BastardCon 4 photos

Sat night, post tourney

So Bastardcon4 was last March already! I finally got around to pruning the many photos and uploading the remainder.  I have turn by turn photos of my 3 games, but still no battle reports I'm afraid.
On Sunday we played a massive 4v4 game, using the Invasion! rules on p410 of the BRB:
Dark Elves + Beastmen + Daemons + Chaos Dwarves
VS
Dwarves + Empire + Dwarves + High Elf

Double Hydra'd

To start with Team Good's high elf player was missing, so it was 4v3, 8000point v 6000point. The He-elf showed up for turn 3 or so I think, and arrived as reinforcements from one of the table quarters we (team good) still held.







The forces of light were feeling quite worried starting out, as we weren't killing enough every turn to make up for the 2000 point difference (especially as for team evil, core units come back for free the next turn as reinforcements), and we didn't know if the High Elves were going to show (Helm's deep anyone?). We started making smarter choices and killing elite expensive units but it still wasn't looking so good. We'd spent two turns trying to kill the Hellcannon with our 2 cannon, either missing or rolling a 1 to wound! Then the HellCannon misfired a doozy during it's turn, causing each and every wizard on the entire table to have to roll on the miscast table. Fun!

To be honest it didn't turn out the best, that size of battle turned into a slow slog for team evil getting to team good's side of the table. Every turn they had the snot bombarded out of them. That can't have been much fun. With the size of the game TeamGood's shooting phases were taking anything from 30-50mins.

Enforcer: my first bad black library book

I'm sure there are fans of this book out there, nay, I know there are fans. It's rated well enough on Amazon (though only 9 reviews) and a little less so on GoodReads.
Unfortunately fans, I am not one of you.

This is an omnibus, a 3 book gathering of the heroine Shira Calpurnia. I did not make it into the second book. I slogged through the first book, as I'm one of those people who doesn't like not finishing a book they've started. I'll tell you this for free, this was very nearly the first time I broke that compulsion.

I've inhaled my way through a merely a small percentage of the Black Library. I relished Eisenhorn and Ravenor, loved all 9 Felix and Gotrek's. I've read a bunch of Gaunts Ghosts, Space Wolves, Ultramarines, Ciaphas Cain. The list goes on, but only for a little bit longer.

So, back to Calpurnia. I like the planetary details, I like the fact there's no obvious big bad chaos guy in the book. I dislike the pace of the story, I seriously disliked the start of each chapter describing the religious mumbo jumbo of each festival day - was too tedious. I was expecting a murder mystery style book, or at least a mystery book. It's not here I'm afraid. So I think worst of all, was how the story developed. Not through solving any clues, but through complete reaction to things happening. Calpurnia is like a Maxwell Smart or Mr.Bean type character in that sense. Towards the end of the story she starts jumping to the correct conclusions, with no clues or reasons as to why. If she didn't, she'd 'lose' as it were. The story had written itself into an impasse where if the bad guys didn't lead her on by the nose, there were no more clues to follow, so BAM, deus ex machina.

I wish I had written this sooner after finishing the book so I could give you actual examples. As it is the book is at the bottom of the charity bag, and I have no inclination to dig it out, let alone open it's pages again.

I think each chapter of the book could be summarised like so:

1. alert! something happened here, go to scene/site
2. at scene: 
1. authority
1. buck authority
   OR
2. establish authority over some planetary element that isn't the Arbites
2. give local a bad time and be considered rude by local customs
   OR
3. some small action scene
3. go back to base and ruminate about the strange/silly local customs
4. go to #1

I'm sorry Mr. Farrer, I didn't like your book.