A Brief Report and a Beautiful Ogre Army from Cancon

Well gang I survived my 4th trip up to Canberra to enjoy the good times at Cancon.  Unlike the last two years I decided to play Warhammer Fantasy this year and I am glad I did.  The Fantasy side of the event this year was run by the Hampton Club out of Melbourne and numbers grew until they had to close the event due to space.  75 players.  That makes it the largest event in Australia since 8th ed came out.

There was a great spread of armies and players from all over Australia.  I was a little surprised at how many Ogre players there were (11) and how few Skaven (3) and Vampire Counts Armies there were (1). I guess Ogres are the new hotness and have a good book so it really shouldn't have been a surprise.  I guess what I should have been surprised by was that out of an 8 game event I didn't see Ogres across the table once.  I did get Warriors of Chaos, 2 Wood Elf armies, 2 Orc and Goblin armies, Empire, Dwarves and Beasts. I won more than a few by a fair margin, lost 1 small loss, tied a few and got slaughtered in the last round.  I ended with exactly half the battle points available and ended on 35th out of 75 players.  Given the state of my mind and my game at the moment I am pretty pleased with the result.  I am much more confident about my abilities as a player after a long break but I suppose 8 games of anything in three days would do that.  I am more than a little annoyed that at least one of the players (early in the event) took advantage of my rustiness and blatantly used a number of rules the wrong way because I wouldn't catch it.  Welll, I did catch it til later in other later games.  Not little things either... This practice cost me one of my games and mislead me on how things worked in a number of ways that cost me in later games because I was playing wrong.  It is a real shame that this happens in our community and should not be tolerated (note I am not talking the little mistakes and misunderstandings that we all make mind you).  That being said I had a streak of 5 games that were amazingly fun against great guys that all deserved best sports trophies.  I left Cancon with a 2nd Best Sports Award and a real desire to get a number of projects done for upcoming events.

I also worked out the format of a one day event with the guys on the car ride home (8 hour drive) that I will be running in addition to Book Of Grudges II later this year.  The drive up and back from Canberra is a long haul but is always one of my favourite parts of the weekend.  Lots of good discussion, tunes, laughs and tactics.  I think it speaks volumes of the great guys that I travel with.  This year I rolled up with Dave of War and Monty.  On the way home Chris Cousins joined the party.  I am already looking forward to next year.

Anyway enough of my thoughts on this and more of the amazing Ogre Army of Roy Diprose. While I didn't get to ask him about his ogres during the event I loved the conversion work put into the army and the theme of what he was going for. (The hall had terrible lighting so I am sorry about how some of these shots came out)  For those who do not know Roy's work he got best painted at the ETC last year with his "living" Tomb King Army.

Chaos Iron Guts

Lead Belchers (those are Ogre sized horrors.  Amazing amounts of sculpting here)

Not sure about these guys but these looked great.

Firebelly

BSB

Differently armed Chaos Ogres

A big congrats to Ben Leopold for taking 1st place with a remarkably soft Skaven army that lacked all the usual tricks and Greg Johnson (Hoodling of the Hoodling's Hole blog) for taking best painted with his Empire army.  I recommend you check it out on his blog.

More soon about my thoughts on my WOC army and another BEAUTIFUL WOC army that was once featured in Dwarf .