The
dust has settled on a glorious day of Inquisitor gaming at Warhammer
World and I would like to share my experience with you all. This was
the first event I have been able to get to in the best part of two
years due to a bunch of real world occurrences, so I was particularly
excited to get playing. The day was set to include three rounds of
games, a painting and modelling contest, a test of 41st
millennium knowledge and prize giving. The newly-remodelled Warhammer
World features a new entrance, dedicated shops for the Black Library,
Forge World and Games Workshop itself, a display of artwork and two
large Horus Heresy era dioramas, and although I didn't have time to
visit, a new hall of miniatures, which I have on good authority is
well worth the entry fee. It would seem though that these new areas
have come at the cost of a reduced gaming area, but there were still
plenty of tables to battle over, including a number of large, themed
tables. We had four standard tables of the Realm of Battle to fight
over, as well as the impressive war-torn city of Spyral Prime.
Despite being populated solely by 28mm Cities of Death terrain, the
difference in scale with 54mm figures is hardly noticeable and
doesn't impact on playing.
We had a table right at the entrance and set up a display to attract attention.
In
the first round I had the honour of GM-ing a game for eventual winner
Stephen and runner up Nick. Stephen's war band was tasked with
hunting down three rogue psykers known as the Wandering Heretics and
Nick with killing 5 heretic cultists. The game was complicated by the
psykers' being able to summon warp portals through which they could
instantaneously jump to distant locations on the board. Both players
coped admirably with the challenging and wily opponents who were all
too happy to run from them through the portals and managed to
respectively capture the psykers and kill the cultists. They also
found time to have a couple of their characters go toe-to-toe in
hand-to-hand combat, where we bore witness to an incredible run of
critical hits, successful parries and critical counter attacks. Lots
of 01-05s were being rolled!
Cultists use a portal to flee.
After
a prolonged lunch break thanks to some overdue fajitas, we had our
“Inquisition” quizzes filled in and scored our fellow attendees
painting and modelling entries. The second round of games saw
Inquisitor Tesnohlidek, the daemonhost C'Innyarh and mutant Komt
tasked by Nick to find the arms smuggler J'Ken's records and stop
them falling into enemy hands. Tesnohlidek had to get this done
without being identified, so sent the mutant Komt ahead to do the
dirty work. The untrustworthy daemonhost went off to find playthings.
I was up against David and Gav who had other intentions with J'Ken.
Gav's tech adept Liwet and her band successfully stole the records
from under Komt's nose and David's Inquisitor Rhodes saw J'Ken
assassinated. My lot achieved little, but Tesnohlidek was not
identified so can continue his Xanthite agenda unmolested.
Komt just about snuck by the servitor on the way to J'Ken's office.
The
final game saw Tesnohlidek and gang out to kill a priest whose blood
was foretold to bring about a dark creature he had an interest in.
Joe was the GM, and Jason and Nick were the other players. Once again
Tesnohlidek sent Komt to do his work for him, and the mutant's
chainsword eventually told for the priest, though a cybernetically
enhanced dog ran down just about every PC on the table! The
daemonhost fell to concentrated fire, and while Tesnohlidek abandoned
Komt to fate, he could not allow the daemonhost to be captured and
dragged it from the field. He is now preparing a new host body to
transfer the daemon's essence to before it can escape...
Tesnohlidek and C'Innyarh back away from the shrine, only to be attacked by the dog from robot hell!
Once
the scores were tallied, Stephen claimed both the Best Player award
and was crowned overall Champion. Nick came second, and Gav won the
Best GM award as well as third place overall. C'Innyarh won me the
Hobbyist prize, which I am especially happy about as it's the one
prize I haven't claimed over the years. Congratulations to all the
winners, and thanks to everyone for making it such a great day. David
deserves special praise for juggling running of the day with
partaking in games. When I ran the tournament a couple of years ago I
was too preoccupied with things running smoothly to play as well. A
superhuman effort!
The prize winning daemonhost.
The
other good things to take away from the day was that we attracted a
lot of attention with a display of our models (not least David's 54mm
Razorback, Sentinel and plasma blastgun from his WIP Warhound Titan),
and handed out a few leaflets with information about the game to
passers-by. Hopefully some of them will want to get involved with the
game. It was rather excellent that Warhammer World let us book tables
to play an out of print game that they no longer sell models for,
though I have a feeling that we won't be able to play there forever.
We will need to plan for alternative venues.
I
have put my scenario from the tournament on the Carthax wiki so
anyone can play it. Gav has an 'In Character' report from the day on the
Conclave already for you to read, and my photos are available on photobucket. I
will link to more as they become available through the Facebook and
Twitter pages.
Next
up for me is more work on the Forces of Chaos within the Carthax sector. I have had the lowdown on converting the Artemis model from
Gav, and have plans to get an Alpha Legionnaire made. Much hacksawing
awaits!
The
Carthaxian Inquisitor
