South  Auckland Miniatures Wargames Club

Newsletter - June 2004

Next meeting:

Saturday June  12^th 2004, at St. Johns Church Hall, Norrie St., Drury, starting at 9a.m.

Games arranged:  

Morning session:

Afternoon session:  

Copy for the Newsletter

Copy for the news letter needs to be to me by week before we meet .- Kevin

Pete's Bitz

The Forum

The Newsroom…..

Bob: Greetings sports fans, and welcome to another great day of games, I am your friendly ogre commentator, Bob Bifford

Jim: and I’m Jim Johnson, and what a day it is, the sun is shining, the birds are singing and it seems a great day, and if we look at the pitch below we can see the gouged eye orcs lining the fields, their scars from previous games evident from here….

Bob: Ahhhh Jim, that’s just the cheerleaders.

Jim: Yikes! Remind me to claw my own eyes out! Well on brighter and better news it is rumoured that the creators at GW will be naming 2005 as the year o f the plastic box sets, as a number of units are being looked at and remade into plastic models.

Bob: that’s right Jim, and confirmed at the moment is Dark Elf corsairs, Skaven plague monks, Saurus cold one riders and Elf bolt throwers.

Jim: well that isn’t all folks, they are looking at more but those are just the confirmed ones.

Bob: ahh that’s what I said Jim. Well anyway, an update on matters at the moment, the summer of chaos book is out filled full of glorious pictures and amazing stories, otherwise that seems to be the big highlights of it….

Jim: talking about big things, ogre kingdoms. There are 2 special characters so far. Greasus Goldtooth the Overtyrant is in fact the biggest fattest ogre in the world, and is carried by a troop of gnoblars into battle on a chariot base? The other is Skrag the Slaughterer – Prophet of Maw, who has two arms ending in blades and drags a cauldron into battle via chains hooked into his flesh……..mmm ugly!

Bob: talking about ugly, look at that beast coming onto the field, what a mutt, and look how big she is…

Jim: Ahh Bob, isn’t that your wife that you are slagging off?

Bob: oh god? Do you think she heard?

Jim: I think so, the overhead speakers across the whole stadium would be the first sign, the second is the way she is storming up here, and on that note folks I’m leaving!

Bob: Jim? Jim? God don’t let me face her alone…….

NICON 2004

Well kiddies, you get to listen to me yet again rave about yet another thing which I feel you may be uninterested in, but well it gives a bit of body to the newsletter and actually makes us feel like a club, (I’ll get back to that later) so with no further ado let’s get down to the brass of it shall we?

 Well this year NICON1, was held in the beautiful suburb of Tauranga2. It was a fairly uneventful trip there, although Mark’s powers seemed to be in full flourish, (you’ll need to ask him about the topless Swedish volleyballers) Well on arrival we espied our fellow comrades in battle, Paul with his Khorne army, Glen with his all mounted High Elf army, Mark with his mage High Elf army and myself with my stalwart dwarfs. The morning started at the perverse delight of our umpire, Daniel Macguire, nice all round guy but a twisted sense of humour, which reached new heights in the first round when he played like armies against each other. Paul had to play chaos, Glen an all mounted High Elf army, Mark against a wood elf player3, and myself against dwarfs. I have never had the opportunity to walk at a slow march forwards into the face of dwarf war machines, I felt abused and violated4, a lot like a chaos player, as I had a large dwarf force lacking of war machines, and my opponent had 5 of them. Myself and Glen being slaughtered, and Paul and Mark gaining Draws in the first round.

 The second round, well for me went a lot better. I played Rob Riley’s Necromancer army. Now Rob was a great guy, works down in Auckland GW, so go down and laugh at the fact that he got the lowest battle points in the whole tournament5. Well my warriors took the left side, my ironbreakers took the right and his grave guard found that they were in trouble as they both came bearing down on them in the middle, but alas the game ended with me 2 inches away readying for the charges. But all in all was a great game to play and I got 17 points out of it as well as good sportsmanship and composition scores. Mark played Paul, who have played before with mark squashing Paul………not this time as Paul showed Mark how to fight properly beating him solidly. Glen played Bobby from Cambridge with his chaos infantry army of 5^th to 4^th edition models6, and had a draw.

 The third round was fairly non descript where you had to go and hunt down enemy characters, myself was up against a young bloke nicknamed captain hair. 22 years and already half bald7, and brought with him Green skins. He was great to play against and we had some good laughs but Orcs versus Dwarfs never seems to go well for Orcs. My dwarfs in turn 4 was in his deployment zone, at the end of the game my dwarfs had made it three quarters of the way back8. But fun was had by all and if I had managed to catch his last character I would have had a massacre score, damn the fickle gods! Paul played a lizardman southlands list with huge amounts of skinks and kroxigors, ending in a large bloodbath, but a draw. Mark played bobby as above but lost and mark played Rob and beat him soundly.

 That night was filled with revelry, an immensely long game of snooker, (I blame Mark for that!), drinking, gambling, meeting new people, drinking, looking through a strange girl’s hair for split ends (don’t ask) drinking, getting told off several times by the owner of the backpackers and did I mention drinking? The next day with the crack of dawn some of us awoke, myself to the nice surprise of being completely free of a hangover, Paul to the surprise that he hadn’t woken up to any strange men. The fourth round was up first in the morning up against a young lady named Marina from west Auckland and her rats. I had her beaten until the last turn when my Ironbreakers having survived combat with 2 units of clanrats in the rear, front and sides for four turns decided to pack up and leave, meaning I was able to snatch a draw from the jaws of a victory9. Paul lost to Rob Riley’s vampires giving Rob his only victory in the whole tournament. Glen played10 a guy named Bruce, first time player and first tournament and mashing him ruthlessly, nice Glen very nice, and Mark played a great guy named Stefan who had a dragon led Dark elf force and beat him.

 Well last round, and suddenly the lack of sleep was starting to catch up. I ended up facing Stefan from above. His Dragon I thought was going to be a problem11, however in the last turn he bounced off my dwarf lord and fled and was chased down by my Dwarf Lord. Now let me say this again. My dwarf Lord chased down and caught a dragon, by himself. Otherwise we both completely forgot how to play as we both aimed for that battle and didn’t play the scenario properly at all. So we looked at it all and just said it was a draw. He was my favourite game; we both knew we weren’t going to get anywhere so just played. Mark played against chaos tzeentch daemons and managed to scrape through a draw, his highlight was facing a charge from a greater demon and standing a shooting and causing 3 wounds. The demon failed to connect and popped itself with a miscast in the subsequent turn. Glen lost to Rob Sadler’s Orcs12, and Paul played the dwarf guy from my first game to a draw.

 Well, we came, we saw, we played and we had a good time. We came away with a few prizes and anyone who can correctly tell me what they were and what for and who got them can have a free chocolate bar, your choice. Now I have a gripe. We are the most disorganised club around and I urge, nay plead we get more numbers next year. It is held by City Guard in Auckland so no real excuses now and they play a lot of different games, DBM, DBR, Napoleonics and Flames of War. So come on and let’s make a good showing for once and actually act like a club?

 Well that is all from me. Signing off.

BLAK

          1.        NICON stands for North Island conference for those that don’t know, and until a month ago I was one of them

2.        Being a nice arrogant Aucklander have commented largely through the weekend on how I felt Tauranga was a beautiful suburb of Auckland.

3.        Coincidently Mark and Allen the Wood elf player were vying for worst composition scores by the end of the tournament, obviously it isn’t just me dwarfs that don’t like Elves

4.        Which I didn’t necessarily dislike

5.        No really go and laugh. He did come last. They are looking to have it engraved with his name and all.

6.        He hates plastic models and so had a large collection of old models, it actually was quite cool

7.        Not that there is anything wrong with baldness……..please don’t hurt me Paul.

8.        My dwarfs were doing Jesse Owens impressions and damn good ones too. My average chase was 9 inches, yay the really fast dwarfs!

9.        This wasn’t a good thing however she followed up on her threats last night and wore a low midriff top and leant over a lot……..I wasn’t distracted as much as others, but I wasn’t going to tell her to stop!

10.     Played is not the right word for this. Ran around and obliterated him is closer to what happened

11.     I learned later he had no idea what to do with his dragon as in 5 games he got into battle with 4 times. 3 in our game.

12.     For those that don’t know Rob is grumpy from over in North Shore who came through once as invitation to our club and proceeded to show Peter how to play an empire army……….nah just hassling Pete! 

Battle Reports

Ancients battle story

The gallant Riders of Rohan (Jason) beat the mighty Assyrians (Kevin), but only just.  OK, so the Riders of Rohan aren’t exactly an ancients army, but they resemble Normans. At first the men of Rohan took many casualties, due to the superior archery of the Assyrians, but once they got to close quarters the Norman knights won just about every combat, I think they only lost once.  Ferocious charge, don’t you just love it.  Best troops of the day, the Assyrian skirmishers, they seemed to be everywhere, so they were the best value troops for their points on the field.  Here’s some highlights of the game.

 1, First combat, a regiment of Norman knights plus general defeat a regiment of Assyrian spearmen, but the stubborn spearmen don’t break, even under the onlsaught of a Norman ferocious charge.  In the next turn the Normans, plus their general, fail a panic test when a few measly Assyrian skirmishers appear to their rear.  How does a Norman general with a leadership of 9 fail a panic test, he rolls a double 6! why can’t he do that when he’s in combat??

 2, Another group of measly Assyrian skirmishers hold up a separate regiment of Norman knights, plus the army standard bearer, for at least 2 turns.

 3, The Assyrian general in his chariot utterly destroys the 2 Rohirrim infantry units, in just 2 turns.  Those chariots are nasty.

 4, In return the Norman general single handedly routs the remains of the Assyrian spearmen who had previously beaten him off.  That ferocious charge again.

 5, Near the end of the game the Assyrian cavalry hadn’t lost a single warrior, the Norman army was reduced to just 2 units of knights, with only 2 models in each unit, the general and the army standard bearer.  Re-grouping and forming into one unit won the day though, they completely destroyed the Assyrian cavalry in 2 turns, and then finished off the Assyrian general.  If the chariot hadn’t been so far away, it might have had a chance for a flank attack on the Norman knights, and the battle could have ended a bit differently.

Club Information

This newsletter is edited by Kevin Carberry so anything you would like included in the newsletter should be sent to me at  kevin@profax.co.nz

Peter "Evil Gnome" Colson is the Club President so any queries, problems, issues or suggestions about the club should go to him at colson@xtra.co.nz or deathloveswar2@hotmail.com (for e-mails with attachments only), monday-thursday, and all day friday and saturday (09) 298-7293