Warhammer Fest 2023, Part 1

Return to Rainy Manchester

As I had said a couple of months ago, even though I had left Manchester, the plan to meet with Saul and Lee at Warhammer Fest had been in the making for far longer.
So, on a typically grey Mancunian morning on Saturday 29th April, we crossed each other as the queue to the event snaked back on itself. And then, we had a great three days of modelling, gaming and general geekyness.
Saul's already published about the event and now it's my turn to give a summary. Over the next few days I'll post narrative battle reports of the games we had.

Day 1: Hobby Challenge & Multiplayer Warcry

I had bought the ticket for the Hobby Challenge, so as soon as I was inside (about 8.30ish) I rushed for it and, once I had collected my Event Exclusive Darkoath Chieftain, I was among the first browsing the mountain of sprues available on the day.
I gasped when I saw tons of sprues from the Stormvault kit and grabbed as many as I could, instantly forgetting about the Darkoath Chieftain.
I started assembling madly, taking full advantage of the modularity of that kit. I was so enraptured that after about 4 hours, I had built enough to fill a Warcry board.

Since I was travelling only with a small backpack, I called it on the terrain building, confident that all the various pieces could have been easily stacked inside each other. so, I texted Saul and Lee to have a Warcry game.
Saul was basically already onto it, having hooked up with a friend from Discord and having arranged for a table and we all played There Can Be Only One, giving me a chance to play as Kalyustar and his Cursed Company once more.

Once the game was done, I went back to the Hobby Challenge area to polish some of the rough joints and mould lines on the models I had built. It was then I realised there were plenty of the Easy-to-Build Sequitors sprues and even of the Knight-Incantor from the Mortal Realms magazine, so I helped myself to some and a few extra bits to convert them and added all to the loot of the day.

Day 2: The Warcry Rumble

That was the day we had looked for the most. Seeing a line-up of 56 Warcry players (even if one dropped out just last minute) was pretty amazing. Everybody was clearly in love with the game, both veterans and novices alike, and most importantly with its spirit as an essentially narrative game. Everyone I played against had a story for their warband or had made some really nice conversions.

I wish I could have taken pictures of all 55 warbands, but alas it wasn't possible, but here are the ones I managed to take, even if in some cases I don't know who their owners are. Anyway, as we started playing, I wasn't expecting anything more but to have four nice games. I had that... and a lot more!

It turned out that Kalyustar's Cursed Company, since its inception a shambling horde of skeletons, is particularly good at the Warcry Rumble battleplans. Put it very simply, the weight of their numbers means that opponents often cannot take objectives away from them. It doesn't matter that the skeletons fall in droves and don't inflict as much casualties in return, there is always enough of them to keep controlling the objectives.

Still, the games were all tense, in no small part thanks to the fact that the Side Quests gave my opponents plenty of chances to score Victory Points without contesting objectives. Nonetheless, and to my surprise, I won all my first three games... and by turn four ended up playing on Table 1 with a chance at winning the whole tournament.

That was the tensest game of the day, and I was in the lead for the first two turns. Then, in turn 3 I got cocky, completely forgot about the Side Quest and gave a chance for my opponent to equalise the score. Turn 4 was a constant back and forth, but by the end of it I was a single Victory Point behind my opponent and finished the tournament in 6th position. Still... a lot higher than I had expected I would have finished!

But the most important thing, was that I had some truly great games, and I can't thank enough my opponents Eloi Garrido, Mathias Brusselaers, Lars Nordal Jensen and Michael Appleton!

Day 3: Casual Gaming and Goodbyes

On the Monday we were all rather tired and agreed to meet at 10ish. I had to be at the airport by 1.30ish, so that gave us time for one last game, which I played with Lee while Saul played another Rumbler we had met the day before.
It was good fun, but then, for the second time in a very short time, I had to say goodbye to a place and people that have meant so much for me and my hobbying.
Oh well! Let's look at the bright side and forward to painting a full Stormvault board for my future games!