N.B. All characters, events and score lines are entirely fictitious. I blame it on the pizza.

Preamble

It's always one of the big dilemmas of organising an event; do you panic now and get it over with or leave it 'til later and hope you can find time to fit it in.

The night before the event as I was driving to pick Daniel up to drive to the school I got a call from Muzzy telling me that his job interview that day had been so successful that they wanted him to go back for a second interview the next day. This would leave us with 29 Warhammer players (odd numbers are not good) and also Muzzy is the one who stores the club's boards. Time to panic.

But first we had to set the hall up. Daniel and Andy F were the only others there and instead of having Mr Nice Caretaker there was some chap we hadn't met before. Mr N. Caretaker helps us lug the tables into the hall but the New Chap had other ideas and left us to it. By the end we were rather knackered and cut a couple of corners but by that point we were beyond caring. When we went to leave we found Muzzy locked out waiting to deliver the boards, fortunately he'd only been stuck there five minutes.

And then I had to pick up Mr Price who had agreed to come over and take the 'Curse of the Newly Painted Army' off some of my miniatures. A pleasant evening ensued involving pizza (which I was later to regret), wine and a few games of HOTT. I lost to both Steve and Brian (Steve also beat Brian as well as me) but at least the COTNPA should now be gone.

A not entirely peaceful night ensued punctuated by a dream in which I hadn't remembered to set my alarm clock and turned up at the event at 11:30. I blame the pizza.

The next morning I left a little later than planned and dashed across Macc to the venue. I made it in time but as usual there were already mad gamers hanging round waiting to register. Fortunately the Sharrocks (Tim, Dominic and Benedict) had already arrived and were holding the fort. Registration was the only time the spreadsheet misfired. Someone had hard coded a competitor's name into the registration page last year instead of it being a link back to the main page. We spent around five minutes looking hopefully for Mr Chesney only to realise the mistake and that we really were one competitor down which would mean that one local team member would have to miss a game in each round until Muzzy could join us.

HOTT registration started with a bit of shock when I realised that my plea for people to bring their own boards hadn't reached anyone (a fault with Bravenet's mailing list system). I now realised that my panicking before had been in vain as I still had more to do. Organising boards is always one of the big nightmares of the event and had been a considerable source of stress for the Warhammer event (15-16 6x4 boards), I had thought that we had HOTT covered, doh! Attention to detail is everything. By the narrowest of margins we managed to get away with this botch although a at least a couple of games had to be played on unpainted surfaces and the big scale games were a little 'cosy'. Next year I shall make amends.

The Games

My first game was against Brian Pierpoint's Papal army which included an aerial hero. The three armies I took with me (Techno Dwarves, Tribal Goblins and Night Goblins, all in 15mm) would all have been in big trouble so I hunted through the pool armies to find if there was anything left which would give me half a chance. I turned up the 'No.13 Alliance' a rather interesting combination which included a hero and a paladin. I can't remember many of the details but the turning point was when Brian's AH charged the rear of the centre of a line of three knights (or was it blades?). The AH rolled low and ended up mired in combat as we drew. In my turn I rolled enough pips to turn the other elements of my line to get a double overlap and move a knight (I'm sure this time) into the AH's recoil zone. Splat. After that things went further downhill for Brian and I came away with a win 45-3.

Game 2 was against Tony Horobin's rather lovely Snow Queen army, I used my techno dwarves. This meant that in my first game I was playing the Macclesfield Manoeuvres 2001 champion and in the second I had the winner of MM2002. I blame the person who sorted out the draw. Things got off to a good start for me when Tony forgot about the effects of artillery on behemoths. Unfortunately for me his amnesia lifted before he had got into range. I sent my airboats off and after a few early skirmishes I recoiled his magician general diagonally back into a line of hordes. Game over, 46-2. Things were beginning to look good.

I wandered off and put some of the scores into the spreadsheets only for Tony to come over and point out that we had completely forgotten that magicians can interpenetrate foot in any direction and the game was still on. As we had left everything set up we carried on where we had left off. Things began to go downhill for me from that point onwards. With things not going my way I saw a way of pulling off victory with a couple of risky moves. I was about 10 AP down at that point to Tony's 7, but I advanced an airboat to attack a horde and flanked a behemoth. All I had to do was win a 5-2 against a horde which would recoil into its mates and then follow this up by winning a 3-3 against a flanked behemoth. I was feeling luck as I reached for my die. Tony however was feeling luckier and beat back my airboat with his lowly horde and followed that by doubling my blade. There may also have been a combat with a beast eating my artillery but that would spoil the narrative fun wouldn't it. The score sheet lists the game a 40-8 to Tony so I must have got some of the details a little fudged somewhere.

Game 3 saw some little guy vs little guy action when my Techno Dwarves faced Paul Smith's Garden Gnomes. Tremendously entertaining for me as I took pot shot after pot shot at Paul's snail behemoths, although repeatedly asking 'How far do they run away again?' might have been fun for me it probably didn't get me Paul's vote for best sportsman. The action in this game was complicated by the large woods which Paul had laid down to hinder the dwarven air force. Eventually after much too-ing and fro-ing We ended up with battle lines perpendicular to our deployment edges. Things were looking pretty good as I was closing in on Paul's general and I rolled a 6 for pips. Thins turned out to be a game loser for me as I felt compelled to make use of each and every pip anticipating where my troops would be engaged in the next turn. Stupidly I moved my airboat into an exposed position and Paul recoiled it off the board with shooting, game over 40-8 to Paul.

At this point in proceedings the IT equipment decided to play true to form and go on strike. This time it wasn't the spreadsheets but instead it was the printer which had formed the erroneous opinions that it was out of ink. After pointing out to the darned thing that the glass was in fact half full normal service was resumed. This was after having to call out the table allocations to the players and getting Benedict to hand write the sheet as a backup.

Game 4 and I was facing Mr Price, who claimed not to have been affected by the previous night's pizza. I secretly considered the possibility that he had in some way poisoned me with the intent of coming off the better should we face on the day. Steve laid down the law and I opted for Simon Corbishley's lizard men army reasoning that the three behemoth's would possibly be in with a chance against Steve's wall of blades. (I have had great fun facing Simon's army in the past, see the game against Paul for why.) I deployed on a nice wide hill and Steve did his usual trick of deploying everything in one big block. And early charge from Steve's Heroes and Paladin tempted me to abandon the hill in search of some points but alas Steve rolled enough pips for a strategic retreat when it looked like I might be able to dent his forces. A bit more shuffling later and we ended up with more or less a stalemate. We were facing off in such a way that one force would have to enter bad going in order to engage the other's line fully. At this point I could foresee the battle going on all afternoon having seen Brian and Steve in action the night before, both carefully manipulating elements a few millimetres and a few degrees to get the maximum effect. The other option was that Steve might have had use of the greater manoeuvrability of his mounted contingent and nipped around the edges of the battlefield. As an organiser I knew I couldn't be mired in a long running game as this had happened to me the year before and caused problems so I elected for a heroic but tactically unsound charge. At one point it actually looked like I was going to kill something but it wasn't to be as I crashed out 48-0.

When the red mist faded I realised that I actually had had plenty of time to finish the game as we were ahead of schedule and the rest of the club was coping with all the numerous organisational tasks. I could have easily afforded to relax a bit more and get into the previous game as it was I was left pacing the hall. It did give me time to take a few more pictures, something I hadn't had time to do the year before. (Incidentally this was the last game in which I saw my nice, laminated quick reference sheet. I guess I'm now the only entrant without one.)

In the final game I was up against Alan 'The Colonel' Saunders with a spectacular mismatch for my techno dwarves, beasts and warband which formed his Knights of Simba army. True to form, when a opportunity to win the game cropped up right at the start of the game when I failed to squish his general with my artillery despite Alan rolling a 1 (all I needed was a 4 or better for the game). Alan surprised me by going for the charge of the light brigade approach and piling his beasts into my artillery, I had expected him to wait a turn or two for his warband to be in position. A short but bloody conflict ensued ending in a sudden death face off between our generals. Despite having a 2 pip advantage I blew yet another crucial roll and lost the fourth game in a row 44-4.

Still, I had had a good time and Ian Edwards had had much worse luck, not winning any of his games so at least I wasn't last. Sorry Ian.

I was very pleased with the way some things had worked out on the day as I hadn't had to do too much data entry or on the day organising myself thanks to my club mates. As an added bonus Both HOTT trophies stayed with the club as Benedict and Tim both took one each. Its just a pity Dominic couldn't do the same in Warhammer.

I blame the pizza.

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