"Insert Witty Title" - Club Meeting - 7 May

Nothing gets a bunch of West Auckland gamers excited than waking up on a Sunday and knowing that it's a club day! You can head on in a grab some game time and just escape for a little while. And today was no exception with about 20 people hitting the tables for some toy soldier action. 6 systems were in action today.

Arena Rex

Gladiatorial Combat, wild animals and all!

Moments after this, Faizal's dudes went and hid....

Such a cool little game!


Test of Honour

Battling Samurai returned to TCOW today and because it's such a quick game, there was about 4 different rounds today. Cherry blossoms and all....

Kings of War

Massed battles in the Realm of Mantica! Today, Dave's Ogres took on Daryl's Dwarves.

Black Powder

Johnny Reb came a'wanderin', lookin' fer a fight!

Dystopian Wars

Glorious navies in some weird, steampunk future.....or past. UFO's as well!

Flames of War

New arrivals in the African Desert...

The bloody Italians won this round....but we'll get them next time!

And then, we played a good, wholesome family card game...

Such fun!

We're a 40k club now: Club Meeting - 23 April

Emprah be praised! Around 1am last night the warp storms cleared just long enough for the geniuses in Nottingham to get us a message bearing miraculous news. A new edition of Warhammer 40,000 is coming. An edition said to be the best edition of the game yet. One with not one, nor two, but THREE different ways to play the game. Plus the rules are free. True, there was no mention of the current price disparity in this corner of the world, but we're sure they'll address that soon.

On the back of this news, it has been decided that henceforth T.C.O.W. shall be renamed That 40k Club Out West (T.40k.C.O.W.). No other games will be played. It's all 40k, all the time now. This rule will kick in just as soon as somebody spends NZ$83 on the new 200 page Shadow War: Armageddon rulebook. So, yeah, not any time soon.

Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled club meeting update.

It was a bit of a quiet one this week. We're in the middle of the school holidays and I guess most were making the most of decent weather. I'm sure camping is fun and all, but they missed out on some great gaming.

We had a great selection of gaming going on. X-Wing, Malifaux, Test of Honour, and Kings of War. Ogres fought Undead, the Neverborn fought Gremlins, some X-Wings and a stolen TIE Fighter took on the Empire, and two groups of Samurai and their attendant Ashigaru had a big ol' scrap somewhere in Japan.

As I spent most of my time playing Test of Honour wishing my dice would roll better, I didn't actually get any photos or have a good look at what else was going on, but everyone appeared to be having a good time.

Oh, and I managed to be just sneaky enough to pull out a win in Test of Honour. Turns out all you need to take down a Samurai Hero is a sacrificial Samurai and enough arrows.

That's all for this week. We hope to see you at the club on 7 May. We'll see then if we're any closer to renaming the club.

BLUDGEFEST IV

"Portobello Road, Portobello Road. Street where the riches of ages are stowed. Anything and everything a chap can unload, is sold off a barrow down Portobello Road. You'll find what you want on the Portobello Road."

Now if you're old enough to know where this little ditty came from*, you're pretty old man...

but once a year (sometimes twice) we invite nerds from far and wide to head to TCOW and disperse their unwanted plastic, metal, cardboard and resin to some other poor sod to store at their place, typically for cash but often for barter! It is the event known as BLUDGEFEST, and it was AWESOME!

So many different things for so many different games all looking for a new home!

And so many willing recipients!

They came from far and wide to sample the wares...

So much stuff!

But of course, being a club day, that also meant gaming was in action as well! There was X-Wing, Epic, Dystopian Wars, Kings of War and Blood Bowl all played.

Blood Bowl was awesome! Daryl and I played to get some practice in before SteamApe at the end of February.

And I should know better than to use Dwarf dice when playing Chaos...

And finally, Mike and Andrew broke out some nostalgia in the form of the old Decipher Star Trek CCG. Good times!

We closed the day with a rousing few games of Exploding Kittens! MEOW....BOOM!@@@@@@

And so Bludgefest ended....and it was great!

GAME ON!

* It's from Bedknobs and Broomsticks....which even features invading Germans.

Club Meeting - 29 January

Apologies to some old, dead dudes...

'Twas the day before DanCon, up at Sturgis West House
14 gamers rolled dice, while avoiding their spouse;
The terrain on the tables were laid out with care,
In hopes it would block line of sight here and there;
The children all opted to stay home instead,
While the gamers were happy they weren't 'round their legs.

As the above suggests, we had a great turnout this weekend. Normally this wouldn't be a surprise, but it's a holiday weekend here in Auckland and the weather is good. You'd expect more people to have headed to a beach to make the most of the weather.

Not us. We're gamers.

We had six tables covered in models and terrain and five different systems being played. Most were old stalwarts, but this weekend saw the first outing of Beyond the Gates of Antares at T.C.O.W.. Let's go through what got played...

Kings of War

Dan and Damien decided to skip getting in some last minute practise for DanCon and busted out the movement trays instead. It was Dan's Undead against Damian's Wizard Stinkfinger and his Ogre hordes. I didn't see much of this game, but I suspect the Undead will be feasting on those Ogre corpses for some time.

Damian's Warbeast tramples through the Undead lines

After the battle

Flames of War

Jonathan and Daryl took DanCon a little more seriously and got in one last game before Monday's event. It was Jonathan's German Grenadiers holding out as long as they could against Daryl's Cossack horde. Things did not look good early on for the Germans, but I missed how this ended.

The Russians advance on a German position

That's a LOT of horses

X-Wing

Roger and I had a fairly one-sided game of X-Wing with his Imperial TIE Defenders and Special Forces TIE turning my ARC-170s and T70 X-Wing into space dust. I did have one small victory, as I managed to damage one TIE enough that it blew up as it flew into an asteroid on the final turn. The dice were against me for the most part, but the game was still fun. Even if we did end up with most of the ships bumping into each other in the middle of the tables.

Ironically, this was the one game I didn't get any photos of. It was that engrossing.


Dropzone Commander

There were two separate games of DZC - one saw David's Shaltari taking on John's Scourge, and the other had (other) Damien's Resistance facing the technological might of Darren's Post-Human Republic.

I didn't see the outcome of David and John's match, but Darren seemed to share my luck with dice and he made some rather unfortunate rolls.

David and John's table
It looks like there is a chance that track could bend

David's gold and turquoise Shaltari

Damien and Darren's table

Cue the Airwolf theme...

Meanwhile, a Resistance aircraft gets the drop on the PHR

Basically, it's Mad Max vs Star Trek

13 dice needing 4+, what's the worst that could happen?

Beyond the Gates of Antares

I'd been curious about this game ever since it's somewhat disastrous Kickstarter project. I'm pleased to see it's finally made it to gaming tables and this was my first chance to actually see it in action. At first glance, it seemed Bolt Action with smaller squads, and (not really) aliens. Turns out there's a lot more too it than that.

Mark and Rob travelled up from the depths of South Auckland to challenge Faizel to a couple of games. Mark bought the power armoured Concord, Rob had the monkey-like Ghar, and Faizal had some flinty Boromites.

The models look great painted and there's a lot of character there, but I'm not sure if it really appeals to me. I might wait for a few more models to come out and see if there's anything that really grabs my attention.

The Boromites take cover from the advancing fire coming from the Concord

A Concord vehicle and supporting drones

A bigger Concord drone, with Order Die for scale

A typical Concord unit with attendant drone

Another unit taking cover behind a rock while a drone blazes away

That's all for this week. Next club meeting is the fifth Bludgefest. Hopefully the weather's just as good and you can all make it along!