I had a lot of fun on this trip and (after some prodding from friends) decided to share the experience.
Friday evening was a lot of meeting and greeting. I had every intention of sitting down to paint with some folks, but got distracted by all the people around. The first thing I checked out was the display case in the lobby. It had a number of not yet released Hordes models from Evolution (which have by now been previewed around the web), and I drooled over those for a while, spinning up color schemes I might use on them. It was fun speculating on what all those models do with fellow pressgangers, while PPS Staff kept snickering at us like they knew something we didn't.
I got to talk to some people I knew from previous conventions and such, and met many others. The evening went by fast.
Saturday was the Hardcore tournament. As a non-drinker, it was amusing to watch the degradation of intellectual coherency throughout the event as alcohol was generously served. You could hear snippets of conversation from games such as "I'm going to shoot" - "Who are you shooting?" - "The dudes!" or "What did your choir sing last turn?" - "Ummmmm...." - "What? Cat got their tongue?"
In the tournament I did all right. I lost two games. The first one I lost was a bit upsetting. I had to march across the field for 3 turns to meet epic Haley and her army at the back edge of their deployment zone toward a corner, behind some woods. My Mortars were pretty much useless that game. Eventually on the 4th turn I took down a Lancer and half a unit of Stormguard. On his 4th Turn, he popped epic Haley's feat. Having to sacrifice movement or combat action, I couldn't do much other than kill a trencher or two, and another few stormguard. Also since he was determining activation order, he was able to make sure to leave the Old Witch and Gorman till last, and I ran out of time before I could activate them. Time was called on his turn after that, and he was able to finish off an unstealthed Old Witch without too much difficulty, with a Telekinesed Thunderhead. My opponent ended up in Semifinals, but lost to the eventual winner.
The second game I lost was completely my fault. Ran out of time before I could activate the Old Witch, and she ate two Obliterator shots to the head, and despite the 4 focus sitting on her, died to some good rolling. It's a bit embarrassing to have lost to Magnus, but again, another minute, and I would have been fine, Magnus would have been dead. I think fatigue was getting to me by this time too, since it was my last game (yes, I'm making excuses). I hadn't run out of time much before this round. My opponent was a pretty cool PP guy (forget his name), and he told me at the end of the game that he could tell I didn't have much experience playing against Mercs. He was correct.
One other fun note, was the game I played against Seacat's Darius. He was doing really well, and had killed all 4 of my solos and half my widowmakers for a total of 5 VP's. I had killed 1 Stormlance, that was it when time was called. I might have been able to kill a Centurion on my turn and maybe GMCA but that wasn't going to net me enough VP's. I went for the long shot. Behemoth picked up the Centurion in front of him, tossed it at Darius, doing some damage and knocking him down. 2 boosted Bombards and 2 Mortar shots later, Darius was dead.
I also got to play Biggie, which was a fun bloody game, despite some horrid dice rolling for both of us.
For the lunch break PP folks had a cook out for us with burgers and dogs. It was a nice sedate break from Hardcore.
The biggest loss of the day for me was the painting portion of Hardcore. I had my hopes high for that one, but there was also a very nicely painted Menoth army in stain glass patterns, that ended up winning.
The winner was the Coven, with 20 or so Baneknights. Fastest caster kill was a two-handed thrown Drakhun with Blood Legacy, killing a full focus hoarding Skarre on turn one.
In the evening, after the tournament, I decided I didn't get enough so played a couple pick up games, and it was fun playing without the stress of the timer, though the timed tournament had me thinking fast, so I think my brain was still in fast play mode. One game was against Rog, and the other was against Dacarnix. Both games were quite enjoyable.
On Sunday, there was a huge live theater of war. I'm not in liberty to say much about it, but it was a hoot. There was some crazy stuff like 18 Mortars on one field, or like Epic Butcher with 16 or so Warjacks. On our table we were outnumbered, outgunned, and outclassed by around 6 full units of Vengers, 4 Warcasters against our two (Irusk and Gorten). There was no way to achieve our primary objective of getting a central point. We had to focus on our second objective of not getting totally annihilated and giving up our flag. It was a very tough battle but we managed to hold the line without losing any casters. It was some pretty amazing and crazy stuff. Line upon line of Vengers broke upon walls of IFP's. We eventually got a third caster to reinforce our back line (the 16 warjack battlegroup with epic Butcher), and managed to halt the advance of the Menoth jacks and Cavalry, who kept coming back even after dying, thanks to the High Reclaimer. For more details and results, I think you'll just have to wait for some official word like an NQ article...
Throughout the whole weekend the PP folks were very friendly and we can't thank them enough for putting this event together. I took an extended vacation and did some sightseeing, and visited some other friends in Seattle area. Overall, I quite enjoyed the trip. There was some discussion of the possibility of holding this event open to public next year, but there currently is no solid decision I'm aware of. We all hope this will become an annual event.
