Blind date at Warhammer World.

Next bit folks,

On Friday I was picked up by my first blind date, Jon, and what a handsome fella he was too. He then chauffeured me to WHW where I was met by all my other prospective partners. A veritable smorgasbord of masculinity if ever I saw one!

Ok, with the serious part out of the way, now it's time for some silly stuff. I didn't take too many photo's at WHW coz I was having too much fun playing with my new pals. I'll try to make up for this error on my part by making this post as exciting as possible......with lots of big words instead.

Once Jon and I had arrived we met up with JB, Paul, Chris, Colin, Chris (yup there's more than one), and Graham Apperley. They were all a very friendly, welcoming & fun bunch of guys. I really felt like I was among "my kinda guys" right from the outset :)

Paul, admiring Jon's posterior. While Colin steadies himself for a Brian Blessed impersonation.

With the formalities were taken care of we jumped straight into playing with make believe soldiers. Jon did a cracking job of providing each of us with an information sheet, looked like something straight out of a proper book it did! Containing a cool back story to the area we were to fight over, a time line of when shit got real for the locals, our fellow ne'er-do-wells, timetable, subplots etcetera etcetera, all bloody good stuff!


Here's my roster sheet that I turned up with:

We then sorted out which tables we would be playing on and with which opponent....I got stuck with Paul, or is it, he got stuck with me? One of the two. Seriously though, Paul was great, coz he knew the rules. I was real rusty, I'd played Necromunda wayyyy back when, so I needed a lot of help.

Place of pretend battle.

Paul, preparing to slice and dice my Eldar into xenos steaks.

Paul's Arbites, camping out with a rocket launcher, cheeky bugger.

"Fuck'n xenos scum....come out and fight like a man!"

"Ahhh, boss....they have a rocket launcher.....what next?

Rocket to the head resulted in a slight bruise.

Up the elevator shaft, let the shooting gallery begin!

"Shoot back, my waif battle brothers."

"Scatter laser to the rescue!!!"

"Ahahhhhh! The Waif's are shooting at us!"

The result of this game was that Paul failed his bottle test after we both had sustained a few casualties. He had one death on the injury table IIRC, my guy recovered ok. A fun game with a cool cat. Thanks for being patient with my shitty rule's knowledge Paul :)


We then stormed Bugman's for an Ale and a pie. The two yanks, Tom and Chris (another Chris, there's fousands of'em!) turned up for a short while as well. They stayed for about an hour, before heading off to the Foundry, where all the cool kids were :p


My next game was with Chris, the Ninjabread guy! The wargaming centre in my brain went into overdrive when I got to see Chris's awesome mini's that I'd only ever seen online, in person! Have a look at them;

Even with my shitty phone camera they still look ace.

Excitement contained momentarily, we discussed our mission. I had to protect a Promethieum cache, while Chris had to rest it from me. He had an extra mission too, a secret one, kill some unfortunate guy in my gang, whom I was unaware of being targeted.

We ended up just using 2/3 of this table, otherwise we'd have spent
most of the game just trying to make contact.

I camped out behind this balcony.

"My treasure, fuck off!"

There was another cache up top, but we didn't bother with it.

Chris getting ready to deploy.

A couple over here....

The rest over here.

Chris went for the classic pincer movement, I just camped out.

Squat succeeds in jumping over this gap.

Wraith canon takes one out.

Sneaky bugger on his way to the cache.

Getting a bead on the squat, but failed to hit. Weapon must
have been too heavy for the ponce to wield correctly.

Chris sent a ganger up against my Leader, who carved him a new one.

But this was just a clever rues, so that his Leader could go
toe to toe with mine without getting gunned down on the approach.

No matter, I fucked them both up.

My reinforcements did nada. By the time they arrived the
baddies had booked it.

The result from the second game was that after taking a few too many casualties, Chris's gang failed they're bottle test. I think a couple of his guys either died or were out of action for the next game too?

During the day's gaming I was introduced to Andy Hoare & Gadge Harvey by Jon. They have been sporadically posting kick arse batreps and other coolness on their blog Tales from the Maelstrom since day dot. Well worth a look see, there's a tonne of oldschool RT on there that'll keep even the hardest of grognard's entertained for days, DAYS man!!!!

Next up was Chris Drake, the hater of pixies. He brought a gang of bolter bitches, which he said he had only painted up the day before, but actually looked the goods. Excellent speed painting Chris!

Our mission was to get to the two Promethium cache's and get them off the table. Obviously we were trying to prevent the other gang from doing the same.

Chris, surveying the field of war....or trying to locate a bloody pen?

Setting up, ready for a fight!

Making they're way around to try and cut off my escape.

I headed straight up the guts.

Split my forces.

Balancing act on this trying battle board.

Chris was so bored with my antics that he made a phone call mid game.

That was until I shot the shit out of a few of his guys.

And made a few fall off the platforms..teeehhh :)

This was a tough game, Chris reacted to my push up the centre, making a dash for the cache's, by moving around my flanks, hoping to cut off the escape route. If he had succeeded in reaching that section of the table I would have most probably been shot to bits. This table had next to no cover, apart from the platforms levels, so it was hard to stay out of sight. Luckily for me, I got to some better vantage points and was able to shoot, and pin, a few of Chris's gang. Both of our gangs had members shot off into the "water" below and were removed as casualties. Chris failed a bottle test and the game was over.

I just want to add that this table might look great, but it's a pain to play on. We were constantly walking around it, trying to see where the enemy were, figuring out the safest path etcetera. Nice to look at, but not very practical.

I had a chance to take a few happy snaps during the day too;

JB & Colin having fun, without smiling.

Paul & Jon, wondering what they had done to deserve this.

So, I can't remember which team won, couldn't give a rats arse to tell you the truth. I had a great time, much mirth and merriment was had. All in the company of a fantastic group of guys that I've had the pleasure of conversing with online with for a few years now. It was by far the best blind date I've ever been on, apart from the lack of genital stimulation....that was unforgivable.

Oh, and lastly, I had a minor fanboy moment (after the fact) when I was introduced to a grey haired guy in Bugman's by Jon. I said hello to him and had an extremely brief, polite and cursory conversation, after which Jon and I left WHW. Heading out to the carpark Jon asked me if I knew who that guy was, I said "no, I had no idea". It was non other than Jes Goodwin himself. I'm a stupid fucker sometimes.


On a serious note, I'd like to thank all of you sexy men that I met at WHW. You made my decision to fly half way across the world to play toy soldiers all worth it....and then some!

Cheers :)