A lodda work for cheriddy mate.....

Lo, it is I! I have returned from another trip to an event although this time instead of heading into the wild lands north of the M25 car park, I went south. Into the wretched hive of scum and villainy known as Kent.

The very awesome Dave Hill had decided to take the plunge and run his own Malifaux event with the aim of raising money for Ronald McDonald House Charities, an excellent organisation that provides accommodation for families with a child in hospital care. A very worthy cause indeed and Dave had come up with some excellent stretch goals to help raise as much money as possible. The event was held at Grumpy Goblin in Ramsgate which is a lovely store over 3 floors with a shop, cafe and gaming area. Jake, who owns the business, had very kindly donated the use of the large gaming area for free. Awesome stuff.

Not only did we have the obligatory raffle (which had a ton of prizes donated by people in the community) but there were baked goods for sale and the ability to pay a £5 fee to grudge the person of your choice in the first round, as long as they agreed of course! The charity shenanigans didn't stop there however; Dave had pledged to TO the whole event dressed in costume (Radioactive Man from The Simpsons) but the brave soul had also agreed to take a cream pie to the face at the end of the event. Joe Wood had promised to dress as a Rotten Belle for the event as well as playing a joke crew made up of Leviticus and 9 Belles, which has been a long running joke in the UK scene as a "broken" crew. Ben "Joffrey" Crowe had also joined in with the fund raising by allowing his opponents to pick his Master for each game. As he was playing Guild I suspect Lucius came out to play at least once.....

UP AND AT DEM!

I had travelled down the night before with THE Joel Henry and we'd had a lovely evening with Lee Battrick and the Lord of Malifaux himself Mike Marshall. Truly we were humbled. Dinner was acquired at the hotel and then Joel and I took ourselves off for the very serious business of studying crews for the next day Pokemon hunting in Ramsgate. So many electric Pokemon on the seafront.......

First round is underway and I had been grudged by Lee Battrick as we'd never had the opportunity to play. Lee has currently left the Bayou for the Guild and had chosen Sonnia for this game of Collect the Bounty. It was a fantastic game, Lee was very patient and helpful as I am not at all familiar with Sonnia so there might have been a bit of coaching going on. A super fun game that ended 5-4 to me with huge thanks to Lee reminding me Ophelia can shoot in melee. Doh!

Second game and I'd decided I was going to take a different Master in each game as I am trying to practice with Wong and Mah so as not to become too reliant on Ophelia. The second strategy was Extraction and after taking one look at the amount of cover and severe terrain on the board, I decided to go with Mah, hoping that being able to ignore severe terrain with chores and being a more melee focused Master would help me in the match up with Paul Dean's Ten Thunders Misaki. Misaki is another Master I don't know too well and Paul had taken some other unfamiliar models such as Ten Thunders Archers, Fuhatsu and The Lone Swordsman. Ultimately the Archers being able to take a free shot at the end of every turn thanks to Blot the Sky and having the ability to ignore cover and not randomise was more than my crew could handle. Paul played really well and came out the 10-5 winner of another fun game. Note to self. Kill the damn archers next time!

Last round and yet another new player - Grant Dickinson. This time however it was a more familiar Master, the mad undertake himself, Nicodem. This was the first time I'd seen the Carrion Emissary on the table against me so I was keen to find out what it could do in the game of Guard the Stash. Turns out, it's really bloody annoying! For the last game I was using Wong as I've been having fun with him and want to try and use him to his full potential. Given the Emissary's ability Shards of Kythera, which places big LoS blocking pillars all over the shop, it's more than a little frustrating!

Another really good game of Guard the Stash that resulted in a 10-6 loss for me. Lots of horribleness ensued from Nicodem which involved summoning over the course of the game, 3 Hanged, 2 Flesh Constructs, a horde of Mindless Zombies, a Punk Zombie, a Crooligan and a couple of Shikome. Bloody Ressers. I simply didn't have the firepower to take them down and some clever use of Shards of Kythera helped keep Grant's key models safe from Wong's blasty magic. Lots of fun but my Gremlins were simply overwhelmed!

End of the event and there were a couple of things to attend to before getting down to the business of results. First the raffle, which had so many prizes that I think most people went home with something. I was lucky enough to come away with a Miss Step, which my Arcanist playing partner was very pleased with. Then we had the very important matter of Dave bravely taking a cream pie to the face, which was duly applied by Ben Crowe who I think enjoyed it far too much....

Pie time!

As for the results the Best Painted award went to Mike Hutchinson (author of the very cool Gaslands game, go check it out!) for his lovely Miaski crew. The wooden spoon went to Al and then we had 3rd place of THE Joel Henry, 2nd place for John Burgess (moving onto Outcast filth instead of Neverborn filth!) and our 1st place prize went to George Hollingdale from the Flippin' Wyrd team. But the real winner of the day was Ronald McDonald House Charity who will be receiving a total amount raised by this event of over £1000 which is amazing. Huge congratulations to Dave for running such a fun event and to everyone who donated and everyone who did daft things in the name of charity. And I still think Joe enjoyed the tights way too much......

Next years Miss model perhaps.....?

Into the Warzone!

Yes it is I, your intrepid explorer! I have returned from a perilous and harrowing journey to Outside of London and into the Middle Lands North of the M25. Basically, I went to a tournament in Warzone Workshop, located in the exotic location known as Northampton.

For those playing along at home, I'd been to a Story Event run at Warzone Workshop at the tail end of last year and had a great time. This time it was a standard 50SS Fixed Faction event run by the local Henchman Ben Harris. And I'd volunteered my services as an assistant TO and spare player for the day. Let the games begin!

We ended up with 25 players after having a last minute drop out so Ben and I decided to rotate playing and being admin, which gave us both a chance to relax and get a drink given it was shaping up to be a very warm day and while the venue is perfectly fine, being on the top floor of an indoor shopping centre means that there's not a lot of options for ventilation. We did our best with strategically placed fans but the hard truth is that putting 27 people in any confined space for a long period of time on a hot day and it's inevitable that the temperature is going to be on the high side!

 We had a good mixture of players from different areas - there was a strong showing from the local meta, including my frequent travel buddies Karl McConnell and Craig Woods, Graeme Nicholls and a few new faces I hadn't met before. We were fortunate also to have amongst us The Man, The Beard, The Legend that is Ritch Keeling. Ritch is currently fufilling a bet to play this year's Nightmare Edition crew at Nationals so he was getting some McCabe practice in. If you'd like to find out a bit more about his bet and the road to Nationals then make sure to check out his blog Brutal Efficacy for more details. Tis a good read. And last but not least we were all blessed by the presence of the Lord of Malifaux Mike Marshall (aka Captain Troy Tempest) who had made the trip over from Norfolk with the ever-lovely Lee Battrick. Truly, we were honoured.

First round and due to the drop out, poor Graeme drew the short straw and had to play the first ringer - me. As the strategy was Reckoning, I decided to take Ophelia and a fairly elite crew including Mancha, Trixiebelle, Merris, and Francois. For my schemes I decided on Leave Your Mark (between Merris and Trixie this seemed doable) and Undercover Entourage on Trixie. Graeme had moved onto Arcanists for this event and had picked Kaeris for this game. Ultimately I couldn't do enough damage to his crew to score for Reckoning (bloody Joss. Stupid Armour. Sodding Johana with a sodding heal!) and Graeme played very smart to kill Trixie when I moved her too far forward and left her in range of the Oxfordian Mages. The game ended in a very decisive win for Graeme but it was a very fun game, despite me still being half asleep and flustered so apologies to Graeme for that!

Next up was lunch and the painting contest. The standard was incredibly high from all the entrants and out of the field of 25 players, we had 14 entries for the contest. That's pretty incredible and really good to see so many people making the effort to have nicely painted minis!

Round 2 and I'd tagged in Ben as ringer so I could take a break and have a sit down, which was quite welcome at this point of the day! I also managed to have a wander round and see how everyone was getting on - the atmosphere was very relaxed and there was a lot of laughing from various tables which is always a good sign everyone's enjoying themselves.

Amusing table numbers are a common theme at Ben's events!

 Onto the final round and I jumped back in to play Nick, who was a local I hadn't met as he'd been taking a few months break from Malifaux and had only just started attending events again. This round was Extraction and just for ease of playing I decided to go with Ophelia again, but a slightly different crew including Gracie to tank some damage and a Rooster Rider to try and get 3VP for Leave Your Mark/Convict Labour which were the two schemes I picked. I was a little worried as Nick was running Von Schill, a Master I don't have a lot of familiarity with. Plus his chosen crew had an awful lot of bulletproof models in it, not ideal against a shooty Master like Ophelia! It was another fun game and Nick was a really lovely opponent to play against, even though the game went fairly definitively my way, he managed to keep laughing and joking - especially when he managed to get the Abomination summoned in by Rusty Alyce to kill Mancha Roja. Gutsy little guy! Finished up 8-0 to me.

So the end of another event and another fun day. Time to hand out the prizes! As is usual at the Warzone events, the prize support was excellent, with a selection of boxes and other goodies for the raffle as well as some lovely trophies for the top 3 in both painting and playing.

So once the dust had settled we had a top 3 in the painting of Hayden Smith (3rd) The Lord of Malifaux Mike Marshall (2nd) and in 1st place was Craig Woods with his gorgeous Whiskey Golem. Sadly I didn't get a picture as I was rushing around during lunch but it looked amazing, as did all the entries. It was a really high standard contest and everyone's entries looked great.

For the Best Sport we had Karl McConnell who is starting to make a habit of being in the running for these awards. Not sure why.....(I kid I kid!). So well done to him as well, despite struggling with a bad back all day!

Finally we had the gaming prizes. Starting with the medal for Best Loser we had my 3rd round opponent Nick, who seemed thrilled with his medal and promptly put it round his neck. He told me later he'd had a really fun day and was planning to come down to the local gaming nights more often so it'll be good to see him at more events in the future. 3rd place we had one of the local guys Steve Wilson, 2nd place was the ever lovely Stuart Snares (even if we did give him a bit of abuse about it, all in good fun!) and our overall winner was Rich Bream, another local lad who has been using Neverborn recently.

In summary, I can highly recommend the events at Warzone Workshop. The shop is in Northampton town centre so there's plenty of parking nearby and it's not a terribly long walk from the train station, which gets a regular service from Euston for all you London type people. I had a lot of fun and I'm hoping to be able to come along and help out again someday (hey someone has to get Ben to events on time :p).