chaos and noise

So, after eight years of running Arcanacon Warmachine tournaments, I have finally passed the event on to Melbourne's newest Pressgang member. That means I can actually play in next year's tournament (which will be a bit weird), but more importantly it means that I can write something new.

I miss writing and running tabletop games. aeliel and I have started planning something for Arcanacon XXX. mousebane, miss_rynn - would either of you be interested in helping to write some material? I'd like to borrow your science-and-mythos brains...

The year is 1932. Four years ago, federal raids on the town of Innsmouth were conducted by the BOI. What they saw and did there has been locked away in classified files, and all media coverage was rigorously suppressed. For three years the town lay almost deserted. Then, as part of President Hoover's Economic Modernisation scheme, an attempt was made to reinvigorate the ship-building trade and capitalise on the town's docks and deep harbour. The town was extensively re-settled, with generous federal grants and concessions offered to industry. For a time, life returned to the town.

Six days ago, a series of grisly murders were discovered in a warehouse by the riverside. The newspapers have begun to stir people into a panic, suggesting that a mass murderer is at work in Innsmouth. Local police have grudgingly handed jurisdiction over to the United States Bureau of Investigation. Now, four members of the newly established Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory have been sent back to that sleepy town on the river mouth, for their first public test.

Yes, it's essentially CSI: Innsmouth, set at the end of the prohibition era :)

I'm looking at running it as a 4-5 character game. The fifth (optional) character will be the local police liaison; able to add some interesting local contacts to the group, but not essential to the Fed story. The Bureau had a major shuffle and re-naming earlier in 1932, with associated bureaucratic power games limiting access to information from older cases, so the group won't know very much about the town's history. That's probably a good thing - there's no saying that the same forces are involved, and it will be healthier for their sanity if they don't know too much.

I really like making props for games: maps, handouts, photos. I'd like to prepare enough photos of suspects to be able to give the players a whiteboard to build their case on...

I always seem to lose a week after travelling anywhere. GenCon Oz finished a week ago, and the last week has been full of catching up on work. I've mostly managed to dodge the post-convention cold, but aeliel wasn't so lucky.

I really enjoyed the trip to Brisbane. We booked a two-bedroom apartment between four people, so we had our own kitchen and a living room for after-con games. I've now become addicted to Arkham Horror after several late-night games... however I managed to resist the urge to buy my own copy at the convention, as my luggage was bulky enough without adding boardgames for the return trip.

Most of my time in the convention centre was spent running demo games at the Privateer Press booth. The con had attracted media coverage on TV, radio and in local papers, and we had a huge number of non-gamers come through to take a look. I ran roughly half my demo games for people who had played other miniatures games (Warhammer etc), and the other half for people with no miniature gaming experience at all. The stall sold ~60 copies of the Warmachine rules, all of them to new players who bought a pile of models. Not bad for a first-run convention, where the retailers were hoping to just break even.

For the last three weeks I've been frantically painting up models for the Warmachine 'Hardcore' tournament - the first official one to run outside the USA. The tournament games were very challenging - strict 7min turns, with five 56min games run back to back. I placed in the top half of the field (three wins, two losses), but I was mainly competing for the Master Craftsman (best painted) medal. After five games my brain was leaking from my ears, but I was very happy when Kel announced that I'd won the prize :)

Overall, a good trip. The convention still has plenty of areas to improve for next year, particularly relating to registration and event tickets, but the organisers seem to be doing a good job of addressing comments and feedback from the people who went. I'll certainly be going back.

Yikes. Suddenly it's the week before Conquest again, and I seem to be missing a few more weeks out of my year.

I haven't been able to finish much work lately, as painting in 40ºC heat tends to be an exercise in futility... the paint dries before I can get it on the brush. Still, we're due for a change tomorrow. I'll see what I can do before the weekend, and then pick up the next batch of models at the convention.

I'm running a trade stall at Conquest this weekend - drop by and say hello, as company is always good. I'll be down near the canteen, with a table full of stock and another table covered in model-building projects. Traders will be put into two areas this year, and I think my area only has two other stalls - everyone else is upstairs in the main rego hall. I'll be close to the miniatures gamers, though, and they're more likely to be interested in painting and sculpting...

The weekend rushed by even faster than usual. I rode up to Brunswick West, exploring more of Royal Park on the way. aeliel's bike still needs some emergency surgery before it will work again (misaligned pedals are tearing the chain off the gears), so I headed out on my own. thekit's housepark-warming in Brunswick seemed successful - the park was indeed warm. Apologies again for abruptly vanishing when everyone else went in search of dinner - hespa, we should catch up sometime soon.

Also - congratulations to lycaonia and Pete :) I hope that everything went well on Saturday!

Here's a pic of the happy couple - er, a pic of a happy couple that I've been sculpting over the last few weeks. They are designed to easily detach from the base, so they could be attached the top of a wedding cake :) Lots of fun to paint, too. I added a few details like knotwork on the back of the gnome's cloak (pic), and tried out a few tricks painting gold, silver and gemstones without using any metallics or gloss paints.

Arcanacon is over for another year, which means that I can start thinking about all the things I've put on hold for the last couple of months... first, though, it's worth taking a look back at what's happened so far.

Wednesday: Recieved an email from my co-organiser, telling me he couldn't make it down from Sydney for the weekend. With no second judge, that meant I'd be covering the Warmachine/Hordes Nationals event solo, and would also have to run the Monday event - which ruled out going to Golgotha on Sunday night. I'll get you next time, nightclub...

Thursday: aeliel made a display board for the Purple Mantis stock that would be on sale at the convention, while I frantically finished off a painting commission job. I printed off scorecards and player packs, and tried to make sure I was up to date on the latest rules changes. With an active community of players (over twenty thousand on the forums) and a full time rules team, the game rules are as watertight and unambiguous as any system I've ever played... as a rules judge, though, it's a hell of a lot of reading material to brush up on.

Friday: Finally finished painting the last few models. Went to Collingwood College to start setting up the Nationals venue. I was a bit worried when we were told that we'd only have a single room, but fortunately that room was easily big enough for the players and game tables - we even had a dozen couches for people to relax in after their games.

Saturday: Woke up far too early, and headed to the convention to start the tournament. We had 38 players in the end, almost half of them from interstate. aeliel handled the scorecards and round draws, while I ran around adjudicating the three 500-point rounds for the Nationals. The games went surprisingly smoothly, with no major disputes or arguments despite the size of the prize pool on offer. Once the official rounds wrapped up, we paused for a beer or two and prepared for the inaugural State of Origin game - contested by Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and a motley team of Tasmanians, West Australians, NSW and more Melbourne players.

South Australia convincingly won the title, winning five of their six games. I finally got a chance to play, losing to Brett's horde of trolls (one of the best painted armies at the event), and then we headed off to geserit's farewell party. Bon voyage Sarah!

Sunday: Things started to look bad after the first of the planned three 750-point games, when a draw on one of the top tables left us with an unchallenged winner - Damien, the only player on a perfect score of 20 points. After having several pairs of eyes going over the tournament rules, I decided that we couldn't call the event early - despite having an undefeated champion by default, there were still two rounds to go and a room full of players who wanted to keep playing them. (EDIT: the decision to keep going despite having an undefeated player was later supported by the Privateer staff. Hopefully the next generation of tournament rules will be clearer about this sort of thing!)

Damien ended up losing in the fifth round, setting up Heath as the top player. Despite that, there were six possible champions going into the final round. When the final game concluded, Heath emerged as the clear winner, with Damien and Joel taking second and third place. I got to hand out lots of prizes (from six sponsors in four different states), and then that was it for the first Australian national championship.

Monday: Metal Mayhem was a very different event from the weekend's games - the games were far more laid back, and I was far less organised. We fitted five rounds into the tournament, with Dave's Cryx/Mercenary army taking the top spot. After one of the longest award ceremonies I've ever sat through, we staggered off to the afterparty and I finally got a chance to catch up with all the roleplayers I'd missed during the weekend.

Most of the weekend is a bit of a blur, but it's a generally positive blur. I'll probably be helping for a couple of days at GenCon Oz as a painting or rules judge, but I have no plans to run an actual tournament myself until at least next January. There are now a couple of new Pressgangers in Australia, and they all seem eager to get stuck into organising things. I've been involved since 2003, and I think it's time to take a bit of a break.

The War All The Time guys sold Purple Mantis putty, sculpting tools and brushes over in the Warhammer 40k area. Sculpting tools sold very well; putty sold reasonably well. The sable brushes didn't sell well at all, which is a bit worrying - they account for about a third of the cost of my inventory, and may take all year to shift. Still, for the first "live fire" test, things went pretty well.