Swansong 1.5 - The UKGT 2013

This weekend gone was the UKGT, that was in all likelihood the last significant Malifaux first edition tournament to be held in the UK, or possibly anywhere.  While I could talk in detail about what I learned about the game etc that would probably be pointless.  Instead I'm just going to give a quick overview of my weekend and a few other thoughts.

This years GT was being held at Tabletop Nation in Essex, a good two-hundred miles south of anywhere I call home. For me the weekend started at lunchtime the Friday before when I was picked up by team mates Craig 'ukrocky' Johnson and Ant 'Stryder' Hoult for the an early run down the A1 to beat the Friday traffic.

The early part of the journey south was a simple enough run, although passing about forty miles of stationary traffic heading north on the way was a sobering reminder of how badly this run could have gone. We were a distance into our journey when designated driver for the weekend voiced a desire to stop at Peterborough services, apparently it's amazing.  I remember thinking it had better be pretty amazing when we veered off and back onto the motorway for the third time looking for the damn place.

It was at this point Craig decided to drop the bombshell that this was the furthest he'd ever driven, with fewer than a quarter of the weekend's miles under our wheels. Several aborted stops later we extracted ourselves from the car at the promised land, rather glad we'd found it at last. I'll grudgingly admit that Peterborough services is about as good as a motorway services is going to get, and Craig's enthusiasm seemed somewhat sated by the giant burrito he consumed.

Back on the road the only remaining blip on the run to the venue was the Fortune of War something that was once a roundabout but is now a sort of chicane shaped monument in the middle of the A127.

I'm still not sure now if it's name or it's abject southern stupidity formed the overriding omen for the weekend, but an omen it certainly was.

We landed at Tabletop Nation in the early afternoon glad to be done with the drive and looking forward to seeing the venue. We weren't disappointed, TTN his HUGE, a massive warehouse full of gaming tables a well stocked store and a bar.

We were the first Malifaux players on site and lacking the drive to play any MX right away I picked up a copy of Pandemic, a game I've been meaning to grab for a while.

Some Zombie Dice and a couple of games of Pandemic later (it is such a good game), we were nicely chilled out and ready for the weekend.

At this point a family of Malifaux players; Cathy, Andy and son James popped their heads in to say hello, which was nice.

TO for the weekend Dave and his son Timmy arrived shortly afterwards and the eight of us went for dinner together.  This is one of the things I like most about the Malifaux community, everyone gets on. It's so easy to relax and chat to these people, even when you're getting funny looks in a gastropub for discussing the merits of giving your skeleton warriors spears and whether Kings of War is a real game or not.*

Much dinner ingested and having helped set up the tables for the event we headed out to find our hotel, this led to an incident;

Hobby Time

While I'm waiting on M2e, and therefore something meaningful to say on the gaming front I've been getting some hobby time in.

So here are a couple of quick shots of last weekends Arcanist efforts;