Board Game Review - Settlers of Catan

So while hanging around in Dublin last weekend I finally picked up my own copy of Settlers of Catan (Settlers). So I thought I would write a fairly basic review of the game that, even though I've played it more than any other board game, is still my favourite.

Note the proximity of those sheep to that woods. 

Settlers has a special place in my heart as it's the first board game I ever played with the SkibbWargamers before I ever even started playing 40k. The game is fantastic for playing with people who are not gamers for many reasons:
The rules are simple and take very little time to explain.
Nobody is eliminated, all players play until the end of every game.
You get to say "Has anyone got wood for sheep?"

Settlers is a 3-4 player(3-6 if you buy the expansion) board-game about a group of settlers trying to control the most influence on Catan, the most hexagonal of all the islands.

I would settle the shit out of this place. 

The game revolves around collecting, trading and spending resources. Each one of those hexagonal tiles(hexs) denotes a resource. Mines for Ore, forests for Wood, quarries for Brick, fields for Sheep and other, yellower fields for Wheat. Settlements can be built on the outlines of these tiles. each player at the start of their turn rolls 2 dice. Any hex with the rolled number on it produces resources. Now I'm not going to go in depth into what the odds of each number on a 2d6 is, I'll leave that up to this guy. However, I will tell you the most likely number to come up is 7.

You might notice there is no 7 on the board above. That's because the 7 activates "the robber", my favourite part of the game. A little grey counter that whoever rolls the 7 gets to place on any hex. That hex cannot produce resources while it contains the robber, also the person who places the counter can steal 1 resource from someone with a settlement touching that hex.

And then I said "No more wood for you!"

The object of the game is to acquire the most victory points. 10 victory points will net you a win. You get victory points by building items. You can build roads, villages, cities and development cards. Each item takes a certain amount of resources to create. That's basically the game. Pretty easy, huh? The fact that all the hexs are in different positions every game means it's seriously re-playable. If you'd like a more in-depth run down of the rules and the game here is a video of Wil Wheaton and some people playing.

After buying the game I was surprised to hear that some of the guys I was up in Dublin with had never played it before. I quickly remedied this as we had 2 games on the way home. The board fit on those tiny train tables really easily and will now be my go to game to bring for trips to Dublin. The game was hilarious as always with somebody(Dan) building 3 cities around a single hex and not being too happy when I dropped the robber right into the middle of it. Ivan was that player who never had any of his hexes get rolled while Dave was saying things like, "I'll roll a 3, it'll be fine" and, true to form, rolling a multitude of 3s. Standard.

I'm not saying anything.

It's also worth noting there are several expansions. Seafarers, which brings building boats to travel to islands into the equation. Cities and Knights, which emphasis city development and armies. And finally, Traders and Barbarians, which, I don't know, involves traders and barbarians n' stuff. (I only heard about this one when I googled some images of Settlers)

Know in America as Catan: Boats and Hoes

So that's essentially the game. I urge anyone who hasn't played it to give it a go at their earliest convenience and anyone around my general vicinity, give me a shout and we'll organise a game.

K-Con: A Traitor and his Con

Time for another tournament report everyone. Yay, happy times! However, for the first time ever this report comes from a tournament in which I did not partake in any drinking. I know. A scary thought. I'm scared too. The reason I wasn't drinking was because I was the one driving to said event. The event in question was K-Con. K-Con was a one-day, 5 round, 1000pt, 40k tournament held on Saturday, February 11th in Gamers World, Dublin and run by John "Traitor" Stowe.

All of the links, all of the time.

The tournament would be utilising a form of composition restriction that means that you have to take units from each section of your codex in roughly equal amounts. Meaning, after the obligatory HQ and two troops to take two heavy options you must have taken one fast, and one elite etc. The rulespack also denies the ability to take duplicates. This is the reason this format is called Highlander. More detailed info is available in the rulespack available here. Many people believe the Highlander format got it's name from the famous line "There can be only one" which comes from the 1986 film. I like to think the name is Highlander because Christopher Lambert will decapitate you with his sword if you try and spam units because Raiden don't roll like that.

 

Well I referenced Mortal Kombat so this was a logical step

The list I took is specifically designed for decisive tactical play. It was:
Codex Blood Angels
FUNBUS
Mephiston
Chaplain
9 Death Company with 2 power weapons and 2 powerfists
Rhino
Death Company Dreadnought with Blood Talons
Stormraven with Multi Melta, Assault Cannon and Extra Armour. 

See I was wasn't joking about the decisive play. That tactical play just happens to used by my opponent to make my RAGE units to run around in circles. Also my list contains no scoring units so to win objective games all I have to do is wipe my opponent off the table. Awesome.

Anyway, as I said earlier I wasn't drinking so I could drive up a car full of people from the Capital all the way to Dublin. In my car were:

Barry "On a 6 can I do it" Hickey who was bringing broken Space Wolves with a broken Thunderwolf Lord of broken-ness

Merv "I don't need Space Wolves to win" Murphy bringing the Vanilla Marines of mediocrity. Spoiler Alert: He totally needs Space Wolves.

Donal "Lives under a bridge with Lenny" Carroll using Wolf Scouts and friends. Donal was here to see if playing Space Wolves means you auto do well. Another Spoiler Alert: It totally does.

and last and most certainly least  
David "Already wrote a tournament report on this" Coleman using a different version of the Funbus.
 

We were all dressed so Fabulously.

So after downloading some quality 80's tunes and threw them on CD, albeit with some Rammstein (because I know how much Merv complains about music he hasn't heard before) it was time to hit the road. After collecting all the lads it was hitting the road time, for future reference "hitting the road time" is like 6 in the morning, and we struck off to Dublin.

During the journey Merv was nice enough to give me advice for the upcoming Fantasy tournament I was going to (that review is up next) and was my first foray into WHFB. I was going to be playing High Elves, Merv's old army. It turns out that his advice was the same advice I had heard everywhere else. Teclis and White Lions, all the time, everytime. Apparently, Teclis is "face meltingly broken"

Silly Nazi. Using Teclis without proper protection.

Anyway enough about Fantasy. We arrived in Dublin, parked up and high tailed it over to Gamers World to get out 40king up and running. Upon arrival we were chastised for our tardiness. It's all well and good for Stowe to give out about people being late, I mean, Meath is already in Dublin. Due to being late it was straight into game one with no time for chatting with the lads. That'll have to wait until after game 1.

Game 1 had me up against Alan Garvey and his Chaos Marines. At K-Con there was a prize awarded for people who created a list that used the third "tier" of the comp restrictions. This mean bringing at least 2 HQs, 3 Troops, 2 Elite, 2 Fast, 2 Heavy and 1 more unit at 1000pts with no duplication. A mean feat by any standards. My first opponent completed these specifications so his list was something like:

All squads are minimum size with no upgrades(including the havocs)
Chaos Lord w/ no upgrades
Summoned Daemon
Noise marines
Chaos Marines
Khorne Beserkers
Havocs
Raptors
Preadator
Dreadnought
Chaos bikes
Chosen
And some other things I've forgotten.

Like this but Chaos Marines

Now having a list with only a single gun being able to kill my Stormraven might seem ideal but we were playing an objective mission, meaning I had to kill his entire army to win the game.  12 or so units. Class. Well the game was very straight forward. Alan knew exactly how to win the game even with a complete inability to kill my units. He reserved his bikes to have them boosting around for the end of the game. He got my death company out in the open and have them running around in circles for the game. Fortunately for me I was able to just barely kill all of his units. Game ended 20-0 to me. I must say that Alan is one of the nicest people to play. He had come with a list that was designed to do nothing but win the novelty prize but he had passed 1 more save in turn 5 it would have been a draw. Great game against a lovely player.

I don't have a picture of Alan but here's a different nice guy.

After Game one it was time to say my hellos to people. It was great seeing all of the Dublin and Northern Ireland based gamers. After many chats I was pitted against an Northern gamer and an old nemesis of mine, Rowan Sheridan. We had played at Warpcon and he had beaten me and now we were playing at K-Con, it was time for revenge. Hopefully. He was once again playing Necrons which included:
Lord on a barge,
Destroyer Lord,
Wraiths,
Annihilation Barge,
Warriors,
Immortals,
Solar Pulse,
Veil of Darkness

I'm not saying anything. It's just a band in a wagon.

We were playing Dawn of War, Killpoints. Also know as yay, I don't have to wipe him completely. Class. I won the dice roll and elected to go first. Meph deployed front and centre next to "his" Rhino. The raven was boosting on turn 1. All of Rowan's unit were rolling on turn 1. Long story short Rowan killed half of my army, which unfortunately for him is 3 kill points. I managed to kill an Annihilation Barge, Command Barge, his warriors, the wraiths and the Destroyer lord. Game ended as a win to me on Killpoints and roughly equal on VPs, so a straight 15 - 5 to me.

That day it was Death Company flavoured.

After this game it was time for a burrito break. I headed over to Bujom(sp?) with Ryan "Has never gotten sick from drinking" McMullan as he was signing this places praises for what seemed like one thousand years. After a very edible lunch it was time to head back to the shop for game 3. This had me up against Grey Knights. I was playing Ray O'Kane in Pitched Battle, Capture and Control. Ray's army consisted of:

Draigo
5 Terminators
5 Paladins
Psy-rifle Dread

In this game I suffered from a serious case of didn't read the rulespack-itis. I was unaware that games could not go on past turn 5. I won first turn and deployed my army. Ray reserved everything. Paladins and Dread walking on and the Termies were deepstriking. I was boosting around in circles until turn 3 when the Paladins and Termies turned up. The 1 psycannon destroyed my Stormraven leaving all of my stuff fall out. Meph and the Death Company killed his Terminators while my Dread charged the Paladins. The Death Company Dread couldn't kill the paladins and the rest of my stuff was too far away to contest his objective by turn 5. Ending in a win to Ray. Entire game over and done with in less than 10 minutes.

And makes you look like less of a fool at tournaments.

All of that spare time was a very bad thing as I a) couldn't fill it with drinking and b) was in a place full of things I wanted to throw money away on. I am an absolute fiend for impulse buying. Luckily Dave finished his game early too and we could sit down, play liar's dice and hurl abuse at people. This kept us entertained until it was time for Game 4. My game four was against Kevin Salendini and his Eldars Noirs (That means Dark Eldar, he's french) in Dawn of War, Wipe him out (or as he called it, objectives). Kevins army consited of
Ravager,
Venom,
Razorwing,
Raider,
Incubi,
Wyches,
Trueborn,
Warriors,
Scorges.

I won first turn and deployed Meph about 7 inches behind the Rhino which was on the 24 inch line. My Raven was hanging just off the board ready to launch forward. Kevin, being French, seized the inititative, came on and blew up the rhino. Turns out Meph was just within 6 inches of the tank which rolled a 6 inch explosion, rolled a 6 to wound him and he failed his 2+ save. Pretty much sums the whole game up. In my turn my Raven drives forward 24 inches. My assault cannon doing nothing to a Raider. Meph double one perils casting his jump pack, double six perils casting preferred enemy before charging some scourges(?), I think that's what they were. He kills 2 and takes a wound from them in combat. It was all coming up Mephy.

Kevin destroyed me here. My death company did nothing before dying to a incredibly low amount of splinter rifles. My DC dread took 3 turns of combat to kill 5 trueborn before get shot and dying. I'm pretty sure the game ended 18 - 2 to him. Moving swiftly on.

Your wyches fight like girls. ICE BURN! I feel better now.

After some more hanging around it was time to play game 5. I was up against someone who had in the game just before played Dave's fun bus and had not come out the better for it. Luckily for me it meant he had some practice against this list. Wait...... actually, that's not good for me. Ah well, it's not like it changes my tactic of RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR CHARGE THINGS. 
My opponent was Jamie Byrne and he was playing Chaos Space Marines with:

Demon Prince, Wings, Warptime
10 Chaos Marines, Meltagun, Chaos Glory, Power Fist
8 Berzerkers, Power Weapon, Rhino
8 Summoned Daemons
3 Obliterators


Basically I won first turn and had a serious advantage going first. In turn 1 I boosted the raven which had Meph and the Dread in it towards his 'zerkers and Prince while my fast rhino went after his marines. His reply is to shoot the Oblits to no effect and position everything to make it harder for me. Thankfully with a solid fleet roll from meph he manages to get into the prince and draw combat at 2 wounds each. The DC Dread manages to melta the Rhino and charge the contents. The Death Company make the marines and wipe them out. The Raven also kills an Oblit. With the marines with the Icon dead the daemons also die. In his turn 2 the oblits immobilise the Raven while Meph kills the Prince and the Dread finishes the 'zerkers. My turn 3 I kill all the Obliterators. Game ends with a win to me. I felt bad for Jamie having to play 2 fun buses back to back. The same thing happened to Rowan as he played Dave right after me but he beat me at Warpcon, so screw that guy.

Jamie, sorry you had to play Dave.

So all told I ended up in 7 place. My congratulations go to Ralph risk for winning the whole tournament. Colin Murray for picking up second and Dave for going for the sad, hiding draw in game 5 and getting 3rd. It was a shame but after the event the validity of ralph's win was called into question. He has been accused of trading certain "favours" in return for his round 5 opponent throwing the game. I don't know the validity of the statement but I can tell you I think neither party would ever be involved in anything like that.

Ever.

So after we said our goodbyes, got ourselves a nice bit of food we all got in the car to head home. After getting lost, thanks to Dan "Nerd, True Story" Ahern and having to head through Naas, we got on our way home. On the way home we worked out a hilarious Space Wolf list for Itzacon for Donal after Wolf Scouts and friends doing so well at 1000pts. A great day had by all. Thanks John for a great event and I'll see you this weekend in the same place for the masters(report due in 4 years).

Warpcon 2012

So finally I've writing tournament reports of events I went to this year. And first up is one close to my heart: Warpcon 2012. Warpcon held a 1850pt, Warhammer 40,000 tournament in UCC on the last weekend of January. It was also utilising a very interesting 2 missions per mission rulespack. It was different from the one that was used in the TOWN by putting more weight on the secondary objective. It was also the first 2 day tournament where I'd be using the new Necron Codex.

They said they'd be back.

The list I was using was what I affectionately call my "So many new things so I took one of everything" list:

Anrakyr w/Command Barge
Overlord w/ Mindshackle, Warscthye, Semp Weave and Command Barge 
Royal Court 1:
Solar Pulse Crytek
Veil Cryptek
Royal Court 2:
3 S8 AP2 Crypteks
Solar Pulse Cryptek
Chronometron Cryptek

Triarch Stalker
7 x Warriors
8 x Warriors
8 x Immortals (W/ phyriann eternal upgrade)
6 Wraiths w/ upgrades
9 scarabs
3 scarabs
3 diversified Tomb Spyders.

As you can probably tell, the name wasn't picked ironically. I can't do irony.

Will I make a Tony Starch joke? Yes, yes I will.

Basically the ingenious plan behind my list was I was waiting for a new codex for ages. Therefore, I wanted to use all of the things, all of the time. Which I did. It was glorious. It's at this point I should say that I really like the new codex. Good but not to the retarded level of Space Wolves or Grey Knights. Cool tricks involving entropic strike and night-fighting but still quite fragile.

Anyway, I seem to be getting distracted by all this talk of wargames. It turns out that the Friday night of Warpcon was also the day that I finished my end of year exams. This led to many, many drinks being consumed. Some would say too many drinks but I don't hang out with people like that, so it's fine. After being a good Samaritan and helping transport and set up tables I parked my car in UCC with the direct intention of being unfit to drive for several days. While setting up tables the lads from Dublin arrived down, Alec "Black Templars" Cornelius, Peter "Richard Gere" Scott and newbie Ryan "Emily" McMullan. Also Bobert "Oh crap, my Drop Pods are on fire" Brennan was there but, to be honest, I see that guy all the time. He might as well move to Cork. HINT HINT.

Insert obligatory picture of Alcohol.

So anyway, we met a plethora of nerds in the Old Bar and formed to become the most formidable quiz team of all time. This time we even had a girl. An actual girl and not just Jiggy. The way I remember it, we won the quiz, were applauded as fantastic nerds and then I continued to act in a responsible manner for the rest of the evening. It was either that or we(I'm using "we" quite liberally) tried to ruin the quiz, shouted and were playing a ridiculous cruel game of roll dice and drink beer(hmmm.... sounds like Skibbcon). After many a beer, shot and other various alcoholi it was home for a good 4 hours sleep before having to be up to play in the morning.

The next morning.

So OW. My head hurt but I managed to get myself down to UCC(which is more effort than I put into my entire of 3rd year). After many hellos and hugs to all the people who came down early on the Saturday it was time to get all matched up. I was playing James "Mage" Carey of BannerCon fame. I was gutted to have missed that one as the lads have told me about how much fun it was. James was playing an Eldar hybrid lists. It had:
Elderad
Wraithlord
Big Guardians squad
2 Fireprisims
Fire Dragons in Wave Serpents
Lots of Dire Avengers with Bladestorm.
More Wave Serpents?

I won first turn which put James in a bad situation. I had a moderate amount of S8 firepower but combined with the Triarch Stalker and the chronometron it was all very reliable. So as is not uncommon with Eldar he went full reserve. I used the 2 turns to spread out. Wraiths and a lord on a barge down one flank, scarabs spyders and Anrakyr down the other. The Stalker walked down the middle with the guns getting into a good position. Half his things came on first turn. The wraiths went after the guardians and wraithlord. The scarabs ate themselves a serpent. While my lord swept a firm prism. When my wraiths managed to tag the Wraithlord into the combat versus the guardians he died to Fearless saves.

Lord of the who? Must be different Wraiths.

The rest of the game went poorly for James with his dire avengers failing to kill my Wraiths leaving enough time for my furious-charging immortals time to deepstrike over and assault next turn. The scarabs and anrakyr teamed up to maul more tanks and go after Elderad once he'd become unmeched. Unfortunately just before the game could end James was called away and had to concede the game. It was a shame as I had a lovely time playing him. He's a great opponent and I have no trouble seeing why BannerCon was such a success.
20 - 0 to me.

This put me up on Table 2 with Rowan "Why don't I just jump on this band-wagon" Sheridan playing a Venom heavy Dark Eldar Tesla heavy Necron list. To be honest, I can't ridicule his list as being all spam and broken-ness because it was the exact way I was going to go before I went with the Dana approach. His list was:
Nemesor Zandrek w/barge
Obyron
Anrakyr w/ barge
1 gun squad of Crypteks, 1 with veils and pulses.
3 Annihilation Barge
2 squads of Wraiths
Immortals
Warriors

We both decided to leave the pulses at home to get around the whole Daytime, Night-time problem. We started off and the first thing I did was charge a 6 man Wraith squad into his 5 man Wraith squad with a mindshackle lord. With that happening in the middle of the board I tried to slow his stuff down. Obyron hopped in his bosses barge and was slowing making his way towards me along with the second squad of Wraiths. I didn't have near enough guns to kill his stuff. His wraiths won out in the middle of the board and he had his objective well covered on his side of the board. I did, however, swamp Anrakyr's Barge and mange to stop him from setting out, so that made me feel better.

Suck it Other Anrakyr.

18 - 2 to Rowan.

So for my third delay to my drinking on Saturday I was playing Lloyd "I still remember those Red Imperial Guard" Courtney of The Last Chancers. I was delighted because Lloyd was the second person I'd ever played a full game of 40k with back in game 2 of Warpcon 09. He was also the first person to ever table me. Now I get a chance to get even. Lloyd was playing Dark Angels. No, not Deathwing, Dark Angels. His list was:
Interrogator Chaplain
Belial
Troop Termie Squad
Venerable Combat Dread
Big Assault Squad
Tactical Squad in a rhino
Tactical squad in a Drop Pod
2 Predators

So the table we were at had a piece of terrain in the middle courtesy of Donal "Right, okay" Casey. It was an awesome Ork Fortress. Beautifully detailed and HUGE. It took up the entire centre of the table. It reminded me of a very evil piece of terrain from Gaelcon that took advantage of poor drunk Eoin. We decided to make the walls impassable as we both had jump infantry squads so we would be a very interesting game revolving around this terrain piece. It was kill points primary, 1 objective each secondary with deployment as Dawn of War. Both objectives were deployed on one side of the fortress. I won first turn and I set up my cryteks, and 2 troops on my objective hoping to shoot anything that showed up. Lloyd brought everything on the other side of the fortress out of line of sight of my army.

And you can't shoot what you can't see.

My wraiths jumped into the fortress ready for action and hid for 2 turns while my scarabs got shot and slowly made their way towards his things. My two lords hopped into the assault squad causing the marines to do more harm to themselves than anything else. My stalker hung around my objective pretty safe, ready to destroy the tac squad and drop pod that would poised to show up at any moment. Turns out Lloyd had been told previously that scarabs are a lot scarier than they actually are, which explains the hanging back. It's didn't take too long however for him to realise he just needed to charge them and he'd be all good. The game got very bloody towards the end but I managed to get more kill points and Lloyd's defensive strategy left the two objectives in my possession too. Vps were brutal though and the game ended with a win to me. Not the utter hammering Lloyd gave me back in the day but it went a ways to patching the wounds.

And he didn't.

17 - 3 to me.

So then it was drinking time. A pile of us headed to Captain America's for dinner. For my dinner I had a Long Island Ice Tea. I emphasise the LONG as I got a Cocktail Tower. These things are awesome. Unfortunately no amount of sweet, alcoholy goodness could convince Sylvan to come back to the Old Bar with us so into a taxi we went and took off to the land of Beer(UCC Old Bar). Here I played an exhibition match or Red or Black against no 1 contender for my world championship title. The game ended rather suddenly when I predicted the joker and won the universe. Also, Burkhardt the mean German made me cry. The night ended with a bunch of people having to hear Drunk Eoin talk about why the new Necron Codex was the best thing to happen since Batman became a thing.

I later found out that Batman is a Necron.

Cue Sunday and a horribly hungover taxi ride to UCC. My head was killing me. I finally got in the door and was greeted with the great news that I was to play Mike Tagney, ETC Captain and all around way too good a player to play drunk-gover. It was also nice to see that Mike's list had been made specifically with killing Wraiths, Scarabs and Necrons in general, firmly in mind. I think this was because of two of his clubmates bringing Necron lists down. Thanks guys...

His list was:
2 x Tervigon
Hive Commander
His bodyguard
2 squads of Genestealers
2 squads of Ymargl Genestealers
Various different flavours of guants.

I had various different flashbacks to the only other time I'd played Mike before. It was in Athlone, with old Necrons, when I was too hungover to move. I had to tell him to roll all of the dice and I'd believe him and just let me die inside until I needed to roll saves. I'm some classy opponent. We were playing the 5 objective game and Mike had ALL OF THE TROOPS. Well long story short here, Mike destroyed me. He's a great player and I just couldn't handle those Ymargls. Why have these not been in every Tyranid list ever? Great game, apart from the Hangover of Doom.

I was so hungover my teeth hurt.

Loss 17 - 3

Game 5 had me against Cork gamer James Howell. Although he's a WAC-head I'd never had many dealings with James as he games mainly on the weekends, when I go down to Skibbereen and he can't come to games on Thursdays because of his work schedule. James was playing Space Wolves with everyone's favourite Great Wolf(After John Stowe), Logan Grimar. His list was:
Logan
Long Fangs
Large Grey Hunter squads in Rhinos
Tiny Wolf Guard Squads in Razorbacks
Wolf Scouts

Ah, the familiar look of cheating with Space Wolves.

This was a brilliant game with lots of back and forth, his scouts taking out my Stalker early and all of his Grey Hunters destroying my Wraiths. There was a Giant Combat with a big squad of Long Fangs and Grey Hunters in combat with a big unit of scarabs that meant that my mindshackle lord could pick on Logan and make him punch himself over and over. Silly Logan. Scarabs were the MVPs in this match making James job just way too difficult. Game ended after 7 turns of slaughter to a victory for me. James is a fantastic opponent and hope to find a way of playing his Wolves again soon.

Win 17 - 3

So I finished up on about 59 BPs, 1 BP and place behind Ryan "Cheating with Space Wolves" McMullan. I had a fantastic time and learned so much more about my new codex. I want to thank Colin and all of the lads for the sterling job, all of my opponents and everybody who was there to make the whole event spectacular. Big shout out goes to Lenny for making some class buns for the ETC fund-raising and winning Merv's predator in a game of "Throw the dice in Merv's tank to win it".

See you all there next year. I'm not going to miss it.

Terminator reference number 4

-Eoin

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.