The Battle for the Gateway of Lost Souls

"Oathbreakers" cursed Gromnir under his breath as the Elves advanced through the morning's mist. The War had dragged on for as long as anyone cared to remember and many Elves and Dwarves had perished. This meeting under truce had the potential to begin to bring the War to an end.

The two sides drew up in parallel opposite each other. With a melodic voice the Elven emmisary began to address the Dwarves in an almost patronising tone.

"The Phoenix King salutes the proud, heroic and honourable Dwarves and is pleased to listen to a request for a cessation of hostilities."

With that, two bolts swept out the mist and scythed into the Dragon Princes and Dwarves marched on the rear of the Elf column.

"Truce breakers!" sang the Elves as they charged the Dwarf lines. The Dwarves, surprised by the actions of the Elves broke and fled. The Dwarves, surprised and shocked levelled their crossbows at the Elves only to catch a glimpse of the Dwarves that had ambushed the Elves. The large pointed hats and style of beard were unmistakable. The Fallen Kin!

The crossbows found their mark and the Chaos Dwarves cried out. But the quarrellers were not enough to slow the advance of the Chaos Dwarves and they withdrew to tell the main force of the day's events. The Elves decided too to withdraw but as they did, the Chaos Dwarf sorceror took out a vial that pulsated with dark magic from within his robes. Speaking words in a dark and evil tongue, dark energy flowed involuntary out of the Elf Emissary's mouth to the vial. The Emissary dropped, lifeless. The Elves cried out in anguish and fled, leaving the field to the Chaos Dwarves.

"We have work to do". hissed the Chaos Dwarf sorceror.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Chaos Dwarves approached the ancient and crumbling temple.

"Hurry! We must not displease the Dark One."

Dust was rising on both horizon to the front and rear of the temple. The Elves and Weaklings would be here soon thought the Sorceror. They would surely know what we mean to do to the Elf-souls. We must not disappoint them as he glanced over his force within the temple.

Slowly and trance-like the Sorceror began the chanting that would allow the sacrifice of souls to Hashut. The runes of the Gateway began to glow and pulsate.

Shots sounded from Earthshaker and Stone Throwers alike. The Chaos forces deployed around the temple charged out to meet the Elf and Dwarf lines. Above the din, the chanting resonated and dark clouds began to swirl around the Gateway.

The Phoenix King and Dwarf High King had sent their best warriors to combat this mortal and spiritual threat. Suddenly the Chaos line gave way to the Elves. The White Lions dashed like quicksilver into the Chaos artillery within the Temple.

For a split second, the Sorceror became aware of his mortal situation and lost concentration. Sparks flew from the Gateway and shocked the Sorceror. Stunned and mentally drained from his exertions, the Sorceror stumbled to the crest of the ruins, gasping out as he felt his body start to solidify. Seizing the opportunity, the Dwarf artillery rang out and an Organ Gun founds its mark. The Sorceror exploded in a shower of crystal rock.

As the last pockets of Chaos resistance were surrounded and destroyed the bloodied armies of Elf and Dwarf drew up against each other once again. This War would continue, but not today. Today's blood reaving was over and the horrors witnessed that day would not easily be forgotten.

Altrincham Altercation Event Writeup Thing

Good evening. Matt and Chris have been good enough to let me abuse their portion of the Internet and spew forth vaguely informative words about what we get up to at Dice Not Included and why it's fun. I do this against my better judgment - not because I don't love the sound of my own cybernetic voice, because I do, but because every time I talk about the games I/we play I am revealing myself to be an absent-minded prematurely-senile balding duffer with only the vaguest grasp of strategy or, for that matter, basic mathematics.

So, the Altrincham Assault. 750 points, three games, Steamroller 4 scenarios: Mosh Pit, the one with the four vertical strips that I can't remember the name of, and the one with the six quadrants between the deployment zones that I really can't remember the name of. I feel this indicates the amount of prep work I'd put in to the tournament - rather than thinking about what would suit the scenarios or the likely opponents like some sort of sensible person, I just brought along my regular "lots of helljacks that hit you in the face" list and my regular "go ahead and kill all my steam-driven doom zombies, they'll only come back as ghosts and rip your face off" list, neither of which exactly excels at taking and holding areas of the table.

Game one was against a pleasant chap called Rick who'd brought a Privateer army. First time I'd seen one of those since the book came out, and Rick claimed he'd be riding on the fact that nobody ever seemed to play against Pirates that often or have the faintest idea what they did. It was a disappointing game - not because of Rick, but because of my seeming inability to remember either what my army did or how to win the scenario. I shan't bore you with the details (because they would bore you) but suffice to say that I got two turns, Rick got three, and we both spent half an hour sitting around not doing very much instead of having the hilarious punch-up that the two armies could have accomplished. It left something of a bad taste in my mouth, and I really hope Rick shows up to the next event so we can have a proper barney.

Lunch, cups of tea all round (Chris, bless him, spent most of the day running around with mugs of precious, life-giving warmed caffeine), and a quick conference with the other Dice Not lads revealed that none of us had done that well. Rick's club, who play a lot of these land-grab scenarios in a league context where winning matters (as opposed to the pick-up games we play, which usually end on a warcaster kill and don't have much in the way of context), had conversely done rather well.

The generally poor Dice Not Included performance meant I was facing our local boy Tom 'The Quiet Digressor' Kinsey and his meticulously planned Cryx army. I'd planned on the prospect of facing at least one Cryx opponent and felt I could have a good go of it even if my opponent hadn't been so good as to feed me souls and new recruits by bringing living troops of their own. Alas for my brilliant planning, I was bitten on the bum by the scenario again - one of those ones where your army has to spread out and have things right across the board. I have a peculiar horror of doing this (years of playing Warhammer Undead where you have to huddle around your army general if you want to ever make it even halfway across the board, maybe?), especially when my army has things that have to hide behind other things and things that need to be near other things to serve their purpose. The Quiet Digressor was able to creep ahead on points by holding the one area I hadn't been able to spare anything to hold. This game left an even worse taste in my mouth, mostly because I lost the ability to add up numbers on dice about halfway through and didn't/couldn't really handle the scenario, and thus felt like an even bigger idiot than I had in the last one.

At this stage I was honestly thinking about dropping out. Ben applied his unorthodox motivational technique and convinced me to stick around for the third game, and I'm glad he did because the third game was bally good fun and reminded me why I come to these things in the first place. Ruth and her Circle army gave me the best game of the day - something like her fourth or fifth game ever and she fought me to a draw. Mistakes were made by both players but they weren't the sort that loses you the game before you've started because of invisible lines on the table. Moments of genuine miniaturised excitement were had. It was a slow game (neither of us really knowing what Ruth's army was capable of) but it was thoroughly enjoyable and our armies actually got their teeth into one another, which is always nice.

Onwards, then, to the award ceremony, in which visiting gamers took away almost every award and left the Dice Not crew (those who'd not scarpered home to their infernal lightnin' boxes at the end of the third round) very much in the loyal applause category. In fact, the only one of our regulars who left with anything prize-shaped was, rather surprisingly, me. I ended up taking home a rather snazzily top-hatted rubber duck (the Pretentious Twonk Who Turned Up In A Waistcoat Best Dressed Gamer Award) and a £20 gift voucher for painting my army and being lucky enough to have my name tugged out of a hat.

Despite having had a rather poor time of it on the table, I'm looking forward to the next event. One or two alterations to the format spring to mind (at least one game that doesn't revolve around occupying imaginary zones of increasingly abstract construction and timed turns spring to mind), but the essential goal of the events - bringing in some new people and introducing some variety into the club's games - is being achieved. Long may it continue to be so. I may even have decided what to spend the twenty quid on before the next one.

Altercation Results

1. Jamie Perkins
2. Darran Palmer
3. Alex Smith
4. Rich Paget
5. Rich Loxam
6. David Holliday
7. Nathan Hoole
8. Austin Pickles
9. Jason Denton
10. Rich Jennings
11. James Johnson
12. Ian Adams
13. Ben Josling
14. Jonthan Taylor-York
15. Tom Frith
16. Tom Kinsey
17. Jon Garrad
18. Ruth Pape
19. Steve Bowden
20. Lee Yates (Webb's Wooden Spoon award)


Fully painted army: John Garrad

Best-dressed gamer: John Garrad
Coolest gamer: Alex Smith
Most nautically-themed army: Rick Jennings

Altrincham Altercation Announced!

Dice Not Included is pleased to announce its second tournament of the year - the Altrincham Altercation.

This is a Warmachine and Hordes tournament for Sunday,the 21st June. Enjoy 3 games of 750 points with other tournament going types; no real Warmachine knowledge necessary.

Download the rather loose rulespack and an entry form here.

Entry is strictly limited to 24 places (6 more than last time!) so get your entries in now!

The current list of confirmed entrants is:

Austin Pickles
Steve Bowden
Rich Paget
Jonathan Taylor-Yorke
Nathan Hoole
Will Booker
Ben Josling
Tom Kinsey
David Holliday
Alex Smith
Chris Messer
Jon Garrad
Jason Denton
Ruth Pape
Ian Adams
Darran Palmer
Rich Loxam
Rick Jennings
James Johnson
Jamie Perkins

Assault Results

Gather round my children, for a tale of focussed fury and furious focus, of beasts and machines of war...

At the risk of sounding knowledgeable about Warmachine and Hordes and not the least bit creepy I’m going to stop with that prologue.

Firstly, a few thanks are in order. Will, Hey Steve! and Chris played a blinder helping me to organise and orchestrate what proved to be a highly successful event; The Gaming Crypt for agreeing to host the event and extending the opening hours to accommodate everyone and of not least the gamers, who without would not have made such an event possible.




The Dice Not Included events team enjoy a brew round.

But enough of all that! What people want to read about is the event! So without further ado let’s get on with it!


Set Up and Round 1

The appetite for a Warmachine event was quite evident in that the Assault quickly sold out after it was advertised, so much so that some of our more lethargic club members ended up not having a place. In the end, we took the hard decision after much bribery with tea and biscuits to add a ninth table.

Gamers started arriving just before 10:00 and as is customary were greeted by the sweatiest of donuts. Yes, that is sweatiest, not sweetest. A quick brew round was made and as the first round had already been drawn players were directed to their tables to the sound of Han Zimmer’s awesome score from the motion picture Gladiator; winner of no less than five Academy Awards. The first round had been engineered to make sure that club members didn’t play each other and same faction games were avoided.

The first round started a little after 10:30 due to a latecomer (there’s always someone isn’t there?) and the gamers made it their business to show that they did indeed ‘have a pair’ . The first scenario was enthusiastically titled ‘Mosh Pit’. I didn’t see much moshing or an awful lot of headbanging but it did appear that models were congregating in a circle in the centre of the board and bashing into each other. Turns out the objective of the scenario was to be as close to the centre board as possible. After a slight overrun on the schedule games were mostly wrapped up by 12.45. As the gamers took a break for lunch the table stood like so:

Entrant Result Points

1 Tony Moore 3 26
2 Jamie Perkins 3 25
3 Neal Barton 3 20
4 James Johnson 3 18
5 Tom Kinsey 3 15
6 David Holliday 3 12
7 Craig Macinnes 3 10
8 Adam Brown 3 8
9 Nathan Hoole 3 3
10 Jason Denton 0 17
11 Dan Melia 0 14
12 Tom Whittaker 0 10
13 Ben Josling 0 8
14 Chris Webb 0 6
15 Adam Dennett 0 4
16 Steve Bowden 0 3
17 Glenn Lloyd 0 3
18 Alex Smith 0 3




The tournament in full-swing, with young Mr. Dare giving the thumbs up.

Many gamers took full advantage of the KFC vouchers set aside for them and the fact KFC was opposite the Gaming Crypt to tuck into chicken fried the Kentucky way. The Colonel would have been proud.


Round 2

Once everyone had had their fill, they returned to discover their next opponent. Pairings were made using the Swiss pairing system to be as neutral as that nation that makes clocks and chocolate and knives.

The scenario was Break the Line and the players quickly got cracking, this time to the Medieval II: Total War score, some cracking tunes on there and the game is even better – though not as good as their new Empire game.

]

More slaughter occurred and lines were broken and as the second round came to an end the standings were as follows:

Entrant Result Points

1 Craig Macinnes 6 38
2 Tom Kinsey 6 34
3 Tony Moore 6 30
4 James Johnson 4 36
5 Neal Barton 4 23
6 Nathan Hoole 4 12
7 Jamie Perkins 3 28
8 Ben Josling 3 22
9 Adam Dennett 3 17
10 David Holliday 3 16
11 Dan Melia 3 16
12 Adam Brown 3 13
13 Alex Smith 3 7
14 Jason Denton 1 24
15 Steve Bowden 0 13
16 Tom Whittaker 0 12
17 Chris Webb 0 6
18 Glenn Lloyd 0 4


Round 3

With 3 people duking it out for maximum points and 4 others for wooden spoon the scene was set for the final round which was (adopt deep and booming voice) Process of Elimination!

Hey Steve!’s rather large and pointy horn was blown to announce the start of the final round and the players engaged with each other ferociously.

The results began to trickle in and the tension mounted as everyone became eager to establish who the victor was.


The Result

The players gathered around as our resident Dwarf player sounded his horn once more – drum roll please.....



The final result was incredibly close. So close in fact that the winner had to be decided on the total number of victory points conceded. Craig had conceded 9 victory points whereas Tony had conceded 27. Craig was declared the winner of the first ever Altrincham Assault!

Prizes were awarded for those that had finished 1st, 2nd and 3rd so congratulations to Craig, Tony and Nathan who all thoroughly deserved the praise and adulation of their fellow competitors.


Reflections

It was brilliant to see such so many turn out and I think it’s a strength of Warmachine that there was a healthy mix of factures and no one faction dominated either the list of entrants or the top quartile.

Looking to the future I’d really enjoy running another event and feedback suggested that everyone really enjoyed themselves. It was hard work and little brain melting and that was just trying to get the lookup formulae to work on Hey Steve!’s fake excel open office spreadsheet!
Stay tuned for the next Altrincham Assault!

Regards,

Matt






Full gallery here.

Warmachine Tournament - Sunday 29th March

In case you've been wondering why all the delay in the latest post, well the wait is finally here- Dice Not Included's first Warmachine/Hordes tournament of 2009!



You should be able to see both the entry form and the schedule for the day.

It promises to be great fun and is limited to 16 places so send your entry form as soon as you can.

DOWNLOAD THE PDF ENTRY FORM HERE.

Current entrants are:

- Darren Palmer
- Adam Brown
- Tony Moore
- Jamie Perkins
- David Holliday
- Rich Paget
- Steve Bowden
- Neal Barton
- Alex Smith
- Dan Melia
- Chris Webb
- Ben Josling
- Daniel Dare
- Nathan Hoole
- Glenn Lloyd
- Tom Kinsey

I look forward to seeing you on the day!

The club can be contacted at dicenotincluded@hotmail.co.uk

Fanmail

We've got some fanmail at DNI, from Games Workshop's very own Mark Wells. He sent us a battlemat, and this postcard...



Cheers Mark!