Autumn Invasion 2017: The Lists

This was taken many Autumns ago, in the fire of our youth

'All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey, I'm out for a walk on an Autumn's day, I'd be freezing off my nuts in Aberdeen, Croydon dreaming on such a winter's day.' - Croydon Dreaming, The Zone's and Fleet's

It's that time of year again. It's raining, it's windy, it's getting cold, and every single person is complaining about the weather. I mean rainier, windier, colder, and moanier of course, after all, our Summer's are English. Its's Autumn everyone, and with it we greet Hawk's annual September tournament; Autumn Invasion! If Hawk are able to release V2 this year it will also be the last V1 Invasion tournament, which heralds the end of an era!

Three of the six of us are going this time, Alex, Joe, and Mike, and is customary I have all their lists to cast my miniature, laser-sporting, electric, beady eye over and critique in this version for the very last time. Let's get on with it before I well up and romance about the good times...

Upcoming Hawk Tournaments & Events

Normally I would I would put my detective hat on and scour the interwebs for details of all the upcoming Zone and Fleet events taking place in the near future for our podcast's news section, but with us having not podded for a while I thought it would be a good idea to list them on here for you instead!

There isn't a huge amount happening towards the end of the year for either system, but for those perhaps willing to travel to an event you may still be able to get your Hawk fix by the end of 2017!

The biggest and most immediate event is Hawk's flagship Dropzone Commander tournament, Autumn Invasion, which is coupled with their Open Day. I think there might be a few spaces left in the tournament (which unlike past events has been capped at 40 people) but even if you don't want to play it is worth popping down to have an ear bash with the Hawk crew; who knows, maybe more news nuggets for V2 will fall from their kangaroo-like info pouches!

How To Run A Successful Blood Bowl League

There are few things in life more difficult, frustrating and often fruitless than trying to arrange for a group of gamers to have a series of constructed games and events, and feed important results back to you in a timely manner. The only examples I can think of which would be more difficult, frustrating and fruitless would be using your vote for the good of the country, telling your wife that "we can't have any more pets", and trying to forget the lyrics to Barbie Girl.

Every club and friendship group needs that person though, that woman or man who is prepared to pour the same level of energy into an upcoming league or campaign as an engine boy shovelling coal on the Titanic. Often though, like the Titanic, the best laid plans will be sunk by an unforeseen event, and the most common iceberg for gamers is long term commitment. I don't blame people for this though, as promising a lot of your hours on a single system for a prolonged length of time can be hard, especially if you find yourself not enjoying it or if 'real life' just happens to get in the way.

After the re-launch of Blood Bowl I decided to take the plunge and arrange a league; the M.A.D. Open! We're now at the very end of the season with only three games left to be played (one Semi-Final, Final and 2nd Runner Up games) and the season went unusually well, with all the participating coaches being very receptive to the format which helped things run smoothly. We had sixteen teams split over two divisions, with ten players finishing all of their required games (which is amazing, more on that later) and a total of forty five games being played in total!

Before we get into the meat and gravy of the post, I recommend having a quick surf around the league's website;

M.A.D. Open Blood Bowl League

Here is a list of why I think it went so well, and tips to get your league or campaign up and running!

The Occupiers of Atlantia

The crew on route to Invasion. I think this may have been taken whilst we were being given our hosts.

As is customary with all tournaments, and was noted in my last blog post, the three weeks before Invasion were spent mostly with me glued to my sofa painting tiny blocks of shaped resin. Normally for a gamer this would be a delight; to have a solid reason to chill out (or cotch as the street kids say) on your sofa, listen to podcasts and paint your hobby. However, it gets to a point when this stops being the case. In fact I'm going to let a selfie of myself from the day before Invasion highlight just how fed up with painting blue and pink I was:

Changing Times

Those of you who have astute observational skills and superb attention to detail (or have either saved links to the blog or clicked a GoGogle link) will have noticed a couple of minor changes to the site:

• Firstly our URL has changed from DZCBlog to OrbitalBombardmentGamers. 
• Secondly we have a shiny new email address, orbitalbgamers@gmail.com. 
• Thirdly, none of the page links to our old posts work (more about that later).

We have been blogging specifically about Dropzone Commander and Hawk Wargames for nearly four years now, with our first instalment landing on the 12th Feburary 2014! I have thoroughly enjoyed my time writing exclusively about Dropzone and I hope that our posts continue to help drive people into the hobby and game (well, when the links work of course).

However, which is a fancy way of saying 'but', the content driving the blog has somewhat diminished over the last year, which I'm sure regular visitors will have noticed through the distinct downturn in posts and podcasts going up on the site. It's no secret that Hawk haven't been 'focused' on their main game system for a while, and of course we now all know that this was due to the internal and ongoing development of Version 2. All this downtime led to myself and the lads investing less time in Dropzone and more time in other systems, such as Blood Bowl, Guild Ball, and Infinity, and this has driven us to the following decision;

Orbital Bombardment will no longer be a specific Dropzone Commander blog. We will now be posting and pod casting about our general miniature interests and any games which take our fancy. 

I want to be very clear, we are still playing and enjoying Dropzone Commander and that we will certainly be covering it as V2 drops and thereafter, but we have all been in the hobby since what feels like we can talk (or at least moan about all the bullshit) and of course play other games. Personally, I want to get back to writing as I miss it! I enjoy the process and lately have applied my creative indulgences to our local Blood Bowl league (http://madopenleague.blogspot.co.uk/ for those interested).

As for the site, it is a bit of a work in process and as mentioned previously our links are not working correctly, which is a colossal fist sized pain in the arsehole. I'll get it fixed soon as I work a page overhaul for the various game systems I expect us to be covering in the future.


I hope you all enjoy the new world, and are looking forward to all the new rules and mechanics for us (Mike edit; Dan) to call bullshit on!