Warhammer Fantasy and Specialist Games stuff up for sale

Who else popped their gaming
cherry with a Specialist Game?

It's only been 6 months since I've last posted here. While I could clean the cobwebs and watch tumbleweed roll past I'm just going to dive straight into it. I've got plenty of Specialist Games stuff lying around my gaff that isn't going to be used in the foreseeable future and I'm looking to pass them onto someone that'll enjoy using them as they'll only spend their time in a box in a wardrobe otherwise.

I've already shifted on some Blood Bowl stuff and now its Necromunda's turn with these Van Saars. There'll be more to follow in the coming days with more Necromunda, Warhammer Fantasy High Elves (lots of them) and Warhammer Quest characters too.

ETC Battle Report Round 6: Austria

So after our caning at the hands of the hosts we were paired off with Austria in the final round. But not without a bit of controversy arising. The Nordies were left without opponents after the Norweigans flaked off to catch flights without informing them first (they only informed the Judges which was a bit disrespectful to their opponents) and Northern Ireland won the round 20-0. The Austrians had 2 lads in the same boat (should that be plane) and so they were down 2 men but we all tried to figure something out. We were given the option of winning the round by default which we turned down, and instead offered to have 2 of the Nordie lads take their places but the Austrians refused. Fair enough.

In the end, two of our players sat it out and we played 6 on 6 but we were up 40 points as a result of 2 byes. At least that would cover us for the 20 point penalty that was imposed because our lists were late because Darragh can't count. :P

ETC Battle Report Round 5: Switzerland

3+ saves? We can't make them.

So after our draw with Denmark we were paired off with the hosts Switzerland and this would realistically determine which of us would get a top 10 finish. I was paired off with Michel 'Giles Le Breton' Weibel and his semi-mech Eldar. The transports and Avatar didn't worry me but the War Walkers did - with their hail of shots they could realistically take out a Razor or unit of Long Fangs a turn while I would have to batter them into submission, forcing me to dedicate my firepower.

It wasn't an army I wanted to face as I couldn't rely on Stormcaller due to Runes of Warding and the Walkers would be a balls to get rid of, as would the Falcon with its Holofields. Have I mentioned before that I despise Holofields?

ETC Battle Report Round 4: Denmark

A 'Draw Pub' Result.

So the start of day 2 saw us pitted against more Scandinavians but this time of the Danish variety. Most of the team had headed out for a few beers on the Saturday night with 2 of us heading home about 2.30am and the other four staying out til 6.30am. If one of the other lads want to to come clean about how much they spent on a 1 litre bottle of Smirnoff and 5 cans of Red Bull in a Swiss nightclub I'll hold off on it. For now. :P

We all came in tired, some more tired than others and our Captain wandered in at 9.10am drinking whiskey. After thanking him for living up to national stereotypes I was asked if I could take a Grey Knight list with lots of infantry. I reckoned I could outrange him and play for a draw that would sneak points our way so I went for it rather than have it demolish one of our other lists or cause one of our swords to lose points.

ETC Battle Report Round 3: Sweden

A-ah-ahh-ah, ah-ah-ahh-ah, They came from the land of the ice and snow

With 3 points out of a possible 4 we were now playing with the big boys. As Quigley, our VC, said: 'These are the teams that you want to be playing. They [Sweden] are dark horses for the title and they're really, really good. They know what they're doing and we're about to be given a lesson.' Spoken just like a teacher.

I don't know if he's a history teacher but one thing I've noticed about history lessons is that everything operates on a cyclical basis i.e. events tend to be repeated. For those that are unaware the Vikings first showed up in Ireland about 795 AD and raped and pillaged their way across the country against the unprepared defenders (they were largely monks, and not the martial arts-loving Shaolin-types either) until they were finally all put to the sword in 1014 at the Battle of Clontarf by Brian Boru (who was the martial art-loving type that was stabbed to death while praying after the battle). So, where am I going with this?

ETC Battle Report Round 2: Belgium

Just look at those legs.

ETC Game 2 - Belgium

Flushed with victory from Round 1 we were drawn with Belgium. We were confident that we could get 2 points from them too which would have meant we might play one of the pre-tourney favourites like ze Germans or the Poles.

I wandered off to have a look at other armies including a stunning Harlequin-themed Dark Eldar army and give the Captain room to think about match-ups. I came back to see Guard and Grey Knights in front of me. I wasn't excited about Guard in Dawn of War but nor did I fancy the 2+ save horde of GK. My decision was made when the GK were given to our Nid player Cornflakes who assured us he had taken this kind of list in practice and knew what to do to crack it.

And this is where the importance of the match-up system came into being.

ETC Battle Report Round 1: Finland

Posers.

So I'm thrown up early as an answer to the Finnish Guard played by Aleksi Meuronen who has the coolest 'tache I've ever seen. I've had a fair bit of practice against this list (with match-ups for Round 1 released early) so I reckon I can take it but I'm worried about how much I'll bleed: 8 Razorbacks at the start tends to become 3 or 4 by the end while my Grey Hunter squads are beefy enough to mangle 10 Guardsmen but not enough to stand up to sustained fire from a gunline. Plus my Scouts are quite squishy and will take on a solitary Guard squad but not 2 or 3 at once.

It was definitely going to be an interesting game but I was feeling quietly confident going into it. Then we had our team talk where I was told that I was expected to get a win and loads of points. Basically: Nuke Finland.

No pressure so then.

ETC Painting

I was lucky enough to be able to sneak off between rounds to take snaps of other player's armies and to have a gawk at the painting competition that was taking place upstairs.

It wasn't just GW but there was plenty of other categories (WW2, vehicles etc.) but the main things that grabbed my attention were the GW, Fantasy and sci-fi.

I found some funky stuff like the Laughing God on the right, although I reckon the guy with the freehand faces on his cloak was the best entry at the show. It was between the Dreadknight and the Laughing God for the front page here but I just like the colours on this guy and he also reminds me of Collodi from Malifaux.

Scroll down to see the rest

I'm off to the ETC

They've so much money they can buy other countries. Assholes.

So I've got about 2 and a half hours until I have to get a bus to take me to the Pale so I have time to throw up a post before I race off. I've been chatting with some people other there and the cost of the place is terrifying - it's €12 for a Big Mac meal. That's $16 to the Yanks out there.

Thankfully there are some saving graces - I'm bringing some food and getting as much booze as I can at the airport and I've been reliably informed there's some quality beers available in the local supermarket for €6, even though the exchange rate is murder at the moment.

ETC points deductions. Already.

So we're not off to the flying start we'd hoped for. Sigh.

The deadline for list submission for ETC lists was mid-July so they could be checked in advance by judges and other teams. It turns out a fair few of the teams including ourselves botched the job and as a result of it have been docked points. Thankfully for us it wasn't a heavy Team Points (TP) deduction but a Battle Point (BP) one.

In fairness, the referees had to impose some form of sanction and it could be much worse from our point of view so while it will come back to haunt us in some fashion (of that I have no doubt) it's definitely not the end of the world and allows us to get on with our games and try to grind our way through the other teams, which I'm fully confident we can do. See below to find out who else has been burned.

One Year On

Even I'm unimpressed with my once-a-month posting in the recent past. Thankfully I've been busy gaming instead of talking/theorising about games. In another day or two I should be comfortable with the Finnish lists that I'd expect to face at the ETC (now 2 and 1/2 weeks away) before I move onto the other team's lists.

To let my brain relax from the demanding 40k, I've really got stuck into Malifaux, running with Zoraida as my Master. She's hard to get the hang of but I've tried out Ol' Saddlebags with a variety of crews before I got my hands on Collodi and co. (on the right) and added them into the mix. I didn't rate him when I first ran him but having seen how much damage his Marionettes can do when using Puppet Show and Breathe Life and having Paired Talons with a Slow Trigger on Crows, I've since revised my opinion. Throw enough mud at a wall and some of it is bound to stick. It worked on David Norris.

Limerick: Brocon, Barbeques & Buggery.

Burkhardt's been at his Sang Guard. But not Sean McDonnell style.

Brocon is being run again this year in UL in Castletroy, across the road from classy Plassey, and I'm heading up along for a few hours before I wander off to a barbeque across the Shannon in lovely Lahinch on Saturday evening. Assuming that the predicted rain isn't torrential.

Although I really should take it for practice I'm not bringing the ETC list as I don't have the models for it and I'm not sure that a regular tournament will give a fair reflection of how it can perform in-game compared to an ETC game. It might sound odd as it is the same game/rules set after all but the armies I would face would on the whole bear little resemblance to those that will appear in Switzerland.

Plus I don't have to cart an army case around and get to spend more time chatting to some friends that I haven't seen in ages.

ETC lists are in.

Apparently balance isn't the key to the ETC.

Hello all,

I realise that its been a while since I've posted anything but things have been hectic recently. There's been some personal stuff but more related to this blog is Team Ireland has been grinding out lists for the ETC (I've caused the team a lot of headaches over which style of army to take before settling on what you see below) and they've been published in the public domain for all to see.

ETC 6 Nations Round 5: England.

Hello. I'm scouting ahead of the Queen to make sure this city is safe.

Round 6 and the defending champions are up against the Old Enemy and only we can stop them. That's the romantic version. We were in 3rd place, with Wales in 2nd and England leading the pack. England only needed a draw to win it because of their VP's already scored  because we'd ruled ourselves out of it by drawing with the Nordies in Round 1.

Speaking of people being late: a big shout out to Mark (our stand-in Guard player) who got very drunk the night before and went home with 'some wee wan' according to ComplainyShanie (better known as Root).

Thankfully Ivan was able to stand in at the last minute. Yeah, the old drink tends to have a detrimental effect on the 40k tourney performances of Cork players alright. Thinking about it now if I had been in Mark's shoes I'd have done exactly the same thing. But with more mooing.

6 Nations Round 4: Wales

God-damned Holofields.

So no hangover despite a bottles of Hoegaarden and a few pints of Leffe (on tap in the Abbot's Ale House) and I was ready for the Welsh challenge. There were a few lists I wanted to avoid, namely the Captain Stu's Dark Eldar Venomspam (because of my distinct lack of firepower) so it was with a mixed feeling that I was told I was playing Gary's Eldar.

My thinking was that I could take out the Seer Councils one at a time by throwing the 3 2+ save Lords at them at once but if they both jumped me then I was going to be in trouble. Gary won the roll for first turn and chose to go first. Then he reserved everything.

I tried not to let the 'lolwut?' show on my face too much for fear of changing his mind.

6 Nations Round 3: Scotland

I assume the Scots retired early to practice bagpipes.

So with an early nights sleep due to the lack of drink on Good Friday we expected the Scots to be well refreshed and ready for our games i.e. not hungover.

So it was that I was put up against Pete and his very fancy newly-airbrushed Dark Eldar. With all the floating gunboats I figured that I'd have to hide most of my army before getting stuck in over the last few turns rather than deploying stuff and getting blown away very quickly.

6 Nations Round 2: Barbarians

That's a lot of Lootas.

They've probably got other names to go by too but I'm not sure what they are. Still dying of a gin-flavoured hangover I was thrown up with the Barbars captain Gareth and his 45 Lootas. Yeah, this was going to be messy.

I had to get stuck in but things didn't go my way when I lost the roll to go first. I was wondering about what and how to deploy when I asked Mike beside if I should reserve everything or deploy everything. 'Seize' was all he had to say.

6 Nations Round 1: Norn Iron

Or Northern Ireland as most people would know them. Following on from FIFA there's two teams from the island of Ireland. Thankfully, as the song suggests, they're not Brazil they're Northern Ireland: at the ETC they finished lower than Ireland last year so we were reckoned we could beat them but it looked a hard task as their armies looked impressive on paper.

I'll take the time now to thank the Nordie team for actually allowing the game to go ahead. I'd gone with Eoin, Caolán, Chris, and some of the boyos from Way-ells the night before and ended up drinking gin & o.j. till half 11 before stumbling off home. My phone died when I got back and fell asleep on the couch so I slept in as I had no alarm, had a quick shower and a puke, rang a taxi and headed up there. When I finally arrived 45 mins later I made my apologies and was told that the Nordies' Dave Mc was still willing to throw dice even though they were fully entitled to take a 20-0 win (I wouldn't have complained to be honest).

So thanks again to Captain Jonny and the lads, but especially Dave, for their patience.

ETC 6 Nations Day 2

Wales: Full of rugby fans, sheep and some sound 40k players.

Its the day after and the dust has settled and most of the lads who travelled over to Cork will be on the way back home about now. Congratulations to the English lads that won it, just taking it from the Welsh by a point. I'm pretty sure they had tonnes of VPs to spare if it came down to a tie-breaker though. War.org has the results.

I just have to say that it was savage and I'm looking forward to the weekend in Switzerland. A big shout out to the Welsh boys for making a weekend out of it - including standing in a park until half 11 drinking beer and gin with orange juice. Classy. Or as the lads would say: Tidy.


Onto the games on Day 2.

ETC 6 Nations Day 1

Alright lads, I meant to have this updated regularly but we can't use the computer during the day because its used for results and they're afraid of crashing or something.

Bag of dicks.