Images courtesy of Capital Country Wargaming¹

Cancon, Cancon, Cancon. The tournament so nice they named it thrice. Or something. Regular visitors to the House that Craic built should be familiar with this mainstay of the Australian Gaming Calendar, but for those who came in late: Cancon is the annual convention held in our nation’s capital of Canberra on Australia Day Weekend (around Jan 26th). They do a bit with RPGs, and more or less every tabletop miniatures system with any kind of clout gets a look in as well.

Cancon has traditonaly hosted Australia’s biggest AOS event, known as Call to Glory, and been absolutely pivotal in the development of the national scene. It was originally run by the redoubtable Clint Mallet and his team, but stewardship of the event passed into the capable hands of Capital Country Wargaming, a slightly less fanatical Gang of Four, in 2024. They changed the format from a standard two-day event to three days with a top 8 elimination final, plus a doubles event (known as Friendly Fyre) on day 3. It was a big hit last year with your humble scribe and his AOS life partner Joel McGrath triumphing in the doubles.

The Cancon Diaries Day 3: Double Dragons

I’m assuming someone won the singles as well, whatever.

Anyways the annual pilgrimage to Cancon is one of the highlights of the gaming year and well worth a couple of Craichouse articles. Sadly, or happily depending on how you feel about my writing style², I don’t have time for last year’s extensive coverage so I’ll be sticking to the tried and true tournament reporting format: Discussing the lists I am taking, reporting on my games and the general flow of the event and shit-canning the host town or city. I might have to break it into 3 parts because boy is there some shit to be flung at Canberra.

The Singles List

Traditionally I have taken some variety of all-new experimental list to Cancon as a painting project and a cringeworthy desire to etch my name in history as the guy who won a huge event with a freaky novelty list. This approach has naturally led me to some of the worst results of my gaming career.³ 2024 was the first Top 8 elimination round and I wanted in, so I took an absolute filth SBGL Legion of Blood Black Knights list, but still missed the cut. Then Joel and I had an absolute blast winning the doubles on one of the best gaming days of my life.

That’s me in the Hawaiian almost actually smiling. About as happy as I’ve been since seeing The Phantom Menace stole the joy from my life.

I’m not sure what lesson to take from all this. It seems like some hokey Pixar approved message about the power of friendship and following your heart but we would never have won the doubles without the Ethereal VLOZD and Black Knights from my filth-mongering singles list. So the lesson is who the hell knows? Let’s go with listen to your heart, unless it tells you to buy crypto formed on the basis of internet memes.⁴

Her real name is going to be a doozy in pub trivia in five years.

Anyways I decided to pick a doubles army first and settled on FEC because I thought it would be funny, as well to squeeze 80 Crypt Ghouls and 2 Abhorrents into a 1000 point army. The points limit for doubles changed leaving me stuck with the models.⁵ I don’t actually run FEC but somewhere in the process of figuring out the doubles stuff I went for the idea of running a genuine Horde army again. My favorite lists have always been based around throwing down enough support buffs to turn otherwise worthless chaff into killing machines. So I had a good look at the book and came up with a 2k Horde FEC list based on my 4th Ed index principles:

1. Forget what the army used to do. It may look similar but it won’t do the same thing.
2. Ignore what the army is supposed to do. A lot of the indices are light on detail, poorly play-tested and hastily written. They just won’t do what the devs seem to think.
3. Try to figure out what the army will actually do and win with that.

Pretty simple stuff. When I had a look at FEC my major takeaway was that Noble Deeds Points, Knight Units and returning models were not fit for purpose. Leaving aside Monsters, the extra attack from Noble Deeds only gets a worthwhile return on Serfs and Morbheg Knights. As for returning models, to make it work you need Courtiers. Reinforced Knight units with 24 wounds were all-too-likely to be wiped out on contact, making the model return strat useless, and draining the Noble Deeds from your Abhorrents to return fairly marginal 3-man Knight units. I figured the index didn’t support the mixed army of Courtiers, Knights, chaff and Abhorrents but I figured it would support an army of spammed Ghouls and Abhorrents.

“For Bison, it was Tuesday.” Love these models.

So I wrote a 2k list, sourced the models and then FEC caught a massive bump in the December patch. Seriously, my army dropped 200 points, got a new mechanism for Noble Deeds and Field Sergeant rules while I was still watching paint tutorials. The bad news was my FEC went from experimenting with a useless faction to running something at the top of the meta. A bad result would leave me looking like a clown.⁶ Anyways, here’s what I settled on:

Generic Gore Pilgrims 36: I don’t wanna stop at all

Flesh-eater Courts | Ghoul Patrol
Drops: 5
Spell Lore – Lore of Madness
Prayer Lore – Rites of Delusion
Manifestation Lore – Forbidden Power
General’s Regiment
Abhorrant Archregent (180)
• General
• Stronger In Madness
Marrowscroll Herald (120)
Regiment 1
Abhorrant Cardinal (120) – Brown one
• Charnel Vestments
Crypt Ghouls (320) • Reinforced
Cryptguard (100)
Regiment 2
Abhorrant Cardinal (120)
Crypt Ghouls (320) • Reinforced
Crypt Ghouls (320)  • Reinforced
Regiment 3
Abhorrant Gorewarden (140)
Crypt Flayers (150)
Regiment 4
Grand Justice Gormayne (110)

A horde of Ghouls backed by a bunch of Abhorrents. With the new FEC Noble Deeds points generator and two Abhorrent Cardinals, I was a pretty good chance of getting the vital 6 NDP in my own turn and wracking up enough to bring back all of my units, while keeping my troops buffed over the length of the battle. One of the better competitive advantages of the FEC is the ability to bring back multiple units in a turn:

They rarely have the spare Abhorrents or NDP to do it, but hopefully my list would be able to manage it. My only Courtier was the Marrowscroll Herald because he is the best Field Seargeant going and his freaky ability to give Strikes First to FEC units in combat with him is a battle winner. With the Marrowscroll and the Ghoul Patrol battle formation you can get 3 units of 40 Ghouls pumping out 180 attacks before your opponent can hit you back. Grand Justice Gormayne is there because he provides a freaky array of buffs and just look at the magnificent bastard.

I can’t actually see the eyes on models this scale. I just put white on the tip of a tiny brush and hope for the best.

The Gorewarden was there for the extra cast and the teleport. He can zip around putting the all-important Noble Deeds buff on units coming in from the board edge. Plus in my 4th Ed experience, teleporting wins battles and if you have one, you need to take it.

If any painting judges are reading this, those black veins on the wing count as Freehand for the painting point.

As is often the case I spent most of my time agonizing over the last 200-odd points in the list. I went with Cryptguard for obvious Bodyguarding reasons and a unit of Crypt Flayers. The Flayers are a bit meh but they can teleport around with the Gorewarden, or act as air transport to foot heroes which seems like a hell of a lot of fun. I was tempted to replace them both with a Zombie Dragon, because Zombie Dragon, but my old model sucks. 10 Cryptguard, 10 Beastflayers and 50 points for a turn one command point would probably be the most competitive option. Still, I had the Flayers from a Mixed Death army from years earlier.

Btw the white stuff on their base is meant to be light snowfall, not the styrofoam crap in beanbags

5 drops seems like a lot but I feel that if you can’t squeeze it into 2 drops you may as well run 5 and try to lock in the second Honour Guard buff. FEC don’t seem to work for me without a bunch of heroes running around. That was my theory anyway. In the weeks leading up to Cancon, FEC lists started doing well in events all over and they were mostly lower-drop outfits built around Ushoran. My list is a bit of an outlier in FEC terms and I will be interested to see if my totally untested theories can match the results of seasoned veterans who have been playing the faction forever. This could easily be my most embarrassing Cancon yet, which is saying something.

As a final word on FEC I had an absolute blast painting them. So much so that I was moved to unpack the light box and you can see the pics throughout the article. I used the excellent Warhipster Contrast + painting tutorial and highly recommend it. Like any paint tutorial my results never quite matched what the guy with the brush was effortlessly putting out, but as a workmanlike painter I was thrilled with the results.

The Beast Christ was probably somebody trying one of Vince’s Hobby Cheating tutorials

The Doubles

Early on in Cancon prep we were thrilled to learn that Clint Mallet, the previous TO, was coming out of retirement to oversee the event. On the way back from Lost Legion GT, Joel and I cooked up a truly awesome combination of 2x 1000pt BOC and FEC lists that would have given us about 180 bodies with total recursion. A transcendent masterpiece of layers of chaff on chaff protecting one miserable Bray Shaman with the recursion artefact. Then Clint forfeited whatever community goodwill he had by changing the doubles points costings to 800pts each. The miserable Turd, I’m so glad he’s not running Cancon anymore.

“I just bought 80 Ghouls Clint!”

It turns out 800 points is a really good number for doubles list as it makes it awkward to fit the sort of reinforced 450-500 pointish hammer units that dominate singles into any sort of coherent form. After I repurposed my doubles stuff for singles I thought it was a pretty good idea. Joel and I wavered between abusing the rules to come up with absolute filth, and picking something that was fun which we could defend our titles with.

We hit on a sort of middle ground with a combined Monster Mash BOC list with a Mega ally, and Ogor Mawtribes Stonehorns which have become decent with a few points drops:

The Returning Champions – Joel 780/2000 pts

Beasts of Chaos
Hungering Warherd
Drops: 2
Spell Lore – Lore of the Twisted Wilds

General’s Regiment
Doombull (170) • General • Gnarlstaff of Morghur • Bestial Cunning
Ghorgon (200)
Regiments of Renown
One-eyed Grunnock (410) Warstomper Mega-Gargant

The Returning Champions – Patrick – 780/1000 pts

Ogor Mawtribes

Beast Handlers
Drops: 1

General’s Regiment
Frostlord on Stonehorn (320) • General • Gruesome Trophies • Touched by the Everwinter
Frost Sabres (70)
Gnoblars (110)
Huskard on Stonehorn (280) • 1x Harpoon Launcher

I think it’s a pretty decent mix of fun and power. The Warstomper and 2 Stonehorns on the starting line with just barely enough chaff in the Gnoblars and Frost Sabres to provide screening or objective play. Gary the Ghorghon and his Doombull boss dropping out of ambush to provide some punch. Gary drops into action needing a 5″ inch charge on 3d6⁷ and gets to eat a few things. Stonehorns have something close to their old charge mortals, and Prized Beast on Gary and the Huskard should go a fair way to counteracting the curse of hitting on 4’s. Warstompers are actually pretty good now and One-Eye has become something of a bargain.

I think we have hit on the ideal doubles list in that it has a lot of killing power but still kind of looks like we are not taking the whole thing way too seriously. No unbinds or Wizards could end up costing us but eh, doubles is meant to be fun and manifestations aren’t. We ended up going with The Returning Champions as our team name so we can have Team Whatever vs The Returning Champions in the official results on Stats and Ladders. And we are the Returning Champions, let the rabble waste their limited mental energy coming up with funny team names.

That’s it for me. I’ll be back with a wrap up and all the incisive social commentary my reading public has come to expect on the other side of Cancon. See you soon.

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1. Reminder: Ask permission to use Cancon images ↩︎
2. For any commenters who feel the urge to remark that they hate my writing style, this is your annual reminder that I hate your fucking face. ↩︎
3. 2/4 with pre-3rd Ed Ironblasters. ↩︎
4. Unless you can get out before the bubble bursts. ↩︎
5. Thanks a bunch Clint, if this goes badly it’s on you ↩︎
6. Fine, looking more like a clown than usual. ↩︎
7. Or something, I’m not about to learn BOC rules at this stage of their life. ↩︎

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