By Pat Nevan

Editor Pete gave me the message to split the original Days 1 and 2 articles into two parts because it was just too damn long and for once, he was right. The average Plastic Craic article is written to be about the length of time you can go to the toilet at work without too much “Did you fall in?” commentary, and the Days 1 and 2 article was well past that. Here’s the link to Day 1, lets get stuck into Day 2. Any errors are Pete’s fault this time, fuck that guy.

Measured Gaming Cruise to Cancon 2024

Day Two

I woke up early in the morning, like 3am early, lay awake staring at the canvas of my swag¹ and drifted in an out until about 6:30am regretting the fact that there was no one awake that I could complain to. Anyways I drifted over to the nearby farmers’ market to enjoy an early breakfast with the local Canberrans enjoying a weekend break from their grueling 24 hour work-from-home weeks in the Australian Public Service. A quick trip to the communal shower block and an encounter with the requisite weirdo in a towel having a full shave, and we were ready to go.

Some of the fellas having an early morning lurk in the carpark

Round 4: Just not a morning person

Won vs David Sulava (Ironjawz) – 21-19 – Every Step is Forward

Not even sure how to report on this one. It was a fun game against a great opponent but we both made so many mistakes I can honestly say, and David agreed, that neither of us deserved to win. I’ve really struggled with morning rounds when I was tired in my last couple of events and today was probably my peak of non-performance. My major fumbles included but were not limited to:

• Absolutely snarling up my Alpha again, leaving Nef and my VLoZD with their dicks in the breeze, having killed a unit of Brutes and ready to be countercharged by all the Ironjawz. The only unit I managed to tie up in combat was Skaggrot the Loonking.
• Not only snarling up my own units in a charge but straight up forgetting to move up my Wight King to support my Black Knights.
• Putting a badly injured Nefferata’s entire output into a Finest Houred, All Out Defenced Mawkrusha rather than healing her by beating on some pigs. I got one wound through from the Insta-kill dagger, lost her in the combat phase, then forgot to roll for the Insta-kill dagger. I remembered two turns later and thew a 6 for it just to torment myself.

Like I said, I deserved to lose this one but David, who is a damn fine player and tournament winner, decided not to just lie down and be out-terrible-decisioned by anybody and made a few critical errors of his own including:

• Choosing enough difficult battle tactics to put the game in a difficult spot. Straight after picking and failing to kill a unit with magic, he shook his head and said “Why did I pick that?”
• Picking an actually impossible battle tactic to make the game near impossible to win. He went with Led into the Maelstrom when his only remaining battleline was in combat. I thought he was going to teleport it out but apparently they can’t.
• And handing me victory by not noticing a unit holding his objective. Turn 4 he moved a Maw Krusha onto an objective, killed my tardy Wight King but didn’t see my Necro and Sepulchural Guard at the bottom of the pie plate, denying himself the points he needed to catch me. 

If you are wondering why I have a photo relevant to the actual game played, David’s wife took it

I won fifth turn priority basically already tabled, but scored enough points to put the game beyond reach.  Another win for SBGL battle tactics.  A close result in one of the strangest games of Sigmar I have played in a while. Easily my best game in the singles, it was a surreal experience, as bewildering as it was hilarious and played in a fine spirit. I’m looking forward to our next match. I’ve arrived at the conclusion that if I ever want to win a tournament again I need to start getting a good night’s sleep beforehand. I’m just too damned old to play brain-fried and hungover anymore. 

The First Timer: Won vs Shaun Ratcliffe, Flesh Eater Courts, 23-10

Justin’s round 4 was more about the series of unfortunate events that preceded it. Apparently he locked his army in the boot of his car at the venue, left the keys at the apartment the Model Citizens boys were staying at, realized he couldn’t get it 15 mins before start time, raced home and just made it back on time.

Come to think of it these are the sort of fuck ups you can avoid by camping on site. Compared to that, the game was pretty uneventful. Justin got off to a slow start but got stuck in to tabling his opponent top of turn 3, leaving him on 3-1 and in a position for a strong finish.

One of the Coolest Army noms

The Filthy Casual: Lost vs Heath Thompson, Ogor Mawtribes, 26-6

Back to back games against the Ogors for Binek but this was a very different Meatfist army and a very different result. Between the charge mortals coming in from everywhere and enough rend on the Ironguts to crack open the what was left of the OBR, Binek’s low wound count worked against him. Apparently Arkhan was resting from his earlier successes and managed to fail 4 out of 6 casts with +3. 

The highlight of the game for Binek was his Liege Kavalos making two from three 6+ Death wards to deny Heath his battle tactic for Avalanche of Flesh. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Avalanche of Flesh is typically taken to mean mortals caused, not allocated, so it would have worked.² Sorry brother.

The Veteran: Won vs Adam Hoad, Stormcast Eternals, 25-19

“This game was my first ever Stormcast mirror match, and it did not disappoint! Adam had 6 Longstrikes and 3×3 Annihilators with Grandhammers in his army. The battleplan favoured me being Every Step is Forward. It allowed me to take control of the mid board, nom out all of his Annihilators, and feed the Longstrikes with whatever Dragon was closest. It was a pretty tight game on points at 19-25, but Adam left most of his army in his back corner. Once all the Annihilators were dead I was pretty confident in being able to squeeze out the win. This was the first game all weekend where the Exorcist actually got to get on the Dais, and the Soulburn from Ionus did something. Adam also had 3 units of Aetherwings which he used perfectly to soak up Unleash Hells and score some easy battle tactics. Great player, and one to watch out for if you’re a Canberra local.”

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I finished my games a bit earlier than most of the boys so I went for a wander down to visit our Clubmate Jason Brown who was playing in the Star Wars Legion event before returning for a couple of carpark beers. There was a lot of tension in the air up on the top tables but for those of us who were off the pace it was time for a few more carpark beers while they did the voting for Coolest Army. There would be a couple of 4-1’s sneak into the elimination round but I was sure it wouldn’t be me and at this point I didn’t really deserve it.

Round 5: Afternoon Delight

Won vs Blake McLachlan (Blades of Khorne), Nexus Collapse, 23-10

Blake is one of the Crutchammer guys from central NSW and a bit of a Khorne diehard³ so I was pretty happy to get drawn against one of the rarer armies at the event. I know I should stop gloating about the dismal failure of the Blades of Khorne battletome in Australia but one more can’t hurt.

“Four, I say Four out of One hundred and eighty armies at Cancon. Son, that’s not a popular faction that’s an undiscernible color on a pie chart.”

We deployed pretty cagily, I split Nef off from the VLoZD to threaten an Alpha on two fronts if I got the first turn, so Blake took first, used the come hither prayer and tried to gank Nef. Good old Redeploy meant only Skarrbrand made it into combat although he did have a 6-man of Bloodcrushers holding up my Zombie Dragon. Nef did for Skarrbrand but got yanked into the middle of the Khorne forces turn 2 and died messily. My own turn 2 was always going to be a good one with 20 Black Knights crashing into the Whipthirster, but I got a Blizzard off on the two remaining Bloodcrushers pinning my VLoZD, moved that behind the main Khorne force and that was pretty much game. Blake called it after some charge mortals.

A win’s a win but this was a hard one to take a lot of joy in. Two out of my 5 games this tournament swung of the back of Blizzards. I probably would have won this one and lost game 1 anyway, but they both went from interesting games to not really worth playing out. Nothing will ever top Bounty Hunters for piss poor design but does anyone actually like Blizzard? Blake was a fine opponent but it was just one of those games for him, hopefully we get a better run next time.

Bradley Baker, Runner-up for Best Painted at Cancon

The First Timer: Won vs Liam F, Maggotkin of Nurgle, 20-14

Justin’s last game was a bit of a grindfest against an absolute slab of a Nurgle list. Two GUO’s and 40 Plaguebearers gumming up the works. He figured he was never going to carve his way through all that with an Alpha strike so he let his opponent take the lead and burned his objectives out from under him, forcing him to waddle forwards and be carved apart over a couple of turns of heavy work.

A good way to win the game but not a good way to deny your opponent’s battle tactics which are all-important for finishing high in your win bracket at events like Cancon. There’s a fair amount of luck of the draw involved in these sort of equations. Still, ending the event on 4-1 is a very good finish.

The Filthy Casual: Lost to Aaron McHours, 21-17

In accordance with the prophecy Binek travelled 700km from home in order to play a Measured Gaming clubmate. Curiously enough they played each other in the first game of Cancon 2023 and the last game of 2024 completing some sort of cycle. Aaron was running a block of 9 Bullgors and his games were determined by whether he could a second turn of charges in after dropping them down. This time around he did and hammered out a win in a pretty tight game.

Binek finished below the 3-2 he was chasing but was pretty happy with the singles tournament overall. The list has a lot more play than the previous Nagash and Morghasts incarnations. I will leave the last word to him with this masterful statement:

“A hard fought game during which I unfortunately ran out of hitting power due to Bullgors slaughtering my army.”

No notes.

Tim Barklay’s notes on some of the conversions for his Coolest Army

The Veteran: Lost to Jake Gunning, SBGL, 18-15

“I got to finish off yet another event against Soulblight. My lucky day. Jake was running monster mash with an ethereal Zombie Dragon, Neferatta AND Manfredd. Like the game against Terry, this was another very tactical game. I ended up killing all 3 of his big ‘uns but Soulblight still just have too many bodies to deal with. We were playing Nexus Collapse and there was only the one objective left by the end, and it was a case of too little too late for me. We both denied our grand strats and called it a day with a 15-18 score. I’d really like a second crack at Jake sometime down the track as he plays the game similar to myself. Happy go lucky but likes to play hard and fair. The best kind of wargamer in my opinion.”

“All in all, a 3-2 result. 41st overall out of 180-odd players and some good games to stew over in the coming weeks. With this thought exercise and giving it time to sink in, and think about the past through the beer fog, I can safely say that I had five great games, all for various reasons. I had the opportunity to play five opponents who I had never played before, something that I’m always extremely grateful for. Thank you to all of my opponents and the TOs for a great event!”⁴

Singles Wrap Up

So that was Cancon done and dusted for another year. There was the doubles and the elimination round on the Sunday but if you weren’t in those, it was time to watch the speeches or hit the road early. There were all sorts of kerfuffles going on with the scoring and the ladder, and it wasn’t a great time to be a TO or somebody anxious about making the cut off. It was an awesome time to be none of those things, drinking beers in the carpark with the guys and waiting to get called inside for the speeches, so that’s what we did. 

Nearly all of the the actual prize support went to the players instead of going to the prize winner which is not an uncommon practice in Australia. The logic is basically fuck them anyway, they won. The names of every attendee were called in three separate groups throughout the speeches to select a prize from one of the tables. If you got called early you got the good stuff, if you got called late, not so much. Back of the envelope at least 1/3rd of attendees more than covered their 100 dollar ticket cost in prizes. Joel got a King Brodd the lucky bastard.

Sponsors were thanked, awards were handed out and the TOs got their wholly justified round of applause. There was some fucking around with the scoring; these are the final standings from the ladder which may have been different on the day. I was about 8 or 9 beers in by this point.

Unfortunately a lot of the Top 8 wouldn’t be able to make the elimination round tomorrow. It is worth noting that most of the guys in the top 8 are Victorians if you keep track of parochial state-based rivalries in the Australian AOS scene. Sam Morgan showed what he can achieve when he decided to finally stop fucking around and take a proper list, and there was a round 5 draw between Nathan Thompson and Dave Kerr that I am happy to describe as convenient for both parties.

I’ll save the end-of-Cancon review for the next part of the article but Saturday ended on a high note. For years, Measured Gaming have invited all comers back to the campground for a BBQ and general piss-up, but we have never had more than five or so people turn up. Everyone is tired or busy or whatever. Our own numbers are have fallen away from their peak and while we were having a great time, you couldn’t help but miss the glory days of ~20 Hawaiians plus assorted hangers-on.

This year we had over 20 people show up for the BBQ which dragged on past midnight, with the Captain in fine form on the tongs and a whole bunch of people standing around eating, drinking, telling tales and talking shit about Sigmar loud enough to shock and awe the rest of the Caravan Park into submission. Probably the best night I’ve had in five Cancons and just such a welcome antidote to all the annoying social functions you have to attend where people insist on blathering on about dull shit like child raising or home renovations instead of important things like battlescroll updates and list building. Really should have taken some more pictures but whatever. I’ll be back to wrap up Day Three of Cancon and our efforts in the Doubles with the last installment in a few days.

Firing up the Barbie⁵ : The First Timer on the left in front of the BBQ, the Filthy Casual on the right waving in the blue hat, the Veteran front left necking a stubby

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1. For non-Australians, a swag is a pup-tent. They have more or less replaced the tent for single campers. Not to be confused with the swag of the once a Jolly swagman type, swag as in loot or Swag as in Swagger ↩︎
2. One of those rare ambiguities in 3rd ed. ↩︎
3. You really have to be to play them in their current state. ↩︎
4. What a guy! If only he could have made five new friends. ↩︎
5. We do call them Barbies, we don’t put shrimp on them, don’t be an ass. ↩︎

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