Gorram is going Conquesting

I’ve not exactly been secretive about work being pretty bad for the last year to 18 months. We’ve been under an organisational review (joys of public service) and I’ve been subject to a pretty horrific bullying campaign by another member of staff. Things got very dark, very stressful and a haze of medication and counseling for most of last year. However, since March, the situations have been resolving – mostly through me being moved to another branch. This is not a project about fighting black dogs (I leave that for 10mm dwarves). This is about the other side. The side where you want to see people, play games and have, as if by magic, had the brain fog lift.

Enter Woodstock, my little gaming pal. We last played a game nearly two years ago when I had finished the Wee Free Men and we had a game of Kings of War 3rd edition. So when she messaged one of our club discords asking if anyone wanted to try Conquest,  a game that I owned a box of but had never even opened it, it felt like things were aligning.

First up was building the minis. This also brought my first major problem – I had a mispack and couldn’t build my jotnar. Thankfully, Para Bellum’s customer service was great and it wasn’t long before a replacement sprue was on it’s way.

It was around this time I came across my second major problem. The models I have didn’t make a legal list for First Blood, at least not since they changed to the new edition (I don’t know if they would have in the old one). So I bought more models – a nice easy fix.

The models themselves are a mixed bag of build experiences. You can tell the older kits but the newer ones are pretty nice. The proportions are a little weird but built and with a coat of primer, they were ready or their first day of games.

This was the first time in a good long while that I’ve given myself permission to play with unpainted minis but genuinely getting in a game (or two as it turned out) was much, much more important.

I got my ass handed to me twice by the Weaver Courts. I definitely felt my spellcaster/warlord was a little underpowered and things died very quickly for a force that is meant to be a hammer to the face. Having a look at the excellent app, I’ve already picked out some new models to try out and Woodstock has dozens she can try out having spent a good chunk of the last year reviewing the kits for Goonhammer. It really feels like a game with a lot to explore before we start feeling the push to move towards Last Argument of Kings (or Queens in our case).

The goal of the day was to play a game with a real person and not be too awkward about it. The game was fun and I can’t have been too bad because she approached me to get another game set up for this weekend.