Con Job.....

Turn Two/match one....no Blood Angels

Turn 3/ Blood Angels arrive, and get slaughtered.

So UB Con was a bit more of a disappointment then we expected.  Now to the Anime enthusiast it was more a less a blast I am guessing.  However we were finding it hard to get engaged in the Con. The team tourney was a bit lacking in some obvious ways. Blue Tables might have worked for me if we had some themed blue terrain. But  we didn't see any of that. So the Team Tourney which was to be the culminating event of the weekend.
Was little more than a Sour bite to end a meager meal.

As far as how the tourney went  for Team Cold Steel Bisons. Well we went 0-3. Enough said however we did when best painted which is kinda sad cause we were not truly painted. We were based and had three colors but much still needed to be done.  So we walked away with some lame UB Con shirts.
(literally lame way to fanboy Anime to actually wear)

Miranda Lawson

Azula

However the weekend wasn't all a wash. We did enjoy some other aspects of our Geekdom. The Con seemed to have a heavy focus on Cos play. (Costume play) That and we hunted around and found an artist to render up some our Characters for our D&D campaign.  Over the weekend we saw a couple of our favorite nerd characters. Mine being Miranda Lawson from Mass Effect 2. Hoff's being Azula from Avatar the last Air-bender.

It's like I'm a teacher... but not at all.

Now, we'll go back in time and cover how we earned our way into the Con: 13 hours of RP prep and execution. We had a simple two part plan. I would run a Dark Heresy game where a group of Inquisitorial Henchmen would search out reports of anomalies in an Imperial Mining town. Once it turned out those 'anomalies' were actually daemons, Jim would follow up with a very logical second part.

A rousing game of Deathwatch. Using the intel of first group to make their plans, a strike squad of Deathwatch Marines drop pod right into the very scene the henchmen died in.

http://www.ubcon.org/events/126

http://www.ubcon.org/events/127

 

 

 

It's a lot of fun to RP with people who don't know the 41st millenium that well, because the gruesome nature takes most RP players used to more traditional settings way out of their element.

"They suspect everyone of heresy..."

A report

We put together a straightforward party; a bit of scum, mixed with a Cleric, with some Imperial Guard muscle. Since this was a one off session, and we wanted to be prepared for people who did not know the game engine, we kept the mechanics simple; stats, skills and fate. All the party was told was that a mining town has been grievously behind on its production quotas, yet ordering all manner of replacement parts for tools and heavy machinery. I strove to set up a rich palette of Imperial drudgery. The party was briefed aboard an Emperor Class Battle-cruiser The Litany of Contempt via servo skulls whilst 500 ratings were whipped and goaded into loading a single piece of ordnance. The planet below was plagued with winds whipping up the dusts of a sulfuric desert that kept the average lifespan of citizens there a ripe age of 31.

Our party learned what it's like to work for an inquisitor quickly; within a few minutes one of them was lured upstairs by ladies of the evening, only to have it it turn out to be a ruse to disarm him, and shoot him dead where he lay. One down. After the other four rushed to his rescue and killed the newly discovered heretics, the law swept in to attempt the same.

A desperate escape into the mines themselves had the party separated. Terrified merely from fighting whores and local law, they were taken face first into the true horror.  Two stumbled across a sorcerer from the Black Legion who flayed their bodies, and melted their minds. The other two stumbled across a pit in the mine filled with bodies, and blood hounds of Khorne. Luckily for the Marines, the last two sent off a frantic, and grainy transmission via a servo skull to the orbiting ship.

There were many daring dos from our party during it all, and space precludes listing them all. Moments of having the foresight to leap through windows rather than get caught in cross fire, fighting even after losing limbs, the casual summary execution of citizens caught in the way. All leading to their desperate escape from the town into the mines, where their true purpose lie. While they didn't know it, at first, their deaths were all inevitable. A mere plot point. What we were watching for, was how much intel our soon-to-be martyrs that would determine what level of support our Marines would get later.

The Angels of Death

A report

Now a central philosophy of our club.

 

We ran into some snags with starting this game. Like the first one, we found out were were vastly overbooked: 9 people in each! We scrambled to come up with solutions, only to find only a handful showed. We even had one of our gamers (And we are very thankful for his attempt) recruit some friends, who gave him the runaround about whether, and when they show.

But this was Deathwatch, so we took the stance that this as happening dammit. One player, even hadn't heard of 40k before. We were pleased. True to Space Marine form, Jim plunged the party straight into it, giving them minutes to equip and organize for a drop pod insertion straight into the town, having received the intelligence that the Great Enemy was present.

Jim came up with a solid party. Dark Angel Tactical marine and a Space Wolf assault marine for some perfect rivalry and dicotamy. I got to play a scholarly Black Templar Apothecary. Our new man took the stubborn Imperial Fist Devastator.

From the outset, we had a rough going, landing into an arena of Blood Crushers, that were rampaging through the town. From there we had to plunge into the mine, all the while coordinating Imperial Guard support elements, and keeping contact with other elements of the Deathwatch. The mines were taken over by different agent of all four Gods, and we had to approach each one differently.

Then came the great reveal of what lay underneath; a pre-heresy design orbital laser, that had been discovered by the Adeptus Geologis, and kept secrets by agents of chaos, now pointed straight at the orbiting Imperial Ships.  Once the party discovered the end game, and confronted the Sorcerer responsible in the shadow of the immense laser, we opted to call in the orbiting ships melta torpedoes and lance batteries, even though the sorcerer escaped.

When Astartes die to a man, it's much more a grand spectacle.

All in all, the con was a lot of fun. Though, we do have to feel that as gamers, we were the second class citizens. So few RP games for such a large crowd.

And as for the war gaming, well, UB Con was certainly found wanting. A problem we intend to correct next year...

Until then we want to thank all of our participants for their part in making our events a success. And for giving us some fond memories to walk away from this Con with. We look forward to seeing you all in the future!