Well, that is it for another year, time for the autopsy.
This was the third HOTT Berkeley event for the Hordes of The Things set of rules, the fantasy variant of the DBx family by the Wargames Research Group.The event is kindly sponsored by Behind The Lines and Table Top Miniatures. All the proceeds from the event go to a charity of the hotel's choice. This year we raised £116 pounds from entry and raffle proceeds for Cancer Research.
The usual suspects had all booked early so I was anticipating a crowd of about 20 plus and had the venue booked well in advance for the 30th & 31st August at the Berkeley Arms hotel in Berkeley, Gloucestershire. Around March time I got an email from Andy Thomas mentioning he'd heard a vicous rumour about the Berkeley Arms Hotel...turns out the manager had become bankrupt and the hotel was to close !! The hotel belongs to the Berkeley Estate so I contacted them for the latest and unfortunately they were unable to gurantee that the place would be available. Oops. A couple of weeks later whilst chatting with Ian Walkley's wife, Jenny, she suddenly remembered a cricketing mate of Ian's had just taken up management of the Tudor Arms near Slimbridge (for those unaware, Ian knows every one in Gloucestershire it would appear). Turns out to have been a Godsend, upon inspection the venue was perfect and it has 12 rooms to cater for those staying overnight. Doubtless other people's reports will tell a little more about the accomodation and food - I only managed to get 1 meal in over the weekend - but then that's probably best.
As with all events getting final numbers is a mamouth task, people would like to come but can't for any number of reaons but the applicant number steadily started to creep up and by the beginning of August we had over 30, finaly settling on 32 just before the event...until Saturday morning that is, when Chris and Gareth turned up unexpectedly, unexpected to me at least, all ready to play. Fortunately we were able to cope and they slotted in nicely, but the lesson is make sure you send applications to the right email and get confirmation.
The actual playing room was the skittle alley and this was booked up Friday evening so we had to wait until Saturday morning to set up, but with numerous helpers this all went fine. A steady stream of players wandered in through the door and set about filling in their paperwork. In previous years I've done much of it in advance but numbers and a determination to cut down my workload means I let every one do their own these days. One of the great benefits of the alley is that there is a little side alcove which I used as my centre of operations; it meant that the "hovering over the shoulder trying to see the next round" was reduced and I was able get on and chat amiably at the same time.
Noticably on time were messrs Court and Rogers without having to be lied to this time :-).. We did have to spent 5 mins fixing a table so we had enough room for all the pool armies and after a quick re-arrange of the draw for Chris and Gareth we got off to a start.
My own games were all excellent, starting with Benedict and finishing with trying to beat Richard BS by enough points to ensure Thomas won the event rather than Richard. However. it was not to be as Richard only needed to take 8points off me to get the event so I had to do all the running, a few risky moves did not pay off (I could have killed his general) and it was not to be. I always seem to play Ned BS and we were at 1-1 from previous years, this year he got it; I spent much of the game dancing round with my Dragons causing him problems and went for a 'no guts no glory' win with a decent match up - whoever won along the line won the game. I had the advantage but lost on the dice and lost a Hero, Dragon and the game. Against Philip Cowley I used Alan's Aboriginees (including 4 warband !), another good game with risks taken but this time they paid off, the God even arrived and stayed around. Last game of the afternoon on Saturday saw Colin using my opposing Aliens against the Colonial Imperial Guard. I defended and put down my day-glow napalm terrain (see the picture gallery). Colin came to get me before the Dragons arrived but used his Beast General in the front row...it did its job but the others failed, leaving one Alien Queen very isolated and alone and very dead next turn.
Saturday evening was spent playing games and genraly mingling and chatting. Alan put on the old Waddington's Formula 1 game which was a scream ... or screach in the case of James Ewins. I also played Zombies with Richard from Behind The Lines and others, I was marvelous and had a bloody good time...oh, and escaped in the chopper !! After that we did AK47 with Ty Grover-Jones and Tony Horobin, Jeff Herbert joined me for his first game of AK47 and was soon planning further spending of hard earned cash.
Sunday morning we were off to a bright and breezy start against none other than Alan Saunders. I use the Colonials and Alan felt Sunday morning was to bad a time to select an army so used the Aliens. He got to defend and raced up the board in 2 moves, only to come to a grinding halt as his pips dried up. I set about massacring the beasts and was all set to storm a win with overlaps gallor on the Alien Queen...until the fickle hand of fate determined otherwise and my Dragons crashed and burned and my Hero got shredded. A case of "Game over man !". Before lunch I was pitted against Gordon Malcolm, I used the Whores (Seb's army from last year) whlist Gordon had Carthiginians. Gordon managed to get his Hero shot and recoiled off the table edge and then missed the sneaker trick of being able to interpenetrate. I ran the sneaker through his Hero, plonked it just past his rear edge then attacked the Hero with the Cleric general. Along with a dead warband and spear that was enough to give me the game.
Sunday afternoon was a shock, the software told me I was playing Sebastian ! What the hell was he doing up the table ? He was using his astounding army - Dwarves on Stilts. Straight from the Dwarves list in the rules but all modeled on stilts with some great gags like beer jugs with straws going into their mouths. hopefully some one else will have pictures as the ones I took of his army came out badly. To the game. I used my Aliens this time and we kew it came down to the attacker/defender roll. I defended and set down loads of rough. Sebastian managed to find ways through the rough and advanced rapidly...as rapid as a dwarf on stilts can. He shot a beast off the table and dismissed a lurker, but then the ferocious aliens were upon him and the Blades got into all sorts of trouble being caught in the rough. The win saw me pitted against Richard BS but as mentioned already I couldn't get that won so finished in respectable 6th place with 6 wins an 3 loses.
Needless to say the PC software crashed again - round 8 for any one in the sweepstake ! Seems to do this every year. It copes fine when tested a few nights before the event but can't seem to cope with the last few rounds. I'll get on to the developer and send him the files to see if he can fix the bug. It is quite good when it works and so was very usefull and I'm glad to have had it else all the other rounds would have been a nightmare, I only have about 20 mins the get the round done normally and with 34 players and 8 rounds it could have taken a while.
The format worked well as usual and for the first round I tried to pit people against people they had not previously played. The sprit of the event was held high by all and there were no rules 'discussions' in the carpark that I knew of. Sebastian failed in his challenge - he'd reckoned on getting an army painted over the weekend and able to use it by round 8. Despite numerous helpers a small matter of glueing the figures together delayed him...ask him and he'll whinge to you at length. Other good natured whingers were Andy Unwin about his dice, but he got some new ones in the raffle fortunately, and Richard BS who whined about the start times. The beauty of it being when Richard was nominated for the prize of top whinger (along with Seb and Andy) he proceeded to justify himself thereby claiming the prize !!
Tony Horobin's cheese idea went down well and every one enjoyed a good selection of cheeses. The actual Cheese Master award went to Iain Davidson who went to great lengths to get 49% of the board covered with small woods just over 200paces in diameter !!
It was a great weekend and I'd like to thank all those that helped;
Behind The lines for trophy figures and special category prizes
Table Top Miniatures for special category prizes and raffle prizes
Sebastian Rogers for the Last Place Trophy
Richard Crawley for name tags and donation of Whinger of the Weekend prize
Ken McKewan for the Innovative Army prize
Jeff Herbert for raffle prizes
Tony Horobin for raffle prizes
Iain Davidson for helping sort the final round after the software crash
The Tudor Arms for hosting the event
The Berkeley Vale gamers for helping out
Every one else for helping clear up
Berkeley 2004 will soon have a date set and we have 3 people booked already (so Sebastian can't be player 2 next time). It will be limited to 34 places as the venue cannot reasonably hold more than that, so book early to avoid dissapointment.