As I write this I’m feeling somewhat guilty that I am sitting in the middle of the Gilcreek Scout Hall as round 2 of Line Breaker gets underway and I still haven’t done a write up of our AoS event from the 11th of Feb! I will get to it, I promise.
Until I do thought…….This is the third year we have run ‘War Hammer Camp’ down in Albany. 11 guys from Perth rolled in to Albany yesterday to square off against 9 of Albany’s finest 40k players. This is my favourite event of our event calendar (although as I sit here recovering from cooking breakfast and lunch for the masses and contemplate how much I need to do to get ready for dinner I am questioning why this is my favourite event????). It is a fun, relaxed weekend where it is less about rolling the dice and more about the players chilling out, hanging out and doing what they do with no pressure.
As always with this event, it is the evenings that I find most enjoyable. The first Perth players arrived mid afternoon, M and I got here about 5pm, a few of the Albany players came out last night and the last of the Perth players rolled in at about 9pm (after painting almost his entire army during the day!) and I am not sure I will ever be able to adequately describe what happens here.
After the trailer was unloaded and eventually the room was set up most of us made our way outside, while a few of the men hung around in the kitchen to chat. For some reason I find a weird sense of joy when men gather in the kitchen to catch up, gossip and chat. As the only woman here I moved as far away from the kitchen as I could and sat with those outside. The only thing that would have made it better in my opinion was if there was a camp fire to sit around, part of that is because I was absolutely freezing and despite being in jeans, runners, thermal, top and jumper I still ended up wrapped in a double sleeping bag! (the Albany players laughing as they were there in t-shirts and thongs) and part of it is because there is just something about sitting around a fire that I find relaxing and calming but I may have gone off on a tangent there. I spent most of the evening outside and the topics of conversation were about as varied as you can imagine. There was a heated debate over The Hobbit vs Lord of the Rings and as I haven’t managed to watch either I couldn’t contribute but the guys all did seemed to agree that The Hobbit should have been 2 movies not 3 even if they couldn’t agree on which movie was better! There was a conversation discussing and debating different religions and their underpinning beliefs and values, as well as a deep and well thought out reasoning of a possible reason as to why Judas betrayed Jesus and literally everything in between.
There was music and laughter and of course there was alcohol. While a half dozen people were debating the similarities and differences between religions a handful of people were inside playing beer pong! This was followed by card games and board games, in fact about the only thing I didn’t see played was 40k!
Players who know each other naturally gravitate towards each other but by the time the beer has made way for the whiskey and port (sorry Tawny as we heard in detail that it must be called in Australia) those natural groups had disappeared and everyone was grouped together. Testament to that, I was chatting to two of the players over lunch and said it was a shame they had to play each other (assuming they must know each other well and play each other often) and one player said ‘it’s ok, to be fair we only met him yesterday so none of us have ever played him before’. Here I was thinking they were old friends!
While some players headed off to bed early there were a select few who decided to make the most of it and rolled into the dorms at 4am. I was up at 6am to start getting breakfast ready so I was pleased M and I didn’t stick around until the last. Breakfast was supposed to start at 8am and the event start at 9.30am. At 9.20am one of the late night revellers made his way from the dorms up to the hall making it up here in time to start the event by the skin of his teeth, admittedly he was still in his super hero pjs and I have just done a quick scan of the room, it’s almost 2pm and he is still in his Superman jammie pants.
It’s St Patrick’s day, as if these guys needed more of an excuse to get into the booze but as the only female here this year I have been given the thoughtful warning of which dorm to avoid to stay clear of the Guinness bombs tonight. Apparently the options are dorm 1 and risk Guinness bombs or dorm 2 where I will be serenaded by the cacophony of snoring and sleep apnoea death snores. Oh the choices! I did consider pulling a mattress out and sleeping in the now covered trailer but decided I would take the snoring over the risk of freezing to death in the icy sub artic Albany evening! (For anyone who is reading this who thinks ‘well I was thinking about it for next year but heck no’, especially any women, I do need to add that in each dorm there are multiple rooms. The last 2 years M and I had the same room but the walls don’t go all the way to the roof leaving a gap of about a foot between the top of the wall and the ceiling to let the sound (and smells) drift on through, this year we got wise (and early so we had first pick) and got a room with walls that go all the way to the roof so the snoring wasn’t an issue and neither is privacy).
As we are about half way through the event now the noise in the room is high, there is laughter and chatter, and a general sense of fun atmosphere. I have managed to get photos of all the armies and it is great to see (and photograph) some new armies that I am not used to seeing. In the past there had been a sense of trepidation on the part of the Albany gamers around the armies that the Perth players would bring down. Would they bring power armies and generally just trounce the Albany players. I can totally understand that hesitation. Players get used to a certain group of players and the social contracts within that group and we were going to introduce a total new group of players, big unknown, so we had really quite stringent army list requirements to set the tone for the event. After chatting with a couple of the Albany players they said that 3 years in, the players know what to expect and we can lift those restrictions. That has made a distinct difference to the armies we are seeing. One army that needs to be mentioned is Hugh’s. As an army list he sent through a photo of Leonardo DiCaprio from The Revenant with the description ‘2000 points’. Yes, Hugh’s army is a single model, one Revenant Titan. His first game went well, he only lost one model! That game was over in about 15 minutes. He is about 90 minutes into a game against Mr Jammie Pants and the game is still going strong.
Apart from the fact I have to cook for the masses lunch and dinner are some of my favourite parts of the event. There is something about sharing a meal and sharing a table with a group of people that brings people together. We set up trestle tables in a long row and everyone sits together to eat. Today’s lunch was improved thanks to the two year reining champion of the event Matt Davey. Matt has been to almost all, if not all, ObSec 40k events but he has moved to Adelaide for work and couldn’t make it. Instead he sent along a carton of his favourite alcoholic beverage so he was here in spirit (or spirits :p). Matt has also sponsored some of the prizes for todays event with all winners walking away with T’au (Matt’s army of choice and it is the T’au codex release today so it all fits together beautifully).
As always I have written far to much and said very little! I will pause here and come back and finish this post in part 2 on Monday when we are home and I can add in info on winners, faction representation, and other actual statistic driven information to contrast this fluff style piece. If you can imagine that there are photos in this post that would be great. Internet connection is rubbish so I can’t upload pictures.