Tuesday, October 2, 2012

FallCon 2012

This last weekend I went to FallCon in Calgary for the first time.  This is a major yearly gaming convention in Western Canada, with a lot of people in attendance.  Several other gamers from Edmonton went at around the same time, for example Mark and Terry.  Don Ray and others from the Calgary Camp Followers organized several DBA-related events that I attended, and I took quite a few photos.

 
A great venue for the convention.

When I arrived on Friday night, the first event at FallCon that I attended was the "Friday Knights" DBA tournament, a Medieval-themed series of games.  I used my Komnenan Byzantine army.

Before the tournament started, I happened to finish a fortune cookie that hopefully foretold how well I would do.

The first game, I played against Don's Anglo-Normans.  This was an interesting game where the bad terrain in the middle of the board was bad for both of our armies, and my archers on the left flank faced off against his archers on his right flank.  Things ground back and forth for quite a while before some lucky rolls allowed me to narrowly win.

Here, you can see my archers on the left, having eliminated his archers, trying to contend with some dismounted knights.

The second game, I played against an army with quite a few spear elements.  However, I don't quite remember which one it was.  The spears on my left fared badly against my knights, and I think I won a comfortable victory there.

The third game, I played against a colourful Medieval French army.  I refused my right flank and engaged his right, hoping to take out his artillery.

However, his artillery was tougher than expected, and killed one of my light horse attacking it, even with a closed door!  Eventually though, I got rid of it, and destroyed enough of his knights to eke out a win.  The funny thing though, is that the overall winner of the tournament turned out to be Mark, who used an army that didn't even have any knights! :)

After a fun Friday night, on Saturday morning I hosted a 3 vs. 3 HoTT game.  Since this was HoTT, any thing could go unit-wise, and we sure had quite a variety of them.

Mark, Terry, and I all had our fantasy armies from the current EDBAG campaign, but the Calgarians in the game had a combination of Arabic, colonial British, and Indian units, which they based on 60mm wide temporary bases.  We coached them through the game as I think all of them are new to the rules.

My side in the game lost when the center (with fire-breathing camel behemoths!) broke and Terry's army was able to break through.  A fun time was had by all.

On Saturday afternoon, we had the "Pirates of the Aegean" DBA tournament, and on Saturday night, I participated in a game of "Werewolf", a great social game.  However, I didn't take any pictures for those events, which is too bad, since I won "Pirates of the Aegean".

Sunday morning was the time for the Alberta Open DBA tournament, and I entered it with my West Frankish/Norman army.

The first game was against Mark's Norse-Irish.  He used the terrain to his advantage and managed to block my knight-heavy army, who are afraid to charge into bad going.  He managed to win by killing a couple of my units and hold out until the time limit ended the game.

  
The second game went better for me.  I played Dennis' Seleukid army, which despite being a fairly good anti-knight army, lost enough units to give me a narrow victory.

The third game, I fought against Marco's Christian Nubian army, which also had home-court advantage in a terrain setup with dunes and rough going.  However, my archers managed to defeat enough of his psiloi and warband in rough going to win.

This was a great convention, and everyone had a great time.  I look forward to going again next year!