We happy few, we band of brothers

- Geoff Cooper

The gang flew down to Christchurch on a gloriously sunny day (scattered across 3 flights) and had a great view in the teeny tiny little plane we were on. As we came into Christchurch the plane came under antiaircraft fire (or maybe we hit a possum) either way it lurched sideways and down. Loads of fun for the whole figure case.

We got a cab to the Avon City Backpackers, which looks impressively scuzzy from the outside but is actually OK on the inside. We're also fairly certain that we got ripped off by the Taxi Driver on the way there. He probably played the old game of 'lets see if we can drive around and around for a bit and see if the people who don't know Christchurch notice'. A real charmer too. Bitched about working long hours, abused the other road users (a few racial slurs thrown in for good measure) and was an all round great human being. Not.

Now I won't spend time describing the venue. Because if you've been there you know how cool it is. Suffice to say 3-5 bars on site and within 50 paces and lots of options for food.

The gang arrived bright and early on the first day and proceeded to lay waste to the landscape in typical Warlords fashion.

Round 1 - Glenn White - Space Wolves - Setup the Base scenario

Glenn and I played on an interesting table. It was covered in lava (impassable terrain) and was a collection of islands of rock connected by bridges (I liked this table so much I am currently building my own version - although with a bit more LOS blocking terrain J). After much violence the game was a draw. Nil all on sectors every one of which was contested. We both achieved the secondary mission though so the draws were pretty well scoring ones.

13 vs. 13

Round 2 - John Seaton - Armoured Company - Get into the enemy deployment zone mission

This game promised to be nasty. My fairly short range assault based army attacking an Armoured company with four (!) Basilisks. The fact that it was a night fight helped save me from having my arse bombed to bits by the massed artillery (Peter Dennes Black Templars were not so fortunate a few rounds latter). I won on sectors. With 3 contested and 1 held by my guys. One highlight was my opponent guessing range so badly that he over shot and shelled his own inquisitor.

18 vs. 8

The Muffin Meeting

Showed up to the NZMWF meeting on the Friday night expecting a bit of a bun fight. Turned out to be a remarkably civilised affair apart from the occasional increasingly incoherent and somewhat drunken interjections from Mike Campbell. (If you hear about anything Mike said at this meeting always remember to insert the word 'drunkenly' to the front of it - the meeting progressed a bit more quickly while Mike was getting his 5th jug) J

It was mostly fairly routinue business with some questions asked about the general failure to achieve anything except it's own existence. A motion to wind it up was discussed, voted on, and unanmioulsy defeated (after some discussion). Then there was the election for president. This almost stalled because no one seemed willing to nominate anyone other the Rob (and I think the reason Michael did get nominated was that some of the other members realised just how crooked it was going to look if someone else didn't get nominated). Then in a surprise turn of events there was no election as Rob stood down after Alan Borthwick outlined some of the problems that he felt the NZMWF had. The primary one being that it was bogged down in personality politics, which could only be resolved by the removal of the personalities involved.

So much to my astonishment far from putting the muffin to bed we instead came home with one of our own as it's president. Go figure. Good on Rob though for having the conviction to stand down when called to.

Round 3 - Kevin O'leary - Armored Company - Waste the enemy HQs

Ugly. Ugly. Ugly. Armoured company in the daylight fighting on a table with less terrain then the average golf course. We got in amongst them but just couldn't seem to come up with the lucky glancing hits in hand to hand. In the end I felt that I got off lightly by only conceding a draw with all sectors contested (even though I nearly threw the game at the last minute by almost abandoning one sector -doh!)

10 vs. 10.

Round 4. - Andrew Stanton - Emperors Children - Take the Monolith Scenario

In every tournament you see armies or terrain that inspire you. In this case Andrews Army (which looked great) has inspired me to finish off my own Emperors Children army. His force also demonstrated to me just how useful the noise marine weaponry (which I had previously dismissed) could be when decent dice were rolled. Unfortunately Andrews dice were usually only able to do half the job (great roll for Strength followed by a crappy roll for armour penetration) while mine were pretty darn good pretty consistently.

16 vs. 5

Round 5 - Tim Oliver - Kult of Speed - Rage of the Monolith

Tim's army looked cool. I'd actually heard about it on the Internet. Basically it was all battle wagons except that the wagons were modeled as Squiggoths. A fun army to play and if only my guys could have hit the side of a barn door we would have probably won. The scenario was a laugh though. Each turn there were lightning strikes and darkness (alternating) and on turn 2 the scenario had more VPs off me or Tim then we had off each other. In the end the extreme mobility of the KOS, and a few bum rolls for possession and lightning strikes meant that he held sectors 2 - 0.

5 vs. 20

Round 6 - Simon Ludemann - Dark Angels - Escape the Planet Mission

All convention my Greater Demon had been a compete waste of time. In round 1 he never showed up. In rounds 2 and 3 he showed up in the unit farthest from the enemy. In round 4 the game was pretty much over before he showed up AND he was in the farthest unit, and in the 5th round he contributed to my defeat by breaking the unit he appeared in. He made up for all this in this game. He showed up at just the right time to bail my Champion out of trouble and then helped to destroy the enemy counter attack that was their last chance to turn the tide.

16 VP vs. 5

Overall placing 8th up 5 places from last year.

The Dinner

The last time I was in Christchurch the only gripe I had was the food. Not enough and not much for you if you didn't like it fried or boiled. This time there was so much food that there was food left over AND there was a (dare I say it) salad bar (inconceivable).

We also did well in terms of final placings. Alan B got 1st in the 40K, Rachael got 2nd and best army, Richard Dagger got 3rd . Mike King also got first in the Fantasy battle. It's just a pity we weren't psychic and guessed who to put into our two teams. Because we didn't manage to have all our best place getters in the one team. Auckland won (they seemed very happy) although if we'd used Hamilton's format we would have won -insert rant from Auckland here- J.

On the Monday we showed up for casual games and then flew out on a slighly larger plane. We had one of the bumpiest landings I have ever experienecd due to the appalling weather. 'Would the passengers please remain seated while Captain Kangaroo taxis what remains of the aircraft to the terminal. Thank you for flying catastrophe air lines.'