Welcome to Daren's last instalment from Adepticon!
Although we'd all been up into the small hours the night before playing the awesome Scavenger Hunt, we hit the tables early and ready for action!
The $1500 Throwdown showed a very different side of the game as players used considerably larger forces that demanded higher levels of concentration but, even so, everyone had a great time... maybe except Andrews 'King Scarab' who seemed to explode on contact with the enemy.
It was a hard fought day but Matt showed his mettle once again and swept his enemies from the table - Carpathian has himself a worthy ally. Matt Cerino won the day with his Enlightened followed by Michael and his Outlaws with Patrick Wallen and his Watchers dropping in third. The award for best player goes to Fernando! His attitude to the game and other players won him this most coveted award...
But, once again, the highlight was the evening's entertainment - this time it was a fantastic Train Heist!
To kick the event off in style, Brian spun a tale of Union trickery as the boys in blue had already made away with the artefacts from the mine on a huge armoured train (an awesome model from Burn in Designs) full of Union Troops and hired Mercenaries.
We divided once again into two teams and shared out our items from the Scavenger hunt and set our forces up along a full 24-foot table. The only way we could get on the Train was to climb up trees and buildings and then risk a jump on to the fast moving vehicle so we'd placed our forces accordingly and made our opening moves. I was extremely happy when I managed to get a Lawbot to climb a tree and jump onto a carriage with no Influence being spent - he was like a mechanical squirrel!
Look out, it's the Squirrelbot!
Then the chaos began.
I'd like to be able to tell you the whole tale of the event but I became engrossed in an epic firefight between my Lawmen and an Outlaw posse led by our youngest player; Fernando.
So I jumped Jim Peterson onto the Engine and waved goodbye as he raced off to face his own enemies as Wyatt Earp and Jesse James squared off. Only one of them would be left standing by the end of the night... and what a fight it was!
Wyatt was on fire, his hatred of Jesse lending him an unearthly accuracy as he coldly executed Jesse's cronies one after the other until he faced off against his nemesis in a small shanty town.
Wyatt pumped all four actions into his Peacemaker giving him eight shots and without spending a single point of influence dropped Jesse with SIX lethal hits! But we all know Jesse wasn't going down with having his Last Laugh and Wyatt only had four Lifeblood left, a truly tense moment.
Jesse hit with all four shots.
Wyatt saved them all.
I dived down twelve foot of table to catch up with events on the train. Something was awry - whatever artefact was on the train kept reanimating the dead and so what seemed at the start to be an easy job turned into an absolute bloodbath.
I took control of Jim Peterson just as The Wraith obliterated one of my allies so Jim Peterson did what Jim Peterson does and put the Wraith down, only to find that out that I was too late - a second Union Train had pulled alongside and transferred the mysterious cargo aboard and the game came to an end. What a night.
The thing I loved the most (other than the shoot-out between Fernando and I) was the Roleplay element that Brian, Tom and Scott had put into the game. We weren't playing a tournament here, we were creating a new legend to add to the Wild West Exodus history books. One that I was honoured to be a part of.
This brings me to the end of Adepticon but not the end of the story. Brian and the guys have got plans to do a lot more events like this and I, for one, am prepared to travel half-way around the world to do it all again.
I hope to see you all at the next one - Wyatt's waiting for ya'll.