My Two Days at Mechanicon

This post managed to get lost in the blob that was MEM2, Thanksgiving, Birthdays, and Christmas.
But hey, better late than never, right? Let's just pretend it still mid November.

I recently attended The Mechanicon for the first time. I have wanted to go for the last few years but my son's birthday has been falling on that weekend since I got into 40k. This year his Birthday was on Sunday so I managed to get in on the Friday Night Fight and took my brothers for the Kill Team Alpha tournament on Saturday.

Foot Nurgle. Every model has magnetized bases to match any table!

I managed to forget my camera on Friday, but with a sixteen hour night shift beforehand and three hours of sleep before the event  there wasn't much to see any way. I tried out a Vulkan list for the first time and my dice treated me a lot better than they did during The Warstore Weekend. Alas, I learned two valuable lessons. First get more sleep before a tournament!
After winning my first game versus plague marines on foot, I came up against a Thousand Sons themed Khan Biker army. My opponent used three thunder fire cannons to make difficult/dangerous terrain and pounded away with rifle dreads while I had to slog towards him. I played a good game for about three turns after which I made a  dumb move unloading my TH/SS terminators and lost any advantage I had from that point. I have noticed that I'm often the first to attack during a waiting game and had I attempted to weather another round of fire I may have won the game. At least I can say I was half asleep!

Thousand Sons bikers

Scarab themed thunderfire cannons.

Rifleman Dreads with hieroglyphics.

 The second thing I learned is that Forgeworld has some crazy stuff! I got demolished by A Death Korps of Krieg army running six DRILLS OF DOOM. This opponent had so much S10 AP1 that is was a real struggle with my medium range shooting. In the end I said "screw it" and charged Vulkan into his fifty man blob squad. To my surprise I actually won combat for two rounds but my opponents squad wouldn't break! Jawaballs took a picture of my mighty hero for me, but I think he is holding it hostage!

Sisters of Blood Angels?

After the tournament was over we all mingled for a bit and a few more guys showed up ready to get their game on. After talking about babies with Jawaballs for a bit I got asked if  I was up for another game. At this time I was past the point of no return so I grabbed my bag and moved over to the next table. "Cool sisters", I commented as my opponent unpacked his army on the other side of the table. His reply, "They are counts as Blood Angels."  Oh, that's cool, wait, what!?

Needless to say, I went home exhausted but content!
Onward to day two!

My mans with the plans!

Saturday brought on the Kill Team Alpha tournament. There were ten players. I supplied forty percent of them.My kill team strategy was simple. Five scouts sit back in cover while an assault cannon dreadnought kills everything.

Laughing Lamenters

My first match was against a standard tactical squad. Easy enough I thought to my self. Kill the two models that could actually hurt me and slaughter the rest. There were crazy parachute deployment rules that my opponent found the need to laugh about every time he placed a model. This went on for about ten minutes before we actually started playing. My plan was about to come to fruition when time was called. My opponent was so slow that we got about three turns in. Since no one ran off the table it was a draw.

OH YEAH!

My second opponent was running a Dark Angel combat squad and a heavy bolter/assault cannon land speeder. We took turns placing tokens that signified buildings being full of smoke or on fire. My plan worked perfectly here as my dreadnought  proceeded to walk forward and demolish his models. My opponent failed his Ld. test and ran in under ten minutes. Since I had some time I walked over to the war store booth and went shopping!

My final match was against the eventual fist place winner. I believe this made me the contender for first based on their battle point system. We each had to place an objective that could be picked up and captured by a model before the game started. My opponent won the roll for first with his Purifiers and a Rhino. He moved up his rhino, jumped out with his psycannon, and proceeded to roll two rending shots and a six on the damage result before I got a turn. Needless to say, 5 scouts couldn't do much without their metal behemoth and my last game was over quickly.

This fight ended quickly...

Now, before we left I packed up a last minute list for my brother Jordan who could not find his orks. It consisted of five chaos marines and a dreadnought with a twin linked lascannon. Well don't you know he finished second and got a prize!

Their victory came right out of left field...

Speaking of prizes I was really impressed by what they gave out. This event cost a dollar to enter after paying admission. Note there were only ten slots to fill. So in all this tournament made a whopping ten bucks. First prize got a FORGEWORLD sentinel, the ammo box/figure case from the 5th edition launch and a trophy to boot. Second place got a resin dragon skull for terrain and two packs of gaming markers. Third also got a few markers. And there was a sportsman ship prize too. All this prize support for a ten dollar tournament. Needless to say, I was very impressed with the MECHANICON!

While I could not play in the main event, I still had a blast and managed to get pics of most of the armies that were present. Enjoy the pics!

And finally...

If you are the owner of this 3rd company army,  I would like to congratulate you on putting our local ultramarine 3rd company player to shame. My hat is off to you good sir!