No joke its April Fauxs Day

Don your Croy, for April Fauxs Day

Last week I got my shots, invoked the various rituals of protection, and updated my will before heading of to Croydon for a days gaming.

Car, tube, tube, train, walk saw me arrive at the Croydon conference centre for April Fauxs Day. A four round, 50ss event. First things first the venue was a pleasant surprise. A bar, decent loos, and praise Almighty December air con. There were two events on, Faux in one half of the room and AOS in the other side. Worries I had that it would be hideously loud soon passed as no one seemed in the mood to shout.
Also it was cool to see a few people I used to play fantasy against in my brief pre-Faux era.

Usual pre tournament routine of registration, get tea, and talk shit I can't back up on the table went well and soon it was time to kick off.

Round one I was up against Dom and his gremlin horde. It was squatters and I took claim jump and inspection. It didn't take long to realise I was out matched so I decided to just throw everything towards Somer and hope I could do enough damage early on to give me an edge. It didn't quite work, Dom weathered the storm then ran off to score VP while I left my crew stranded in the middle of the table. It was a really fun game despite my lack of points. I lost game one but had high hopes for game two.

The game did have one interruption which was TO Conor coming around taking drinks orders. This went on all day and it's safe to say that anyone who brings me that much tea automatically gets add to my list of favourite people.

Game two was a bit of deja vu I faced off against Jay using Ophelia in extraction I once again run Raspi. Which was the exact set up in round two of my last event when I also faced Jay. It was a great game we both went on the offensive early despite frame being in the pool. Jay won the early smack down taking out a few of my key minions while I only put a few dents in his, but Ophelia did take a few shots a my acolyte killing her to score me frame.
After that it became a bit of a brawl around the extraction marker while a model from each crew tried to score claim jump.
The game ended in a slight win for me but mainly down to a few lucky flips on my side and it could have easily gone to the green skins had the luck turned.

Lunch! I popped my crew out for best painted which was judges choice today. As usual I didn't hope to win but I always enter to see how I stack up against better painters and there were a few great ones on show.
Down stairs from the venue was a slightly hipster burger place, which I highly recommend to any heading that way as the food was great and in truth I ate enough that I probably should have had a nap instead of heading back to the event.

Round three. Interference against Reva. I played Toby who I always bump into but never get to play. Turn one I tried to be clever and take a few pot shots at Reva with an over keen December acolyte, Reva shrugged it off and then squished the acolyte in return and that pretty much sums up the game. The left side of the table was a bundle with Lola and a mannequin not really doing much other than being swamped in models and fluffing hits, the right side of the table was my crew dying while Cooper ran and hid repeatedly. The MVP for me was a raptor dropping to deny claim jump the flying off again next turn... until it got squished too.
Game ended  with a well deserved win for Toby and the Pony rider, another fun game, another crushing defeat.

Game four. I was facing off against the second best member of High Fauxdelity at that table (for those that haven't heard it High Fauxdelity is a podcast which stars Ritch, puts up with me and let's a couple of other fellas on to do the heavy lifting) We were playing reckoning and it was Raspi vs the Viks. Carnage doesn't even begin to cover it. I pushed forward early looking to start throwing ice around, the Viks charged an insanely long way and started whirl winding everything in range. Snowstorm exploded with enough force to kill a vik and end of turn two I had two minions left neither of us had a master and I had run out of tea. It was a dark time. The game continued in this chaotic style until the end when Ritch scored all the points and I gave his snipers dirty looks. Solid win for Ritch and a great game to end the day on.

Cup of tea while things we finished up, people won things as always check the rankings page as I don't remember stuff like that but congratulations to those that left with shiny things.

I then took the long lonely train ride home while trying to work out how to lessen the many mistakes I made. (which, I got a chance to do the following Saturday and I'll write up next)

Big thanks to all my opponents, next time I'll try and give you more of a challenge. Thanks and well done to Conor for running a fun and smooth event.

Welcome to my nightmare... edition crew

Following on from last weeks progress report I have now finished the Dark Carnival This is just a quick post as there wasn't a huge amount left to work on.

First up is the mechanical wonder that is the mannequin. I found this quite tricky to paint as the is so little detail but such character in its plainness that it was hard to know where to stop. I ended up just sticking to three colours and just trying to add some depth to each colour.

I met her in a club down in old Malifaux...

So one of the bonuses of starting a new faction is that I get to paint a new faction, and it also means I finally have an excuse to paint my Dark Carnival crew.

First step was building and tidying the carnival folk. You'll notice there are no pictures of this step. That's because it's hard to take photos while you are curled up in a ball on the floor sobbing about gap filling the middle of a monkeys face. I'm fairly sure that the "Dark" in the name Dark Carnival comes from the place where the sprue designer was when they made it.

So built, cleaned up, washed in middle aged tears, and primed. Next step was thinking about how to paint them. This went back and forth through hundreds of different ideas, from monochrome to sepia, vampiric to flamboyant, oriental to Aztec. In the end I decided to just work off my alt performers style and go from there.

The alternative performer is painted around the idea of a rockabilly flamenco dancer.