For weeks now there have been rumblings and anticipation growing as dark clouds of pure awesome potential gather over the ancient Town of ...sorry! Ahem.....Gather over the ancient CITY of York.
From the hidden corners and holes beings of dark purpose and heroes of bright potential find them selves drawn to the place of testing; 'GUPIES' So much power in one place is indeed a dangerous thing and only one will rise to the top and remain to claim the ultimate prize of NORTHERN CADRE MASTER!
Or...in the real world a load of like minded awesome (not quite heroic types) people got together to get their Esper on! And what a day it was ;)
Northern Cadre was the first in what we hope to be many many more 'Cadre' events around the UK.
It was an Endless Hunger event. There's a load of eager gamer's out there just waiting for the chance to get their cadres out and throw down against one another to test their metal, more importantly who want to meet others in the community, have a laugh and buzz over the awesome game we have in our hands and all the stuff that will come with it in the future. Having a ton of cool guys you can meet up with and play and chill with is what its all about right? :)
So after a pleasant drive to york with Ninja Craig, talking about cadre builds, Anime tropes, combos, aethetics and more importantly Alex Louis Armstrong 'Gowan no Renkinjutsushi', we arrived at the venues of Northern Cadre,
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| Conversational gold! |
Ninja Cy had awesomely arranged this and provided some massively swish scenery for us to battle on. Very cool stuff
What followed was an awesome day of people immersing them selves in the depths and fun of Relic Knights, for me though the day mainly consisted of 'why wont you DIE!, Just fall down, I've put a massive mecha driven axe in your bonnet! Fall down! - oh you have a technique that stops that and make me axe my self in the face...joy!' You get the idea lol
I had the pleasure of seeing there two very old gaming friends from years gone by; Conrad and Andy. Who as luck (or something not at all like luck) would have it I ended up playing.
Now like any right minded upright honest to goodness type I had the slickest mercs in the Galaxy; The Black Diamonds. But so did half the field! Impostors all of them (obviously)
How Would my Jade Trouper Corp 'Brutal Delux' of the Black Diamonds fare?
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| Jade Troopers 'BRUTAL DELUX' |
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| Boss Man Magnus - M Dawg |
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| Black Dragons 'Murder Inc.' |
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| Miss Drake and her boys |
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| Ready to ruin! |
My First game I had to face Conrad. He had brought a Black Diamond Cadre. This was going to be tough. My Cadre consisted of Leopold, Miss Drake, Bretwalda my Diamond Back and Murder Inc. my Black Dragons.
Conrad deployed; Suspect 7 (and suspect they bloody are as well!) Some Diamond Corp, Leopold (clearly a civilian cosplay impostor) Sophia Drake and some Black Dragons. He had more board presence and numbers/mobility.
It got worse from there, I had to kill him, Despite having the 'leet' Black Diamonds, killing stuff is tough and no matter how many burst rifle volleys or plasma axe whirlwinds I throw at him, Conrad's Cadre displayed in buckets the playground equivalent of ''I know you are, but what am I?' by successfully guarding against just about anything I could throw at him whilst his Suspects just ran around achieving objectives as if I wasn't there! Next time!
So,after being shown that my Cadre was not quite as 'all about the brutal' as I thought, we went into there second match. This time I faced 'Snowy'. He had the very speedy and elusive Cerci girls with a little prismatic back up. The confidence level of my guys was not high.
However in a flash of pure unadulterated AWESOME (random luck) Sophia and Murder Inc (black Dragons) managed to show the Hell's bells there 'lead farmer' technique and sent a wall of unfriendly hurty metal their way and removed them from the universe. A very good start. About time my cadre started making good on the time money and resources spent on their training! Snowy stayed focused and on plan infusing all the things he could, but when Sophia and Murder Inc got Knight Kill on the my 4th turn it was over as I capped out points, game over.
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| ..Murder Inc. was heard to say... |
Confidence restored I went into game 3 and was drawn against Andy.back in the day I had lucked out against Andy so many times in other games I was sure this would be a fun but very tough game especially as was to play the shattered sword.
From the start it went wrong. I was basically for 5 or 6 turns griefed by a bloody minded out of his depth old man with an exotic pigeon and some shiny armour... Francis Malry...grade A git...
And this is how it went
'I axe you in the face old man, behold the might of Bretwalda!'
' No, no - I think you'll find you are axing your self in the face chap...'
'Eat lead old man - Im going to riddle you with rifle fire; Black Dragon style'
'No, sorry, I think you'll find you are riddling your self Black Dragon Style...SHAZAM!
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| Out Wit..you say... Go F**k Yourself |
Or this at least is how it felt In a few turns he had took 9 HP of Bretwalda, 6 of Sophia and 4 of my Black Dragons. What a horrible horrible person Francis Malory is. I don't know how he sleeps at night...well with the fishes now I presume as Leopold showed him the zappy business end of his glowy staff! KNIGHT KILL BOOM have that!.
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| Icing an Old honourable man... nailed it! |
Once I have got passed him, Bretwalda and the Murder Inc, took his fancy armoured jet back totting boys to pieces in short order with out loosing a single man.
So when his last remaining misguided do gooder infused his third objective I thought 'no biggie, he has three points, I have 5 and i can freely infuse all the objectives I need or just kill the wounded Navarre Hauer, Andy looked at me rather smugly with a glowing aura of satisfaction as he declare he had won...
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| ... |
Er, What now.... I mean I have just rained pain on you. This is when he pointed out the fact, one which had some how utterly escaped my brain, that we had on top of everything else drew the Crystal harvest...of which he had achieved pretty much straight away. In my Stompy mecha lust I had clean forgot. AAAARG!
Great game though despite my stupid lol
At the End of the day I had only 1 win but three fantastic enjoyable games. And that's what its about isnt it?
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| LOOTZ of which the trophies Ninja Cy hand made! |
All that remained was the placings and prize givings. And some lovely loot there was as well for those doing well. The Masterful Ninja Ben, somewhat unsurprisingly I think took the day with his Prismatic/Shattered Sword Cadre. Well done to him and well done to everyone else for making it a great day.
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| All Hail Ninja Ben; The Conquering Hero! Grats |
There will be many more days like it. Prepare your self!
I demand you all be there, DEMAND!!
Spent...
