Lock & Load 2014

Privateer Press' big hometown con was this past weekend, June 6-8, and as I'm in the area I headed up. I didn't participate as much in the convention as I'd have liked, because one of my old college buddies was having his bachelor party the same weekend in the same city, and that kind of took precedence.

My convention experience, then consisted of playing three games of Warmachine; trying out the Warmachine: Tactics demo that was on offer; attending a concept art seminar; and hitting the PP store to pick up a couple models slightly earlier than their street dates. In order:

First game was 50 points, versus a Mortenebra force, on one of the theme tables. I ran Master Tormentor Morghoul with a beast herd starring Molik Karn, a beast noted for extraordinary threat range. And that's how I won the game, by folding up his right flank and then sending Karn in for the kill. Sadly, that was my only win. But my opponent did have a really sweet paint scheme! That white is hard to pull off.

Second game was a short and sweet 25-pointer, again with pMorghoul and Karn, versus a Barnabas minions list. I lost that one with a really stupid mistake, putting Karn just outside Morghoul's control range on a sidestep, and thereby losing him... and eventually the game. (Also, Gatorman Posse are very, very good.)

Third game was a rough one, versus a Mercenaries Durgen Madhammer + Earthbreaker list with plenty of AOEs. Morghoul doesn't like AOEs, and I eventually lost to a solid assassination run.

The concept art panel was pretty fun. It began with a brief talk on how the art staff at Privateer develops the reference art for a model, using the new Cephalyx models as examples. Then we had an open group design, where members of the audience tossed out ideas and the moderator sketched it out in realtime on the computer. This was the result, a possible (though not likely) Mercenary warcaster:

The store doesn't really merit mention; I picked up Tyrant Zaadesh after a short wait in line thanks to not hitting the store until late afternoon.

Now, Brian's bachelor party was the highlight of the weekend. Since we're all enormous geeks, it was nil on the strippers and blow, very high on the board games... I managed to play four new games and enjoyed all of them; three (Sentinels of the Multiverse, Love Letter, and 7 Wonders) are now on my to-buy list.