Hopefully the turnout for next year's Orktoberfest will be just as big. I'm expecting so as next year will be a 40k year for the event and 40k should be more popular with more 6th edition books coming out between now and next October. More details in the new year.
The only unfortunate thing about this year's Orctoberfest was that I didn't get any pictures. We were in the middle of packing for a move which never occurred and I totally forgot to pack my camera or ask to borrow my dad's digital SLR. Oh well, next year for sure I will have pictures.
Kinda bummed I missed out on this year's Remembrance Day Challenge but house hunting was more important. The owners of Great White did mention they were going to be putting on a Warhammer Fantasy tournament in the spring so maybe I'll try to attend that one. Just need a fantasy army.
As for other wargaming, not much has occurred. I picked up the Dark Vengeance box. Mostly for the rulebook but I did manage to trade the Chaos half for more Dark Angels. The models in hindsight, while good looking and well detailed, were unnecessary as I have a complete army already. It's been a few months since I got them and I've only put together two Tactical Squads and one Deathwing squad. Still have the two Ravenwing squadrons and a Deathwing squad on sprue plus the commander and librarian and special edition chaplain. Tempted to sell the non-Deathwing stuff I have as I read there are rumors of a Deathwing box being released with the new Dark Angels codex and I hardly ever play with anything other than a full Deathwing army nowadays.
So what have I been doing to keep my gaming self satisfied? Got around to building an MTG cube with a bunch of MTG cards I had lying around plus some generous donations from my brother-in-law. I had heard about the format before but never played. After some reading about cubing, it sounded like fun so I put one together and played with some of my old high school friends. Turns out they enjoyed the cube and wouldn't mind cubing again.
I wasn't happy with the original cube though so I scoured channelfireball.com for some cheap cards to make some of the themes and archetypes stand out a bit more. Most of my friends haven't played MTG in years so aren't familiar with many of the newer mechanics or synergies so my cube is a pseudo-noob friendly cube. Mostly basic mechanics and strategies with a few intermediate-advanced strategies and the cards I bought should make those strategies more obvious. Just gotta wait a few days for the cards to arrive and then I can update my cube!
This brings up an amusing anecdote from the first run through of my cube. I was mentioning that there was a lot of red burn being passed around in the first pack and after the draft had finished, one of my friends who had never played before beat me quite handily with a pure red burn deck. He ended up picking every high damage burn spell and just burned me out both games. Maybe I had too many burn spells but at least that is a noob friendly strategy. Hoping to see what other strategies show up as we cube over the holiday season.
In addition to the construction of my MTG cube, I had my same high school friends make up D&D characters so we could play test D&D Next. We ended up doing random race, class, background and specialty and a random wrestler name. So the group (they decided would be called Outlaw Shizzle to honour the last group we had) is as follows:
- The Rage - Stout Halfling Cleric Guardian Noble
- Grudge Jr. - Hill Dwarf Warlock Bounty Hunter Healer
- Slater Jr. - Human Fighter Thief Acolyte
- Angel Ripper the Third - Wood Elf Sorcerer Thug Necromancer
- Pretty Boy Ray - Halfling Lightfoot Rogue Blacksmith Jack of all Trades (we were all disappointed that this guy turned out very archetypal)
- Anvil - High Elf Wizard Knight Lurker
Looking forward to a nice holiday season of gaming with my friends.