I'm still a gamer!

Yay!  I'm back!  And I had a GREAT weekend of gaming.  So great, in fact, that I have to blog about it.  You see, I got to play three games in one day.  THREE!  I haven't played a total of three games in two months.  This was a very nice bit of luck.

Back when I was just a lowly gamer, too young to really know about real life, I used to play three games a day, sometimes twice a week.  Every Saturday, I wake up and me and my buddy/roommate would load up and go occupy the LGS.  Show up an 10, sit around until noon, play a game against each other, then another game against someone else around 3 or 4, then another game against another gamer at around 7 or 8.  And sometimes, if we were good and everything fell into place, we'd stay after the store was closed and play an Apocalypse game (before there was such a thing as Apocalypse).  Those were glorious times.

These days, my work schedule has me screwed four days a week, and then I have a family day and a 'busy-day', leaving only my game group gig at the comic store.  I'm more interested in talking about products and helping the guys (and gal) learn the game than I am in actually playing myself.  And I'm usually too exhausted from a long work-week anyway.  So no games for Jay.

Not so this week.  I got a game in on Monday and three more on Saturday.  That makes me a little happy.  Can't you tell?

So what did I play this week?

It all started on Monday.  My buddy, Aaron, has been trying to get in a game with me for a few weeks, but our work schedules didn't coincide well.  He wanted to give his Iron Warriors another run and show off some new toys.  I played my Eldar and we threw down with 1500 points.  My army was experimental.  I brought all Jetbikes, Vipers, Wave Serpents, and Falcons.  It was fast.  It was tons of pew-pew.  His army was the typical Cultists and Marines and Warpsmith.  Oh, and the Daemon Prince of Khorne rocking wings and a Black Mace.  Worse yet, there was also a Land Raider and some Terminators.  That's right- a Land Raider and Terminators!  I didn't feel confident in victory for that one.  But some great Rending shots and many vehicular targets meant total victory for the Eldar.  I had killed every model except the cursed Land Raider.  Now Aaron is out for revenge and he's running out of time...

Saturday morning saw me make it to work right on time, set up a Fantasy table, and begin the process of rolling Warhammer out to my 40k crowd.  My buddy, Taylor, had acquired a massive collection of Dwarfs recently and wanted to learn the game.  I grabbed my Empire army and made a half-legal 1000 pt army to battle him with.  I had the typical General, Wizard of Metal, 2 units of Handgunners, a unit of Greatwords, a Cannon and a Helblaster.  He brought Quarellers, two units of Warriors, an Organ Gun and a Cannon, and all backed up by a Runesmith.  My Wizard and unit of Handgunners fled from the table early on, so I didn't get a chance to teach too much magic (not that it would have worked against Dwarfs), but my firepower was decimating the enemy.  Everything was fine until my Helblaster malfunctioned, and then the Dwarfs made contact and my Empire ran.  And they ran fast.  It was a good experience, and is officially the first game of the 'Fantasy era'.

Come at me, brah!

Saturday afternoon saw Taylor and me play a 1500  point game of 40k.  I brought the same list I used on Monday for my Eldar, and he brought his Black Templars.  His army consisted of two units of Marines, a unit of Assault Marines led by a Chaplain, and wait for it...  a High Marshall in Termie armor leading a squad of Storm-shield Terminators, all riding in a Land Raider Crusader!  Another Land Raider and unit Teminators!  Dammit!  It was a great game.  The best part was that his High Marshall (with Lightning Claw and Storm Shield) had rolled 'Legendary Fighter' as his Warlord Trait and came into two situations to use it.  First, he charged and Challenged a Warlock in a Guardian squad.  Hitting and wounding a gazillion times, my Warlock made all the saves (only a 4+, mind you).  Then, in the next turn, my Warlock attempted to cast his blessing on the unit, rolled a Perils of the Warp, and failed his save- dead!  I denied the Legendary Fighter VP to him by suicide!  After killing the unit off, the High Marshall then charged and Challenged my Warlord- the Farseer.  It was the last turn of the game.  He hit and wounded me a gazillion more times.  This time, I failed one wound.  But I had cast Fortune.  Reroll became success.  Again, denied!  The game ended quickly at the end of turn 5, and it turned out to be a draw.  Awesome!!!  Of course the Land Raider still survived, just like the first game.  This army may need some adjusting.

Finally came the third game against my buddy, Daniel.  We have the Escalation campaign going and this was our third game.  This game moved us up to 1500 points.  I'm not going to go into any details here, other than to note that it was my Eldar (a different list from earlier) versus his Tau (always evolving).  The game was much like our first- bloody!  There were very models models alive at the end of this game and the whole battle was a treatise on strategery (that's right, I said strategery!).  More to come on that in a later blog. 

The moral of this whole rant is that I finally got to be a gamer for a moment.  Not the consummate hobbyist that I've lost to the time to be, but the gamer that I once was.  Many doods were pushed, many dice were rolled, and the big-ass rulebooks were opened once or twice.  It felt GOOOOOD!

How have your gaming-bugs been going?  Tell me about it.  And get some more dice rolling!

As always, Happy Gaming!