18-19th June 2022 saw bloodshed and devastation in the North of England on a scale unseen since the days of William the Bastard. This intrepid gamer waved goodbye to her Oxfordshire home, dropped the kids with the Grandparents and drove for hours. Finally arriving at Ossett in Yorkshire for the Northern Kings Grand Tournament. Grand it certainly was…
A credit to the hobby
The Northern Kings are renown for their excellent gaming skills and ostentatious name. Now they rightly add ‘running the best tournaments in the UK’ to their roll of honour. For once I don’t exaggerate. The tables were beautiful with gorgeous game mats and a wide variety of bespoke terrain themed to each table. Communication and willingness to support everyone was exemplary. Biscuits were carried around the tables on a platter each round. The venue was spacious and well ventilated. Saturday night was a good laugh. Goody bags had Haribo in them. Parking was plentiful. Scoring was, a little tricky to work out at first but ultimately gave a fair representation of the event. If you get the opportunity to attend future Northern Kings events I highly recommend jumping at the chance. This is the standard to which all tournaments should aspire.
My own Petard
I narrowly avoided the wooden spoon this event thanks purely to a good showing in the final game. My army actually performed better than previous iterations and my ability to destroy enemy units vastly improved. Where did it go so wrong? Entirely my own fault I fell behind on hobby scores which is about the most embarrassing (yet totally fair) situation to find myself in. My new units weren’t based properly, one character was an unpainted toy Dalek and my painting was largely constrast paint with a drybrush. I even lost track of time and submitted my army list late which cost me 5pts. All that sent me down four places on the final positions.
Disaster and dismay
This should have been the best weekend in the history of great weekends. Unfortunately a couple of things happened to really dampen my spirits. First off I lost my wedding ring. That was pretty awful. I mention this only to highlight the support I received from the organisers who helped me search the room and asked everyone to keep an eye out. They were really great about doing what they could. Secondly I booked a really cheap room in a dive pub to save money, they proceeded to run awful karaoke right below my uncomfortable bedroom until midnight. On reflection I won’t be doing that again.
Intellectual Laziness
That Ronnie guy everyone talks about was there and bought doughnut type things to share like an absolute legend. I cornered him for an interview which started well. He tried to pass the success of Mantic off on other people to begin so I told him off for being modest and pushed a bit. Ronnie turned misty eyed and gave a beautiful explanation of his desire to create a game that encouraged participation. Allowing all sorts of models because of his experience at other large retailers. New players being excited to join the hobby and having to turn away, crestfallen, due to cost. It was the mark of a man driven by a love of the hobby. A man wanting to provide the best play experience possible for as many people as possible. Exactly the kind of inspirational insight into the soul of Mantic any journalist would be delighted to hear.
I should have left things there. It would have made an excellent article. I just had to talk about gender diversity in Kings of War. Oooooooh dear. To give him his due, Ronnie does want to increase the representation of women in the model range and narrative. Unfortunately he perceives simply including women without a narrative justification as intellectual laziness. I hold the absence of women across the majority of the model range as the height of intellectual laziness. One cannot justify erasing a huge part of any fantasy population due to real world historical prejudices. It’s a basis to work on at least and Mantic is open to the required conversations. That said I will be physically ill if the Dwarven beserker women idea sees the light of day. Please don’t ask about that.
Photo highlights
Before I sign off I need to share some photos I took at the event…
Steve Hildrew’s beautiful Riftforged Orcs with lovingly painted gradients on every surface, OSL and an ethereal feel to the horde. This army is just yummy.
Gofur’s portal. Nightstalkers are pretty creepy. When they are accompanied by an ominous rent in the fabric of reality through which an eldritch being is emerging… they become downright terrifying.
If you’re going to have a flying character, make them this awesome. This is the way. Hats off to Alan.
