CanCon... hurrah!

Everyone loves a road trip... in a train! This Australia Day long weekend, I took the trip up to our nations capital to take part in CanCon 2006. It is (presumably) Australia's biggest annual gaming convention, running competitions in wargames, shops selling all kinds of nerdy crap and generally a huge gathering of people with loud shirts and poor personal hygene.

I travelled up with Geoff Watson to take part in the "Australian Bloodbowl Nationals". There were about 40 people there taking part, in a seven round tournament held over the three days.

I have been playing Bloodbowl (which is a fantasy strategy game based loosely on american football) for a bit under a year now, and this was my second competition. I actually won the first one (Eucalyptus Bowl) due to a shameless amount of luck (its a dice heavy game, so while strategy is important, luck can play a large part).

I took my Necromantic team again, since they did such a great job last time, and all in all they didn't disappoint! I started off fairly slowly, my first game was a loss thanks to a combination of my own stupidity and his inconsiderately taking advantage of it! The way the points worked out, the most you could get was a 6, and the least was a 1. While I lost the first game, I still ended up with 3 points, so it wasn't beyond repair.

I then went on to draw my next game, and win the final one of the day. I had a great day, and met some really nice people. It turned out Chunky and a few others were staying in the same motel, so after going out for the biggest schnitzel I've ever seen, we spent the night playing poker.

The next day went much better, with two wins to start off. The first was against Scott, one of the tea baggers staying at the motel. Thanks largely to some luck near the end, I managed to pull off a close win. The second game, against Dwarves (in my opinion the most overpowered team in bloodbowl) was a total slaughter in my favour (shows what my opinion was worth!). The poor guy was feeling a bit ill which can't have helped, but he was just very unlucky and while he probably wouldn't want to hear it, made his fair share of mistakes. He obviously considered himself a bit of a veteran, and wasn't thrilled that these "novices" were handing his ass to him on a plate (Geoff had kicked his ass the day before). He went so far as to give me some absurdly obvious advice at the end of it all, like I didn't know all about it. I took the time to explain why I had done things differently, but if he was really as experienced as all that I shouldn't have needed to.

The third game was also against Dwarves, this time against ClayInfinity, the commish of the online league that I participate in. I didn't expect this game to go as well as the last one, and I was spot on there. It was a brutal war of attrition, he was winning in terms of both casualties and touchdowns. Unfortunately for him, I managed to force his second touchdown early enough to allow me time for an equaliser. There was still an enormous amount of luck needed, but without a doubt that was my toughest and most enjoyable game of the tournament.

So going into the final day, I was actually in a pretty good position. I hadn't had a single bad result (lowest score for a match was 3) and I had had a couple of full point games. Geoff Watson was in pretty much the same position, he was only half a point ahead of me at this stage, and we were both in the top ten somewhere.

I had the best final game I could possibly have, a full six points, so it was all down to how my opponents went. Geoff Watson got a five point win, putting him half a point behind me. I ended up in fourth place, only a point behind the guys that came second and third (they used sportsmanship as a tie-breaker). I won the prize for best newcomer to CanCon, although the guy that came second was actually a newcomer too, they decided to split the prizes up where possible.

It was great to see some familiar faces from Eucalyptus Bowl, and also to put new faces on people I had met online. I was really pleased with my final ranking, and I am looking forward to the next event!