Where can you find a giant foam cowboy
hat, the frantic sound of rolling dice and a Hukish?
Why at Conflict Calgary of course! This past weekend,
Games Workshop trucked it out to the beautiful city of
Calgary to kick off a new season of Conflict. Join me
(The Hukish) as I take you on a magical adventure of
mythical proportions! Actually how about I just show
you around the event.
The morning sun was blazing in through the massive floor
to ceiling windows of the hall. Gamers started slowly
entering the hall (lacking the caffeine to move any faster),
making their way by the store to pick up some last minutes
purchases before moving on to the conflict, some to the
tournament tables to battle for supremacy, others to
Mad Grox and the like. Following suit I made my way through
the store and into the Conflict.
The first table I hit was Uncle Mike’s Hill Clinic.
This table was clearly all about making you guess it,
hills. Run by Mike Atkinson (Uncle Mike) and Bill Yuen,
they put out a good spread of pink foam, Wire Cutters
and an assortment of different flocking materials you
could put on your snazzy new (and really sticky) terrain
piece. People liked coming to Uncle Mike’s Clinic
so much last year they even came back for another stab
at the pie this year. This is great place to get mucky
with the whole family, now then on to the next table.
After managing to escape the clutches of hill building,
I happened upon a table of people playing Battle Fleet
Gothic. Arrayed about the board was an impressive number
of Chaos and Tau ships, the objective being that the
Tau fleet had to stand against the forces of Chaos and
defend the planet from obliteration! As I was leaving
the table the players were about to enter into bloody
space combat!
Walking about the hall I was drawn to the shouts coming
from one table, gathered around it were the denizens
of the Blood Bowl world. This was none other than the
Fatal Four-Way Bowl. In this game four players compete
on one field for ultimate victory over each other all
the while dropping the elbow and shouting for the blood
of the fallen (sounds like my family re-unions) there
was even some elves fouling a downed ogre, what fun.
The guys from the Alberta Blood Bowl Association (ABBA)
really did a great job, they even had intro games setup
to play some one-on-one with a volunteer so you could
learn the game (great for those new to the hobby). I
hope these guys show up next year.
Moving
along, it was time to visit one of our new games this
season, Thar Be Zombies.
Keeping in theme with this years campaign The Conquest
of The New World and the jungle theme of this seasons’ Conflict,
we decided to make a game based on the Zombie Pirates
of The Vampire Coast. This game puts you in the role
of a unit of warriors stranded by a violent storm, smack
dab right in the middle of the vampire coast. Players
then work to fight against the endless hordes of undead,
all the while trying to get treasure; there were also
some great models present for the game as well, like
the Queen Bess, or the Undead Leviathan. Now, time for
Blood Frenzy!
Blood
Frenzy eh, sounds like this is going to be fun. At this
table run by Steve Champagne, participants risk it all
to best an army of Khornate followers on the field of
battle. While I was at the table I watched as a small
company of Ultramarines, Black Templar and Imperial Guard
fought with courage and honor against the crazed minions
of the Blood God, sweet!
The next table I came across was The War of The Icon.
The goal for this scenario was for combatants to take
and hold the Icon at the centre of the table, while keeping
the other players from taking it back. The gents running
the table even brought a whole slew of models for people
to use if they didn’t have their own models, what
a great idea. The scenery was also keeping with the whole
jungle theme of this season, great job guys.
Where is the one place you can go if you like to build
strange death traps then race them around a hap hazard
track at break neck speeds, the whole time dodging fists,
feet and the occasional bolter slug? Why at Mad Grox’s,
obviously. Here you get to build crazy contraptions out
of plastic bitz and sprues, then take to the track and
try to beat Mad Grox on his home turf. I even managed
to get some footage of some of the racers before they
got mangled, err I mean, managed to get on the track.
I really love those five car pile-ups in the middle of
the track.
Next on my list was the other game new to the Conflict
fold, Ascension To Power. ATP is the Warhammer version
of Mad Grox. For this game, players build weird mutated
champions of Chaos and fight amongst themselves for the
glory of Daemon hood and immortality. During this great
brawl players increase in power or decrease in power
depending on the capricious will of Grak N’ul.
Then to cap it all off the victor then goes toe-to-toe
with the daemon for ultimate glory. Speaking of which
I got to see a beefed up champion with ten attacks miss
all ten times (that’s what we call a wiffle) then
get absolutely smashed by Grak N’ul, talk about
you’re bad luck.
Switching things up a bit, this year we hosted a The
Lord of The Rings Doubles Tournament. This was a first
for the Conflict circuit and there was a great turn out
of five teams to test their mettle on the battlefields
of Middle Earth. All the races were well represented
here and ranged from the Warriors of Rohan to the wicked
Nazgul, and all of them sporting some nice paint-jobs.
We also had a staff member, in this case Ryan Zulchewicz,
on hand to help the newer players with their game. The
winners of this fine event (Alex Gibbs and Joe Wilson)
received a Battle of Pelennor Fields Boxed Set and a
Host of the Dark Lord Boxed Set to split between themselves,
wow what prizes, they also got their pictures taken by
yours truly (better than yours truly? Maybe not) unfortunately
Mr. Wilson fled before I could capture his soul in my
demon box (take his picture). You can look forward to
this event showing up at the next Conflict, so keep an
eye out for it.
This year I was involved in the ever-popular Warpstone
Painting Contest, which is great for people who just
love to paint their miniatures to the best of their ability.
Here at the booth you can admire the entrants’ models,
get tips from the judges about painting and you can even
enter a model or two yourself (hopefully you’ve
done this before pestering the judges with questions
about eyes). This year we had some great pieces and I
would encourage you to check out the Warpstone section
of out website for a closer look at the winners. When
I was done with the judging I made my way over to the
Kill Team Challenge.
If you are ever looking for a fast way to get into Warhammer
40,000 a great place to start is kill teams and here
at the Kill Team Challenge table (run by Paul Smolik)
you can do just that, play a quick and dirty game of
Kill Teams. The goal here is for Kill Teams to duke it
out over a recently abandoned outpost, the Edstar Outpost
to be exact, which contains an important objective. Paul
also supplied a multitude of Kill Teams for use by the
new gamer, thus enabling Hobbyists new and old to enjoy
this scenario.
Before I go I would also like to mention the G. R. O.
T. S. (Greater Red Deer Organization of Tactical Silliness)
and their wonderful tables. These guys were heading up
the Rumble in the Jungle table and the Clash in Osgiliath
table. Both their tables looked great and had heavy gaming
traffic throughout the day. These two tables are great
for the Hobbyist who doesn’t have a lot of models
to his/her name, due to the fact that Warhammer Warbands
and The Lord of The Rings never require huge armies to
have a great game.
Well its was a great show and I hope we have many more
great Conflicts to come, hopefully someday I will get
my Skaven Army Conflict ready, that’s if I don’t
keep dropping them. Wow all this typing had made me a
bit peckish, I think ill go find a snack. Hope to see
you guys at the next Conflict.
