KillCon!!

This is the power of gathering: 

it inspires us - delightfully - 

to be more hopeful, more joyful,

more thoughtful:

in a word,

more alive.

- Alice Waters

Greetings one and all! Welcome back to The Art of Caesura!

The impossible has happened. We had our first warhammer "convention" in the town in which I live, Killarney, Co. Kerry, Ireland! 

Welcome to KillCon!

Some background:

1 year ago the nearest FLGS / Games Workshop shops were about 2 hours away. With young kids, it was not possible to be part of those communities. Through Facebook groups, I managed to find a core of people within about an hour of me who are into Warhammer, we set up a WhatsApp group, through which I managed to finagle my first game of 40k in a couple decades. 

About a year ago, a convenience store in town started carrying a limited supply of Games Workshop products (most importantly, Imperium Magazine). It was a big deal to be able to walk into a store and see the warhammer stuff I love. Then about a month and a half ago we actually had Friendly Local Game Store open up: The Guild Hall!!!

Since then, we'd been trying to organize a get-together of the 9 or so people on the WhatsApp group (most of us have never met each other, though we've been corresponding for a year) and this past weekend it happened!

We agreed to play Combat Patrol (an intriguing format of 40K which I shall devote a future post to), our WhatsApp group was alight with excitement in the week leading up to the big day. 

When I arrived, things were in full swing: 3 games were reaching their climax and a few other hobby enthusiasts were milling about. It was lovely meeting these people with whom I've been corresponding for up to a year, some of whom I still hadn't actually met. It was exciting to discuss the intricacies of miniature painting verbally, rather than textually and to see and hold their work, rather than gently pinching my phone screen to appreciate details. 

After a bit of an ol' chin-wag, I met a guy, Tris, who had only moved to the area a few months before and hadn't yet made it into the WhatsApp group. He asked if I'd like to play Combat Patrol with him and I was only too thrilled to. 

I will have separate posts about the play-by-play of our game, but suffice to say, my first game of 10th Edition was a blast. Tris was an excellent and patient guide and a fun and sports-manly opponent! 

While we were playing the shop reached a peak of maybe 20 people at once! The atmosphere was electric - people getting excited about each other's games, people gushing over each other's armies, and just generally a good time being had by all. 

Maybe this experience isn't unique to The Guild Hall, maybe this is what "40k Nights" are like in many other FLGS - I wouldn't know - but I'm so glad that I can now share in such experiences. 

Thank you for reading about my excitement around KillCon. We hope to get games going more frequently, with possibly quarterly big meet-ups such as this. I shall keep you posted right here on The Art of Caesura!

Reading: The Lincoln Highway - Amor Towles 

Watching: The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)

Next Week:

Story time...