Playing at Northern King Kon 2023

Over the weekend Mr T. and myself travelled north to the town of Ossett just south of Leeds to attend his first (and my second) wargames event/competition. It was to be 2 1/2 days of gaming and meeting fellow hobbyists under the care of the Northern Kings wargames group. 

I did an extremely poor job of taking pictures over the weekend, I'm hopeful Mr T did a better job and managed to snag many more than I did and that he will post them up.

Friday evening was a relaxed affair with three quick 500 point Firefight games between 6ish and 9is. For us it was mainly a chance to find the venue and meet some of people we would be playing with over the weekend. Whilst it was rather chilly outside the hall the played in was lovely and warm and our hosts made us very welcome. I should give a big shout-out to our hosts Nick, Elliott, and Tom who laid on a great weekend for us. They had to battle against a few issues with people dropping out and even melting trophies. 

The only picture I got from Friday was against Nick's Asterians, an army he'd stuck together and painted all in one week. An impressive feat given how nice it looked and I think I may have been his first opponent with them. I also played Richard with his GCPS and Mr T in the last game. That meant I had played two new opponents with new armies I'd not played against before. 

On Saturday we played three games of Firefight at 1500 points, one in the morning and two in the afternoon after a good lunch. Lunch was provided on both days (and jolly nice it was too), tea and coffee was on permanent offer and the community centre's bar as open as well. On top of that Nick often passed amongst us to ply us with sweet treats. I'd heard the Northern Kings events described as 'premium' online and all things considered we absolutely got value (and more) for our ticket price.

First up I had a game against Adam with his Veer-myn playing the Scourge (kill) scenario. This was one scenario I hoped to avoid as it's not a good one for armies with lots of cheap, easy to kill units. Playing it against another army with cheap, easy to kill units was probably a best case scenario. Adam had gone leader heavy compared to my list so I could only envy the number of command dice he rolled. In the end the game hinged on a small mistake he made in moving a unit of cheap rats he could sacrifice for wounds away from his Brood Mother leader who I'd managed to charge on turn 1 but who just survived. You can see her in the back of the photo I remembered to take just before a Tunneller shot her off and as she was his most expensive unit bagged 10 valuable VP's. Otherwise it was a close game with not much in it. 

Next up was Elliott with his Forge Fathers, I don't think he'd planned to play but because of a number imbalance caused by drop outs he joined us. This Scenario was Manpower and used 4 objective markers which needed to be controlled. Things well reasonably well at the start with my Creepers taking out an Iron Ancestor and a APC in turn 1 and then my lead from the first couple of turns was slowly eroded by Elliott and he saw out the win, I think that was in the last turn, possibly two. 

My last game was against David and his Mazon Labs, I can't believe I didn't get any pictures of his army as they took my best painted vote. The scenario was Lockdown which features two area that need to be controlled. Again I got off to a fast start with the Creepers rushing up and my units scoring on both objectives. Again I slowly got reeled back in with my number of scoring units being eroded and Richard managed to take the win. Not having played Mazon I was surprised by what they could do with respect to healing units back up and also giving units extra move distance.

So the day ended after three games against three new thoroughly nice opponents and one new army. Richard with his GCPS who I played against the night before won the tournament with Elliott coming in second. Mr T played against Richard in one of his games and it seems the GCPS have some units which are rather good (something about missile launchers and other blast weapons) which makes them a challenge to play against. I'm glad with my low armour army I didn't have to face them. 
One win from three left me in the middle part of the table with Mr T one place below me, but only by 30 odd kills points. I was also voted Best Sport by my opponents so it seems they had as much fun as I did.

By the end of the day both Mr T and myself where suffering from some mental (and back based) exhaustion so rather than stay for drinks and more games we headed back to the accommodation for a bite to eat and bed.

Peter's GCPS

On Sunday we had four games of Deadzone to play with one before lunch and then three after we'd filled up. I did manage to get some pictures of the armies on parade but sadly none of the actual games.

Playing at 180 points the game's moved along nice and quickly and given the numbers of players we had (six) we did more of a round robin event than a Swiss matching style. This meant we each got to play someone different each round.

First up I played Richard with his Marauders in Breakthrough where you have to get off the other side of the table. In general I pushed on and Richard tried to make use of his shooting a bit more and he whittled me away enough to then make his melee's decisive.

Richard's Marauders

Second up Ian D and myself continued the Ian-off (it was one all from Nottingham) to see who would take the lead. The scenario was Strength in Depth and the Veer-myn got off to a quick start and then it all went rather wrong. One of the joys of Deadzone is how it creates cinematic moments like when a cheap as chips Plague Ghoul shooting on 6+ boards the eight-train and one shots your Nightmare saving on 4+. All you can do at that point is have a laugh and silently curse your opponents luck! Not for nothing is Ian D (probably) the best Deadzone player in the UK and he quickly reeled my lead back in and took the game. So I'm currently trailing 2-1 and have some work to do if I don't want that first win to look like a fluke.

Ian's Plague

Next up was Sharad who was also sitting on two defeats from two but as this was essentially the first time he'd played he at least had an excuse :-) Sharad had won Best Sports in the Kings of War tournament the day before so in many ways it was a clash of the two nicest people in the hall! Chem Chase isn't really the scenario you want to see if you are playing a low model count Strike Team against a faster and more numerous opponent. This time the luck swung in my favour, for instance Sharad's first move was with his sniper who moved a square, picked up an item, turned over the booby-trap and was knocked back down again. Unfortunately that rather set the tone for him and again I took the early lead but this time managed to keep extending it.

Sharad's Enforcers

My last game up was against Mr T in Deep Strike. Again my luck stayed with me and after a good tussle against his very fighty Forge Fathers I managed to come out on top. Unfortunately the way things played out I didn't get to play against Peter and his GCPS so I'll need to issue a challenge against him if we meet up again at another event.

With two wins from four I again ended up in the middle of the pack and was again voted Best Sport. I hope that means the people I played with enjoyed themselves as much as I did. Playing four games of Deadzone on the Sunday was much less draining than the three of Firefight on the Saturday and really the perfect way to complete an enjoyable weekend. I had four more enjoyable games against two new opponents and got to meet even more members of the community who I'd love to play again.

On the bright side I think Mr T enjoyed the Deadzone enough to want to go and play that again in the future, both agreed that competition Firefight (even the way we play :-) was probably not the best fit for ourselves.