I'm back from Cerci 500! A fun filled, action packed race to the finish line. The day was an absolute blast and firstly I want to say a big thank you to Ben Clapperton who organised the event, he did a smashing job. The day started at 6.45am wrapped up in my sleeping bag at a friends house, five minutes later I find out I forgot my toothbrush! What a start, guess it was "use the finger" time. That minor catastrophe over, I got to Paul Scott's at 7.20am where I messaged him. Some waiting occurred then I waited some more. I then did the unthinkable and knocked on his door before 7.30am to hear him call out the window in a croaky voice "in a minute." Someone sleep in did they Paul? We will put it down to jet lag from his recent trip abroad...

Anyway we hit the road only to find out Paul had left his mobile, minor catastrophe number two, this didn't bode well for the Midlands boys. We discussed various Ninja/Relic Knights/Mini's games on the way up, the time passed and we picked Snowy up near Harrogate. Another hour along the motorway and we made it for 10.15am, perfect timing. We bust our way through the doors like a suited reservoir dogs slo-mo cut scene. Waugh Games was our host today and the place was a great space to get some Relic Knights gaming action in. Four tables were set out and I provided the terrain and mat for the fifth, game on!

Ben drew the first round and guess what... I had to play Paul. Now our rivalry extended back to Northern Cadre where we didn't get to spar but I ended the day 2-1 whilst he managed a similar but not so awesome score of 1-2 (sorry Paul, I just keep reminding you). We got set up on the red planet board in front of us and Ben drew scenarios for everyone. He drew Secure Perimeter and Defence of Life, a really nice touch was that Ben had got some custom Life tokens made for us with special thanks to Sarissa Precision, really cool (see below)!

Going up against Paul's Black Diamond I was pretty sure he was going to try and shoot me in the face. I had two lists ready but I thought if I could achieve the primary faster than he could shoot me, I was in for a win here so I took my second list shown below.

The idea here was to fast activate Cordelia and use her flight and vacuum ability to close the distance needed to travel between objectives. Held Esper shouldn't be an issue with Cordelia generating her own and Ekhis can transfer or steal as needed. The Prefects would come in for objective grabbing whilst remaining in the Darkfield if necessary and Togan and Cecilia have access to chaos initiate which is useful as well as being quite resilient.

So our game got under way, Paul won the flip and chose to activate first. Being pretty much within the Darkfield the whole game meant that my Prefects and Togan didn't present themselves as targets for Paul, he did however charge headlong into combat with Delphyne on turn one with the Diamondback which gave me a moments fright, she armoured up as well as using the +1 armour from the Dampening Field and she was reduced to 2/3 health. Delphyne and Ekhis then crept their way up the board with Paul focusing some fire on them only for Delphyne to block the attacks using Ekhis. Due to the objective placement I pretty much had centre of the board and managed to get Paul to drop all his objectives in a line at the back edge. In came Cordelia Clean with a Vaccuum to suck up two objectives bringing them all within 8-10 inches of each other. I got secure tokens on all of Pauls objectives but not before he managed to waste another two Prefects in combat and securing my primary objective for himself.

With 5 minutes to go Paul hit Delphyne with all he was worth, Magnus carving a huge amount of damage out, being next to the Dampening Field and using her Essence Initiate armour abilities to boost it to a total of five armour she managed to survive with two health remaining, phew! She then snook in and secured my primary for the five victory points and time was called. A close game which could have gone either way with a little more focused fire on Delphyne so well done Paul. But if you had to choose a victor of this monumental match up you would obviously choose me (Craig that is) as I scored more than you Paul, that is because five is more than nothing. It was interesting that Defence of Life did not even play into our match up this time around.

Next up was Simon Glass who (congratulations) won his first ever Relic Knights game and at a cadre event for that. Taking the Black Diamond he had a full complement of One Shot, Suspect 7, Diamond Corps, Blitz Tank and another unit of Corp. I took the same list again after Ben drew Espionage and Carnage scenarios. I knew I wasn't going to be completing Carnage as my faction isn't geared towards damage output but Espionage was definitely possible. I would have to pay attention to his One Shot though as it has the ability to pretty much "One Shot" Delphyne. We both deployed and I managed again to get my opponent to place all objectives on the same side of the board and with a sneaky rear deployment of Togan and Cecilia caused real problems for Simon who had to think twice about shooting them due to being able to redirect to the nearest unit.

The game rolled on with Cordelia sabotaging and infusing the first secondary objective. Delphyne got up close and personal with the primary objective planting three sabotage tokens and keeping either Ekhis attached to another unit or next to her. Simons Blitz Tank managed to shoot its own unit with a cheeky redirect from Delphyne but Fritz had me in a tight spot when he dropped his AoE which meant units in the area cannot Guard, Yikes! Delphyne was a sitting duck! Luckily I had Ekhis a height three unit and the primary objective (another height 3 unit) and a cargo container (height 3) nearby so was able to deny pretty much most lines of fire.

At this point Simon sent some bullets flying into Togan and Cecilia in a great attempt to make me redirect them to the nearest target at the time which was Delphyne, I took the pasting on Togan and Cecilia and then continued to keep Delphyne out of range which mean the next viable target was the primary objective, a good play there by Simon. Delphyne got the final sabotage token on Simon's secondary objective then transferred some Held Esper to the Prefects who had been sitting pretty under the Darkfield Generator.

Not being able to see them all game meant Simon was in a position where he couldn't stop them so they went on to grab my faction objective for a 6-0 victory. Positioning in this game was key as I caused a real nightmare for Simon with Togan and Cecilia. A good game though and hopefully gives simon some things to think about from other factions and what they will bring to the table.

Lunch time hit us and I was feeling good having taken two wins and 11-0 in victory points. Huzzah! Waugh games was a real nice venue so I had a poke around some of the stuff for sale, got talking to a few of the guys who had travelled and handed out my supply of double sized protectors for people. And then back to the madness!

I believe I was joint first by this point so got matched up with Andrew Watson who was playing the only Radiant list of the day. I have never played against this Candy list which is regarded as one of the top three at 50 points but I did have a very good idea of how the synergies work. He took Candy, Cordelia Clean and Navarre from Shattered Sword. My one gripe with this list (I will get this out of the way now) is that you can pick any faction scenario regardless of whether you include a unit from that faction. Andrew chose Lap Time so the race was on to see if he could complete his primary scenario before I could stop him. For this game I swapped up my list as I knew fast activation alone wasn't going to save me not having overcharged damage prevention abilities so I went with my first list:

The idea here is simple, stay hidden in the Darkfields, grab the objectives and stay alive with Kisa doing most of legwork with her Thrusters movement as well as having the ability to move units out of position with Essence action Stand Back on all my units. I believe I got a decent deployment in as it caused some issues for Andy when placing his final unit Candy. My Prefects were set up in conga line to the nearest objective ready to grab the super groovy Conservation tokens that Ben had got produced. The first few turns revolved around getting closer to objectives, Andy's entire list has flight so terrain is basically negated. The prefects did manage to hit Cordelia after picking up a token causing her to drop it which slowed him down a little and Kisa managed a similar trick by using the Stand Back Essence ability to push Navarre and Candy into the nearby terrain again causing her to drop the token.

These extra activations meant I went ahead on token drops even though Andy had activated first, hurrah! But alas, the true speed and ability to ignore terrain ended up causing too many issues for me. Andy tried to block Togan and Cecilia who had grabbed a token off his secondary but he cheekily placed an AoE denying me my first move. Togan and Cecilia again got Stand Back off to move all his units out the way and produce a path to victory having an infuse token on both his Secondary objectives and them holding the last Conservation token as well as a Held Esper! Just one more activation and I could have dropped that token and infused on the same turn for the win. But Cordelia being a woman with jetboots swiftly boosted in to his Primary Objective for the Conservaton five victory points and his Lap Time victory. Sour grapes here. But I must give it to Andy, it was a really awesome game that I hugely enjoyed and fared better against than I thought, well done and after all I lost out to number one which isn't so bad now you say it out loud.

So came the final match up of the day for me against Craig Johnson, what?!? Another Craig! How bloody dare he! My game before felt like it had taken me through the mill but it was about to get worse in what was the most closely contested game I think I have ever had. Ben drew Tear it Down and Anarchy for both of us. I figured that Tear it Down wasn't going to be an option for me so my focus was on sabotaging five objectives and of course stopping the Suspect 7. Craig Johnson took a Black Diamond list that is pretty standard including Magnus, Sophia, Black Dragons, Suspect 7 a Darkfield Generator and a Dampening Field. A strong list letting the Suspect 7 fast activate to complete their faction objective in three activations. For the remainder of this post I will refer to Craig Johnson as Mr. J to avoid confusion.

Mr. J got the first activation which saw him shimmy the Suspect 7 down the board as quickly as possible, standard stuff. Next up was Kisa, I managed to pay for Esper Storm and dropped it right on the Suspect 7 standing at his primary objective knowing that this would force him to drop the token on his activation wasting time and if he stayed around would get hurt. Knowing he could stick around and sacrifice his Suspect 7 he had just enough time before her base one armour plus the Dampening Field wasn't enough to stop her dying. So on my second activation with Togan and Cecilia I dropped Miscommunication, an AoE which stops units in the area receiving any buffs. Not being able to use the Dampening Field meant he couldn't stay long enough to grab the second cargo token, huzzah! More turns flowed and again Mr. J was about to make another dash for the Cargo token with his second Suspect 7 model, he moved up to just outside the range of the AoE at full health which meant she could move in, take the damage and survive. Noooo! I can't let that happen!

So Togan and Cecilia got back into the action and used Stand Back to push her off the height three cargo container causing two damage to her, she activated next turn and bit the dust. Another close call! In all this time we had also been manoeuvring to sabotage our own and each others objectives. Things were getting tense and with 15 minutes remaining, I had two objectives left to sabotage whilst Mr. J had one. I dropped the infuse token off on my primary and one of his secondary objective so I was set to achieve five victory points if I could somehow deny him his sabotage or cargo. At this point his Suspect 7 set about killing my Prefect who was in the Darkfield and swiftly made short work of her. Shortly after, his Black Dragons scored his secondary scenario with a final Sabotage, Kisa moved into position to sabotage the last objective but sadly it was too late.

The fast activation of Sophia and the Black Dragons meant they quickly went marching across the board picking up that final Cargo token and deposited it off the edge, with my final Prefect stranded he bit the dust out in the open just after Kisa scored my secondary objective. A win for Mr. J but it was so tightly contested that it made for a brilliant finale to the day. I can see now that my positioning was a little to blame but that is the best thing about these tightly knit games, looking back and seeing the one mistake you made that cost you. The back and forward between the Suspect 7 and Doctrines "control" abilities were a great match up and at the end I believe we had an audience of 5 or 6 people. Great game Mr. J. and I look forward to more like it in the future.

So in the end I came away with fourth place and I commend Paul Scott for pitting me to the post and taking third. Well Played sir (I knew all this take the piss out of Paul was gonna bite me in the ass) but I can still hold the moral high ground having beat him in my first game :P

A good day for Team Midlands taking both 4th and 3rd place and a great day had by all. It was a pleasure to meet everyone who made it to the event and I look forward to seeing (and playing) against you all at other Cadre events across the country. The scene really is picking up and its fun and exciting to be a part of it.