2 men, 1 bed & 6 games of Warhammer.

The South Coast Grand tournament is the premier event of the Warhammer Fantasy tournament calendar year. It hosts 200 players competing over 6 games across a hobby weekend down in Portsmouth on the 11-13^th of April 2014.

Tickets for this event are often hotly contested (some people book the hotel rooms a year in advance) so it was fecking awesome when our Corehammer group tickets got confirmed after blasting out a purchasing time of 47 seconds after the ticket release.  The event managed to sell 275 tickets in the first minute, far exceeding our expectations and confirming the growing interest in the event (the previous year had sold out after 10 minutes). With our tickets confirmed and our hotel booked (we’re sharing a double bed unexpectedly as everything’s booked already) we began to plan our first Corehammer trip to the SCGT.

After all the Corehammer hype around buying tickets it ended up, after some standard bailers,  just being myself and Gaz committing to the cause. This has thrown up its own unique problems/tales with myself having a decent (if un-experienced attendance wise) knowledge of the tournament scene/game in general and Gaz, being a fairly new player, having none at all. With this in mind the CH faithful, lead by myself and Steve Leighton, have spent most of our time trying to mentor Gaz into a tournament focused player by introducing him to the finer things in WHF life such as FAQ’s, tournament comp packs, 3 colour minimum painting restrictions and downright filth mongers. All of which has appeared to ruin his hobby and leave him slaving over his painting table cursing my name at any chance he can spare a moment for social interaction on the CH email list. But tantrums aside (he will thank me for it later) Gaz and myself have agreed to document some of this journey to South Coast by sharing some of our experiences in preparation for the event, reports from the weekend and then its hopefully rewarding conclusion.

Gaz is kicking off the series detailing how he ended up in this mess of hobby preparation and his goals working towards the event, which is now only three weeks away. For any further updates check back here or check out the Twitter build up from @Corehammer @drats_hammer or @MunkyManGaz – Enjoy.

THE MUNKY MAN COMETH

 By Gaz Holmes

Ok so to start off I’d say my first chance encounter of tournament gaming and to be honest first real meeting with the Corehammer guys was a trip to Warhammer World before Christmas. I took my Savage Orcs to play Stevie Boxall’s Ogres and to say that he beat me would be an under statement. I honestly don’t remember killing anything of his army and every time anything died he asked crazy things like “did that guy have the lucky shield?” or “was that the unit with the banner of eternal flame!?”. After much post-game ripping from the Corehammer gang, losing to a man in a mustard coloured shirt is not great, it was clear that something had to change.

Now my early approach to Warhammer, that continued leading up to this day, had always been throwing armies together from what I could afford, trying to shoe horn these models into the points I was playing because as a poor Welsh boy I could rarely afford anything of worth (so buying one stone troll would have been my budget blown on Warhammer for a few weeks).

Starting the hobby again in 2012 the first thing I got hit with was, ‘HOLY SHIT I CAN BUY WHATEVER I WANT NOW I HAVE MONEY’. That basically spurred me on to collect my savage Orc and Goblin army which, even though I had some early success with, quickly became a losing army against Deadbeat and John Dirt (more CH crew cretins) who for the most part thought a lot more about structure, composition and how they would utilize their armies than I did. But anyway I digress, basically during all this time I was slowly buying the pieces to make a vampire counts army and after the announcement of Ill Blood decided that I would start a fresh approach to the game with this army, by taking a more focused/competitive approach to list building and gaming.

Sadly, due to some stuff going on at my Airsoft centre in north Wales (TBC for a future CH event I’m sure), I was unable to attend Ill Blood. I was absolutely gutted about this because I had been looking forward to having some more competitive games and hanging out with the southerners, Stevie/Kieron/Steve, and knew it would be a blast. From all positive response I can see that it was a cracking event and I won’t be making that mistake again. BUT AGAIN I DIGRESS.

So anyway, back to the main topic. I got a call from Kieron one fateful day asking if I fancied heading to this big tournament I’d never heard of down south with him, Stevie Boxall and maybe Steve Leighton. Of course I said yes, of course I thought my army was ready and of course I thought it would be plain sailing as I was none the wiser. So began my rocky road to the south coast grand tournament 2014….

A few weeks ago after many missed Skype meetings and messages through Facebook I finally sat down with Kieron for a chat about South Coast and what I needed to do/be ready for. It had turned out by this time Leighton was unavailable due to starting a new job (gratz dude), Boxall was running up North to be with his true love Cold World (get to Outbreak fest guys Lee Lad Fellows is a doll and Jordon is a Gent) and Kieron had booked us into a room in a nice B&B with only one double bed (trap). So we talked and it turned out all the models I’d painted for my new VC army weren’t painted enough to meet the 3 colour minimum for the tourney and my army from Kieron’s perspective was:

1) Terrible

2) Not up to scratch for the tournament comp?  (As it turns out there’s special rules on army building and the 2 Terrorgheists that Leighton suggested I buy the week before were now a no go.)

Now I’m not going to lie and say I re-wrote my list personally, as it’s heavily governed by the wise guidance of Leighton and Kieron, who have basically coached me out of my earlier misguided approach to warhammer to an army that I now hope doesn’t have me leaving every game at SCGT after a first turn white wash. To help me monitor my progress with this new list they have even set up a whatsapp group chat that, dependent on my current game results gets it group name changed between, ‘Gaz loves to suck’ and ‘Gaz the people’s champ’.

So my hobby journey on the road to the south coast grand tournament 2014 is well under way, but somehow still feels like I’m back at the start as I have a full A4 page of stuff to do and re-do (thanks guys!).

The theme of the army was started back when I painted a warrior priest all vampirey and then found an easier way to paint the troops ethereally (Ink wash & Dry brush). After that I didn’t add any different colours and went on to make my necromancers use these set colours in their OSL effects In an attempt to make it appear like they where re-animating different parts of the army. Then reality hit after a lecture from Kieron and it was evident more colours may be needed to meet the tournament standard…

Overall though I am really happy with the new paint schemes and I have now got all the models I need (bar 4 dire wolves) though rather than just doing them the easy way of course I have HAD to put further conversion work in, as I can’t have a standard boring looking army and I also to try and distract viewers from my painting ability, that is nowhere near as good as many of the CH crew. I’ve included a few WIP pictures in this article but I will be posting another blog just before tourney when (hopefully) my army will be ready to go and the scenery I have built (YES I HAVE TO DO THAT AS WELL FOR THE STUPID TOURNAMENT) is done.

 After all this is done I’m rewarding myself by tormenting Deadbeat with pyro… just need to keep that in mind.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKrmw8Kb1I0&w=560&h=315]