lord and his retinue mounted in a Redeemer coming out of hiding and assaulting the enemy.  Kicking ass and taking names.

To my opponents credit, his army was beautifully painted (winning one of the peoples choice awards) and I feel it necessary to share some photos of his models.

So for all my troubles, I managed to get 3rd in the Best General Competition, 3rd Overall, Best Painted Army and Best Painted HQ model.  The weekend was a great success and I’m already scheming planning my army for next year…

If you want to see some more photos of the weekend go to my FB page or the ADFWGA FB page to see some great action over the weekend.

Comments welcome

John