Tuesday 2 June 2015

Report from the Inquisitor Grand Tournament 2015


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