Lock and Load: Day 1

OK, today was the first official day of Lock & Load. Plenty of action. The two main tournaments today were the first day of Masters (96 slots) and Iron Gauntlet (64 or 96 slots...not sure which). There was also a very busy Iron Arena area where games were going on all day.

But the story began early in the morning, as the line up formed for entry into the Privateer Press store. The line started at around 4:00 AM. I took this picture of Roy, Steve and Mike at about 6:00.

The hot items were all the new Convergence models that were being released.

Waiting for the Masters and Iron Gauntlet tournaments to start, the parade of Warmachine podcast celebrities began. Good to see all these guys out enjoying events. If you are into the Warmachine podcast scene...well, conventions like these are fodder that they get a lot of milage out of. Here are Crump and Phatasian from Muse on Minis.

The action was fast and furious in the tournament hall. Here, Tyler (from the Red Deer GROTS group) goes head-to-head with Jake van Meter...another Warmachine community celebrity. They are playing in the first round of the Iron Gauntlet tourney.

Some guy had stayed up all Thursday night with a buddy and managed to assemble and paint an entire force of new convergence models to play in Iron Gauntlet today. Nuts!

My tournament day was embarrassingly lacklustre. I went an anemic 1-3 in the Masters tourney. *cry* My first round opponent was Chad from the Muse on Minis crew. Whoops...bad news right out of the starting gate. Chad would wind up #2 in the tournament at the end of the day...

Chad Shonkwiler played eDoomshaper, and managed to get Mulg to take down my Judicator in one activation. Ouch. As you can see in the picture, he's quite happy the way it all turned out...as Mulg went on to assassinate my eFeora on the next turn.

My next opponent was Jaaron Moyer. He played an eLylith Legion list that assassinated my pSeverius on turn 2. Again...see how happy he is. I wasn't.

Next I played Adrian Trollip from Vancouver. He's not very happy in the photo...I can empathize. Losing sucks. Adrian was playing an eStriker Cygnar infantry brick that pSeverius tore apart with Ashes-to-Ashes and plenty of good work from my Errant Knights. The Avatar wound up assassinating eStriker in this one.

Last match of the day was with Matthew Bucher from Phoenix, AZ. Another Legion opponent...Matt played Rhyas and got plenty of value out of his swordsmen and spear-throwing Ogryn. After a long grinding game that saw plenty of attrition on both sides, Matt won on scenario points.

Although the tournament was no great shakes for me personally, the Alberta crew did great. Gord from Red Deer and Bryn from Calgary took two spots in the top eight, and advance to the final rounds on Sunday. Gord wound up taking 3rd place, while Bryn took  6th.

Here is Gord (on the right) with Trevor, the host of the Chain Attack podcast.

At the end of the day's games, the top eight players were selected to move onto the final rounds on Sunday. As you can see from this list, most of the game's factions were represented by the day's top players.

Later in the evening, I joined the St. Albert crew for pizza, beer and Jack Daniels at a great pizza joint in the market down near the waterfront. Lots of fun today. Looking forward to Hardcore tomorrow.

'Til next time.