SkibbCon 2.0

Anyone surprised by the fact I'm writing a tournament report so soon after my Gaelcon (well in Eoin terms it's soon) will be relieved to hear that I haven't gone mad, this one is about a tournament held nearly a whole year ago. SkibbCon 2 followed on from the fine tradition of SkibbCon in many ways. It was still situated in Russagh Mill, it still had an emphasis on having fun and most importantly drinking. However, some changes were made, mainly to facilitate more people being able to come. As such SkibbCon 2.0, held from the 10th to 12th of June 2011, was a Warhammer 40,000 doubles tournament with no more than 1000pts being spent by each team member using a standard Force Org chart(remember that part as it comes up later on). The only other restriction was that both the armies on a team must be similarly aligned to the Forces of Order or Disorder.

Armies of Order: All Imperial Space Marines. Imperial Guard. Eldar. Tau and Kroot Mercenaries. Witchhunters.

Armies of Disorder: Chaos Space Marines. Daemons. Orks. Dark Eldar. Tyranids. Necron.

I found that Orks being a Force of Disorder to be a bit harsh.

18 teams were signed up as of Friday night from all over the place. We had a large contingent down from The Town as well as some people I didn't know from Limerick. After much "socializing"(please note that in this article this means heavy drinking) it was time for the table quiz. After having through the shame of last year's mix up with the team names, things were a lot more organised. Now there is no age filter on this site so I can't go into detail about a lot of the team names but apparently Caolán likes to suck balls of many different types and in great volume. The majority of the team names were a testament to this. The quiz was tense where cheating and blackmail were rife and a threat of physical bodily harm was doled out to Andrew Kirwan, who was not in attendance, by SWG president Cian. In the end it was the aforementioned ball-sucker's team who won and netted themselves a nice bottle of alcohol. I suppose we could have given something more sensible as a prize but shut up.

It's okay, Merv wasn't there so it was safe.

After the quiz it was time for another SkibbCon tradition, drunk poker. It was impressive to see that even though Jason "REALLY likes Stephen Fry" Lane was playing poker he could also play another game that I think is called "Hey! You look like you're winning poker, have some absinthe". It should be noted that even though he was playing that game he still managed to drink an unholy amount of the stuff himself. Much merriment was had including ringing Dave "Crap at 40k" Coleman at 3 in the morning to shout at him. My night ended when at half 5 I was told I should go to bed as I was too drunk and had to organise things in the morning.

I'm sorry. I'm sure it won't happen again................

So in the morning I awoke, begrudgingly, to find some nice breakfast and some new attendees who had driven down from Dublin and Limerick. After hating them for not having hangovers it was time to begin a marathon of 40k.It continued for many, many hours but hey, we were eating and sleeping in the same place so there was no need to hurry. Not that anyone tried. Because I wasn't playing this next part are just going to be a selection of photographs and abusive comments.

Gribble gribble

1 Grey Knight model versus most of a Tyranid Army

Here we see Ivan's Vindicare Assassin about to be charged by a large part of Derek Barry's Tyranid army. Unsurprisingly, the Grey Knight won out, proving even more that Ivan only plays crutch armies. Also, that lack of a paint job by Ivan cost his team a podium finish.

I can't look at this any other way than John whispering to his models.

After spending so long talking on the internet and on podcasts about how much he wanted to attend SkibbCon we see John "Doesn't drink his whiskey" Stowe playing the fluffy and fun Deathclut in Landraider spam with Long Fang spam combo.

All Infanty Guard

If you look closely at this picture you can see a finger pointing at the infantry in David Chamber's famous infantry guard list. HINT: They're in the tanks.

Mt. Long Fang

Here we have 36 long fangs on a single terrain piece. This army belongs to the Double Space Wolf combo of Chris and Ulick. That is a seriously undercosted ruined building.

Mt Fire Warrior

Yes, that is the same building. This time full of Pa's Firewarriors. I'm going to go right ahead and say that's not as point efficient as the Long Fang one.

Taking Neck Beard to a new level

Ah my nemesis. Alec "The Gypsy" Cornelius picture here with former SkibbCon winner Tristram "Just back from a wedding" Hills.

I'm glad this thing has a flash

In the absence of solar pulses we had to have a way of introducing Night fighting in a non Dawn of War mission. Solution: Still be playing games at half 11 at night. All thanks to Bruce "Not playing Tau this time" Sutton's apparently invincible Land Speeder.

WTF are these things?

Pictured are, I think, Kevin's Eldar. They were partnered to the invic-land speeder having marines. I just don't have any idea what those models are meant to represent. Proixied Fire Dragons? That's probably it.

So after the day's games wrapped up, around half eleven it was time for the serious drinking to take place. However, before this could begin there was a slight problem. It turns out there was a problem with one teams list. Now this team will remain nameless but it seems like Dan Ahern and Pat Corr thought they were playing in a 2004pt doubles tournament. Now as I was trying to come up with an amicable solution to this predicament I had Dan constantly repeating this one sentence to me: "Shut up, give us 0 points and drink this." So I did.

Many hilarious things happened. One of my favourites was when I dumped a bucket of ice water on Chris and Tadhg. It was totally worth having to go outside in the rain, to get a mop and clean it up. We rang Dave again, ha suck it, Dave. Red or Black was also played. I still maintain it's the most taxing of drinking games. Damn you, Alec. And to a lesser extent damn you too, Stowe. My girlfriend had to carry a hammered drunk, sorry, food poisoned Tristram up a flight of stairs as he tried to requisition my room. I would have helped her but, ....... yeah.

Yeah.

So I think I got to bed. I'm not sure. I don't remember waking up. I spent the entire next day hammered. Walking around, being unhelpful and shouting for no reason. Again I wasn't playing so here are more pictures.

Alec: "What do you think we should do here, Tris?"

Tris: "I'll catch them off guard by pretending to be asleep then you roll dice at them until they die"

Here are some pictures of Alec and Tristram playing "Best Army" Winners Darran and Bob. Team Town were thrown in at the deep-end here after finding themselves in 3rd position after being gifted 20 points by the generous Team Cheating. Turns out Wraithlords don't like massive amounts of venoms. Who knew?

SWG's president Cian hoping using an actual battery will help keep his Battlewagon going

Can it see us? Oh balls.

So because we felt bad for Team Cheater we decided to give Dan and Pat a very special gift. SWG member Sylvan had made some absolutely amazing seals for us to give as prizes and we could think of no better recipients of these impurity seals than these guys.

Dan is the smuggest man in the world.

So that was it really, or as much as I can coherently remember. I'm really looking forward to the event this year and finally getting to play in a doubles game. I want to thank everyone who came down to our convention. I want to congratulate all of those who won prizes:

1st place - Dyslexia Untied - Richard Flood + Pádraic Ó Confhaola
2nd place - The Kabal of the Bunny Run - Tristram Hills + Alec Corneilius

3rd place - Earth on Hell - John Stowe + Ralph Risk

Best Army - Awesome Raptor - Robert Brennan + Darren Kerwick

Wooden Spoon - Off at Stephen Fry - Jason Lane + Pat Bourke

I also want to thank Craig for his invaluable help with admin. The SWGers: Caolán, Chris, Cian, Emma, Pa, Sylvan and Tadhg for their invaluable help with everything else. You guys are a great bunch of people to cater for and here's to many more SkibbCons. I'll just leave you with one thought....

Top Gun.

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.

The Dark Side

So it happened. I gave in. Defected. I turned my coat. I've started playing *sniff* Warhammer Fantasy. I knew I never should have picked up Island of Blood, the WHFB starter set. But after hearing that MooCon 3: This time it's Fantasy, would provide an easy way to enter the hobby I caved and bought it. I'm a big fan of using tournaments to get into wargaming, those 5 games teach you more in a short period then a month of normal playing. My ever first full game of 40k was game one of Warpcon 2009. It got me hooked. I was looking to MooCon 3 to do the same. Unfortunately I was unable to attend the tournament in the end and shoved Island of Blood back in the press.

My press, where hobbies go to die.

Then King of the Gnoblars was approaching and I realised there was another WHFB tournament that ticked all of my boxes. Well, all one of my boxes in that I don't have to sacrifice playing 40k to attend. So instead of borrowing a complete army I decided I could make the majority of one myself. After trading the Skaven in my Island of Blood for the High Elves in Rob "Prod Rob Gleasure" Gleasure's box set I had about 60ish GW high elf miniatures. Also seeing as SWG have been playing King's of War and even holding tournaments down in Skibb I also have a significant amount of Mantic models. Mainly spear-men and archers. With a list of all the models available to me I enlisted the help of Nigel "Glassy guy" Kavanagh to construct a list. And by help I mean he made my list for me. In fairness to Nigel he did at least try and get some input from me. I'm not sure however, that my repeating "Level Four, 2+ Ward save, FULL COMMAND" was entirely helpful.

I also want them to have deep-strike and outflank.

One thing of note for King of the Gnoblars, run by the aforementioned Prod Rob, is that it is using an incredibly interesting system of composition restriction. My view of comp in Fantasy, as a 40k player, has always been akin to "Oh, that's a very nice model you've spent lots of time converting and painting. Oh, you want to play with it? Of course. LOL. I was kidding, that's too good. You're not allowed bring it." Rob's system works differently. Allowing to bring anything your army book allows but penalising your end round score by what you bring.

Systemised Criteria for Army List Evaluation (SCALE).

- Each army list's score is worked out as per the details below
- Armies start at 0, each 'nasty' adds 1 to the score (to a maximum of 5), each 'nice' deducts 1 from the score (to a minumum of 0). Some 'nice' and 'nasty' details are especially important to army balance, so they add or deduct 2, 3, or 4. Where this is the case they have this number in parentheses after them, e.g. Teclis (4).
- After each game, the standard 20-0 score is calculated as per the rulespack. The players then compare army scores and the result is adjusted by the difference in army scores, e.g. Player A beats Player B 12-8. Player A's army has a score of 4 and Player B's army has a score of 2. The difference (4 minus 2) is 2 in favour of Player B, so player B adds 2 to his score and Player A subtracts 2. Thus, the result of the game is a 10-10 draw.
- An army can have any score but the adjustment is always capped at 5

Edited to make more sense as an excerpt.


So every army book(codex) has a specific list of "Nasty" things and "Nice" things. As well as there being a general list concerning all armies.

Numbers and MATHS

Talking to Rob he explained the reasoning behind it all. He's not exactly trying to penalise the units he thinks are good or give people extra points for bringing units recognised to be useless. It's more about trying to wean people away from the recognised "tournament builds" There are basically 4 different things you can do with a comp system like this.
1. Bring your regular tournament build that you bring to every tournament and just use that armies SCALE score
2. Bring whatever you've always wanted to because things like double rare and special characters are no longer banned(as a 40k player I'm going to use the name of the only broken special character I know. TECLIS)
3. Max out on what's recognised as being broken. Hydras, Pegasus Lords, Teclis again and take the massive SCALE score that comes with it.
4. What has come to be known as Stealth Cheese. Bringing units no one ever brings combined with units known to work so that it all works out to a low SCALE score (0 or 1).

Hi, I'm Teclis. I know ALL THE SPELLS.

So anyway, for people who know about Fantasy here's my list:

TEAM FULL COMMAND
High Elves [0]:
Level 4, life, 4+ ward, scroll
BSB, GW, armour of caledor
Level 2, shadow, jewel of the dusk, seerstaff [pit of shades, mindrazor]
28 sea guard, shields, FC, flaming
30 spears, shields, FC
20 swordmasters, FC
5 reavers 
5 reavers
28 white lions, FC
RBT
Eagle
Eagle 

Pew pew...... magic?

The two squads of reavers which are not considered a great unit give me a nice point which cancels out the nasty point for taking 28 white lions. >15 white lions in a unit is a nasty point.


It was with this list that I played my first ever game of Fantasy last Thursday. Stephen "Deathstrike to the Face" McCarthy from WAC, who can't make it to KotG, played me with his Chaos Warriors. Steve was also nice enough to let me play with pieces of card cut out in the rough size of a unit with "White lions" and "LSG" written on them, what a gent. We were playing the number 2 mission from KotG which will from know on be known as "Fantasy Spearhead with Corner Grab" which involved getting extra VPS for having units in the corner. His list was [I think]:

Daemon Prince with Tzeencth
2 x sorcerers with tzeentch
Chosen
These heavy cavalry guys.
A bunch of guys with frenzy
Chaos Warriors
A giant thing. 

Fighting for Equality. And also because of their unending blood lust.

Steve got very unlucky here, failing a lot of what seemed like sure-fire charges. Also I got Mindrazor off. A lot. Coupled with how silly "Always strikes first" is as a rule and how stupidly good white lions are. I ended up winning the game. The reavers were great in this game because they a very fast, have swift reform and ran off to grab corners to get me 500 extra VPs in the end.

Couple of things I learned from playing this game.
1. You do not want to roll a 6 and a 1 for your magic.
2. White Lions win at everything
3. Mind Razor makes everything better.
4. Giants do no like repeater bolt throwers when I keep rolling 5s and 6s.
5. Random charges are random. Very much so.
6. I know that eagles are meant to fly in front of people and block them, I just don't know how to do that.
7. My guys, no matter how much they know the Daemon prince is next to them, will not turn to charge him. Noobs.

So basically, I'm very much looking forward to the weekend. The drinking mainly, but also trying out this new system. At the very least I will know a little more about fantasy when I'm shouting "NERD" at the top of my voice at the various conventions I'm going to attend in the future.

- Eoin

TownCon 2011

So seeing as Gaelcon was over two months ago I thought it might be about time to add to my series of posts I'm thinking of titling "Eoin travels around Ireland, gets drunk, makes a fool of himself and also Warhammer 40,000" by writing up a review of TownCon 2011.

TownCon was a 1750pt, 2 Day, Warhammer 40k, Ranking tournament held from the 23rd to the 25th of September in Kilkenny. It was run by Mr. Paul "Look at me, I moderate W-ired" Quigley. TownCon was also the 2011, Warhammer 40,000 Grand Tournament. Exciting, huh? Also being all progressive n' stuff, Paul was using the ETC scoring rules. There are 2 missions per game, primary and secondary. 8 points for primary, 4 points for secondary and 8 points available for VPs. I find this type of scoring very interesting and was looking forward to using it.

Before I get into anything more specific I would be remiss if I did not explain the origins of TownCon. It all started at Itzacon in March 2011. Myself, Caolán and a group of the WAC lads (not to be confused with the WAAC John "I play Necron now" Stowe) including Donal, Dan, Ivan, Nick and some others were, not surprisingly, in the pub, drinking. We were approached by some poor, unfortunate fella trying to inform us about this new tournament being held in Kilkenny called..... to be honest, the name escapes me. "A convention, in the town?" we relied in unison. "A Town....Con?" until finally we were doing nothing more than shouting the word "TownCon" at this man until he caved and decided to officially and forevermore change the name of the convention to TownCon.

What can I say? It's all official.

With whatever they originally wanted to call the event long forgotten it was time to ship off to the middle....wait east........ hold on, where is Killkenny? Does anyone even know? Anyway, I decided since it took so little effort at Bro-Con it was time again to bring stupid, auto-win Space Wolves.

My list was:
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)
2 x 8 grey hunters w/ melta + mark of the wulfen + wolf standard + rhino w/dozer blades
2 x 5 grey hunters w/flamer
6 long fangs w/ 2 lascannon + 3 missile launcher
6 long fangs w/ 2 lascannon + 3 missile launcher w/ las plas razorback w/dozerblades
6 long fangs w/ 5 missile launcher w/ las plas razorback w/dozerblades

Okay, maybe not all wolves are auto-win.

Once again the Skibb Wargamers had a healthy contingent present., 4 to be precise. Things started on the Friday with everyone setting up tables and terrain in the hotel. Unfortunately, my late finishing at work meant I had to miss all of this as I only made it to Kilkenny in time to make the pub. I was upset....... I'm just going to have to live with it, I suppose. At the pub everyone met up. The lads from Cork, the Kilkenny lads(or as they like to be known, The Townies), some new lads from Dublin and Floody. That night the Townies showed us around the town. Pints were drank. Whiskey was drank. And once again Little Dave surprised us all by not getting thrown out. The score between myself and himself in the game of "getting thrown out of pubs at cons" is still 2 - 0 to me.

Pictured: Kilkenny

Just so everyone is aware, I'm a big fan of the Townies, even more so since they officially called themselves "The Townies". Awesome guys. After a good night of drinking with them we all headed back to the hostel where all the people I was in the room with had to deal with my snoring, suckers. After some sleep it was morning time and I was in need of 3 things: coffee, lucozade and people to shout at. After a healthy dose of all three Cian was nice enough to drive myself and Tadhg to the hotel. It saved us the trouble of walking the entire length of Kilkenny. I mean, it's like a whole 30 yards.

Once we arrived we got our passes from the TownCon people, fought the Fun Police and then it was mingling time. The DGG boys only arrived on the Saturday so we had a catch up. It was only a week since I'd seen most of them because of NWG but I hadn't seen Ralph "I have to borrow my father-in-laws toys" Risk since Skibbcon 2.0. Myself and Ulick "I won't give him a nickname because he has it bad enough being from Kerry" O'Sullivan threw abuse at each other as per usual. This is why I love cons. Also the drinking.

I'll take 2 blues and a yellow please, Barman.

So round 1 kicked off and I was paired with someone I had never met before, Simon Fitzpatrick. He was playing a Space Marine army. Simon's a lovely guy with a cool list. Squads of devastators with large amounts of wounds. Tac marines with heavy weapons. Assault marines in drop pods and lots of razorbacks. Unfortunately for Simon the first mission's primary objective was killpoints and his army relied heavily on combat squads, as well as having easy killpoints in the drop pods and razorbacks. In fairness to him he did see that he was at a disadvantage and went for it. Combat squaded everything, playing aggressively and really just being mean to me and my poor hangover. In the end I managed to win primary, win secondary and come ahead on VPs for 17 points. A really good start but one that put me in a pretty terrible situation....

I'm friends with Paul Quigley and was happy that his event was going so well. It was this friendship that stopped me from causing a scene when drawn against know cheater and ruiner of cons Dan "True Story" Ahern. I knew somebody was going to have to bite the bullet and play him so might as well be me. Dan had decided to cheat with Tau at TownCon bringing lots of Broadsides, lots of Crisis Suits, lots of Kroot and the Firewarriors he was obliged to take. Ah no, I love Dan. Even if he was acting hyper all weekend. I think it's being in his home town, it's like a power source for him. Myself and Dan were already 2 pints each in by the time we found out we were playing each other. We thought it was an occasion worthy of some more drinking, more pints! The game was, as always, good fun. With me winning on primary and him on secondary. We drew on Vps leaving me with 12 points.

It is impossible to be smugger than this man. It's been proven. With Science.

This left me on enough points to be playing Donal "WHEEEEEEEEEEEW" Carroll. Donal was playing Tyranids with 2 Tervigons, lots of Hive Guard, 2 big Genestealer Squads and an awesome Hive Tyrant Blob. As much as I love 'nids, mathematically Spaces Wolves > Tyranids. With Jaws, wolf banners, wolf scouts and a large amount of high strength AP3 weaponry the advantage was most certainly mine. Things were not helped my Donal's poor run roll for his Genestealers managed to just leave him in terrain precharge so my full, conter-attacking, wolf bannering, grey hunter squad got all of their attacks in first. The wolf scouts were, once again, heroes taking out tervigons and about 3 seperate Guant squads. Class. I won on both Primary and Secondary objectives but Donal's Hive Tyrant managed to boss it up and gain about 800 Vps in the last 2-3 turns. 3 squads and a rune priest. Nice! Game ended either a 16-4 or a 17-3 to me, I can't remember.

This reminds me of a movie. I just can't think which one. Ah now I remember, High School Musical 3.

With all of the Warhammer out of the way it was time for the real fun to begin, the Saturday night. Things kicked off with a trip to ruin the TownCon table quiz. We had quite a large team including members from SWG, WAC, The Warheads and The Townies. It was like the UN, except with gaming clubs instead of countries and also shouting/drinking/ruining things instead of whatever the UN does. Things got a bit heated with the other teams(which, for the record, were full of NERDS) and one woman threatened David "Made us all like him, then turned out to be a Warhead" McHugh, the most unassuming of all of us. We assume it was threatening although I still think she might have been coming on to him. She said she would "@~#! his *^&% up and make sure his $£%" never &^£%"$^% again". Sexy.

After (morally) winning the table quiz and armed with the knowledge of how fruits and vegetables are different it was off into town, for a night on the town, in the town. The incredibly nice folks of TownCon managed to arrange vouchers for free shots for us. Much to my surprise, when I redeemed my voucher the number 6 displayed on the front did not show the voucher number but in fact, the amount of shots I would be getting. I think this fact absolves me of any and all responsibility for my actions. It was at this point the group got split up and it was a night of walking between all 4 of the places to get alcohol in the town to try and go drinking with everyone. After many hours, and many high numbered vouchers, someone who shall remain nameless: Peter "Look at me I can do maths" Scott said he was going to "the bathroom" which I'm assuming is some kind of Warhead code meaning "stopping drinking and going home, like a big girl". I continued to drink with the Townies until all of a sudden I woke up on the Sunday morning. Magic.

I'm the drinking version of Harry Potter.

After packing up all my stuff from the hostel and acquiring a breakfast roll it was back to the hotel for more Warhammer (Warhammer was really getting in the way of my drinking this weekend). Turned out that first game of the morning was against my old foe Alec "Burger King Hat" Cornelius. Alec's list had changed since our last encounter, it now contained fancy things like Harlequins. This time it was my turn to go first and hungover/drunk Eoin decided to hide his long fangs in a similar manner to sober Eoin's move at Bro-Con. This was not the best option here and Alec managed to hang out in the corner for the game and deny me plenty of kill points. Alec had some terrible luck with 2 of his units not arriving until turn 5. This did, however, work out in his favour as the game ended after turn 5 so his two recently arrived tanks could contest objectives unmolested. Once again I had a great time playing Alec and he is a lovely guy to have a game against. I look forward to any games we have in the future. He won the primary objective, I won the secondary and we drew on killpoints leaving me with 8 points. Space Wolves really are stupidly forgiving.

The face of a man with no fear of Space Wolves.

So after my first 4 games my points added up to a grand total of "the same as Cáólán" so it was myself and himself. SkibbWargamer vs SkibbWargamer. I am a big fan of Cáólán's list. By a big fan I mean I think it's really scary and really utilises the best thing about Blood Angels, fast tanks. He uses a 6 Predators(3 autocannon/lascannon and 3 Baal) and 5 razorbacks(4 twin las and 1 heavy flamer). It's cool, unless of course, you're playing against it. If that is the case then Cáólán is a WAAC jerk who tries to make 40k no fun for anyone. I won the roll to go first which is the start of a series(ALL) of rolls to go in my favour. No seriously, it was ridiculous. I stopped to check if I was cheating. Not just legal cheating like using Space Wolves but actual, Dan Ahern cheating. I am, however, legally obliged to say that Cáólán took it all very well and in no way got pissed off. In no way. That should keep his solicitors happy. Anyhow, what with an indestructible squad of wolf scouts destroying the back of his army and my long fangs blowing up anything they even thought about shooting the game was swinging quite heavily my way. Even in the later turns when his guns finally switched on I already had the primary objective and my scouts pipped the secondary in turn 7. He did manged to claw back a draw on VPs, leaving me with 16 from the game.

Here's a picture of Cáólán post-game.

So with 3 wins, 2 draw and the points deduction for my wolf scouts having camo cloaks but not ACTUALLY having camo cloaks, I ended up in sixth place. Proving once again, space wolves are silly and should not be allowed. I packed up all of my things, said my goodbyes and took off in Dick "Dick" Flood(y)'s Landrover for Cork with a nudist, a priest and a child. I'm sure there's a long winded joke that starts like that but I'm going to wrap this up. Congrats to German ETC ringer Jannik on his win and in closing: TOWNCON!