Main Menu

News:

If you are having problems registering, please e-mail theconclaveforum at gmail.com

Inquisitor at the London GT (19-20 May 2018)

Started by MarcoSkoll, October 18, 2017, 10:43:44 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

TheNephew

I too had a great time - thanks again for your the work that went into it, David.
Was great to see everyone again, and some new faces.
I much prefer London, because it's about three hours closer and far more accessible for me. Obviously that's far from true for everyone.

I think in many ways it was my most successful event yet - narratively I got many of my scenario, campaign and character goals completed, and game-wise Mr and Mrs Mech spent far less time floored and gutshot than usual.

Making friends with Strang's gang, who promptly turned around and convinced the PDF that I was the Bad Guys, was great.
Getting repeatedly shot by said guards while trying to usefully engage said Bad Guys was good fun too.

Finally having a Cunning Plan succesfully executed, with the unfortunate demise of everyone's favourite Cardinal, was nice.

Watching the slightly confused Saint stolen from the amorous embraces of Buckethead Bill and Epicurius(?) was one of the funniest things I've seen on the table in a while.
Relying on a Magos to sell the "Oh my gosh, it's a chaos space marine attacking us all, all of us!" narrative was maybe not the smartest call on Planck and Mirielle's part though.

The finale was also a great showdown, wading thorugh hordes of zombies while Daniel held (and eventually just blocked) the balcony against the oncoming Forces of Good (and Ambivalence) felt suitably cinematic.

Hope the second days goes/went well.

MarcoSkoll

Well - I hope you all enjoyed yourselves.

I am fairly shattered, as I stayed behind to help the main organisers pack down the rest of the event (hoping to help set a good impression with them on our first visit to the event), so you'll have to wait to hear any more thoughts from me until I am on the other side of some sleep!
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

mcjomar

All in all I had a fantastic time.

Samantha may not have quite impressed her superiors with the loss (martyrdom) of the Cardinal, but on a personal level, she would be satisfied with the upheaval her actions have caused (or been involved in). Jack may be less pleased, having been on the receiving end of yet more chaos shenanigans (and a very wounded leg) - not great for the psyker! I think the warband will likely recognise how useful haywire grenades are for dealing with various problematic targets (a single plasma pistol does not a solution make!). As Ordo Hereticus (of a fashion) they're liable to recognise the danger of Carthaxian witchery, and might also consider psyk-out grenades also (Jack won't be happy about those either).

I had a grand old time causing violence and meeting everyone.

Apologies, Cortez, for causing you so much trouble!

Thanks Marco for setting everything up and running it all! It was a great day, and some fantastic work and storytelling.
Thanks to everyone who played with (or against) me for making the day so much fun - I hope I returned the favour!

For my part, I like how local London has proven to be - Warhammer World is nice, but it requires a long drive to my parents for me to be able to make it with a reasonable degree of sleep. Either setting is workable though, given enough advanced notice.
Anyone local to Surrey is welcome down the Surrey Spartans for a game!


Apparently my quote of the day: "Clearly I need to make sure to execute little girls out of hand!"

More 40k version:
"Better a thousand innocents die, than let a single traitor live." (paraphrasing a little)
"Heretics are like cockroaches - annoying to find, and even more annoying to kill." - unattrib.

MarcoSkoll

#123
For a more proper wrap up of the weekend now I've had some (but not yet quite enough) time to recover...

~~~~~

Buoyed up on a wave of holy fervour, the Imperium has finally fully retaken Ilithyia after more than eighty years of conflict, and is now gearing up to repay the fallen Alykia sector in kind.

High Cardinal Tobias Keidrow became a martyr for his own cause, murdered by traitor forces in a suicide attack. (Or so the wider Imperium would believe - rumours abound that internal machinations may have been in play).

However, this lead to the dramatic revelation that Saint Aderyn (or at least someone sufficiently able to pass for her...) had indeed survived the traitorous attack on the High Assembly in 011.M42, having spent the last six years hidden away by Inquisitor Lyra Rhodes of the Ordo Perditus.
Secretly inducted into the ranks of the Adepta Sororitas under the guise of being one of her own body doubles, the Inquisitor elected to reveal the ruse in the crucial moments after the High Cardinal was assassinated, in the hopes that the return of the Saint could stabilise the conflict after the demise of the energetic orator.

It was however a short lived return for the Saint - as a final desperate blow, the forces of Chaos attempted a final vindictive blow upon the world. A dark monolith had been implanted upon the world, corrupting loyal servants of the Emperor into dessicated husks bound to Chaos.
Discovered by the traitorous Isabella Von Ravensburg, the breach was almost fully opened.
At the very last moment, the raw faith of Saint Aderyn, assisted by the heroism of Inquisitor Duvarnae (which I've probably misspelt and will need to look through my notes for the day to check) was enough to overwhelm the accursed artefact, but at the cost of the Saint's third death.

Riding upon her success at the climax of the conflict, and with the support of the individual known as "Strang", Duvarnae was easily able to politically suppress any calls for moderation, and fully set the process of the Alykian Crusade in motion.

~~~~~

Although we had a small turn-out, I think Legacy turned out as a successful event. (Although it seems that the LGT's main WH40K event has proven pretty controversial).

For the Saturday, it was nice to have had the opportunity to run a plot over four rounds (something we've not had time for in a while), allowing some of the plot threads to actually progress through the event.

I was also happy that I'd managed to pick a plot line which proved sufficiently "controversial" that we had players supporting both sides of the conflict; We had 4 "Warmongers" and 2 "Peacekeepers" (to use the vernacular from my planning notes), which was sufficiently balanced that I could have representatives of both factions in every game. (Particularly as I had written the scenarios with multiple possible objectives and could pick and choose as appropriate to the characters, even with characters supposedly on the same side having different ideas about the best way to achieve their goals).

~~~~~

Sunday also worked fairly well, particularly as we've not really had much prior experience with trying to run events on a Sunday.
I am appreciative to all of the GMs for rejigging their scenarios on the fly to work for four players (in order that I didn't spend the day sitting out), and I had quite a lot of fun joining the game.

To pick a few of the moments I particularly enjoyed from joining in, Maya deciding in Ruaridh's hive-quake scenario that "Frak this, I can fly"...



However, it seemed there was no flipping point in me writing rules for people with big flaming wings being very visible, because everyone proceeded to wilfully ignore the flying, flaming psyker for the rest of the game - even once she started shouting in a psychically boosted voice. (She's a very versatile psyker that can combine the disciplines of pyrokinesis, empathy and microtelekinesis into a power set that goes from illusion to shock and awe. As the game was going on, she was definitely shifting more and more towards the "shock and awe" end of that spectrum, given she started the game half invisible and ended up flying, on fire, and doing a Brian Blessed impersonation).

In Chris' Heretek scenario, Evelyn managing to mess up my chances of intervening in genuinely important matters by refusing to forgive Suggs, Euan's gunslinger, for chucking a grenade at her, and thus wasting time booting him in his already badly mutilated groin.

And for Euan's Squigeon scenario, I decided that the best replacement "message" to plant on the Squigeon (as per my objective) would be to booby trap it with a live krak grenade. This was obviously going to be a much trickier approach than just scrawling a completely misdirecting note, but live explosives seemed like a good way of starting a power struggle/internal war with the planet's Ork problem, it was much more interesting and it gave Kronen a chance to actually use her "Booby Traps" ability.

That plan went out of the window when one of Richard's arbitrators charged while the trap was being set (letting the Squigeon break loose), but Kronen (at her Kroneniest) used Lighting Reflexes to chuck the already primed grenade at the Arbitrator.

She did however make the mistake of misidentifying an Alpha Legionnaire as a loyalist - an embarrassing mistake for a veteran of the 13th Black Crusade who has fought and killed Space Marines before...

(Plus Evelyn deciding that the aforementioned arbitrator also needed a boot in the groin. I think that may be becoming a thing).

~~~~~

I enjoyed myself (although I am thoroughly worn out, what with having spent extra time at the end of the day helping pack up) - and I hope you all did too, and I'll see you at the next one. (Maybe someone else can run that one... I can bring the terrain though!)
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

Van Helser

Had a super busy week and haven't really had the chance to post anything until now, but the extra week has given me some time to digest the weekend.

Sterling work from Marco to organise the day, and to provide excellent terrain for two tables.  Both days had great games in the right Inquisitor spirit with some stand out moments.  My personal favourite was Vector Tern's sneak attack with a powerfist to Isabella's unfortunate head, which we double-checked with Gav Thorpe that you can't become aware of a successful sneak attack by hearing it if the risky action roll was passed.  The dastardly powers of the warp brought Isabella back from the dead (dead dead), with the Protean warp malignancy causing an outward change in her.  The games on the second day were good fun, and hunting for a squigeon with a Legionnaire that couldn't muster more than two successful actions a turn was an excellent farce.

There were downsides to the event, but all of them I think lie squarely at the door of the LGT organisers:

The security arrangements simply meant that there were too few staff to check bags, and that meant a big delay to the events.  Wasn't too much of an issue for us as scenarios can always be tweaked and sped up if needs be, but it was bad news for the other tournaments.

It would have been nicer to not be shut away in a corner of the bar, as we probably could have had more interest from attendees if we'd been more visible.  What was more concerning about the position was the lack of space between tables and the tortuous route past the Warmaster games to get to the bar or toilets.  If there had been any less-abled attendees, it would likely have been a real struggle to get to our games.  I am still convinced that a fire safety inspector would have had a fit if he'd seen the layout.

If Marco hadn't provided terrain, we would have fought over unpainted polystyrene blocks like the 40k gamers had to endure.  Poor show from the organisers in failing to get that done to an acceptable level.

£50 to play over the two days...  not sure where our money went, other than the use of a gaming mat and the rent of the space.

All in all it was a great event, but that's down to Marco and the other Inquisitor players.  I just feel like we could have had as much fun in Nottingham at WHW without the entry fee, had more space and comfort and probably more visibility amongst all the other tables.  Even with the advertising through the LGT page, attendee numbers were about the same as they are for any of the Nottingham events we do, so despite the reach and clout of associating with a big GT event I don't think it paid off in terms of growing the game. 

Oh, and £5.40 beers.

Not sure I'd do another LGT without big changes in the overall set up.

Ruaridh


MarcoSkoll

Quote from: Van Helser on May 27, 2018, 12:50:55 PMSterling work from Marco to organise the day, and to provide excellent terrain for two tables.  Both days had great games in the right Inquisitor spirit with some stand out moments.
Hopefully people had fun with some of the various twists and tricks I'd tried to build into the scenarios.

QuoteThe security arrangements simply meant that there were too few staff to check bags, and that meant a big delay to the events.  Wasn't too much of an issue for us as scenarios can always be tweaked and sped up if needs be, but it was bad news for the other tournaments.
I think we also got quite lucky with how long it took people to get through the door - although we started late, we did ultimately get everyone to the table early enough that it didn't derail anything too badly.

QuoteI am still convinced that a fire safety inspector would have had a fit if he'd seen the layout.
Probably. (Says the person who'd brought along a plasma ball which 1) had instructions that said "do not tamper with this device, as it may be a fire risk" and 2) he had heavily tampered with, including plugging it into twice as much voltage as it was designed to run on).

Our positioning was somewhat exacerbated by the Warhammer Community team. The originally planned floor layout would have been a bit less cramped, but with the community team taking up a huge chunk of space, things had to be shifted around.
(I'm still wondering exactly how often shouts of "Die Heretic" and "Clearly I should have just executed that random bystander" got broadcast over Twitch...)

QuoteIf Marco hadn't provided terrain, we would have fought over unpainted polystyrene blocks like the 40k gamers had to endure.  Poor show from the organisers in failing to get that done to an acceptable level.
Actually, the ruins we were offered were not the unpainted polystyrene from the WH40K event - there were a few crates of basic, but functional ruins around from previous LGTs. (Which were unused because the main event was aiming for identical, symmetrical table layouts).

They would have been usable without the table looking like an explosion at B&Q, although I turned them down on the day; between what I and Cortez had brought, we were well set for the two tables worth of terrain we needed, and I thought people would prefer to play some games on tables that weren't half ruined debris like we usually get at Warhammer World.

(Both tables were hopefully somewhat different to our normal fare, with the configuration table offering two levels for characters to move around and a couple of fairly impressive centrepieces, and the forest table breaking up pretty much all longer lines of sight and offering a lot of risky terrain).

QuoteNot sure I'd do another LGT without big changes in the overall set up.
At present, I'm planning to say yes if I'm asked about it again next year (although I plan to argue for lower ticket pricing), as I hope that involvement in a high profile event* like that has the potential to help develop Inquisitor's visibility (even if just through things like the final results, we did get to announce our presence), and even if it wasn't perfect, I personally enjoyed it enough that I'm prepared to give it another shot.

I'm not certain I'd do it a third time unless things seem quite a bit more in order next year, but a second time, sure.

* Although I still think the holy grail would be running a display table at Salute - that'd be as high profile as I think as it's possible to get in the UK, with a constant throughput of attendees (rather than players focused on their own games), and us with large models that tend to do a good job of getting noticed.

That's starting to seem quite a bit more viable as an idea, now I've got entire sets of portable terrain...
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

TheNephew

I'd agree with Rauridh that we didn't get our moneys-worth out of the LGT organisers - in stuff, space, convenience or exposure for the game.

In an ideal world we'd be a bit more visible (or at least have elbow room), tickets would be £10-15 per day, there would be fewer queues, and the drinks would come in pints not stubbies.

Having said that, if ticket prices next year are cheaper to reflect that I'd do it again - even factoring in the laughable queue situation, my ratio of game:travel time was much more favourable than approximate parity, which it is at WHW.

I'd probably even do both days.

mcjomar

Quote from: MarcoSkoll on May 27, 2018, 02:28:13 PM

(I'm still wondering exactly how often shouts of "Die Heretic" and "Clearly I should have just executed that random bystander" got broadcast over Twitch...)



I did try to find out but the twitch channel for warhammer community has a subscription requirement and I'm not sure how willing I am to pay for that.
"Heretics are like cockroaches - annoying to find, and even more annoying to kill." - unattrib.

Heroka Vendile

I finally submitted my response to the LGT general feedback survey - I think it's important we all do so as a very small part of the event.
My key comment was high ticket price considering all they really provided us was a venue and some tables. Also about being hidden away in a corner - note really conducive to promoting our ancient game  ;)
It's all fun and games until someone shoots their own guy with a Graviton gun instead of the MASSIVE SPIDER.
The Order of Krubal
Rewards Of The Enemy

TheNephew

I too raised the point that our benevolent overlord runs a better event without the 'help' of the LGT, so the ticket price was hard to justify.

Given the space allowances for the other events, I'm not too sorry we were out of the way, but you're right that publicity was no small part of why we were there in the first place.

I did say I would likely go again if they manage to get their act together - I would have liked to see more of what was going on in the evening, but eating dinner on-site was not an option.