Analysis: Wartorn 2013

Events, tournaments and conventions are the lifeblood of the gaming community. They are essential for helping bring people to new businesses, new clubs, and even new games. They grant us the chance to find a bargain, meet new friends and test our skills on the table-top battlefield for prizes galore.


This weekend saw me attend Wartorn 2013, an event held is the historic seaside town of Scarborough (History fact: Scarbrough was the first "seaside resort-town" in the UK!). The event aims to bring the community together, and raise money for Help for Heroes. And like any other good journalist, I've returned bearing thoughts, products and all-important photography.

People were greeted to a plethora of things to check out. 2nd hand 40k, historical games, game demonstrations, battle-cases, bitz, and far more. The event was graced by the big name that is Warlord Games, and I sure had a fun chat with the staff there; they helped me pick out the right stuff I needed to start Bolt Action, and to make it better, sold me a Flammpanzer B2 (I'm obsessed with the Char B1 family of tanks), which they very kindly cast up for me the day before. Great customer service, and they'll see me again.

I did feel a little disappointed by the lack of any 40k models that truly caught my eye. Having said that, I did get a cool looking Goff Rocker and a "Gods of Chaos" wristband, which I suspect is from GW's 25th birthday for 40k. The lack of 40k did mean I had money to spend on other cool stuff: I managed to get come cheap but detailed 15mm German infantry and Hetzers from Forged In Battle, some flame tokens, and various others bits and bobs that added up to a healthy sum at the end of the weekend.


The tournament on the Sunday was a partial disappointment: only three people showed up. Now, I am in no way blaming the organisers, they did a good job of advertising the competition months in advance. I blame the people for now showing up, had said group of people shown up, we would have had a good time. The organisers were very kind and gave us three showing players a partial refund, and arranged a smaller competition for a KR multi-case, provided kindly by Lesley's Bits Box.
It was only two matches per player, and I managed to come second overall (which I could as 2nd out of ten).  My first match was against another Chaos Space Marine player, using a Nurgle force. At first I was on the back leg, I lost my Vindicator before it could do anything (fighting lengh-ways on a 6ft long table sucks for siege weapons like the Vindicator), my combat cultists were killed to a man, and two flamer Heldrakes killed off my objective holding blob (even though they passed every leadership roll).


 However, once my combat beasts got close, things went very well. My Mutilators ripped up the cultists, and my Sorcerer even managed to transform into a Daemon Prince, and subsequently killed the enemy warlord, granting me the one extra point I needed to win.

My second match didn't go so well, I was against a Grey Knight infantry force: 50+ of my most hated foe, most with strength five guns. As you can imagine, my toughness three cultists without the benefit of cover didn't do so well. Combined with twice delayed infiltrators and lots of Psycannons, you can imagine how badly it went. However, I did have fun at the event, and it did teach me valuable lessons for use in future competitions:

• One-buy some sort of placed terrain. The limited terrain on the tables lead to most of my deaths
• Two-Invest in more ap2/3 ( baleflamers, battle cannons etc.)
• Three-wear my glasses to tournaments! In all honesty it was very, very hard to differentiate between closely placed squads. There were apparently different shoulder pad styles, but it was hard for me to tell any difference. Being able to see better might have helped.