NICON 2011

The Queen's Birthday weekend saw the annual NICON tournament come and go (this year taking place in Hamilton) and was well attended by the local Tronhammer boys. Despite the painting score and other controversies, we all had a great time, met and competed against some awesome guys, and played our absolute guts out. Jimmy had a cracking tourney, coming away with five wins and a draw, let down in the rankings only by not having his army painted. Darren netted a very nice painting score, and Dan and I finished 4th and 5th.



There were two games during NICON where we had to play each other, which to be honest is not the easiest circumstance to deal with at a competitive event. I found that my game with Dan felt a bit more relaxed to begin with. Dan was at that point leading the scoreboard, but I managed my first win against him in this game; a big personal achievement for me, but I felt quite bad afterwards. Dan also had to play Jimmy. I guess the field was small enough so that it was inevitable we would play another club mate, so we had to just put our game face on and roll some dice!

NICON saw a personal best for me at a tournament, and I was surprised by the performance of the wizard-less Empire army. The playing field was very close.  The top five armies in order were Daemons, Dark Elves, Dwarfs, Empire and Daemons. I was surprised and disappointed at how the painting and sports scores were marked, and it seemed like they had a significant impact on the final rankings. I am not sure I am comfortable with that concept personally, but it is what it is.

Despite this, big thanks to the TO Carl who took it all in his stride and created a great event for us, and huge props to the Tron boys for their effort and support, and for rocking our new shirts in style!

Looking forward, there is Tin Soldiers IV in July, and Call to Arms 2011 in August. My goal is to attend at least one of those, though I may save my Wellington trip for the Fields of Blood GT in 2012.