You can't cover Gaelcon

So I realised if I post my Gaelcon tournament report now I'm only like 6 months behind. That's a result! So here it is. Well first things first: I played in Gaelcon, a 1750pt, 5 round, 2 day tournament in Dublin on the bank holiday weekend of the 29th to 31th of October. It was originally meant to be held in the D4 Hotel, I say originally because the convention had to be moved to the RDS once the D4 hotel was renamed "Dublin's Underwater Halloween Wonderland". That's right, an Act of God tried to ruin my weekends drinking. But hey, I'm from Cork. Floods have never stopped me drinking.

Pictured: SkibbWargamer Tadhg in his apartment.

 Gaelcon saw me mix things up altering my auto-win Space Wolves list:

Rune Priest w/ tempest wrath & jaws + chooser of the slain
Rune Priest w/ murderous hurricane& stormcaller + chooser of the slain + wolf tooth necklace + melta bombs
2 x 5 scouts w/meltagun
4 wolf guard - (2 x combi melta + wolf claw + melta bombs) & (2 x combi melta + powerfist)
8 grey hunters w/ melta + power weapon + wolf standard + rhino w/dozer blades
8 grey hunters w/ melta + power weapon + wolf standard
9 grey hunters w/ melta + power weapon + wolf standard
5 grey hunters w/flamer
6 long fangs w/ 2 lascannon + 3 missile launcher
6 long fangs w/ 2 lascannon + 3 missile launcher + rhino w/dozer blades
6 long fangs w/ 5 missile launcher + rhino w/dozer blades

See how I made it look like I was going to change things up but in fact still have 3 squads of long fangs, 2 runes priests and loads of Grey Hunters? That's what Space Wolf players are like.

I got on the aircoach with a bunch of the lads on the Friday and off we struck to the Big(ger) Smoke. I spent most of the journey fawning all over the White Dwarf that had pre release pictures of the new Necron models. I know it's all old news now but let's pretend like it didn't take me a 7 months to get around to writing this, alright?  Upon arrival in Dublin we made a direct beeline for Gamers World on Jervis St. I'd heard many great things about this place and I now know it's the venue for K-Con 2012(review due sometime in 2015). After we had a look around and bought various shiny things, we then decided it was probably time to head to the hotel. The floods has us staying in the Bewleys Hotel in Leopardstown so we had to take the Luas. Finally, having Cáólán "I used to be so metropolitan" Gibbons around became useful as he knew his way around Dublin and got us to the Luas in no time. All that didn't really mean a whole lot as it took us, at a conservative estimate, 11 hours to work out which Luas we needed to get on. There were only 2 options, that one or the other one. Sake!

I'm pretty sure both options are wrong.

After finding out how people in Dublin dislike being asked for advice we finally got on the tram and off we took to Leopardstown. Upon arrival we were met by Paul "Can't just stick to one codex" Quigley who took us to our hotel. Hurray, a bar, it's finally time to start drinki- wait a second - 6 euro for a pint, each? Class. At this point myself and Cáólán dropped our stuff in the room, left everyone watching a rugby and took off into Oil Can Harry's the pub for the event where we were assured that there would be cheap(er) booze. Quigley had left but now he was back and we(I) got progressively louder. After many hilarious stories, sambuka, pints and an ill advised amount of vodka we hopped in a taxi and took off for Leopardstown. As people who have read this blog before know, vodka is a bad, bad drink. It does evil things to me. In this instance, however, I wasn't feeling the effects. I'm sure that when I hung out of the side of the taxi shouting "YOU CAN'T COVER ME, CONSTRUCTION WORKERS" at the people fixing the road it's because I'm hilarious and nothing to do with the drink. Anyway, the rest of the night is pretty much a blur. A fun blur, but a blur none the same. I remember shouting, drinking, hitting fellow bunny Tadhghghgghghgg "f" Murphy in the face with a magazine, being put in a headlock, more shouting, drinking, kicking people and going to bed. Yay for Gaelcon.

Yay, I say!

The next morning wasn't exactly fun times but the hotel breakfast helped, a lot. As it was Halloween myself and Tadhg dressed up in costumes, country style. This basically involved wearing bin bags in inventive ways and I went the extra step wearing underwear outside my pants, You know, just like Superman. Eventually we had to take them off because 1.) Bin bags collect heat like no other thing I've ever worn and 2.) The other nerds were jealous. We were showing up their lack lustre attempts at dressing up. Like Dan "recognized cheater" Ahern. Pictured here:

He didn't even try and get the beard right.

I am not one to award mediocrity but he had gone the extra mile to secure an elusive SkibbCon 2 T-Shirt to compete the outfit. Anyhow, game one had me up against Mike "s1r_mike" McConkey from the Arkham Gaming Centre, the proud owners of a large amount of my money that weekend, in Spearhead Quarter grab. Mike was playing Elderad Mech based Eldar. With Falcons, Wave Serpents, Fire Dragons, Dire Avengers, Jet Bikes etc etc. So lots of last minute objective grabbing. Just had to make sure that he had no tanks left come turn 5.There are a couple of important things that should be noted about this game:
1.) There was a big THING in the middle of the board blocking LOS from all of my things to all his things.
2.) I was still really drunk
3.) Elderad would mean I can't really use any of my powers(Tempest Wrath would be really good)
4.) Most importantly, Space Wolves are retarded.

Why is this a thing? Anyone?

So Mike wins the roll off and gives me first turn. I don't know why but I have the sneaking suspicion that Mike is going to go full reserve here. So I deployed 2 squads of Long Fangs where they could see all the objectives in the two unoccupied quarters. I would have deployed so they could see the other objectives but Mt. Dick Eoin Over in the centre of the board had other ideas. The third squad deployed where the could climb the aforementioned mountain should Mike reserve. This squad were joined by 2 rune priest squads in rhinos. My third squad was lined up to drive towards an empty quarter. This is where my genius move comes in. I infiltrated both squads of wolf scouts. Not because it was tactically sound, not even because an unexpected move might throw Mike giving me an edge, it was because, as I mentioned before, I was still drunk.

Like, proper hammered.

Couple of things of note happened in this game. Mike went full reserve so I used an Elderad-less turn to cast tempest, got a double one perils but it still went off. As Mike comes in from reserve one falcon (the one unit not killing my retardedly placed scouts) decides to risk it and boost to a pretty decent position hiding behind everyone's favourite stupid mountain and rolled a one. Class. Space Wolves take one wound, kill 2 units. Sounds about right. Mike made some very good moves throughout. Blocking LOS and negating charge against infantry with stupid, stupid Falcons but at the start of my turn 5 my guys remembered they were Space Wolves. 1 turn and 11 missiles, 4 lascannons, 4 melta guns and 2 wolf standard charges later I killed all of the things and I had 4 objectives and Mike had 1. Stupid Wolves.

Insert Pun Picture here.

After sobering up I was against David McCurdy who I had met previously when I heckled from the Home Nations last April. David is a fantastic guy with a really nice Grey Knight army which contained the bane of my life, Grey Knight Terminators. As well as a land raider full of inquisitorial, henchman-y death and psybacks with strike squads. David was also my sole Grey Knight opponent at the weekend despite reports that at least 47 thousand people were playing them at the event. I had a great time with this game and we destroyed each other. It was Dawn of War killpoints and I managed to sneak a win in the last turn as my entire armies shooting managed to bring down 3 terminators that had started as 5 before running though a full strength, wolf bannered Grey hunter squad. To win my 1 kill point. This move made me the first of 2 SkibbWargamers to snatch a victory out from under David in the dying seconds of the game that day. What a dick that Cáólán guy is.

Gaelcon 2010

This second win had me playing Pearce "The Bunny" Condren or as I like to think of him, that horrible person who had me unjustly evicted from the student bar in Limerick. Time for some payback. Pearce was running a mech Blood Angels list consisting of Predators, rifle-dreads, Lasbacks and a Whirlwind!  My Long Fangs decided that they were a bit exhausted from being so ludicrously under-costed so decided to not hit anything or make any saves this game. Fair enough as they do a whole lot of work most of the other times.  Pearce is a good player who made a break for my objective at the right time (we were playing the one objective game) just as I made a break for his. Turns out I was unable to kill his whirlwind parked near his objective and the game ended. It was a win to Pearce and I couldn't hold anything against him, well accept that Limerick thing. God I hate that guy.

Deceiving looks etc

So 2 wins and a loss after day one and it was time for food and more drinking. Ah drinking. Now I'm going to be honest here. The Saturday and Sunday night have kind of blurred together as I had never gone to a convention over a bank holiday before so have no way of differentiating the two days so here are the highlights from both nights. Nigel "W-ired" Kavanagh threatening to "glass any bitches who wouldn't go to an event run by John Stowe". Nigel kicking Donal "Wolf Scouts and Friends" Carroll while he was defensless on the ground. Ah Dublin. I remember heckling an auction. Heckling cheaters at a Table Quiz. Donnacha "One of the Family" O'Mahony doing a very good impression of yours truly. Everyone being asked to go inside to the pub because there were some very loud, very rude, non-gamers ruining it for everyone and we had to intimidate them.

How I pictured us

Then we have the forming of the Red or Black Association and the appointment of Ivan "Crutch Army" Sheehan as President and Tadhg "Tesla" Murphy as Junior Vice-President, Senior Referee, Head of the Red or Black FAQ Team and Designated Sober. Following this we had an epic battle between myself and Alec "Best BT General" Corneilius and myself for title of "Intergalactic World Red or Black Champion, of the World" with myself being crowned victorious. WWWWWWWHHHHHHHEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW.

The games pulls a big crowd.

So after about half of those events, I'm not really sure which ones, I went to bed Saturday night. Then it was up the next morning for more lovely free breakfast and once again not being able to get the bus to the RDS. More taxis. Yay. My happiness was shortlived as it turns out I was playing Merv "Thanks for paying taxes" Murphy. Myself and Merv have a weird 40k history. We play dice games against each other. In equal amounts. Every time we play one of us get retarded luck and wins. We played a game on the thursday before Gaelcon and e called it after turn three because he had 2 units left. This time, however, Merv failed his first save in turn 4. Well, I ended up losing this one surprisingly. I would feel bitter about this had I not just done the same thing to him at Itzacon. Must remember to ask him for a friendly game before the next tournament.

... I hate you

 With my 2 wins and 2 losses I was up against Matt MvVaigh another Mechdar which was Falcons with Harlequins, the Avatar, Elderad and Guardian Jetbikes. We were playing Kill Points and I ended up winning by multi charging one squad of harlequins with 2 guys from 2 different squads and putting the rest of my guys into the falcons. With my wolf banners popped I brought them both down and ended up getting pulled into combat and killing the harlequins in his turn(the last one) to win by a kill point. In fairness to Matt however he could have easily won because my wolf scouts fluffed and both squads died. He tank rammed a rhino to death and survived the long fanging so he could have just bounced around for the remaining 5 turns. Instead he wanted to make a game of it and went after the VPs sink that are my rhinos full of guys. Great game and a lovely player.

These things need to go die in a hole.

Well after 3 wins and 2 losses I ended up on 17th out of 54 people. A solid result and I was delighted with the 5 great games I had. The craic was unreal and I will definitely be heading back next year, granted I'll be bring some alcohol with me.