Clash of Kings Road Trip Part 9 – Welsh Regional in Cardiff

Prepare yourself!! It’s a long pic heavy blog today! And I will also be doing a battle report on Friday on the final game on table 1 between Goblins and Undead. Although you can work out the result below it should still be a good read!

And we’re off!

On Sunday myself and Dave made the 3 hour or so drive down to Nottingham to Cardiff for the Welsh Regional for the UK Clash of Kings. One advantage of having some of the Regional’s on a Sunday is that the traffic is non-existent and we made good time – including a little stop of for some breakfast at a Golden Arches!

Tris Moran the local Pathfinder has been doing great work for Mantic down in the South-west and Wales promoting our games and the hobby. This saw attendance reach 12 + Tris and Dave which compared to the 4-8 last year (including staff) is a great improvement. I opted to sit out this event and instead take lots of pictures, do the event admin and Ref – which in itself sounds like a busy day but actually I just got to watch lots of games of Kings of War.

Considering 10 out of the 14 put their hand up at the beginning of the day when asked ‘hands up if it’s your first Kings of War Tournament’ I was surprised at the lack of Rules queries which either says the players had been practicing a lot or the rules where easy to learn and clear to understand… probably a bit of both!

Amusing rules question for the day…

Basilean’s have the rule ‘Blessed be the Pious’ which says:

All units in the Basilean army (except for Heroes, Monsters and Angelic units) have Blessing (1). If the unit itself is within 6” of an Angelic unit, this power is increased to Blessing (2).

Doesn’t say FRIENDLY Angelic units… so Byron had Basilean Infantry blocks gaining +1 Blessing for Craig’s Angels being with 6″ of his units!

With the pre-event brief done we started the gaming off with a random draw…

The gaming

Like the previous Clash of Kings Regionals all the gamers took to their games in great spirit and although this was a ‘competitive’ event all games were played with high levels of respect and sportsmanship. Plenty of hand shakes and laughs were had whilst enemies were crushed upon the battlefield!

The awards

With all events there are winners and losers but it was quite clear everyone had a good time.

I think you can see from the armies listed below we had a real mix which is good to see, 8 different factions across the 14 players. Lists were also varied which is healthy for any event. We had both a Basilean and Undead Monstrous Infantry list being played (they finished 6th and 4th respectively).

I’ll also have the battle report of the final game Table 1 clash between Chris and Stephen to Blog about, hopefully have that done for Friday.

Finals standings (Army/Tournament points out of 60)

1) Chris Morris – Goblins – 54pts
2) Jon Howes – Dwarfs – 44pts
3) Marcus (Sid) Bennett – Kingdom of Men – 40pts
4) Tris Moran – Undead – 37pts
5) Derek Whittenbury – Undead – 35pts
6) Craig Wilson – Basileans – 32pts
7) Stephen Kerslake – Undead – 31pts
8) Connor Harvey – Ogres – 29pts
9) Paul Kennedy – Ogres – 28pts
10) Simon Day – Dwarfs – 23pts
11) Phillip Brown – Abyssal Dwarfs – 23pts
12) Byron Gwillym – Basileans – 23pts
13) Warren Gleeson – Twilight Kin – 13pts
14) Dave Symonds – Ogres – 7pts

Welsh Regional Champion 2015 – Chris Morris – Goblins

2nd Place – Jon Howes – Dwarfs

3rd Place – Sid Bennett – Kingdom of Men

Wooden Spoon – Warren Gleeson – Twilight Kin (Dave has already won 1 spoon this year and happy to pass the prize on to Warren!)

Most Sporting Opponent: Dave Symonds – Ogres

Best Army: Phillip Brown – Abyssal Dwarfs

The Venue

Firestorm Games have recently moved across the road into a new premises. The new venue – the ‘South West Gaming Centre’ – looks fantastic already. It has a huge capacity for over 100 gamers on 6 by 4 foot tables plus additional space for card/board games and a well stock shop.

Be careful of the coffee machine however… it’s placed cunningly close to the shop stock and I for one feel foul of this trap… still when has a gamer ever walked into a store and not ‘needed’ something!

Going to SALUTE? Want to say hello or try out Kings of War?

Mantic is going to be at Salute in a little over a week and I’ve been given the Kings of War demo to run. Nothing too big, and the Basileans will be staying at home! But if you fancy coming over to say hello or taking control of one of the demo armies for a bit it would be great to see you all! Happy to talk about the game, Regionals or anything Mantic really!

I’ll be on GL01 with a Kings of War display and Dungeon Saga bits. The rest of Mantic will be on the Trade stand (TK04) which is only the other side of the ‘road’ and will be showing off Mars Attacks, Deadzone, Dreadball and DBX. Should be a great day!

The road trip keeps on going!

Next stop Brighton!

South Regional for Clash of Kings – 10th May in Brighton

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