Slow Dancer at Mayhem in the Mountains

So,

I am finally recovered from the long road trip this past weekend to attend Mayhem in the Mountains with DrunkenSamurai. Our trip started at 4:13 am on Friday, with Drunken's car loaded with terrain and a whole pantry full of food (packed by Mrs. DrunkenSamurai) we headed out to the song of Slow Dancer by Robert Plant. The trip was pretty uneventful and we arrived in Parker Colorado around 6:00pm Colorado time.

First up was to check in with my friends, the Goodmans & Carr's and them Drunken and I headed for Collectormania in Parker. We met up with Tim McKnight & Aaron Hunt to hand off the events shirts and then Drunken and I headed back to crash for the night.

Saturday saw us up at the shop to set terrain up and I snapped few pictures of the tables. I brought the Amon Hen & Mirkwood table from GitD and the rest of the tables were built by the local LotR group in the last few weeks.

First up my Amon Hen table from GitD.

Next was a table put together by Aaron Hunt to represent the town of Bree.

Here we have a Mordor table built by Russ Brown, this was one tough table to fight on!

Here is a Isengard table, this table gave me inspiration to build one for GitD 2011.

Next up we have the Shire by Tim McKnight.

Here is the Mirkwood table I brought from GitD.

So with that we got our table assignments and who we would play for the first round. I got Russ Brown on the Shire table. The First scenario was called The Foothills of Khazad Dum and was a modified Ill Met By Moonlight scenario.
Russ was playing a Minas Morgul army with two Nazgul's (one generic and the Undying) Russ was a great person to play against and I voted for him as my Favorite player in the event.
Unfortunately Russ deployed his weaker troops (Orcs!) up on the center line with his tougher troops 3" back from his baseline. Needless to say my Spiders deployed right up front and I was all over him in the first turn. Russ played a good game but by the time the Nazgul got up close to support the game was pretty much over, although he did kill the Spider Queen! So I got a Major Win and Russ actually got 3 bonus points for doing more wounds with his Hero.


My second game was against John Hess from the Chicago area, one of the other "Ringers" that traveled to the event to play. John was playing a Dol Guldur force that had nothing but Easterlings and a few Black Guard Orcs. The scenario was Reinforcements which was a modified Clash of Piquets scenario. The only chance I had was the fact I was on my Mirkwood table and I knew I had to use the terrain to my advantage.

Needless to say, I was a bit brash and rushed my Spiders up to quickly without the support of the goblins and I ended up loosing pretty bad which meant I got a Major Loss!


My third game was against Aaron Hunt and his Gondor army. Well as luck would have it my camera batteries died so I did not get a picture of Aaron or his army. We played a modified Domination scenario with three objectives. Well the game ended up as a Draw due to the fact that Aaron forgot to move his troops up to take a objective on his side of the board. Most of his army killed all but 6 Goblins in my army and he outnumbered me in the middle and I held one objective on my side. So when I rolled for the game to end it looked like Aaron won, but since he forgot to move his troops he had only one objective in the center while I had mine. So it was a Draw and I only had 6 Goblins left out of 48 models!! What a cool game!

At this point my son made it to the store and changed out my batteries and than he took a few pictures while the event was going on, here is DrunkenSamurai (In Orange Shirt & Green Hat!) playing against Will's "Ice Dwarf's".

Russ Brown & Tim McKnight fighting it out on the Amon Hen table.

Here is Rob Farallo & Downtown Frank Brown doing battle.

Chris Langland Easterlings vs Aaron Hunt's Gondor force.

Not sure who's Isengard force fighting against Corey O'Brian's Goblin hoard.

Corey (On the Left!) smiling while his Goblins kill something!

Here I am (on the left) not liking what is happening, must have been getting beaten up!

DrunkenSamurai trying to figure out how to deal with the Mordor table.

Well after three rounds I was 1 Major Win, 1 Major Loss & a Draw, not to bad, not great, but not bad. After the three games all of us went to Old Chicago for Pizza & Beers. Can't tell you what we talked about (and I was not drinking!) but it was a great time. And Keith did not fall asleep at all during dinner, way to go Keith the Hobbit!

Sunday came and we were back at the shop for game 4, The Artifact, which is a modified Seize the Prize scenario that GitD introduced 3 years ago. I got Rob Farallo and his Easterling force. Having played this scenario many times (I mean many times in three years) I had this scenario figured out. To make things even better, we played this on the Isengard table which meant that the artifact was in between the two large pits, so I knew where the fight would happen.
Rob was a great guy and he had a tough army, but since I played this scenario many times I knew what I had to do. Needless to say I flanked his army with a few spiders and proceeded to take apart his force.
Rob had a few Kataphrakt's and that's what I decided had to die first so that he could not get off the table with the artifact.
I also liked that Rob painted his army vary similar to the movie Easterlings which was also the same way I painted mine.

Well after the dust settled, I walked away with a Major Win and was feeling pretty good about how the army was doing. But than I realized that I was sitting pretty far at the top of the rankings which meant I could draw Chris L or Frank Brown in the last round.

Well as luck would have it I got Chris Langland and his Easterling force on the wide open Mordor table! Now Chris has been out to the GitD a couple of times but i never got to play against him. So with that we squared of in a Kill them all scenario called Red Horn Pass.
It was a tough game and I ended up making a few errors that lead to Chris winning the game with a Major Win while I took a Major Loss! Good Game Chris.
So after the game came the awards presentation and the announcement of the Durin's Axe painting competition which I entered 3 entries, a Goblin Shaman, a Morannon Orc Captain and the Meats Back on the Menu diorama.

Now I have one negative thing about this event and it was the two tools that were judging the painting for the armies and the paint competition. First off they did not really look at any models in the armies and from what I heard they graded everyone low. Secondly the choice's for the Durin's Axe was a little wonky. I did not make the cut and was beaten by Chris Langlands Gandalf that was okay, Drunken Samurai Saurmon took 2nd and a Undying model that looked like a 6 year old dry brushed it! Clearly these "judges" had no frickin clue and I would love to see some of there models! Hell I think they may need glass's!

Anyhow I ended up winning the Diorama since I was the only one that entered! it felt like a hollow victory since no one else entered.

Now Keith got to the main announcements and I was surprised to see that I won Best Appearance for my army. I also came in second in the Sportsmenship and I was 4th overall! The results can be seen here. DrunkenSamurai took 8th overall. So not too bad for the Arizonians, although I know DrunkenSamurai wish's he did better.

So to celebrate Drunken & I went to dinner at the Chill's in Parker that has some very interesting looking Chill's out front. We than headed back to crash for the night so we could get up early on Monday, which we did at 4:00am again. This time the Road Trip song was Rush, Finding my way Home! Not too much to say about the return trip, we both just wanted to get home.

So to wrap it up, it was a great trip and a great run event, I look forward to going again next year.

TK