DieCon/Privateer Press Weekend Wrap-Up
As exhausting and draining as it was, Privateer Weekend was a phenomenal success. The PP Weekend committee did a fantastic job organizing the events and putting the weekend together. We had a number of great players come in from the surrounding areas and every tournament that was run was packed. And to top it all off we were able to reach the 32-man requirement for our Official Hardcore tournament and still had about a dozen people playing in a Hordes Steamroller event that ran simultaneously!
St. Louis Privateer Press Weekend: May 30 – June 1, 2008
The St. Louis Riverdogs are pleased to announce our first Annual Privateer weekend at Diecon 8. This will be the premiere event for the Midwest prior to Gencon 2008. Privateer weekend contains 3 days of spine crushing, cortex smashing fun over more than 7 events. The terrain is amazing including specialized scenario tables. The competitors are top tier in both skill and personality. The gaming will be second to none. Featured events over the weekend include three steamroller competitions, an ongoing tour of duty competition, painting competitions, Iron Kingdom knowledge test against Capt Saulty Dog, and our main event, an official Hardcore tournament on Saturday.
Check out http://diecon.gamestlouis.com for our complete event schedule and follow the link to Diecon 8 to see other convention activities and preregister. Or check out http://www.diecon.com for general convention information. A summary of our event schedule is below.
Bloodstone Marches Campaign Wrap-Up
On January 10th we finished up our Bloodstone Marches Theatre of War campaign. Although the other factions fought hard the Legion of Everblight managed to win their third strategic objective, allowing Thagrosh to escape to recover from absorbing Pyromalific's athanc in safety.
Everyone seemed to have had a good time during the league and the rule changes we made seemed to go over well. A few more were proposed for the next time - things like doing away with detachments completely. I can see where detachments were initially intended to make sure participants didn't change lists mid-round but we play all our games in one day. On top of that the campaign is meant to be very casual for us, so it seemed like a fair suggestion to just let folks bring their lists to play on campaign night. It's less record keeping for the campaign organizer and less work for the teams to get all the lists together early, so it's win-win for everyone.
There were also a few inconsistencies between scenarios and some of the rules that seemed a bit confusing at time - things like columns that need destroying varying in rules between scenarios. I'm not sure how much can be done there without adjusting balance. There were also some complaints (from both sides) that a few scenarios seemed unbalanced. We'll definitely have to look at the scenarios a little more closely if we run the Bloodstone Marches again.
But all in all the campaign seemed to be a success and I look forward to giving another Theater of War a shot in the future.
Ternon Crag Dispatch, Issue 1
Death Soars over the Marches!
Until recently the rumors of miners spotting reptilian creatures flying overhead have been dismissed as conjecture, but now we know them to be fact. These creatures have been seen en masse north of the Crag, around the Scarleforth Lake and along the Hawksmire River.
We at the Dispatch doubt the rumors that these creatures are in fact dragons. Everyone knows that dragons are massive creatures with wingspans that would block out the sun. However even though the creatures seen have appeared much smaller in size, what they lack in size they make up for in quantity and destruction.
Return to the Bloodstone Marches
Starting December 19th a dozen of the local Hordes players, myself included, will be starting up another Call to Arms campaign set in the Bloodstone Marches at one of the local gaming stores. Saultydog and Prorpger will also be joining in on this one, and that combined with Manaburst may wind up meaning we don't get back to our initial campaign. We'll have to wait and see if we get a chance to finish it up some time in the future.
As for the new campaign, we learned some lessons based on how the first attempt went and have made a couple minor rule tweaks to try and help even things out a bit. These changes should help us finish the campaign before the first tour of the 2008 Call to Arms league starts while while also combating the "snowball effect" that can help one person run away with the lead. So with the following changes, the Legion of Everblight prepares to conquerer the Bloodstone Marches. 
Foodmachine St. Louis, 2007
Last year one our local Privateer Press Pressgangers and his friend in Indianapolis got together and devised a competition between our two cities to collect canned goods for our local food pantries, with the city donating the most cans per player to take ownership of the Harvestthrall Trophy.
This event, dubbed "Foodmachine," featured interesting twists on the typical Warmachine rules to help encouraging food donation - in addition to having the entry fee replaced with a required can donation by donating additional cans during a match a player could have a number of effects on the game such as generating extra Focus points and re-rolling his or his opponent's dice.
After the success of the event Privateer Press provided coverage of that event in No Quarter Magazine and promote the second year of the event nationally. In 2007 the Foodmachine event, organized on the Harvestthrall web site, featured nearly fifty competing local communities across the globe.
Bloodstone Marches – Destroy Supply Fortress
Destroy Supply Fortress
Sunday, October 28th, 2007
With a number of Trollkin rescued from the Skorne at Ternon Crag, the Trollbloods were in desperate need of supplies to feed the newly freed hungry mouths. To assist their kin fighting in the area, Madrak had decided to lead an attack on an recently constructed supply fortress south of the town. Unfortunately unbeknownst to Madrak Everblight had claimed the supply depot as his own only shortly before. At the Trolls push for the fortress the blighted Nyss stationed there rally to defend their newly claimed prize.
Prorpger declared his first attack on one of his Strategic Objective deep in my territory for round 2. The fortress itself was a 6" x 10" structure located in the middle of the defender's deployment zone with a lone door facing the defender's table edge. The Trollbloods had two opportunities to win: destroy the structure (ARM 18, can take 10 damage per 1") or hold the structure for one round.
Bloodstone Marches – The Escape
The Escape (Castle of the Keys)
Sunday, October 28th, 2007
After their victory over the dragon Pyromalfic, Everblight's escape required his scattered forces to escape the ruins and regroup. Thagrosh had located a promising escape route through an unstable tunnel below the ruins and lead what forces were nearby away from the castle. Before the blighted forces could completely withdraw they were sensed by Balder, who quickly gathered what constructs were nearby in an attempt to cut off the dragonspawn's escape.
The Escape is the Legion's second Strategic Objective of the Bloodstone Marches theater of war, and the first fight of our second round. Although the victory conditions were the same as a standard assassination game, the fight was contemplated by the unstable cavern it took place in. To represent this the table was divided into 8 12" x 18" segments as shown here. During the Legion player's Maintenance Phase he would check for a cave-in by rolling a d6 for each section, starting with section 1. If the roll was a 6, that section would suffer a cave-in at the start of the Legion player's next Maintenance Phase and stop checking sections for that turn. When a section suffers a cave-in every model in that area suffers a POW 15 damage roll and is knocked down. All terrain is removed from the section and the entire section becomes rough terrain.
As with the rest of the campaign proxies were allowed, and Saultydog took the opportunity to let a Warpwolf stand in for the second Woldwarden which is currently in pieces on his painting desk. I was hoping he wouldn't pick up a second one but it's not like it's unexpected. I hate those stoopit things.
10/20/2007: Hordes Stampede! Event
On October 20th we had a Hordes Stampede hosted by Miniature Market locally here in St. Louis. We had a large turnout for this event - large enough that we had to run out for an extra table so that we would have enough. In addition to a fair number of regulars we had a couple younger guys who were back in town for the weekend from college and a few other locals who aren't regulars but came by anyway. Between the sixteen participants, two employees, and the pressganger the store was packed.
Unlike the Swiss tournament format that is typically used for Privateer Press game events the goal of the Stampede was to claim a table by defeating its current defender then defending the table against new attackers for as long as possible. In addition the defender would suffer attrition, forcing him to hold on for as long he good with his dwindling forces. To help offset his mounting losses the defender's side of each table had a few extra pieces of defensible terrain - a couple trenches and a couple linear obstacles to seek cover behind.
My other tournament reports so far have centered more around the games I played and their results. This time I want to take a break and instead talk about observations regarding the Stampede format itself, including some of the things that worked and some that didn't.
Bloodstone Marches – Prevent Blight Outbreak
Prevent Blight Outbreak: Castle of the Keys
Sunday, October 14th, 2007
The second and final fight for a strategic objective of the first round in our Bloodstone Marches Theater of War campaign was Saultydog's Circle trying to contain the outbreak of Dragonblight at the castle of the keys. Unfortunately for the druids they ran afoul of a group of Prorpger's trolls who, still bitter over the Circle's betrayal of Madrak Ironhide and unaware of the Circle's goal decided to take the opportunity to strike at the Blackclads.
This game was fought on a table bisected from left to right by a 4" stream of Blighted Shallow water. The blighted energies in this region had two effects: first living non-Legion models in the blighted water suffer -2 MAT, RAT, and STR. However we made a mistake and only played this as a -1 penalty. Second, all Tough rolls in this scenario only succeed on a roll of 6. The Circle's goal was to damn this river by collapsing six of the eight columns surrounding the river and using the rubble to stop it. The columns were positioned with four on each side of the river, each 1" from the river and 8" from the columns to its right and left or 10" from a table edge if there was no column to that side of it. The columns were ARM 18 structures that could take 20 damage points before being destroyed. This scenario used the Siege Attrition rules for the campaign, meaning if any columns were destroyed but Circle lost, the next time they attempted the scenario whatever columns had been destroyed in previous attempts would remain begin the game already destroyed.
Other than the river and columns, each player placed four terrain pieces but could only select obstructions, obstacles, and structures. We also allowed open pits to be used, feeling it felt in theme with the ruined castle. These terrain features had to be at least 6" away from the channel and 3" from each other. Both players primarily selected linear obstacles for their terrain pieces, resulting in a relatively open table with regards to LOS. Saultydog did place a couple pits on the Trollblood side to try to slow them down while Prorpger put a couple of structures over on the Circle side for the same reason. In addition we wound up using P3 paints for columns again. We really need to add some more variety of terrain pieces but time to make terrain always seems hard to find.
As I mentioned in the previous post about our campaign we were allowing proxies so both players took the opportunity to break out some new models and try them out. They fielded the following:
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